Tuning in the Muse

Here are a couple of tips for tuning past the mental static that can drown out a writer’s soft-spoken Muse. First, write in a staging area that’s separate from your working draft. Second, before you revise older text, save it to an outtakes file. Let’s detail the staging tip first.

Staging 

Add these two headings to the document containing your working draft: Working Draft, and Notes or Staging. Working Draft obviously holds the prose an editor will eventually see.

Notes or Staging, completely separate from Working Draft, is the virtual garage where your not-ready-for-prime-time prose rehearses. I think of Notes as a place where anything goes: streams of consciousness, brainstorming, laundry lists, sketches, etc. All these untamed things are free from the domestication that a presentable draft requires.

With the Notes heading in place, start writing in the Working Draft heading. When you hear your inner critic begin to whine, stop writing in Working Draft and start writing in Notes. Pretend you’re talking to the best listener you know — God, your Labrador or some other entity who accepts you completely. When you speak to this entity, you can take on the voice of Don Corleone, Oprah, or any other effective communicator or chat guru. Do this aloud or just in your head.

Outtakes

Here’s tip two for getting the digital ink to flow: reassure your inner squirrel — you know, the part that’s afraid to delete something for fear you might need it later. Do this by making a separate outtakes file for your article or story. For example, HistoryOfFlight.doc holds the working draft and OutsHistoryOfFlight.doc holds its outtakes.

Before you change any text in your working draft, whether it’s a sentence or several paragraphs, copy that text to the outtakes file. This assures your squirreling impulse that you’re not actually deleting anything, but keeping it safe for later use. Now you’re free to hack the original text to pieces.

Copyright © 2008 Darrin Koltow

A proofreading technique

Here’s an approach to proofreading I’ve found to be effective: turn the document into a plain text email message, email it to yourself, then read each word aloud. You’ll catch errors big and small this way.

Some details and thoughts. First, the operating principle to this technique is this: when you see a familiar thing from a fresh perspective, the familiar thing seems new.

In this case, the fresh perspective is that of a reader. Your brain naturally shifts to a reader’s POV when reading email, even if it’s email from yourself. As a reader, you’re not going to be defensive about the document’s errors, and you won’t try to deny their existence. I bet a lot of that denial can happen on a subconscious level, which is why even experienced writers can miss their own mistakes.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could step outside of your body and see all the annoying character flaws that you’re normally blind to but that everyone else around you notices? Well, at least you can do it for writing.

I use my Yahoo Mail account for this technique, with the text coming in as plain old Courier. This helps me see all the errors standing stark naked before me, black on white. Specify a Courier font in the Yahoo Mail Options menu.

Another important factor here is line width. It’s better to have a relatively narrow window, one that can hold maybe 50 to 60 characters per line. I get impatient when I read those long horizontals. And when I get impatient, I miss errors.

Copyright © 2007 Darrin Koltow

Words are the Enemy

Dear Prospective Client:

Words are the Enemy. They are the fat that hides the meat of your message from your audience. I cut the fat and leave the meat.

Send me a brief spec of your copy needs. I’ll write or edit 200 words for free with no strings attached.

Use the comment box or send to dkoltow at yahoo dot com.

Darrin Koltow
dkoltow at yahoo dot com
(407) 292-0871
2812 North Powers Dr., Unit 69
Orlando, Fl 32818

Yeast life extension may help us live longer

Researchers at the University of Southern California have set a new record for life extension by coaxing baker’s yeast to endure 10 weeks rather than one. The breakthrough may aid the fight against cancer and aging in humans.

Gerontologist Valter Longo headed a team that lengthened yeast lifespan by reducing its food intake and disabling two genes, RAS2 and SCH9, which promote cancer in humans. Longo speculates that these changes cause the yeast to shift into a kind of holding pattern until its normal diet is restored.

Why was yeast studied? Previous studies of yeast have shed light on how aging and disease work in mammals.

Sources and related links:
LA Times

Science Daily

Dick Clark

A population question

Here are two questions I’m seeking answers to: given a demographic of 50 percent male, 50 percent female for any particular state in the United States, what are the different forces, including births and deaths, that maintain that demographic, and how do they maintain that demographic?

 Copyright © Darrin Koltow

Stem cells produced without destroying embryo

A stem cell researcher, Robert Lanza, has recently produced stem cells from an embryo without destroying the embryo. (Source: LA Times). The method involves pulling out one of the eight to ten cells inside the embryo and coaxing it to become a stem cell.

Does this new procedure produce any ethical concerns? It does for some. A Catholic ethicist, cited in the aforementioned article, says the new method opens the door for embryos to be bought, sold and otherwise de-humanized.  Is this true? Maybe a look back into the past is called for. What research has in the past raised concerns about the cheapening of human life, and did the results of that research ultimately justify those concerns?

Kitchen safety

This is an excerpt from an article I wrote on kitchen safety. The article was originally to cover just a single, more focused topic: how you can sanitize wet kitchen sponges by zapping them in the microwave for a minute. (Be careful: make sure they’re wet when you zap them, and realize they will be hot after the zapping.)

I wanted to make the article even more useful, so I researched and wrote this part about the NSF, formerly the National Sanitation Foundation.

Kitchen safety

Good kitchen hygiene includes more than the offbeat pairing of appliances and cleaning tools. It includes investments in products that make it easier to work with food safely. How do you find such products? Look for the logo of NSF International, a non-profit company founded in 1944 that inspects new food products for safety. They also issue food-handling guidelines that companies in the U.S. and abroad adhere to.

How does NSF determine if a kitchenware product is safe? Says Nancy Culotta, NSF’s Vice President of Retail Food Safety, “We conduct physical tests to make sure the utensils are easily cleanable, (that is, tight-fitting and without recesses where food could accumulate), and also to ensure the material won’t chip or abrade and find its way into the food.”

Where can you find NSF-certified kitchenware? Culotta mentions department stores, big box retailers and specialty retailers such as JCPenney, Williams-Sonoma and Costco, among other stores. Look for the NSF logo when you go shopping.

But makers of some NSF-certified products sell just to commercial customers, so you won’t see them in stores. Your best bet will be to purchase them online through a distributor. We’ve listed distributors for such products.

Countertops
Avoid plastic laminates and natural stone, including granite. Stone can have pores that hold bacteria. Ceramic tiles are also out because of the grooves between the tiles.

Instead, seek stainless steel and other solid, non-porous surfaces, which can include stone that’s coated with a non-porous material.

Cutting boards
The same is true for cutting boards: take Grandma’s old wooden cutting board out of commission and buy a board with a smooth, non-porous surface. Epicurean Cutting Surfaces makes such boards. For even better kitchen hygiene, get two boards: one for meat and poultry and one for vegetables. Available at Amazon.com.
 
Plates
The NSF-approved Super Melamine plates by G.E.T. Enterprises are available at www.abestkitchen.com/store/melamine.html.

Oven mitts
Orka silicone oven mitts by Isi are waterproof, stain resistant, washable in the dishwasher, and can withstand temperatures of 500 degrees. Available at Amazon.com.

Dishwashers
The Bosch 300 Series Integra Dishwashers, besides being energy efficient and quiet, have special features related to cleaning and safety. They adjust water temperature and cycle duration according to the load size and amount of food to be cleaned off. They can detect leaks, pump out the water before flooding occurs and then shut down. Find the dealer nearest you by using the online dealer locator on their web site (boschappliances.com)

Knives
Dexter-Russell’s line of Sani-Safe knives bears the NSF logo. The handle of these knives is slip resistant, durable, easy to grip, and joined seamlessly to the blade, making it more difficult for bacteria to grow.
 
These knives are available at cutlerymania.com and also offline. See Dexter-Russell’s site for a page that shows an offline distributor nearest your zip code.

Pots and pans
NordicWare.com sells NSF-compliant pots and pans to the end consumer (and you don’t have to buy in bulk). On their site’s main page, click the Cookware link, then look for the subcategories that mention NSF, such as “N.S.F. Certified Restaurant Cookware.”

The aforementioned products help you keep a kitchen safe from harmful bacteria, but they won’t do all the work. Follow FDA guidelines for handling food safely. Cook meat to an internal temperature of 160 degrees (165 for poultry). Don’t rely on rules of thumb here, like the absence of blood on a toothpick stuck into a chicken. Buy a meat thermometer.

Refrigerate all food — including warmed up leftovers — immediately. Do not let food cool off first. Toss any food left at room temperature for over two hours.

Taking some precautionary steps toward a safe kitchen lets you focus on what really matters: enjoying the food.

For more information:
NSF International: www.Nsf.org
The FDA Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition: www.cfsan.fda.gov
The Partnership for Food Safety Education: www.FightBac.org

Gratitude and generosity

Here’s an excerpt from an article that the Washington Post published. This bit didn’t make the final cut, but it’s a pretty interesting study of the connection between gratitude and generosity.

Gratitude and generosity

In gratitude’s attempts to steer us toward well-being, it sometimes takes us through uncomfortable places, as shown in a study by Gonzaga University assistant professor of psychology Monica Bartlett and Northeastern University associate professor of psychology David DeSteno. Barlett and DeSteno found that gratitude begets graciousness — even when the pleasure of giving turns to displeasure.

In their 2005 study, the two placed 237 Northeastern University students three at a time in the following soap-opera-like scenario: the researchers give Allison a task to do at a computer, then pull the computer’s plug while she’s not looking. Bobby, a stranger to Allison, comes over to help her. Allison thinks Bobby is helping because he’s a nice guy. Nope: Bobby is the researcher’s stooge. Allison completes her task with Bobby’s help. The researchers measure Allison’s gratitude with a questionnaire and she leaves.

In the hallway, Allison meets another stranger, Chandra, who is also a stooge. She asks Allison to fill out a brief survey, but the survey isn’t brief at all; it’s designed to be unpleasant to work on. The researchers measure Allison’s generosity by how many minutes she works on Chandra’s bogus survey. The final step is up to the researchers: looking at what effect Allison’s gratitude for Bobby had on her generosity.

The results? First, 100% of the time that Allison feels grateful, she works at least a minute on Chandra’s survey. She spends an average of 20 minutes helping Chandra when feeling thankful — even though the survey drains her — compared to only 12 minutes when not thankful.

Interpreting Allison’s behavior, DeSteno states that gratitude for Bobby motivates her to stay the extra eight minutes — even though it is a burden for her to do so.

But Allison’s graciousness to Chandra evaporates when the researchers surreptitiously let her discover that her gratitude for Bobby is causing it: her work on Chandra’s survey drops from 20 minutes to only 6.

The drastic drop, suggests DeSteno, is due to overcompensating for the perceived error of helping someone who has not helped you. “They actually kind of overcorrect themselves, saying ‘Well, I’m really not going to be a sucker to my feelings or let them bias my judgment,’” he says.

Speculating on the reason humans have gratitude, DeSteno suggests we may be hard-wired for it as a means of building social bonds. “We think that one of the main purposes of gratitude is to tell us to repay a person who’s helped us. The feeling of gratitude is a pleasant one, but it’s distinct from feeling happy. Our intent with this study was to show that gratitude is what makes you want to help me. And you help me not from just knowing that I helped you, but feeling it.”

Copyright © 2007 Darrin Koltow.

What a turnaround. I started writing an article on Steve Long’s photosynthesis study. This work seemed to have no negatives about it, and Long’s theoretical improvements to photosynthesis would produce all kinds of dreamy benefits. (This was my impression, not necessarily his.) I saw fields bursting with giant-sized ears of corn and wheat stalks. I saw myself laughing at former worries over electric bills as I lazily lay on my roof among super-efficient solar panels, which were made possible by Long’s work and my reporting of it. Egging on my daydreaming was “Why Study Photosynthesis?” by Devens Gust. I expected more rosy images of the future as I called David Kramer. He too would have only kudos to give Long’s work.

Crash. Not so. “I don’t think there’s an advantage at present for the plant to be more efficient [in terms of photosynthesis].” I don’t think it was even what he said so much as his tone: cautious, careful, and painting a lot more gray into the picture of the effects of Long’s study.

But, some beautiful paintings have a good bit of gray, don’t they?

I think we forget our successes way too easily. I have to remind myself of a major success involving fiction writing that happened to me last summer. It amounted to finally discovering an approach for consistently writing and finishing short stories. I finally found something that trumps “writer’s block,” and “I don’t feel like writing,” and all the other crap that repels the muse.

The approach goes something like this: I imagine sitting in a movie theater, seeing the coming attractions of movies, and hearing great music backing the images: the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony; Elgar; Dvorak; Wagner. Oh, man: Wagner.

Before the epiphany, I had been trying to write stories using the aforementioned approach, but minus the music. I would see myself in the movie theater, just as the lights went down and the sneak previews began playing. And ideas would come. I would feel galvanized, enough to sketch out an outline of a complete story, or a single scene to a story. But I couldn’t seem to develop the story further. The juices dried up, no matter how vividly I imagined the setting of the cinema.

I kept trying, though. And then I think the epiphany happened like this: I played Vaughn Williams Fantasia on a theme by Tallis, or it might have been the Wagner piece that opens the movie Excalibur, and I imagined sitting in the cinema.

Anyway, something big clicked. Very big. I wept, I wrote, I had to get up and pace the room the feeling was so intense. I won’t pretend any of what I wrote that day was quality stuff. But it felt real and it felt good. I don’t think what I wrote in that moment was junk. There were gems in there. But the point is, I found an approach to writing that felt right to me. And I used the same approach — great music and thinking of movies — the next day, not believing it would work. But it did. It took me some time to finish the first story, but I did finish it, and another and another. That approach got me to write stories and finish them, and dig the process. I’m still powered by that personal Big Bang of several months ago.