There is an agent in the family!

Not for me yet -- I still have to finish that novel -- but my husband landed an agent for his supernatural thriller. Hoo, hah! I can take some credit because I wrote the query for him, since the one he'd written kind of rambled all over the place. After studying 700 hooks on Miss Snark's blog, I had a better idea of how to compose a query for him, and the first mailing to 10 agents resulted in about half that many requests. The agent who picked up the project has just started shopping the manuscript around. One rejection from one well-known publisher, another highly reputable publisher asked for a look. We hope there will be more good news soon.

Critique Circle - So far, not bad

There was a time, in the golden long-ago of publishing, when a fresh new author who showed sufficient talent might be nurtured along by a good editor who, in those halcyon days, actually edited.

Times have changed.

Editors fret about it, but there's no denying that actual editing is only a small part of what editors do any more. Much of what they do is manuscript acquisition, and the expectation is that those manuscripts will come in clean, shining, and ready to publish.

So who helps the author edit the manuscript? An agent?

Hahahahah.

To make a living sufficient to support even a modest apartment in New York, agents have to hustle constantly, reading queries, reading pages, hoping to find something that's marketable. It's a tough job. Editing? Not what they're paid for.

So who gets to edit your priceless prose?

You do, author.

Increasingly, the advice on writer's boards is: "Find a critique group." Fellow authors may or may not be expert critiquers, but several sets of fresh eyes may be just what's needed to spot the typos, the long passages of exposition, the boring backstory, the howlers, and other writing mishaps that you can't find because you're way, way too close to the words. There are many, many critique groups on the web.

One that I decided to try out and report on is Critique Circle.

It works like this: You sign up for free. You can't read any works at all until you sign up. Once registered, you get two free credits. You need at least three credits to submit your own work. You earn credits by critiquing other people's work. Since you're new, you can have a newbie helper look at your critique before sending it. When you have enough credits to spend, you submit a piece of writing (short story, chapter, etc, preferably under 4000 words) to the Newbie Queue. Your work goes up with the next critique round, which happens one a week. People read your work, critique it, and you get to read the critiques as you receive them. You rate the critique and send a nice thank you note.

You can submit up to three pieces, one at a time, to the Newbie Queue, or after your first newbie critique you can submit to the regular queues. The advantage to the Newbie Queue is that your work goes up at the next critique round. In the regular queues, only a set number of pieces go up at any one time, so if you don't get your work in quickly, you may have to wait another week or two for your next critique. But if you have a piece up for critique already, it will cost you double the points to have a piece waiting for the next queue. Not a problem if you are an active critiquer, but if your time is precious and you can't spare time for a lot of critiques, you may not be able to race through your novel at a chapter a week.

What makes or breaks a critique group is the quality of the critiques. For newcomers, there are examples of good and bad critiques -- if newbies read them. Newbie helpers will assist with early critiques -- if newbies make use of their services. Those are big "ifs."

So far I've had two pieces critiqued: a picture book and the first chapter of a fantasy novel. They've gathered eleven critques. Two were too short to rate, but were helpful short comments. One was terrific -- quiet long and detailed. Five were very good. Two were pretty good. And one was, "Would you please discuss the world I created instead of the cliche D&D pseudo-medieval-vaguely-Celtic world you keep trying to force it into?" The critiques confirmed what I thought might be a problem with the novel chapter (too much backstory) and also picked up some problems I wasn't able to spot (of the "Okay, what is it the main character doing here?" variety). The not-so-hot hotshot who gave the poor critique said "I don't get this, this is stupid, this doesn't belong in fantasy" to the unique features of the fantasy world I'd created, and brushed off everything else as "cliche."

Can't win 'em all. At least it's free.

There are some writing tools that I haven't explored too much yet, though the manuscript submission tracker might be useful. There's also a discussion board that I haven't delved into too much (I waste too much time at discussion boards already), communal writes to a given writing prompt, and a bookstore where Critique Circle authors can list their published books. The titles link to Amazon and the links contain an associate code, so this appears to be not only a showcase for authors but one way that Critique Circle generates income to support the site.

The other way they generate income is to offer a subscription membership. For $34 per year, there are raft of extra features and services for premium members, including setting up private queues so your fans can critique a continuous series of chapters of your latest hot novel, or fans of a particular narrow genre can trade stories with others who appreciate what they are writing.

Is it worth it? So far I'm going to say yes, it is. I have a tendency to fall in love with my own words, so hearing others say, "You know, you could have said this in half so many words" is helpful. One of my goals with my novel is to trim it by about 1/4 to 1/3, since it's already too long and I haven't even finished the ending yet. "In love with my own words" doesn't even begin to cover it. Having other readers is a tremendous help in spotting what needs to be said and what doesn't.

Whether it would be useful for you depends on how good you are at self-editing.

Early Writerious: Pencil, Pen, and Crayon Years

My mother has been cleaning house and getting a lot of old stuff out of the house. Invariably that means I end up going home with a box of stuff that she no longer wants, but doesn't really want to get rid of, just doesn't want to see again. Sometimes it's things I don't want to get rid of, either. In this latest transfer of unwanted goods was a small brown paper sack with a lot of old letters in it -- letters I'd written to my grandmother when we moved to another state. That was back long, long before email, back before cell phones, back when long distance was an extra charge on your bill but it only cost six cents to mail a letter of heartfelt greeings. So now I will bore you all with my precociousness, beginning with the year 1967, when I was but a tot at age five (I can hear you all doing the math). Yes, I was writing on my own by then. I'd been reading since age three. Spelling, punctuation, and capitalization are as they were in the original. Interesting how the spelling degenerates -- perhaps I was relying on others in the earlier epistles.

Dear Grandma
How Are You? I Am fine. I am Building A Ship Out on The Side of Our House. I am Having Fun Playing in my Ship.

The "ship" in question was a vaguely triangular-shaped junction of rock walls beside the house that reminded me vaguely of the prow of a ship. "Building" the ship consisted of moving a few bits of this and that around and sitting there envisioning it all as a ship.

(Envelope dated Nov 1967)
Dear Grandmother
How Are you? We Had a Turkey. And pumpkin Pie. Mark has his room in the Basement. We Get Carnation MiLK.

A scintillating narrative of Thanksgiving day. These are the things that are important to a five-year-old.

(Dated 1968)
Dear Gandma
Thank you for all the Lovely clothes. I like Them all Also Thank you so very much for the record and Book. I listen and read it every Day.

Evidently the obligatory thank-you letter, written a couple of weeks after Christmas.

(this one done painstakingly in cursive - envelope dated Feb 1968)
Dear Grandma
I miss you. come see me again. We will come see you soon.

Grandma must have come for Christmas. Ah, yes -- the infamous Hong Kong Flu year, when we all, every one of us, came down with the vile bug, one at a time. Just as one person would be well, the next would fall ill. Marvelous Christmas, it was.

(typewritten -- envelope dated Aug 1968)
HI
I am Righting to see if you are Happy. We ar getting to go to
go on ar trip. We are going for one week. ar you going for one week/? My bunny is going to. When are you comeing home. ar cat is home ar dog is home just we are going and my bunny ar is going. i have a picture of are car and we are in it.

The bunny was a stuffed bunny, of course. If I'd had a live bunny, it would have stayed with the dog and cat.

Dear Grandma
Guess What! We have some turkeys in the courtyard! There is one male and two females. They are Big and fat. Today we learned a new game called 20 Questions. I have a present for you but do not open it until Christmas.

This was accompanied by a drawing labeled "a male turkey." Evidently a letter written under the direction of my first grade teacher, since the spelling is spot on, though capitalization is still shaky.

(Dated January 3, 1969 -- I would be age 6 1/2)
Dear Grandma
Guess What! We Still have Snow out there. I bet it is about 8 inches deep. I Love the Love Bug that you Gave me. I am Going to take it to School for Show and Tell Next friday. I like the Play food that you Gave me. Played with it friday. You Know What happened friday! Ther was No School! Because ther was to much snow on the road. So the bus's did not come. The Boy's (Mark and Kent) are Clening the Drive Way Now. Well I don't have any more to say. By.

The sign-off was to be my standard schtick for a whole series of letters. The Love Bug was a pink furry cylindrical stuffed toy with a goofy face done in felt at one end. I still have it.

(Envelope dated Feb 1969)
Dear Grandma
Did you have a happy Valentines day? I did. We had a valentines parrty at school. and i got a lot of valentines. Geuss What! wear going to Come to your house! We are going to Come on Kent's Brithday. you know what? Noseles wear liveing the Peach house acrosst the street now Donny a littel boy and his famly are liveing in it!
Well i don't have anymore to say, By!

I haven't a clue who or what "Noslels" is -- probably a phonetic spelling of the name of the family that lived in the house prior to the aforementioned Donny.

(Envelope dated 1969)
Dear Grandmother
Happy Easter! (I hope) Oh boy! am I going to have fun on Easter! Can you guess? Well, Instead of hunting Candy eggs, we are going to hunt plasteck eggs with money and srprizes inside! (That money relly Get's me!) I here that you might come up here for Easter. I hope you do,... and you know why Easter is such a special day? Because, Jeuse Rose on Easter! Well, have a happy Easter! By!

A born money-grubber, despite the theological overtones.

(Dated June 11, 1969)
Dear Grandma
HI! What's going on today?! I just got a set of Beads (Small and Big) and thin wier. it's called "indian rings." I realy sent away for some magck tricks, in the Cappy Dick, But I guess they ran Out But, anyway, I'll have fun. Well, no more to say, By!

Not sure what "Cappy Dick" is -- probably something in the comic section of the newspaper where kids could send away for various kits. I do recall getting a magic kit with Kool-ade labels at one point. I never did figure out why I got the bead kit instead of the magic kit I wanted.

Well i don't have anymore to say, By!

Dannon Skirts the Issue Again

In my last inquiry to Dannon (if you've been following the Activa saga), I asked for a definitive reply as to whether the "Bifidus Regularis" bacteria is genetically engineered or not. I'm not rabid anti-GMO, but I do like to know what's in my food. In that letter, I said that if they could not give me a clear "no," that I must necessarily take that as a "yes."

Here is their latest response:

Thank you for contacting The Dannon Company regarding our position on the use of ingredients that have been enhanced through agricultural biotechnology.

Dannon has a 58-year heritage of providing wholesome, safe and good tasting products to its consumers.

All Dannon products are manufactured under strict quality controls and conditions that meet or exceed all applicable industry and government standards. We take great care to monitor all scientific information related to food safety, including that concerning the assessment of ingredients improved through agricultural biotechnology. To date, no information has emerged suggesting that these ingredients pose consumer health risk.

Moreover, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) mandate the safety of food. Each of these government entities as well as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and the World Health Organization stand firmly behind the safety of these products.

For more information, we invite you to visit the following websites: The Alliance for Better Foods website at www.betterfoods.org, The International Food Information Council at www.ificinfo.health.org or The Council for Biotechnology Information at www.whybiotech.com. You may also contact The Council for Biotechnology Information toll-free at 1-800-980-8660 to obtain an informative booklet. Once again, thank you for your interest.

Sounds like a "yes" to me. "Agricultural biotechnology" can mean any number of technologies, one of which is genetic enginering.

Mind you, I wasn't questioning the safety of the product, only the origin of their magical bacteria. It's the Dannon people who keep harping on safety, while coyly skirting around the real question. And that closing paragraph smacks of, "Go away, kid, you're bothering us."

This again highlights the importance of both clarity and honesty in one's writing. The letter seems to have been written by someone well versed in the art of obfuscation. I ask a clear yes-or-no question, they respond with an essay on food safety. This arouses suspicion. I ask the same question, and they respond with another essay on food safety. Suspicions confirmed? Sounds like.

What bothers me most about this is not the bacteria itself, but the fact that the Dannon representatives will not give me a clear answer. Withholding valuable information about their products limits the consumers' ability to make educated choices. If they're afraid that people won't buy their yogurt because it contains a GM bacteria perhaps -- hey, here's a thought! -- they could use a non-GM bacteria and promote their food as GMO-free.

Oh, Dannon, Dannon, why won't you be honest with me?

Dannon Responds

Not that I've been in a complete tizzy about yogurt bacteria. I'm still eating Activa, and my insides are doing quite nicely, thank you.

But with my curiosity piqued regarding exactly what "Bifidus Regularis TM" is exactly, I was pleased that Dannon did finally respond to my query. Amongst some boilerplate statements about how the company strives for excellence, etc., yes, fine, thank you, here is what they said about the bacteria:

"Bifidus Regularis" is the commercial name for the proprietary strain of Bifidobacterium in Activia. Dannon is the only worldwide manufacture that can use this specific probiotic strain. One way we protect our probiotic patents is to trademark the name of the culture (give this living species a commercial name).

Ahem. Hmm. Well, that explains the "TM" mark after the name. Proprietary strain. Yes.

But it fails to answer the primary question: is "Bifidus Regularis TM" a genetically-engineered bacteria or not? I've written back to inquire. Stay tuned.

Tempest in a Yogurt Pot

Last time I questioned the origins of Bifidus Regularis (TM!) found in Dannon Activa yogurt. That bothersome TM symbol suggested something sinister, but a link from an anonymous comment put me onto a page that gave me the necessary information.

Genetically engineered bacteria? That's still unclear.

A very special strain? Well... perhaps... a strain. Maybe. Still not clear.

A trademarked name to make a dull little intestinal bacteria sound even friendlier and more helpful?

Bingo.

That would indeed explain why both words in the scientific-sounding name are capitalized. It's a proper name, not a scientific name (for if it were a scientific name, the second word -- the specific epithet -- would be small-case, and both words would be in italics). In truth, the lowly bacteria bears the name Bifidobacterium animalis DN 173 010, a rather long and slightly scary name to print on an ingredients label. Sooo much friendlier to call it "Bifidus Regularis" for the American market, suggesting that it helps promote regularity (the "reduced transit time" as the advertising so tactfully puts it). In other countries where Activa is marketed, Dannon uses other names derived from comforting terms in the appropriate language.

Ah, Dannon, Dannon, do you not understand the importance of written communication? Of full disclosure? Of educating the consumer? Do you not comprehend the anxiety produced when important details are left out of your communication, such as, "Now, what exactly is it that you want me to eat?" Do you fear "confusing" the consumer, so that you only disclose what you want them to know? I hope not, for that approach does not inspire confidence.

Thank you, Anonymous, for the tip. You were ever so much more helpful than the Dannon company, which hasn't bothered to answer any of my emails. So helpful, they are. So friendly. So communicative.

Too busy dancing the hoochy-coochy around their offices, perhaps, filled with Activa joy, to get around to their emails.

Magical Yogurt, Bacteria of Mystic Origin

After my bout with the intestinal virus, in the interest of soothing the insides into some semblance of normality, I bought a box of Optimum Zen cereal (it DID promise "inner harmony" -- okay, so maybe that wasn't quite what they meant, but it does taste good in an unusually gingery way) and tried a new product, Activa Yogurt. The label promised that it had special bacteria made to "regulate" your digestive system. If you go to their website, you can watch a lady in a green suit do what used to be called "the hoochy-koochy" across the room because, presumably, she feels so amazingly good after eating the yogurt.

Eating the stuff for a few days really does "reduce transit time" as the label so delicately puts things. Curious about why that might be, I tried to find more information about their star player in their lineup of probiotics (fancy name for "nice bacteria"), Bifidus Regularis. The one teensy little slightly disturbing thing in all the smooth berry taste and lovely nature-green packaging is the tiny "TM" after the name of this organism.

Dannon is very cagey about what Bifidus Regularis (don't forget the TM mark) is, except a strain of probiotic bacteria that were "selected" by "specialists" at Dannon. Now, to the best of my knowledge, the only organisms that bear a TM mark after their scientific names, the only organisms that can be trademarked, period, are genetically modified organisms. I could be wrong about that. This could be a strain specially picked out of culture after culture. But can something that exists in nature be patented? There is something I should find out more about.

Now, I'm not fanatically opposed to GMOs myself, but I know some folks are, and personally, I'd like to know more about what it is that I'm eating and why this particular food has this particular "transit time" effect. Currently there are those in the American political scene who would like to actually reduce the information on food labels, with the presumptuous and patronizing excuse that people might be "confused" by too much information. In this context, "confused" translates to "informed about things they might be worried about." So I have no high hopes that Dannon's labels nor even their website might carry more information about their bacterial superstar than what is there already.

Dannon "specialists" care to comment?

Yah, I didn't think so.

UPDATE: Found a PDF on the website aimed at health professionals that has a better explanation of what bifidobacterium can do for "transit time," here: For Health Care Professionals. It also has some cute little graphs to summarize Dannon's own studies on Bifidobacteria animalis DN-173 030 (the little numbers after the scientific name inspire such confidence, do they not?). But it still doesn't explain why Bifidus Regularis has a trademark symbol by it.

Lucretia Borgia 'n me

When the nasty gastroenteric invader I wrote about in the last post refused to budge, even when assaulted by a tiny bland diet and regular salvos of Pepto-Bismol (O sweet yet odious pink goo, so gagging in the throat, so soothing on the innards), I betook myself to the doctor. An initial blood test revealed nothing unusual, suggesting merely an ugly virus, but a few more tests (on blood and... the obvious) are underway in case something more exotic is lurking within. In the meantime, the doctor sent me off with a prescription to calm the inner storms.

I had it filled immediately, and the pharmacist did the usual counsel. "It is a bit strong," he warned, saying that some people became a bit drowsy when taking it. Then he added in a hushed, by-the-way voice, "It is a controlled substance."

Oh. Spiffy. Exiting the pharmacy, wondering about the street value of my prescription, I expected the magical medicine to be an opiate of some sort. The pharmacist hadn't given a specific name, and I knew they'd been used often in the past for their constipating effect. I think at some point my son, as a very small child, had taken some such potion.

Then I read the label: "Diphenoxylate/Atropine."

Atropine!

The botanically-trained regions of my brain sat up, alert. Atropine. Vegetable alkaloid. Belladonna. Deadly nightshade. Toxic.

Oh, my.

I felt like Lucretia Borgia, walking around clutching my vial of vegetable poison.

The tiny white pills, each smaller than a paper match head, did the trick, quieting the smooth muscle contractions (as one web page on the substance said it would) and stopping the "intestinal distress" dead in its tracks after the third dose.

Because the other ingredient is a narcotic, the pills have a tiny "wheee" effect. Not enough to seriously impair, but enough that one doesn't want to drive a car an hour or so after taking a dose.

The overdue manuscript is done and submitted. The next book in the series is underway. The revisions of the book edited by committee will get done when they get done. And dissertation research continues.

I may have lost my three-day weekend, but life goes on.

So long as Lucretia doesn't throw anything stronger my way.

Of flu and grumbling guts

Thursday night I thought I was shivering because my office was so friggin' cold (half the time the heaters are on and it's too hot, the other half the heaters are off and all the heat goes right out the uninsulated windows). But when I woke up Friday morning with a temperature of 101.4, I knew it wasn't just the temperature that was giving me the shakes and chills.

I had a class to teach in the morning, and it was too late to try to get someone to cover for me, so I went in, gave the cherubs the basics of DNA, had them do a couple of practice worksheets, and then handed them a computer activity to complete. As soon as class was out I headed home, a miserable hour's drive with my insides romping about, thinking maybe they'd like to be my outsides for a while. Took a hot bath, tucked myself into bed sometime around 1:00, shut the door to keep the kitties out, and stayed put, seeing as how by then my temperature had soared to 102.1. The family members were on their own for dinner. I didn't move out of bed except to visit the porcelain throne until this morning.

Now, with a book deadline past and me still trying to finish the thing -- it's a stinker of a book to write, because the topic they gave me was too broad -- the flu or whatever this vile virus is was the last thing I needed. I will prop myself up on the couch and do what I can to finish the thing.

I'd already been thinking, "I'm sick of this book!" I didn't expect the cosmos to take me so literally.

The hazards of editing by committee

Twitchy. That's how I'm feeling. Twitchy and pissed off. Next time I accept a nonfiction book assignment, I'll make a point of making sure that the book is to be edited by one editor to whom I am accountable, not a committee.

Now, because I'd still like to be a working writer and still get assignments, let's go all pseudonymous. Let's say it was Packager A who called me up one day and offered an assignment to contribute to Publisher XYZ's new children's nonfiction series. The subject was -- let's call it transportation. No problem I said. I've written on the subject before. I'll take two.

I dug out old notes and looked up new material. Because the series was new, there were no existing books to look at as models, so I requested a copy of the outline of another writer in the series whose outline was due before mine, to assure series consistency. It's highly unfun to get an outline back and find, "Don't like this, make it more like Author B's outline," when you've never seen Author B's outline. So after modeling my two after Author B's outline, I submitted them to Packager A.

Fine?

Hell, no.

First problem: XYZ's editors, in an, "Oh, didn't you know?" statement, said that they wanted stories about the people, not just the vehicles. "Who are the people operating the vehicles?" they asked. "What are they doing? What kind of training do they get?"

Back to the keyboard, this time for a challenge. I sifted through article databases and put the word out on message boards to find people to interview. It's like gleaning wheat from a field after the combined, other gleaners, and an army of mice have been through, but I finally find a handful of stories. I revise the outlines, send them back, and they're approved by the people at XYZ, with the caveat that I make the stories exciting. "Fill this out," one says. "This is boring the way it's written."

It's an outline, for pity's sake.

All right, so with outline approved, I hack away at the manuscript. It's a short book, pitched for kids, so every word has to count. I write, rewrite, edit, and finally get it off just in time for the deadline. And that was that?

Hell, no.

See, I'm used to working for publishers who, after approving the outline, look over the manuscript, ask for a round of edits, and then turn their team of editors loose on the manuscript to make it look like the other books in the series. I've even written for Publisher XYZ before, and that was my experience.

Not this time.

The manuscript came back bleeding. Fine, I can deal with that on the inital edit. This is where you learn the difference between what the editors asked for and what they really wanted. But this manuscript had been hacked and slashed by an entire committee, and half of the comments completely conflicted with the other half. Orders were to cut 2000 words or so out of the manuscript that was under 6000 words to begin with, yet every paragraph had "expand this" and "can you elaborate on that?" in it. Cut, but expand. Trim, but tell us more.

I want to write. I want to keep getting assignments. So I bit back any commentary and took the draft with a smile. I worked. I cut. I trimmed. I added. I hacked out entire sections. I reluctantly removed a sidebar about careers for women in this field of transporation when a sensitive male editor squealed, "Let's not make this political without presenting the other side!" Women in the field -- there's another side?

This wasn't the end of it, either. This went on for three rounds before they finally accepted the manuscript. Hell, this was a work for hire job. They squeezed me for every penny of value that they paid, and then some, until I was ready to scream to the committee at XYZ, "Just write your own damn book if you know so much about it!" But of course, I didn't. Not within earshot, anyway. This is my bread and butter writing, and it's best just to smile and say, "Sure, I can do that. When do you need it by?"

And now the second book is back for its second go-around. It's already been hacked by the committee once. This time we're dealing with comments from an editor who worked in this area of transporation. He's been busy "correcting" facts and figures that came directly from official industry factsheets, substituting his own from some damn Bob's Website kind of source. He's also tweaked that his own particular branch of the industry isn't represented in the book. Well, finding all those stories was no easy task. If Mr. Expert has some stories I can use, I'll look at them, but his most helpful comment was a listing of vehicles that I could write about. With no stories to go with them, without the people factor that his own publisher is asking for, and with the edits due in a week, I'm not going to cut and rewrite an entire chapter. If Mr. Expert wants a chapter on his industry, he's welcome to find the stories himself and write his own damn chapter.

But of course I won't say it quite like that. I still need the work.

Sleep Deprivation

It's my own fault, really. Sitting up too late at night, after I've done my writing for the evening, reading discussion boards and blogs. You'd think I'd known better than to go to bed at 11:30 when I have to get up at 5:30 the next morning. The cats romping around didn't help, either, nor did the DH's snoring. Wear earplugs. Sure. Earplugs don't cut out those bass rumbles. Nor does a pillow over one's head. Only a sharp poke and a, "Roll over!" is effective -- for a while.

So today I'm running on something less than six hours of sleep. If I were in the military, where they claim that sleep is overrated, I'd be praised. But today's Olympic athletes know something that the military would like very much to ignore: no one can perform at their peak when they are sleep deprived.

Athletes, who will do anything to squeeze out that extra edge, to be just a fraction of a second faster than their competitors, know the value of sleep. They know from hard experience that if they don't get enough quality sleep, their performance is affected.

Nor can one "get used to" shorter hours of sleep. We think we can. We get up an hour earlier, or sit up an hour later, and function on six or seven hours of sleep. The fact that we can function at all fools us into thinking that we're doing okay, that we've adjusted to less sleep. But a sleep-deprived brain is no qualified judge of our own performance. Objective tests show that when people get less than a full 8-9 hours of sleep, their performance goes down. Students who pull all-nighters frequently think they're getting more work done, when in fact the quality of their work declines, and it takes them longer to get the same amount of work done because they can't concentrate as well as someone who is properly rested. Learning is affected, too, because sleep has been shown, in scientific studies, to be instrumental in fixing learned material into our brains.

Folklore and military machismo are no places to learn the facts about sleep and human physiology. Instead, turn to Stanley Coren's Sleep
Thieves, a look into the scientific study of sleep. Coren describes his own ill-fated attempt to get along with less sleep, and discovered, through his journals, that when he stole a few hours of sleep from each night in an attempt to use those hours for greater productivity, his real productivity actually dropped. He got far more done when he was well rested, in much less time.

Hence sleep deprivation need not and should not be part of the writer's life. When the blank page mocks us, when we sit up and pound our foreheads for ideas, when our writing seems trite, it may not be writer's block. It may be sleep deprivation.

Introducing Writerious

I am Writerious, and this is my blog. Here I will explore the mysteries of the writing life. I'm a writer and a voracious reader. I'll be writing about my own writing experiences, struggles with editors, the thrill of publication and the sting of rejection. I'll also review the books I'm reading, an eclectic assortment of whatever turns me on at the moment, be novels, essays, or books on writing.

If any of my readers are published authors, I'll be happy to review your works. Send them in a self-addressed stamped mailer if you need them back. I review only books that are published by traditional publishers, or that are truly self-published (that is, bear the imprint of your own one-writer publishing company). I do not review books that bear the imprint of any of the vanity publishers: AuthorHouse, Dorrance, XLibris, etc. If you paid to have it published and it bears the name of some company other than your own, and if you did not buy the ISBN from Bowker's directly, it's vanity published.

Subsequent posts will be, I hope, more interesting than this one. Stay tuned.