Darwin Fish and Updates

About a week and a half ago I saw one too many Jesus Fish around town. Now, generally I don't really give a hoot what you put on your car, but these stupid things have always bothered me, I don't know why. In any case I have also seen a few of the Darwin Fish floating around, one thing I've always found clever is turning someones own symbol against them, so I decided to order one. Unlike bumper stickers, car plaques are way more elegant looking and, hopefully, don't ruin your paint. All in all, it was a pretty simple procedure through a great website called Evolve Fish, and when all said and done it only cost me about 8 bucks with shipping! There's a whole host of other neat stuff on their website, so if you're interested check em out here: http://www.evolvefish.com/

I will not go into any of my religious beliefs or even slander anyone else's for that matter, especially since this is from my phone. That is for another blog all together. Suffice to say, I do not like organized religion--if you wanna believe do it on your own terms, not someone else's--and I really do believe in evolution over that whole creationism stuff. I am also somewhat outspoken about my opinions, so the Darwin Fish fits just fine. Hell, when it has turned belly up I found this sweet Alien head car plaque that I might buy. Take it as you will, but I think it looks pretty snazzy myself!

Now for the real meat of my post: updates. I said I was going to be posting more so never fear! I have several blogs in the works, all of which I hope are somewhat interesting anyway. The big kahuna of them all, though, is my second Ry Recommends post. It’s been a little less than a year and a half since I last did one of these, and damn do I have a lot to talk about! Sadly the blurbs about each book are not very short, but I think it’s turning out well. My other projects include a new series of posts looking into the various genres, sci-fi, fantasy, mystery, and the like which will then lead into a couple in depth looks at some of the sub-genres out there like cyberpunk and dystopian literature. On top of all that I have a few more full posts about some of the books and series I’ve read recently which’ll be fun to write up as well. Seeing as it’s my spring break I hope to get a least a couple blogs out before Monday, but we’ll see.

Until then, to infinity and beyond!

New Blog App

As everyone knows I am rather sketchy about updates and I believe part of the reason stems from the fact that I tend to be horribly long winded. So, in an attempt to combat that, I have installed something called Blogaway onto my G1.

Essentially, it's a simple blogger application where you can post new blogs, work on drafts--although not drafts you started on the computer unfortunately--,and view other blogs you follow. It also looks like it allows you to post pictures, which I'm going to test out here in a few. So far I have no serious beef with set up or function, people seem to forget that even though their phone has Google's Android OS, it's still a phone. I would like to actually be able to work on posts started on the computer and view my previous posts, but for now that function seems to still be on the drawing board. Also, it looks as though my labels aren't integrated into the functionality, which really sucks. I'll post this and see what it looks like in the actual browser.

Hmm I don't know where the image is gonna show up either.. weird. Anyway, i may post more but my spelling will probably die.. I'll go back and edit stuff from the computer too, but i can see this being a really useful application for when an idea strikes me on the go! Plus, I hope this will teach me to be a little bit more concise since typing, even on a full QWERTY, is kinda hard. Thus begins the era of the microblog!

*edit* So it would appear that I haven't quite figured out how the pictures work. It says "forbidden" when I try, which is rather strange, but you know.. the maiden voyage always has some glitches. I think I'll tag all the posts I make from here with "microblog", not that anyone really reads these, so it's easy to sort for you and me.

More Publishing Complaints

In my last post, E-Books as a Means to Revolution, I got into a mini rant about the corruption and bs tactics of publishing companies. It turns out that I had more to say than what actually fit with the content of that last post. So here's a few more things that came up.

The biggest thing, and actually the reason this post is coming into existence, is the dirty tricks publishers are now using to get our money. This has affected me directly as I've been reading the Codex Alera (very good by the way) series by Jim Butcher. Everyone knows that, in general, there are three types of printing sizes Mass Market (MM), Quality Paperback (QP), and Hardcover (CL)*. And generally the prices are as follows: MM $7.99, QP $14.99, and CL $24.99. There's some fluctuation depending on the genre as well as amount of pages--like Stephen Kings newest book Under the Dome which is retail $35.00 because it's a monster of a book--but on average that's about the price rundown. These prices are based on two factors: the materials used to print the book, essentially the MM's are cheaper because they're lower quality than that of the QP and CL, the other determinant factor is their size. MM's are 7 inches long by 4.5 inches wide; QP's are 8.3 inches long by 5.5 inches wide; and CL's are 9.3 inches long by 6.5 inches wide. Why have I told you all this random information? Well, my friends, it's because the publishing companies have decided to create another size, call it Mass Market, and charge two dollars more for it. Yes indeed, that's now $9.99 for your favorite books! That may not seem like much, but this new MM is 7.3 inches long and 4.5 inches wide and yet is still made from the same material as normal Mass Markets.





As you can see your two dollars goes to great use! If I'm going to pay more money I want better quality, not a larger size! The other thing that's retarded about this whole situation is the fact that these aren't meant to be in that larger size, so what do they do? They just change the spacing and the margins! A pretty dirty thing to do if you ask me. Most QP's actually have normal size fonts and spacings and so the book actually looks good, in these crappy things it annoys the hell out of you while you're reading because of all the extra room on the sides and between the lines! Lastly, but actually really important, is it completely destroys the look of your bookshelf. Sure maybe I have just a bit of OCD in me when it comes to books, but I like to have all the same editions otherwise it just irks me every time I look at my shelf. Yes that means if I buy a series starting with a hardcover I need to own the rest in hardcover. Even still, I don't know if this is Jim Butchers fault or if it was the publisher company who did this, but book number 5 is in this fucked up format.. why in gods name would you change the format of a SERIES on book FIVE?! At least they should offer up a normal sized MM for people like me, oh wait they can't BECAUSE NO ONE WILL BUY THE BIGGER ONE!

I haven't really written a ranty type blog in a while, it felt good. This one was particularly needed because of my recent reading of the Codex Alera books, but it has also been something that's always bugged me, especially about "popular fiction". It seems as though these publishers are doing this mainly with mystery/suspense books as well as sci-fi fantasy, which is even more sad because those are the ones I read more often! It also sucks because of the fact that generally popular fiction stuff like that are the only ones to go into MM, so if you just buy sci-fi/fantasy or mystery/suspense then you probably have a pretty sexy looking bookshelf, until now. I think perhaps I might send an emial or message to Jim Butcher, obviously a little less angry sounding, and ask if he knows whats up. Sometimes authors are as much of nerds about books as I am, maybe he has the same feeling, or he'll know if it'll ever come out as a true MM.

Anyway, two blogs in one day is pretty good for me, especially after so long without posting. I know I told everyone I was gonna do another Ry Recommends, it is coming, eventually, maybe I'll start throwing together a list of books to use. Ta ta for now.

*CL stands for Cloth which is what hardcover books were generally made from way back in the day. At least at borders they haven't bothered to change it to HC, but I've seen it done.

E-Books as a Means to Revolution

In the past I've written about the E-Book Revolution as well as some of my thoughts on owning digital vs physical books. I'm still doing a lot of thinking on the subject and I think I may have come up with a pro for the Revolution.

The publishing industry, like most big businesses these days, is corrupt. There's no doubt about it. You have publishers swindling authors by paying them much less than they deserve, only to turn it around and charge way more than they should, then, on top of that, you have book sellers--both the so called "brick and mortar" as well as online retailers--upping the price again for profit. Of course, the publishing industry is not nearly as far gone as the music industry, or even that of the movie industry, but I feel like it's effects are far more devastating, both to the consumer as well as the author.

I am not an author myself, but working in a bookstore as well as reading author's blogs I feel like I have enough information to make a reasonable opinion of the situation. Authors spend months or years in a creative fever trying to write a book. They have to deal with their own criticisms, writers block, plot holes, and a whole host of other mentally challenging obstacles before the next step. Revision. They revise, revise, and revise again; tweaking, changing, adding before they have finally come up with something they're proud of, I've heard it likened to a child even. So they package it up and send it out to the world and wait, and wait, and wait before.. Rejection. As far as I can tell many authors to hit it big first off, but even if they pass that big hurtle, they're still stuck with "We at *insert publishing company here* are very interested in your book. We'll take a chance on you for $xxx.xx and a publishing run of xxxx copies..." and so on. Now sometimes the author will get the price they were expecting, but many times they're shortchanged, cheated, and robbed. I mean after they have spent so much time, money, and emotional well being on their work and yet the publishing company wants to offer you that much? This is where it can get shitty, if indeed they have put out a written a damn good book, they have been paid x amount of money to get it going, and only get x% of the profits as well, but because the author decided to settle for the publishing companies numbers they'll be getting all the profit. Now generally if the author hit it big they'll offer more for next book and so on, but this is where the major snag comes in because if the author does indeed keep writing those best sellers, publishers expect more books out of them. More than likely the author has to sign a contract stating that they'll write x number of books per year for x amount of money and this kills the creativity. Deadlines, stress, and nagging editors harass them at every turn, and generally the first book they wrote was with all their heart, now they just get things out on paper so they can meet the deadlines.

I've seen it happen, great authors like Nora Roberts, James Patterson, Danielle Steele, and Nelson DeMille just to name a few. Their first books were amazing, fantastic, one of a kind; the publishing company they signed up with saw this potential and dragged them into a binding contract. Now look at them, Patterson and Roberts alone put out 5-6 books a year and guess what? They are what I like to call "cookie cutter plots". Change the city, change the character names, and use the twist you had in your fourth book, and make this character fall in love with this one, and generally leave the plot as is. The reason these books continue to be popular is because consumers want to believe that because these authors were great at one time, then they must have it in them to be so again. Another reason is that once a publishing company finds something that "works" they do not want you to move away from it, the author may put in something more original, but instead of taking that chance again they edit it to look just like your last 8 books. Profit, profit, profit.

Naturally those authors I mentioned are successful and probably have a good deal of money, but do they have as much as they deserve? I don't think so honestly. It's all well and good that the publishing world is a business like any other, but I never have felt that businesses should screw over their employees. Books are especially touchy I think because, after all, none of the people who actually work at the publishing company can actually write worth a damn. So it would make sense to me that the author would be treated like a god, but no. Instead big wigs at the company make tons of money off authors' intellectual creativity and merely toss a sliver of that profit back to the author. They then decide pretty much everything about the book that isn't actual writing, they pick the cover artist, they pick what size to publish it in, they pick how many and how long to publish it, and then they merely ask what the author thinks--usually not so much. I believe that authors can escape this rat race with e-books.

As much as it pains me to see paper books are on their way out. Sure it won't be for a while, it might not even completely happen, but working at a bookstore I've noticed how much our sales have declined yet how much amazons e-book sales have jumped. There is a silver lining here, though, and that is for the authors which in turn will lead to the readers as well. Right now we have the Kindle, the Sony E-Reader, and the Nook out on the market with 50+ more already in development. Now is the time when authors can break away from the greed and the corruption of the publishing companies! So far Sony, Amazon, and B&N are arguing over prices of an e-book, they're also arguing with the publishers about those prices. If you haven't heard already, our dear friends over at Amazon want to monopolize e-books and e-book prices so much so that they pulled all of their books from the major publisher Macmillan over such a dispute. Check out the article over here. This whole incident has other publishers getting a little nervous; as well they should, because why exactly does an author even need a publisher for e-books? Amazons trying to market it so that authors sell their books directly to them, this is a baaaad idea though. What authors should realize from this little dispute is that the power is now in their hands again. Instead of going through a publisher or even an online retail like Amazon, Sony, or Borders, authors now have the chance to sell their own books! This may not seem like much right now, but shit, think about it! James Patterson is an international bestseller, if he were to say hey *insert publisher here* go fuck yourselves I'm going to sell my own books, what could they actually do? They'll probably beg and plead for him to stay, but anyone with business sense would realize that he'd make a much bigger profit from selling them on his own. I mean really, he could hire a freelance editor, and then when he finishes his book why even bother with taking only x amount of the profit when he could put it up on his website and make 100% of the profit. It wouldn't be hard, he'd still sell a ton of books because he could price them as low as he wants and still make a hearty profit, and because he is already a huge international author he wouldn't even need the advertising from the publishing companies--which I believe is their only real use these days.

I know the appeal of a solid book, but I can't help but see the possibility of completely changing the publishing world. Unfortunately, because in print books still make up the largest portion of sales for an author, one or two authors wouldn't be able to accomplish this it has to be a group effort, it has to a bunch of the big name authors coming together and sticking it to the man. You get James Patterson, Nora Roberts, Clive Cussler, Dan Brown, Orson Scott Card, Stephanie Meyer, Stephen King, and a few other big names and the publishing industry would be crippled! Now with that many big names going independent it wouldn't take long for younger more green authors to follow suit, and soon publishing companies will have two options: Completely gut and reorganize their industry or loose buckets and buckets of money, if not go out of business all together. Sure they might fight, but they would have no real cards in their hand, sure they might have the rights to certain books for a certain amount of time, but that won't be enough. People want new books by these authors not the same thing they've already read. How would the new publishing world look? Well for one authors would have complete rights to their books, no "we'll take a chance on you and buy your book from you for x number of years", the publishers get the privilege of putting their name on the book, that way authors can sell paper books in major retailers as well as put their e-books up on their own website for their pure profit. Next authors should get at least 50% of the profits, I know that publishing paper books is not cheap, but it is not so expensive that you can get away with an 80% : 20% publisher : author ratio. This in turn will mean that publishers will have to restructure their prices to be more reasonable in terms of what it costs them to print the book and what they charge for it. Somehow I don't think it costs even $20 a book for hardcovers and yet publishers list the price at $25+ per book. Sadly I can't seem to find any accurate information on how much publishers actually make because of this, but I feel like they can lower the prices of all of the books. This will also mean that instead of keeping a book under hardcover for a full year (or more) will fade away. Most books do not last a full year in hardcover with even decent sales, what they should do is put books up for 3 months, if sales are good, up it to a maximum of 6 months and then send the book to paperback.

The next thing this restructure will do is stop the rampant corruption that has filled the publishing world. Most people don't know, but the New York Times Bestseller List is a load of shit. Yes that's right, a load of shit. Why you ask? Because publishers contact Borders or Barnes and Nobel and say "hey for $xxxx I want you to get everyone in your company to market this book" this is all under the table by the way. I've seen it done. Just looking at the NYT Bestseller list this week 4 of the top 10 are best sellers because of Borders, which may not seem like a lot, but you have to take into account that 4 others are on the list because of their movies. That leaves 2 books that made the top ten because of being well written. 2% that's wretched. Of course it's not always through bookstores that they do this, many publishers send their books to Oprah, hmm I wonder why? Every Single One of her "recommendations" has been number one on the best seller list. Why is this important? Because many, many, many people only buy books if they have a NYT Bestseller stamps on them. They won't look at books that have won actual awards--which you might notice are hardly ever on the NYT list--they won't touch anything but these books because they think that if everyone else is buying it, it must be good. Nope, actually employees at Borders and B&N are told you have to sell this many of this book, and if they don't their hours get cut, which means the store loses money, which means that everyone working at these retailers has become sharks because without hours, no money, no money, no food, no food, death. Furthermore employees actually get in trouble with their management if they don't sell these books. It doesn't matter if the books actually suck, it doesn't matter who the customer is, you have to try your hardest to sell these books even if it's not something even related to what the customers purchase. You could be a big buff biker who only reads hunting books we will still recommend things like Twilight to you. You have to note as well that we booksellers and even the management do not know where the corporate offices pull these books out of their ass, and when we ask they say "oh we just liked it". Right. If they had actually even read the back of these books we're forced to sell they would know that they are not very good, nor do they actually appeal to a wide variety of people, this and the fact that they all hit the NYT list makes me believe publishers have money that isn't accounted for. If the structure was reset, though, publishing companies would have to consult with authors before they do anything with that author's book. Now sure, there are going to be some greedy authors out there, but generally I think authors want to make the List off their own skills, not because a thousand borders around the country are forcing it on hapless customers. Even if it's just a foolish fairytale that's what I believe.

I don't know if it will ever happen, but I think now is the time for something to happen if it will. Authors have to strike against the publishers before they all fall in line together and it becomes practically suicide to market your own books. You wrote the book. You put in the time for it. You sweat blood and tears for your books, take a stand, and take back what is actually yours! Publishers nor book retailers have no write to set the price of your e-book, they aren't doing anything with it in terms of supplies, they may market it a bit, but most authors have a huge following already on their website! It wouldn't even be hard; e-books are merely a text document that you can put up on your website with hardly any cost to yourself. Lastly, you don't want your fans to be screwed do you? We're your life blood, we only put up with publishing companies because of the huge monopoly they have over your works. Now is the time to take matters into your own hands!

Originality

I entered the world of blogging back in 2007, at first with some faithful companions, and then on my own. It was my senior year and I honest to god wanted to become a better writer, express my thoughts more clearly, and put myself out there. It was a rough start to say the least and, honestly, I don't know if it's even gotten that much better for me. I've watched the progress of my friends and, like everything else in my life, they've improved miles while I've gone inches. Or so I think, one thing I've learned over these past few years is that you cannot judge your own writing, at least not so much that it prevents you from doing the thing you're here to do; write. I've had so many difficulties with this idea; in fact I don't believe I've overcome it yet. To date I have never finished a short story or any sort of fiction at all; I've ranted, I've raved, I've peered into my soul at times on this blog, but I still have yet to actually do what I set out to do. I know that very, very few people actually read this blog, and I know that I thrive on those readers, but honestly I'm actually quite terrified of certain kinds of criticism. Sure I don't really give one wit about what others think of me, but when it comes to fiction and short story stuff, I'm terrified. Perhaps it isn't just them I am afraid of; perhaps I'm afraid of what it is I will think. My first and last attempt at any sort of story was Untitled and I came to a very interesting conclusion: I may read too much. I know it sound weird and off—authors need to keep in touch with their genre after all—but I've been thinking about it for the past couple months and I don't know if I have any of my own ideas.

Originality is, after all, an authors best friend, it's what gives him his power, his allure, his greatness, but it's also one of those things that is becoming harder and harder to come by. If you think of great fantasy, Tolkien comes up without a second thought, but really how many other authors are really being as original as they should be? I mean sure a few come to mind, but many of the fantasy authors I can think of have striking similarities to Tolkien, some, like Terry Brooks, blatantly rip him off. Of course many authors are different too, but I find that when I write, or even think of stories playing out in my head, that they are horribly similar to things I've read or seen in the past. Some are completely subconscious to the extent that I don't even realize it isn't even my idea in the first place, others take a mere five minutes of thought for me to realize "shit.. this isn't mine". The easiest example is, of course, Untitled because one of my good friends first pointed it out to me. You see there's this graphic novel called Air Gear that was floating around the net back freshmen maybe sophomore year (it's now available here in the U.S. in hard print), this graphic novel was the inspiration—without my knowing it—of Untitled. From wiki:

"Itsuki "Ikki" Minami, is a student and a delinquent. Also known as the "Unbeatable Babyface", Ikki is the leader of the youth gang by the name of "East Side Gunz". Upon his return home, after being humiliated by a Storm Rider team called the Skull Saders, Ikki discovers a secret hidden from him by his benefactors, the Noyamano sisters. The sisters belong to a group of Storm Riders who go by the team name of Sleeping Forest. In the anime, learning the sisters' secret angers him and he steals a pair of Air Trecks, abbreviated as "AT". (In the manga, the sisters give a pair of ATs to him and invite him to skate with them.) Ikki eventually settles his grudge with the Skull Saders, but in the process he receives more than the simple satisfaction of revenge. Determined to experience the sensation of "flight" for as long as he can, Ikki is quickly engaged in the mysterious, irresistible world of Air Treks."

Yeah, you might not be able to tell too much how similar my story was, but trust me, it was. Sure I had different names, a different setting, and a slightly different premise, but at the heart it was Air Gear written poorly. This may be part of the reason I stopped, subconsciously I knew I was kind of ripping off this story, but who knows. Recently I have had a million ideas running through my head, stories to tell, characters to create, but I am afraid of ripping things off again. This is partly why you have an editor I'm sure, partly why you keep in touch with what others are doing, but honestly, can I really say that I have any of my own ideas? I look over at my bookcase and there are so many stories there, so many characters, plots, and worlds, can I really write something on my own? There are book I read back in middle school that I don't even remember, probably books from my childhood that are gone, but memory never really disappears, we just loose access to it. Already I scoff at professional, excellent writers because I see similarities to others, who am I to even judge? I know that people get inspiration from others, every author interview says as much, but where can you draw the line? Some, like Lev Grossman, make it obvious enough that they're writing satire that it's okay to use such fundamental ideas, but others, like Brooks, seem to not know or not care that their story is the same give or take a character name. I wonder if maybe I just need to write without thinking and get it out of my system. Perhaps I'm over reacting and just need to get my foot in the door because I have not written anything to completion. Maybe writing something, finishing it, even if I don't show anyone, is the way to go, I mean if it is blatantly ripped off from somewhere who cares? Yet I feel as though everyone else out there can write amazing, original, creative works on their first try. So many of my heroes wrote their first book or story, got it published, and were on their way. They had a well of ideas that never seemed to end, and yet the first thing I try and seriously write is plagiarized trash. Now look at me, I read, and then write about books, that is all this blog has turned into. Sure it's interesting, but it is not what I wanted after two years of this. Even if it was, I see no improvement between April 2007 and now. My vocabulary may be somewhat more sophisticated, but not much, and certainly not as a result of me writing about fucking books. I mean I don't even do that "right", I ramble and I jump around, and in the end I just have a big puddle of mush that probably turns people off from the books more than interests them. What do I do? I know I have ideas, but how can I know they're mine?

Maybe that's the thing; maybe everything really is just a copy of a copy of a copy. Is there even such thing as true originality? Or are things only original because we have yet to have encountered them before? Tolkien could have knicked some of his ideas off someone before him, and that person from someone before. Back in the early 1900's Carl Jung—one of Freud's disciples—was examining patients in a mental hospital when he encountered a severely schizophrenic man gazing out the window in a peculiar way. When he asked the man what he saw the patient told him that if he squinted his eyes and looked at the sun, he could then see the "sun's penis", and that if you moved your head to and fro you could see the penis moving and this, he said, was the origin of the wind. Pretty fucking weird eh? Well, it wasn't the first time that had been said. It turned out that when Jung was studying mythology he came across a recently translated Greek text that said nearly the same thing: a tube hanging from the sun, when moving, caused the winds. Penis aside, there was no possible way for this schizophrenic man to have even heard of the text since it wasn't even translated until after he had been committed, from that encounter Jung developed his idea of the collective unconscious. As the name implies, Jung believed that every human being had access to this vast store of knowledge and could not be explained by personal unconscious from ones memories. Things like God, the spirit, truth, justice, these things aren't learned even over an entire person's lifetime, yet even a young child knows when something is just "wrong", he may not know what that thing is, why it feels that way, or be able to explain it, but he just knows it. Certainly we learn things, from our parents, society, and many other things, but there's something else going on. This is one of the topics that was addressed in The Witch in the Waiting Room by Robert Bobrow M.D., and one of the things that I feel we have yet to truly unlock. Even Plato believed in this with his Forms which "asserts that non-material abstract (but substantial) forms (or ideas), and not the material world of change known to us through sensation, possess the highest and most fundamental kind of reality". Essentially anyone can look at a chair, any chair, and know that it is a chair. I'm not a philosopher so I probably botched the metaphor a bit, but the idea is the same. Why is it that in fiction there is always a hero and always a villain? Even the oldest written human stories contain these ideas: in Homer's works and even in the ancient, ancient Epic of Gilgamesh contain these very same themes. Certainly there isn't The Lord of the Rings just floating up around, but the idea of it is there, Good over Evil, Light vs. Dark, Friendship and Loyalty, it's hard for me to believe that these things, which are all so prevalent in every culture, are just things we learn. They're too profound, they're too intense. Even just the idea of "friends" is too much for anyone to come up with on their own, and yet at the youngest of ages we group together, we are loyal to one another, we make these connections with other people that just cannot be explained. And then there's love. Countless songs, ballads, poems, and every other kind of expressive form have described this. Across generations, throughout the world, love is another one of those forces that every human just knows deep down.

Perhaps originality is merely taking these ideals and putting your own face on them, certainly we enjoy authors like Tolkien and Herbert not only for their ideas, but for their characterizations, their subtle twists and turns. It's a cliché by now, but it really isn't the destination that really counts, it's the journey to get there! That's kind of where I hit a rut, I'm so paranoid about ripping ideas off, that I can't appreciate my own unique ride. I do truly feel that reading is almost detrimental to my writing, but at the same time imitation is the highest form of flattery—unless you're a lawyer. I said back in the day that the only way to improve one's writing was to write, I think the same is true for fiction, your first few stories might be horribly familiar, but it might only be because you're most familiar with other peoples writing and haven't yet learned what your own style is. Write now I really do not know what my style is, at least not in a fictional sense. I know I ramble when I write, but that is because of my lack of proofreading or editing. It's horrible, but I have never proofread my stuff before, I generally write, and post (or turn in as the case may be). As such I've realized that proofreading is a skill, a skill that is hard, frustrating, and makes me want to shoot myself, but a skill none the less. As all skills go it's another one of those things that you just have to do over, and over, and over again before you can really do it decently. For someone such as myself it is also one of those skills that is absolutely essential, my grammar sucks, I ramble, my sentences are awkward, and I generally take forever to make a single point, so bear with me. This is one of those things that I am going to try and do from now on, on all of my posts. Except this one, it's 12:30, I'm tired, and I really don't want to look at this post ever again!