CalvinDude.com

I’ve been editing quite a bit this weekend, which has been a lot of fun although it has also been hard work. On the other hand, some of the tools that I’ve developed (the VBScripts, for instance) are able to show me that I’m making objective progress. Whether that translates into subjective progress is something yet to be seen, but I believe it does (in other words, I think that an objectively better text will translate into a subjectively better experience for the reader).

Just to give an example, one of the big problems that faces new writers is the fact that they are often repetitious. We can often catch a lot of these problems ourselves, but often it takes extra readers to find them. That’s why, for instance, in the dedication I wrote for Public Transit, I included the phrase “Thanks, I suddenly realized, to…” I had used the phrase “suddenly” and “realized” as well as the combo “suddenly realized” a lot in that novel without knowing it; but the readers I gave it to for critiques spotted this flaw instantly.

Let’s make this concrete. Suppose that I wrote the following paragraph:

The wide receiver ran to his starting position. On the snap, he ran down field as fast as he could. Once in the open, he turned back, saw the ball already in the air. He ran to where it would fall, scooped it in his arms, and ran for the end zone.

When I run that paragraph through my stats program, it tells me:

There were 52 total words.
There were 35 different words used.
There were 27 words used only once.

So what this tells me is that in the above paragraph, there were 35 unique words that made up a total of 52 words. That means about 2/3 of the paragraph was unique. More importantly, of the 35 different words used, only 27 of them were used only once. That means that there were 8 words used more than one time.

But here’s where the problem of repetition comes in. See, there were 52 total words, with 27 words only used once (meaning we haven’t accounted for 25 words). There were 35 distinct words, meaning that there were only 8 words that accounted for those missing 25 words! Thus, 48% of this single paragraph was comprised of 15% of the words used in it.

Because the paragraph is so short, we can look at all of the words that appeared more than once:

6 the
4 he
4 ran
3 in
2 as
2 his
2 it
2 to

It’s not a surprise that “the” is high on the list, since “the” is a function word. In this context, so is “he”, “in”, “as”, “his”, “it”, and “to.” Those aren’t a big deal.

But what about “ran”? “Ran” is a verb, not a function word. What happens if we substitute synonyms for the word “ran” in the paragraph?

The wide receiver trotted to his starting position. On the snap, he raced down field as fast as he could. Once in the open, he turned back, saw the ball already in the air. He ran to where it would fall, scooped it in his arms, and sprinted for the end zone.

Now when I run my stats programs, I get the following result:

There were 52 total words.
There were 38 different words used.
There were 31 words used only once.

The numbers have improved. We added three more unique words, and because we only used the word “ran” once, we’ve added four to the number of words used only once. Furthermore, now the only words that occur more than one time are all function words.

Now, 73% of the text is comprised of different words (up from 67%), and 60% of the text is comprised of words used only once (up from 52%). Finally, 40% of the text is comprised of 13% of the words (whereas before 48% was comprised of 15% of the words).

Those numbers show that the second paragraph is objectively superior (assuming, of course, the rules of syntax and grammar are followed). That doesn’t mean it’s subjectively better though, because subjectivity relies on personal taste. However, I would say that generally speaking objective improvements would indicate subjective improvements too.

So why do I bring that up? Well, let’s just look at the numbers for my first chapter of The 13th Prime before I did my edits this weekend:

There were 3684 total words.
There were 1001 different words used.
There were 595 words used only once.

Compared to after my final edit this weekend:

There were 3694 total words.
There were 1053 different words used.
There were 668 words used only once.

You can see that I added 10 words to the total length. However, I added 52 “different words” and 73 “words used only once”!

Now with longer texts, the ratios won’t apply the same way as they did when I examined the single paragraph above. Still, I do look at how often a word appears in the document, and for this size of a sample I don’t want to see non-function words appearing more than around 20 times. That gives those words a cap of about 1/200 (that is, I want to keep non-function words appearing no more than once every 200 words).

Of course there are ALWAYS exceptions to this, so if I read something and artistically feel it’s better to have a repetition, then I’ll include it. But in those instances, I better have a darn good reason to do so!

Just a reminder that now would be a good time to pray for the people of Iran:

I testify with confidence that this is the most authentic, grassroots and beautiful movement from the people, by the people and for the people.

– An Iranian student, quoted in The Jerusalem Post

The protesters number in the millions. Are we seeing a revolution, or the prelude to Iran’s Tiananmen Square? I lean toward the former, but believe Iran will try to implement the latter.

The reason why Iran won’t succeed, IMO, is because these aren’t just students protesting, as happened in China. This is far more widespread. In theory, it can be crushed—but at the cost of so many lives that I believe Iran wouldn’t be able to survive very long afterwards.

It also appears the protests are no longer so much about the presidential “election” in Iran as it is about protesting the Ayatollah himself (which means they’re protesting the theocracy of Iran, not just this one election).

Shifting…President Um sits on his hands, silent and waiting. Voting “present” once more. Lacking backbone. He assures Iran that he will have a dialogue with whomever wins the election, not realizing in his messianic delusion that if the Mullahs win after THIS type of behavior—when they have no problem shafting their own people—only an idiot could trust anything they say to The Great Satan; and if the Mullahs lose, President Omighty won’t have backed the people of Iran either. Thus, the coward on Pennsylvania Avenue puts us in a lose/lose situation once again.

But boy he sure does have a pretty mouth teleprompter.

I was going to post part of this yesterday, but I didn’t. Stupid Bush.

Anyway, turns out that I was a bit inaccurate in my previous post, as the PDF text-to-speech worked just fine on my friend’s computer at distinguishing between wind (as in “wind-up”) and wind (as in “the wind blows”). The only difference is that he didn’t have Office 2007 (and may have in fact been on XP since the default voice was Microsoft Mike while on Vista it’s Microsoft Mary).

Yet more proof that Vista is a downgrade from XP. Not that more proof was needed.

Anyway, I also have to give a shout out to that same friend, Travis. I’ve finished the latest edit on The 13th Prime and was starting to go through it chapter by chapter (although it doesn’t have real “chapters”…but that’s another story). Since Travis is good at editing and giving his opinion, I sent him the first chapter after I was about 95% confident in it.

Showing he’s a true friend, Travis said: “I can tell this is one of your older works.” Why? “Because you’re much better now.”

Which actually confirmed my suspicious. I had figured that I was 95% done and that it would only take one more draft to iron out a few remaining rough patches, but as I had begun work on the second chapter revisions I had gotten a bit bogged down and had begun to think that it might be a little less than 95% ready. But I was still in that delusional area where I thought I was close enough.

But Travis’s critique was spot on. And more than that, I knew that I was a better writer than my current version of The 13th Prime has me.

Earlier this year, I wrote a short story entitled What Time Can’t Heal. I haven’t posted it anywhere because I entered it into a short story contest which, if I win, will publish it and I don’t want to have the story already archived in Google’s cache before it can get published. But if you were to ask me what my best work was to date, I would say it’s that short story.

After I spoke with Travis this morning, I got to my lunch break and decided to rework the first chapter again. It’s 7 pages long (in default Word format, not book format), and I wasn’t able to get the entire chapter revised on my lunch break. However, as I edited it, I consciously told myself: I’m writing What Time Can’t Heal again. And with that short story in mind—not the plot, not the structure, but rather what I felt internally as I wrote it—I finished up three pages.

And it was so much better than the draft I had given to Travis yesterday.

I’m not saying it’s perfect yet. Because it’s not. I’ll need to do at least two more revisions after I’m done with this one before I’ll get that confident in it (because I’m the kind of person who edits until I get to the point where I think the best I have is a neutral edit; that is, I could change words around but it won’t improve the story. That’s when I’m done editing…and sometimes I think I’m there before I really am too, but again, that’s a different story.)

In any case, this means that the quick final edit I envisioned is now a bit more intricate than originally thought. But the end product ought to blow the current version away without even trying.

So thanks Travis :-)

Oh, and I still blame Bush.

A cool feature of the newest version of Adobe Acrobat Reader is that it has the ability to read a PDF file to you, using Microsoft’s text-to-speech capabilities. Unfortunately, the voices aren’t that great, and it mispronounces several words (like “wind” is always the kind like when you wind up a watch, and never pronounced like when the wind blows).

However, despite this drawback, it’s a very useful feature for writers. Why? Because when you’re proofing a document, it’s often best to have it read aloud.

And if you have Office 2007, you can save Word documents as PDF files, open them up and have Adobe read them back to you. (You can also have Microsoft’s software read along too, but it’s a bit easier to set it up using Adobe, IMO.)

In any case, having your computer read your document back to you helps you to find places where you made mistakes, especially involving function words (the words that you kind of “skim” over when you’re reading normally). And since it’s easy enough to get it set up, now any writer can benefit :-)

I just had the following exchange. Thought I’d pass it on because…well because I guess I am the human thesaurus. Note: I actually didn’t have to look up any of the words I used in my final post. They just came to me. That might be scary, but it sure is terrifying.

Truth Unites… and Divides said…
Yow!! Makes me glad to be a Calvinist, Creationist, Complementarian, Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy Christian!!
6/15/2009 9:59 AM

Peter Pike said…
Truth,

There are too many C’s in there. I’d be suspicious if I were you. After all, TULIP knows now C’s.
6/15/2009 12:10 PM

Truth Unites… and Divides said…
“There are too many C’s in there. I’d be suspicious if I were you.”

Christ, crucified Cornerstone.

P.S. Peter Pike = PP = PeePee.

;-)
6/15/2009 4:37 PM

Peter Pike said…
Compare!

Calloused consumption caroused crying calamity.

Perfect production presupposes parsimonious paladins.

Careful caution can corrode, cause cancers.

Practical pardons predate perdition!

Could c’s create crystalized chaos?

Perhaps. Parry: perish psychological profundities producing practically pernicious preening. Profligates public punctuality.

Can’t coincidences cease catholic communion, cleanse colons, condition colors?

P’shaw. Providence pummels prosthetic powers pretending precognition! Peter Pike pwns peddlers profusely protesting punditry!

14 Videos Iran Doesn’t Want You To See.

Can you say “powder keg”?

Guess which one I am…

Can you tell my boss is out sick today?

That Algore. Man, someone should get him a Nobel Prize or something.

I look outside at all the global warming and think, “Thank God Algore is right or we’d be in a freaking ice age right now.”

It’s June. At least, that’s the rumor.

I saw this article about how this June has been the coldest on record in Chicago—seven degrees below average. So I looked up how the weather has been here in Colorado Springs. First I needed to get the baseline averages.

The average high temperature for June in Colorado Springs on the average year is 78 degrees. The average low is 51 degrees. The average mean is 65 degrees.

Incidentally, this proves that the way they calculate the average temperature is just to add the high and the low and divide by two (78 + 51 = 129; 129/2 = 64.5, which rounds to 65). I’ve checked several of the different values from many different places and have gotten this same result. Thus, “average temperature” is a big pile of penguin poo (that’s a shout out to my mom’s blog, for reasons she will know even if you don’t!). Just to give you a radical example of why such an average is pointless, if you had a high of 80 and a low of 70, the average temperature would be 75. But if you had a high of 150 and a low of 0, you’d also have an average temperature of 75. Something tells me these two days are radically different from each other and as such, saying they have the same average temperature is (as reported earlier) a big pile of penguin poo.

Moving on.

Now it’s time to look at what this current June has been doing. Thus far in June 2009, the average high temperature has been 69 degrees. The average low has been 48 degrees. The average has, you guessed it, been 59 degrees.

78 – 69 = 9 degrees cooler than our average high so far this month.
51 – 48 = 3 degrees cooler than our average low so far this month.
65 – 59 = 6 degrees cooler than our average mean so far this month.

Let’s use the 6 degrees because…well, why not? Gotta use something. And Algore doesn’t tell me how he picks the numbers he uses so he can lump it.

6 degrees Fahrenheit = 3.3 degrees Celsius.

Global Warming is supposed to = doom because of a rise of….1.6 degrees C.

But we’re 3.3 degrees C COLDER and THERE IS NO DOOM!

Someone get me a Nobel.

My mom forwarded this to me today. It was made by a relative of someone she once worked with.

Sums it all up.

Oh. And remember how Obama promised that for 95% of Americans, taxes wouldn’t rise at all. Indeed, the exact quote was:

“What I’ve said is I want to provide a tax cut for 95 percent of working Americans, 95 percent. If you make more — if you make less than a quarter million dollars a year, then you will not see your income tax go up, your capital gains tax go up, your payroll tax. Not one dime.”

Notice the part about “income tax” and notice the part about “not one dime”? Behold this:

The IRS is weighing a proposal to deem one-quarter of employees’ use of work cell phones as personal use and therefore subject to tax as a fringe benefit.

…

Current law already requires that the value of those cell phone services be included in a worker’s gross income, unless the employee keeps detailed records showing that the cell phone is used for work only….

So much for Hope ‘n Change™.

Update: Once again, I have to say that WordPress’s “helpful features” SUCK! When I have to go in and manually update SQL databases because it doesn’t handle it correctly, that means it’s broken. [End venting.]