[stylist] Writing sample

Thu May 6 00:46:33 UTC 2010

Shawn,
sometimes cliche phrases or stock phrases and stock characters are 
useful in a story, i.e. sore thumbs, if they convey what you want to 
communicate and the pat meaning fits what you want.  but  it is, as 
neil says, a good idea to pay attention to them.

your writing:
she may have know something.
---you need to revise.

your sentence beginning with:
I thought she was nuts but I got into a stupid fight with one of the
---is too long, run-on, and at least needs a semicolon, if not one or 
two periods to break up the thoughts.

this lady I'd never seen before plots down
---I think you mean plops p l o p s

While don't you ask me?" said Jane.
"
---"while" when you mean "why" and you have a quotation mark after 
the said in the tag.

>"Why can't you have kids of you own?" she asked.
---should be "of your own."

interesting ending, but even the aliens dissolve into a stock kind of 
alien description.  how about aliens who are complex, maybe have 
sinful thoughts like us, whose power and capabilities corrupt them in 
ways we don't have here on earth.  in other words, give some depth to 
the aliens.
and, you mean you don't shoot death rays out your blind eyes?  man, 
get with the program, or sign up for the secret training.
jc

At 07:54 AM 5/5/2010, you wrote:
>Here is the text version of what I wrote.  Please let me know if you 
>have problems with this and I will work with the format.
>
>Shawn
>
>Space Aliens
>by Shawn Jacobson
>Every office has at least one space alien.  You know, they're the 
>ones that stick out of the office like soar thumbs, the ones that 
>don't fit in, the ones you meet and then you wonder what planet they're from.
>We had two of them where I used to work.  One was Dexter the wall 
>walker.  He always slid along the walls when he walked around the 
>building.  One day, I turned the corner and he jumped across the 
>hall to get away from me.  "Don't look at me!" he exclaimed.  I 
>later learned from a coworker that he thought that blind people 
>could shoot rays from their eyes and make you go blind.
>The other was creepy Rita the aura reader.  She always said that she 
>could read auras and would wave her hands around in the air in front 
>of your face to see what your aura was like.  One day she ran into 
>me coming up the elevator and said "Go home Joe, your aura's all 
>wrong today."  I thought she was nuts but I got into a stupid fight 
>with one of the branch managers about who had the meeting room, then 
>I deleted a document I was writing and had to spend three hours 
>re-typing it.  So she may have know something.
>Anyway, I met the office alien about two weeks after 
>transferring.  I was eating my lunch and this lady I'd never seen 
>before plots down on the seat next to me.
>"How many kids do you have?" she asked.
>"Two, a boy and a girl" I replied while the little robot in my head 
>started screaming "WARNING! WARNING!".
>We talked a while longer, mostly her asking probing questions, until 
>she found out that both kids were adopted.
>"Why can't you have kids of you own?" she asked.
>"That's none of your business!" I exclaimed angrily.  She got up in 
>a huff and moved to the other side of the room.  I'd gotten the 
>impression that she was on some sort of a manhunt; I didn't have to 
>worry about that anymore.  I told one of the managers about what 
>happened and mentioned that I felt uncomfortable; he left a thick 
>volume on my chair that explained office HR procedures with a note 
>asking "how uncomfortable are you?"  I let the issue drop.
>I forgot all about it until I got pegged to represent our office on 
>a disabilities awareness committee that the agency was putting 
>together.  "Don't obligate us to anything" my boss's boss growled 
>"we don't have any funding for disability awareness.
>So I started going to meetings.  It was pretty depressing knowing 
>that my mission was to make sure nothing was done, but with 70% of 
>blind people unemployed, I sure wasn't going to rock the boat.  And 
>most other people seemed to be there for the same reason 
>anyway.  They were people who were just starting out, getting ready 
>to retire, or were the one disabled person in their office.
>One was Alex, a deaf guy who always had an attractive female 
>interpreter with him.  He spent the whole summer telling me to look 
>at him and not the interpreter and I spent the whole summer apologizing.
>And then there was Jane.  Jane was a real tiny woman who used a 
>motorized wheelchair to get around.  I found out that Jane liked 
>hugs.  We were up in the building's Randolph Shepherd snack-bar and 
>she's giving a hug to the lady who runs it.  I turned to the lady 
>and asked if she thought Jane might want me to give her a hug.
>"While don't you ask me?" said Jane.
>"Would you like a hug? I asked Jane.
>"Sure" she said "if you can get down here".
>So I squatted down, bent over and hugged her in her 
>wheelchair.  From then on, I gave her a hug at every meeting we went to.
>Finally, the committee's work was done and we had the obligatory 
>coffee and doughnuts wrap-up meeting.  The agency head came and 
>congratulated us for the stellar work of the committee, a 30-page 
>report with lots of high minded goals but no action items.  Then 
>some less important officials came and thanked us for moving the 
>cause of the disabled forward.  I sat next to Alex and Jane; they 
>seemed to be having an animated sign language conversation and I 
>wished I could understand what they were saying.  Then after the 
>last speaker finished people started heading back to their cubes and 
>then there was just us disabled people left in the room.  Jane 
>turned to me and said "Joe, why don't you come over to our 
>office.  We have something to show you."
>And that's how I learned about the Intergalactic Federation.  I 
>learned about all sorts of creatures including beings that could 
>read auras and a creature that didn't have eyes and could make you 
>blind as part of its strategy for self defense.
>I also learned about races very much like us who had solved their 
>problems with war, greed, and environmental degradation.  I don't 
>know if we will solve our problems, but I believe we can; others have done so.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org [mailto:stylist-bounces at nfbnet.org] 
>On Behalf Of Donna Hill
>Sent: Tuesday, May 04, 2010 4:22 PM
>To: Writer's Division Mailing List
>Subject: Re: [stylist] Writing sample
>
>Hi Shawn,
>What type of file is this? I tried opening with Word, Adobe, Firefox,
>IE8 and Thunderbird. None of them worked.
>Donna
>
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>
>Jacobson, Shawn D wrote:
> > Attached is the writing sample that I will read at the May 
> meeting.  This is a short 1,000 or so word story which I look 
> foreward to expanding.
> >
> > Please feel free to send me any comments.
> >
> > Shawn Jacobson
> > Mathematical Statistician
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> >
> >
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