First Cup of Coffee - June 25, 2021

On giving critique, the differences between alpha reading and beta reading, critting and workshopping. How to take critique and what to do with it. Also why having someone clean your house isn't a luxury.

You can watch the You Tube video of the podcast here (https://youtu.be/tzShYuPk9vQ).

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy, author of Fantasy Romance and Romantic Fantasy. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Hmm. Do you like how I started out with the wind chimes? Who says I don't have team music? Then the trick will be to record some so I can like start it even in the winter time when I'm inside. Today is. Are you ready? Say it with me. It's Friday! Yay! It is Friday, June 25th. Last Friday in June. Halfway through 2021 is what we're approaching people. Amazing. It's a um lovely cool morning here in Santa Fe. We had a nice storm coming yesterday afternoon. Not much rain, a little rain. Cooled things down. And I'm fancy this morning. For those of you on video, you can see I'm wearing a matching earring and jewelry and necklace set, which is not something I do often, although I do wear this set. And this is um jewelry that was in my mother's collection that she passed along to me. Always having to clarify that my mother is still with us, just uh cleaning out her jewelry collection. Um this is a set of jewelry that my previous stepfather gave her. Um my mother has been twice widowed, married thrice, and my stepfather, my first stepfather, second father. It gets confusing. Um he gave her these. This and uh interestingly enough, from Santa Fe. Sometimes people ask me how I ended up uh in Santa Fe, uh having grown up in Denver, and we would come down to Santa Fe all the time. And my mom loved coming down to the art galleries and the restaurants, and so uh this particular set of jewelry is apparently quite good. It's it's very much quintessential Santa Fe jewelry. Um you almost have to see it on video, but I'll do my best to describe it. It's different shape types of turquoise and similar stones. There is an oval at the top of turquoise that's kind of um oh, you know, like it's there's there's a pattern in it. There's a lot of brown in it, too. There's like a crackle pattern almost. And then there is a purplish stone that is heart-shaped, and beneath that the three-flower pattern, the sort of the trefoil, um, with two teardropped deep blue shapes, probably lapis, and then uh an oval beneath that. So they are a really pretty set of jewelry, and there's even a maker's mark on the back. It says um JR USA Silversmith. So put that up there so you guys can see. You don't always have jewelry with the maker's mark, the artist's mark on it. And uh, so it's it's real silver. Um, I'm going to take it off because I feel like it's a little much to be wearing this kind of jewelry while sitting at my Great Barber drinking coffee. But I will show you the necklace. The necklace is made on the um same pattern, of course. Matching. Um, and I'll hold it up for you to see. It's actually not exactly the same. There are no heart shapes, but uh a collection of the same colors of the stones. One of the things that's neat about this necklace is that these links, these are handmade silver links. Um, they are not uh machine made. So that's part of the silver smithery of it all. I did clean them up a bit this morning, but I think I could do some more work on this. It's kind of hard with stuff with stones like these that are not the gemstones, uh, you're not supposed to put them, soak them in jewelry cleaner, because it's hard on these um, I don't know what you call it, like ones like turquoise and pearls. I want to say organic, and that's probably not correct, but you get my meaning. But you can see in the necklace, maybe not, but that like in the inner stisses, it's still it's pretty tarnished in there. So I might have to try to get in there with a little brush. I was able to, um, the earrings have bigger openings, so I was able to get in there and clean those up. So they're much more shined up this morning. Ah, we are starting to get to the end of the earrings. Um there's a few. I might have to see if I can um set aside some time to do some jewelry repair this weekend, because there's a few I haven't showed you because I need to fix them. I've kind of got a big bag of jewelry I need to repair. I just need to get out the magnifying mirror and the tools and do that. So post-book finishing would be a good weekend to do that. And uh let's all cross our fingers that it will be post-book finishing. Making sure I don't crush my flowers here. Um yeah, so book is not done. Right familiar. Um, though it's close. I know I keep saying that. I've how long have I been saying it's close? Um I've I've passed 94,000 words. I got a little more than 3,000 yesterday. I'm pretty sure I'm on the final scene. I don't think I'll need anything more after this. Um people who are reading along the pages as I finish them um say it's good. So cross my fingers. Uh I um I'm trying to just decide what uh if I should tell you something that that Dorinda said about it, and I don't think I'm going to. I know I shouldn't tease. Oh, I was trying to figure out where the reflection was coming from. I was seeing like a little reflection moving in the grape barber, and it's from the sunlight hitting this big silver beret. Okay. So yes, I'm Punchy F Book Brain. Um I'm not too bad. I uh did go to dinner last night with folks from the New Mexico Beta Readers group, uh, Emily Ma, Jim Sorensen, Reese Hogan, and uh attendant kids. Reese and Jim both brought their kids, which is fine. Um the the boys uh got handed a video game and went off to play together. So so yeah, that was fun. And we we talked books and uh and gossiped a bit about our fellow writers, which is also fun. Yeah, and so I I had um trying to decide how to phrase this. I had strong opinions uh about both of their books. And um I know I no no contain your shock. I mean I've please, please. Um I I know that you all are stunned by the news that I have strong opinions about something, but I did. And it can be a an odd thing when you read someone's book, and in in both their cases, they're both very strong writers. I really enjoyed their writing, and but I thought both books um had strong had major enough flaws that I thought they needed to be reworked. Um and it's it's totally up to the to the writer to decide whether or not they want to do an extensive revision. But I always feel bad when I offer feedback that is more than minor tweaking, um, especially in Emily's case. Um Reese's case, I thought there were very specific things that he needed to do to um, I don't know, it it was it was not a complete overhaul. I thought that there were specific things he could do. Um in Emily's case, I thought that that her whole structure wasn't working. I thought that the format that she had chosen was ambitious, um, and it it ended up not working. And I'm not sure, you know, it was one of those things where I kept reading it, and and you do this when you when you beta read for someone or crit read, you know, that there can be a fine line. Sometimes people ask, what is the difference between like an alpha read or a beta read? And it's funny because I've only heard people start using the terms like alpha read and beta read in recent years. Um, beta read came first, and then I think people like did a sort of a logical extension from beta read to take it to alpha read because beta read, I know I've ranted about this before, but I'm sure beta read must come from the concept of beta testing. Um and and I know I looked up, you know, like the software design stuff and like the difference between alpha testing and beta testing, you know, and basically alpha testing means what you're doing in-house. That's that's your first step, you know, among your development team. And beta testing is when you have someone who's not part of your crew test it out. So a beta read usually means when you give it to your readers, um, and so a lot of people have extrapolated alpha read to mean like what they're reading, like the first before beta. So I don't know what you do if it's like pre-alpha, but um back in the day, I'd I've you I've heard you guys say that you think my old lady voice is funny, but back in the day, we didn't have alpha and beta reading, we just had critique, critique workshopping. So um I got what Emily was trying to do. I want this to be um a successful project for her. I had a suggestion that was a massive, massive suggestion, and she um she took it very well. I mean, she's professional, but I still felt kind of bad. And she told me not to apologize, and I was still like, oh no, this is an apology, because it's like, no, I think you should tear your book up. And I my suggestion was actually to make it into two books, and she said maybe what she should do is just scrap what would be book one and go straight to book two. And I was like, that works, that that would work too. Um, I'm reminded of the uh the Neil Gaiman advice, which I'm not sure if he came up with it, but he's the one who gets quoted for it. Now I'm looking at the tarnish and the inner stices of that necklace, I need to not do that. Um, where he says that when somebody tells you that something is not working for them in a manuscript, that they are almost always correct. And when they tell you how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. And I think that's a good rule of thumb, unless it's me, in which case, if I tell you how to fix it, it's definitely right. It's not true. But I think people don't I I think it's good advice because it's good to pay attention to what people say is not working for them, but it is up to the writer to how to fix it. That said, I do think sometimes people give you good suggestions. Um, in Emily's case, I think it was that not that she disagreed that what you know that my suggestion for fixing to make book one work. I think she just felt like she didn't care. She's like, do I really need to write book one? Because of I'm trying to explain what basically she was trying to she was trying to create an entree into uh into an established series, but she was basically rebooting. And so book one is a lot of recapitulating what happened in the first trilogy. And you know, when you have a lot of backstory like that, when you're explaining things that happened before, it's just really, really hard to work against the weight of that amount of story. And so I had been thinking of ways that she could do that, and she's like, Do I really need to retell all of that? And it's like, well, actually, no, you don't. If you don't want to, you don't have to. And so I'm excited to see what she does with it because um it's an amazing world, fantastic premise, um, great characters, all of this stuff. So I think that um I think it it could be really fun. So um, what else? Today I have Sephora board meeting this morning, but it's the last time that it's in the morning. Um, the old regime, the new regime kicks in next week uh with uh Cephwa board meetings in the afternoons or on Saturdays. Thank goodness, you guys know how I've hated this um 9 a.m. Friday morning board meeting. I'm hoping today's will be short. I might have to skip out because I have to finish this fucking book. I'm gonna do an hour. It's only 7.45 right now, so I can go do an hour before the board meeting starts. Um and I wanted to talk about. I have a note. There was um a Twitter hot take that I saw people sharing. You know, and sometimes I feel like like we shouldn't even pay attention to these things because I think people put these hot takes on Twitter entirely to get people riled up. You know, that's they just want the retweets and the commenting. Um, and people had done that, and and people see through this because they'd done screenshots of this person's tweet and we're sharing that as opposed to uh giving them the actual retweet, because it's like we're not gonna dignify this with a retweet. But it's worth discussing because this person had said, if you have someone clean your house for you, then I know, then I assume that you are straight up. Um I don't even remember how they phrased it, um, you know, basically a piece of shit, imperialist, capitalist uh enemy of the people, was was the import of it. Um and it was very interesting because the people I saw pick it up and sharing it were saying, uh, we're talking about if you are disabled or chronically ill, um having somebody clean for you is not a luxury, it's it's a necessity. But then other people were weighing in and saying, you know, issues of disability aside, there's a lot else going on here. And I think you all, if you've been listening for a long time, you heard me kind of uh waffling over whether to hire someone to clean my house. And now I do. I have um a gal who and she often brings her sister, and they come every other week, and they are deep cleaning the house because it has not been deep cleaned in a long time. You know, and I would clean my house every other week, but I just don't have the time or energy or inclination, I don't know, whatever, to deep clean. And so we could talk about division of labor, labor, and whether that's fair or not. Um, but you know, I can tell you that I am largely responsible for cleaning the house, that it falls to me. And David has helped me occasionally over the years, but and we and you know, and we could talk about learned helplessness too and that sort of thing, but it doesn't bother him in the same way that it bothers me. And I've always been very much a champion of the person who cares about the thing is the person who does the thing. You know, like I don't care about car maintenance, and I mean he'll he'll get incredibly aggravated with me because he'll be like, you know, you can't just drive around with that light on. I'm like, look, look at me, here I am driving around with that light on. Um I I so don't care about car maintenance. And I think he's the same way about cleaning the house. He simply doesn't see things. And the thing is that even though things are changing, I'm going to argue that it is still women who are largely responsible for household chores, especially things like scrubbing floors and baseboards and all of that kind of thing. You know, like even if your husband vacuums sometimes or does the dishes, you know, even people, even couples I know where the male partner, and this would be heck couples, puts in a great deal of effort, it's still largely the responsibility of the woman. Maybe that will change eventually. But if you are a woman who also works, then having someone clean your house is not being an imperialist or it's not like we're going out and having lunch instead. Um, you know, it's it's just been huge for me, huge for me to have someone come in and clean the house. And it's it's cleaner than it's ever been. I mean, they do such a better job than I do. And and something else that someone brought up was um, you know, that taking that position too is you know, most people who who come and clean in your clean your house are going to be uh immigrants, people of color, people who don't otherwise have education. Um the gals who clean my house are both uh Hispanic, I think they're both from Mexico, and one speaks English very well, and the other one not really at all. And this is a good business for them. I mean, they work really super hard, and they are delightful, and they clearly have way high standards of cleaning than I do, and I don't feel guilty at all paying them to do this thing because they're getting paid nicely, and this is this is a job for them, this is their work, and you know, somebody was pointing out uh in in this discussion, you know, like is there some you know hesitation to having like people of color come into your home? You know, is that where some of this uh you know perspective comes from? It's like, yeah, you know, paying people to do a job, there is there is no shame in being a person who pays someone else to do work for you. And I know that was something that when I became um a full-time writer, when I became a self-published writer and concentrated on that a whole lot, is that it was really amazing to me to be this person who created a thing that then generated all these jobs for other people, um, you know, paying my editors and paying my formatter and paying my cover designers and all of this. It's I am the source of a thing that provides work for other people. And there is something that's immensely satisfying in that. And what that's not being an imperialist or a capitalist. Uh that's that's um being a source of of life. So, on that note, off I go. I will remind you that first cup of coffee is part of the Frolic Media Podcast Network, and you will find more podcasts that you love at frolic.media slash podcasts. I will talk to you all on Monday. Have a fantastic weekend, you all. Bye bye.