And why?
The hardest thing was the performance reviews for the people I supervised. I didn't find writing my own any easier.
My first book, because it was my first. It was difficult to decide what to cut out, and very time consuming going through 20 travel notebooks, trying to read my old hand-writing, putting things in perspective, and selecting the best stuff from each trip, or each event, notebook.... I also was thoughtful of others' privacy; even with just a first name, or even an assumed name, I thought others who read it would know who I was referring to, but it never got the mass appeal I wanted and was told early on people don't care for "travel books" unless you are one of a few TV personalities.
The editing was tough, but so was all the other stuff that went along, even post-printing, when I'd have shows, or when I'd read my introduction, etc..
You've been published?? How cool is that?
shareResearch papers. It was the worst punishment about attempting to go to college in Illinois, because you needed English to pass, and none of the high schools give you the training to write such a paper before you graduate, and the colleges do next to nothing to help you figure out how to do it right. It didn't seem to matter what I did, or how many times I re-took the class, (although taking English with a drunken Ukranian moron professor one semester didn't help), I never could write the paper correctly, and envied classmates who seemed to do it with no effort. Even crueler, it didn't seem to matter what college you went to in the state, ALL of them required that you write research papers for their English classes. Even better, you couldn't research anything that made sense or was fun. It to be something stupid and uninteresting, like American sub-cultures.
My strength in writing revolves around stories, not dry, fact-heavy research that won't help me in my future job. And don't get me started on Bibliography. The Penguin Handbook is barely a help, and if it weren't for EasyBib.com I would have never survived doing bibliography for my last two papers for speech class. The only reason I eventually passed English to get a degree of any kind, was because I took it at a university in Texas, so they had different requirements for what you wrote.
I also had to do a research paper for my college English Composition class, but I really enjoyed it because I was able to choose a topic that I found interesting. And no drunken Ukrainian professor to deal with...
shareI had to do a couple of research papers for a business class I took when I went back to school a few years ago. Not fun, and I know what you mean about the bibliography! I hated that - making sure it was in the required format. Argh. We could choose the company, but had to have it approved by the professor.
sharePerformance reviews are tough, I agree.
shareAccounting Designation exam 1996. You needed 70% to pass and I wasn't that confident after the exam. Then I had to wait 6 weeks for the result. I was thinking my father-in-law will think I am an idiot if I fail this. I came through with a whopping 74%.
shareSix weeks of waiting?? Yikes. I hope you celebrated after you passed!
shareEverything. I agree with William Zinsser in his classic best seller, On Writing Well...
" Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair. If you find that writing is hard, it's because it is hard. "
Wise words.
shareMy little snippet that I spoke at my brother's funeral. I'm sort of known as the writer in my family so people were expecting something eloquent. But I hated my brother. But he was still my brother. So I wrote a eulogy for Paul Walker who I loved dearly and pretended it was for my bro. That's a thing I did. Went over great. Made people cry. I fucking loved Paul Walker.
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