My wife's mother is Russian. She's been wanting us to train my daughter for about a year already - turns out that's (more) common for Russians. cuh-razy.
Hebrew has some really nice lullabies and kid's songs - for younger ages than the good English ones I know. I think it's because the words are simpler.
(This is the same reason that most lyrics and poetry in Hebrew for ages ABOVE preschoolers tends to suck.)
My eldest has been making up songs lately. His favorite is: Ducks, ducks, flying through the air Ducks, ducks, fly up to the tree They see some squirrels WHAT!? I *hate* squirrels!
Or the one that got me recently, because I didn't realize he has been saying it for weeks..."go grr, Mommy?" "What do you want, sweetie?" "Go grr" toddles to fridge, opens it, hauls the enormous tub of yogurt down from the shelf "GO GRR!"
I'd say "when you feel you've gotten your work as good as you possibly can on your own," where, in this case, "on your own" includes feedback from friends, writing circles, etc.
@KitFox: Everybody needs to find what kind of feedback works for them. Writing circles are one way of doing that. Personally, I go for Critters, and for individual callouts to friends of mine whose opinion I trust respect.
Writing circles can be very valuable. But I've seen writers who insist that Everything Here Is Okay because their writers group told them the book is wonderful.
Proofreading is always valuable. You see a mistake, go ahead and fix it. But when there are problems with characters and structure, maybe we should fix those first? Maybe hunting down every typo art this point is a waste of time?
But as I am writing it, it seems like it might be a lot longer than I originally thought, and maybe not so funny, and now I think I should take that first scene out except that it is kind of important for later.
If that's really tough to do, you can always preface the story with something like "Ten years ago, the stapler was obsessed with the photocopier and vowed to make it his. It's been eleven years, and the copier has gone missing."
I went to school with a lot of designers. They'll be slightly more opinionated than that. Also, the smug-and-superior designer thing is a bit of a cardboard cliche, but there's some truth in it.
But in this context, there is a new designer who has been hired to convert her web designs to mobile-compatible designs. How would you picture a conversation like that?
> "I'd love to pow-wow about your project, see if we can bring it into this century." He let out a honking laugh, "Just kidding, but seriously, shifting your designs to a modern mobile platform is going to create a lot of issues, so the sooner we get started the better."
@NeilFein I am having some trouble with her, which surprises me. I have a smooth story for Ada, the programmer, but Macy has proven to be difficult. Which is, ironically, her character.
@NeilFein He's no programmer. Don't kid yourself. But he designs for mobile applications because they are new things, and his second-rate web designs look good on mobile.
Yes, I think he's uncreative. His designs in school used unpaneled layouts and high-contrast, sans serif fonts.
While they work well for a mobile environment, many designs are actually far superior, but mobile computing is so new that he is the best of the early alternatives.
If Macy were designing for mobile, she would create beautiful touchable sites.
But she works on a larger canvas, and always has.
Macy's designs are very sensual and textural. She feels the beauty of the sites that she creates and has great intuition for using design elements to emphasize the important information on each page.
Danny thinks only about function, and is locked into using color to draw attention, for instance.
He's not a main character, though maybe he should be.
Maybe I should show him a little more respect.
It does seem that I am down on all men in this story so far.
So you have characters who are feeling certain ways, and that means you can't send the story where you want it to go. What happens if you just let the characters take the story in whatever direction it goes? This doesn't have to be a problem if your original plan for the plot isn't set in stone.
The Overlook Hotel
The Overlook Hotel