Website Updates

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Jan 22, 2016 in Blog Posts | 0 comments

As always, I want to keep everyone informed on changes I am making to the website.  Right now, the biggest change is the modification of permalinks.  Permalinks are the things you see in the URL (that thing that you type google.com into).  In the past, I had “ugly” permalinks that were just a number.  In order to make the website more friendly, I have chosen to move these to words and numbers, that way, people can search and find things easier.  Also, titles of pages will now be a way to navigate to to specific pages.  By doing this, any old links that had been shared with another person, will be different than the new links.  Don’t worry, these links are still active, it just takes a little longer for the website to load if you are using an old link.

Small Questions: About Fish and Cats

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Jan 18, 2016 in Small Questions | 0 comments

For an animal that despises water, why do cats love fish?  How did they get addicted to something so foreign?  And Tuna, that’s a pretty hard to get to fish, but they love it, have they always loved tuna?  Do they have preferred fish… like, do some cats go: “anchovies are too salty for me, I am more of a sardine kind of kitty”?

Theodore asking the tough questions.

New Category Introduction: Small Questions

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Jan 12, 2016 in Blog Posts | 0 comments

When I am working on a novel, what I am actually doing is solving high level questions that need artificial players.  In order to solve these deep questions, I manipulate personas I’ve created in a story and see where they go and what they do.  Through their interactions and responses to my “situations” I get the answers that were elusive beforehand.

While my novels are unpublished, they do ask big questions that take a lot of time to answer.  That’s why I don’t self publish.  I want the work that went in them for me, is recognized and treated in the best possible way.  Yet, a lot of my life is looking at little questions that poke at my brain.

So I decided to share some of my little questions in the near future in a series I will call: small questions.

Beautiful Imperfections

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Dec 5, 2015 in Blog Posts, Philosophical Diatribe | 0 comments

While I am injured still, I have returned home in hopes of getting my stitches removed from my hand for free (part of the global cost of the procedure).  Would it have been cheaper to take them out myself?  Yes.  Would my mother have consistently berate me over how it would look better if I had them removed by a professional?  Yes.  Thus, I drove to my home to get stitches removed so she could A) see me go to the doctor, and B) know that I didn’t pay extra money or deviate and remove them myself.

But this transitions me into the important aspect of my mother, who I love with all my heart and has supported me dearly throughout my life.  When I decided to get a philosophy degree instead of a mechanical engineering degree, she supported me knowing that my life would be difficult with a degree that didn’t have a future job prospect associated with it.  However, and excuse the previous tangent, my mother also is very critical of my appearance and consistently wants me to become an Adonis of a man – beer, whiskey, and good food keeps that future decently at bay.  S0, when my finger was marred by my brother and a razor blade (an unfortunate accident where I lost the ability to write by hand due to a splint and stitches), she instantly wanted professional medical staff to mend my future scar (she doesn’t know that scars are sexy now, they are in like infinity scarfs and assless chaps (all chaps are assless, but not everyone knows that) (depending where you live)).  Her little cub needed to be her perfect little baby.

This mentality of perfection has always been in my life, which could explain some aspects of myself.  For example, on holidays, I will wear a graphic-t and pajama pants, won’t put deodorant on, and will leave my hear unkempt and “poofy”.  So, when she decided to have some remodeling done, I felt bad for the craftsmen who would have to live up to her standards of perfection.  Then, something amazing happened and I got to glimpse something that even a perfectionist couldn’t ignore.

Injured

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Dec 2, 2015 in Blog Posts | 0 comments

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I was injured during a freak razor blade accident with my brother.  My middle finger was gashed to the knuckle and I have stitches and a splint on that finger.  As such, I haven’t been able to write at my normal volume.  Even writing this post is difficult because I have to type with my index pointer on the right side of the keyboard.  My speed for typing has dropped dramatically and the amount of mistakes I make has increased tenfold.  As such, I will be focusing on editing till I have full use of my middle finger.  Once I am at full strength, I will be adding in some posts I had written by hand but cannot transcribe yet.  Remember this, if you are a writer, protect your hands at all possible turns because if you can’t write, you aren’t a writer.

Some of My Haikus

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Nov 28, 2015 in Haiku | 0 comments

Broiling gray sky
a ray pierces through the darkness
Smile till it hurts

The desert cactus
flowers for no one – oh well
Why am I here now?

My face, brush of wind
a little brown bat blocks the light
Avoidance is key

An endless forest
No compass, is it afternoon?
Fear sets in… look moss

Refactoring

Posted by Theodore Maestranzi on Nov 20, 2015 in Blog Posts | 0 comments

Many of you may not know but my traditional career is in marketing. Specifically, I work on getting requirements for software from the customer and then make sure that the desired outcome of the software doesn’t change as it goes through the design process (requirements are what the customer wants the software to do). Now, as code is developed and lumped on top of other code (all of those updates you get are code getting lumped on top of code), it can get messy so a decision is made and people go in and refactor what was previously written. They streamline it, shorten it, and make the commands more intuitive. This leads to faster APIs, programs, interfaces, and all that jazz. However, no one pays for refactoring, and it is something that can only be done once you have written more code.

Perhaps it is because I am around it all day, but I found refactoring code to be a nice metaphor for editing (in that you can only do it effectively when you have moved on to write more work as you are too close to your previous work, but I digress). The editing processes isn’t to make a book read faster, or smoother, it is to achieve what you want to achieve when you sat down to write it. That means, if you were going for a horror book, and it isn’t very horrifying, you can drop in some more trap doors. Or if you are reading and notice that the characters jump from one location to another location, without explanation, now you can add that explanation. For me, that is cleaning up the story which I have fully written in my head, a notebook, or on a poster board, and making it understandable at the level I understand it. That usually means, more writing once I come back to it.

Normally, I do a refactoring run on my books once I have finished the next manuscript. The reason is simple, to get away from my own work. When I begin work on my next manuscript, I am beginning a new writing style to best fit the story/ideas/and characters I plan to write. This means I am throwing out how I was writing and working on a new format. Not only that, the entire plot, story, and characters are different from the previous book so I am slowly logging the previous book in my memory and bringing a new story to the forefront. Why is this important?

It is simple, it allows me to see what a reader will see. Gaps become much more noticeable as I go through the editing process after spending a bunch of time in my newest book. The character’s voice is scrutinized more. Catalytic actions are put under the microscope and confirmed that their chemical parts will behave in the way I have deduced. Grammar edits are easier to spot since this is no longer my baby (my new book has usurped this book’s claims to be my child). And so forth.

Which brings me to Death by Comedy or as it is now known Ashley Pepin’s Mistake. After a full editing session, the books sub plot is much more visible, the writing has been cleaned up to help differentiate between the multiple narrators (I left it ambiguous at times because you don’t need to know who is speaking), and the manuscript has been submitted to a potential publishing arm (Kindle Singles as this is a novella in length, and they are the only people who actively pursue novellas). In about six weeks, I will know if it has been accepted.