THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2023 - WRITING AND MORE

 THURSDAY, OCTOBER 5, 2023 - WRITING

I never thought I’d be saying this:  I LOVE TO WRITE.

I rearranged my bookcase, and a large, orange-covered, bound book ended up on my desk. It has a very long title, “THE DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN EXPERT SYSTEM FOR THE ADVISEMENT OF THE UNDERGRADUATE BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION MAJORS”, August 1990. Other doctoral students said, “The longer the title, the better the dissertation is!!!”.  

I was told that a short title - like “Expert Systems” just couldn’t cover all the aspects - focus, focus. Narrow the topic. 

WOW - 33 years ago.  

I’ve never reread the book. I’m not sure I could. I have told friends, “If you have trouble sleeping, I’ll lend you my dissertation to read. It will put you to sleep in five minutes”. But - it must have been acceptable. I’ve been Dr. White since that time.  

Dissertations are not fun to write but necessary in the academic field. They show you can do research and understand the literature.

I authored (or co-authored) over 50 papers for academic conferences and journals. But those would only have been written with a dissertation. 

I wrote “Web 2.0 for Business Learning the New Tools”. It was a textbook supplement for the Introduction to Information Technology class and published by John Wiley & Sons. I think I made about $5 on this book!!! <grin>

After retiring, I wrote two Amazon e-books: Bring It On - Coaching and Mentoring for College Students - and -  Rebooting: Creating the Change and Career You Seek: Tools for finding new careers and jobs. (Aside last month, I got one cent from Amazon for selling a copy of one of these e-books!!!). Those are from my career as an academic advisor.

I wrote an unpublished novel - Redemption -in 2016. I’ve thought about redoing this over the years - and have two versions. It is set in Wisconsin at a University - with a professor of Economics who lost his wife to cancer and the Dean of the School of Business who lost her husband in Afghanistan - who end up together. (No, it isn’t the finest book around - but I like it.)

I’ve written short stories here on my blog and then some stories that got longer. Dan Jackson got to 15 chapters, which could be a great book. 

Celeste got to about ten chapters, and Zach (Civil War) had ten chapters. Gottfried got to nine chapters. Ned had nine chapters. Max Zinn is at seven chapters now. Emmalee and Penny got to twelve chapters.  

Some of these required more research than others. Zach had much research - dysentery in the Civil War, locations, and battle sites. It even had some Andersonville (maybe one of the worst prisons ever). I knew nothing about olive growing but started with Max.  

Before I decided on serial book chapters on Saturdays, I wrote short stories. (And pretty much all “Pollyanna” stories with happy endings.)

This is from someone who “failed” Freshman Composition I and II in college. (I had three “C” grades - two were in composition!!! A “C” grade isn’t failing, but it wasn’t excellent!!!)

I have much better tools now. I love Grammarly - it finds errors and makes me correct or ignore them. (Probably 70% of my mistakes are in misusing commas!!! I should have paid attention in High School English classes!!!)

*****

So, it’s a mild problem. What should I write about? Are my weekly stories any good? Would anybody like to take just one of the stories and read it and help it improve? (And, others could take other stories?)

Maybe, like my dissertation, I don’t want to go back and work on them again. Perhaps I’d like to, but I don’t want to try. 

I’ve run out of ideas for the daily blogs as well. I don’t want to tackle politics. I do give my spin on religion on Fridays. What might you want to read? More technology? (I’d have to do more research!!). More on health, aging, or relationships?)

Any suggestions?

(Of course, I could write about LOVE WINS - I’m very serious about loving one another, about not allowing myself to hate. I could write about how LOVE TRANSFORMED me - from a nice - but egotistical, judgmental male to a loving, humbled woman)

KAREN ANNE WHITE, ©, OCTOBER 5, 2023