The Write Way

23 January 2004

Whether the Weather ...

Greetings,

What a nasty shock we all had last week with that virus scare! Thank you for your patience while I tried to get to the bottom of the problem and thank you for all the kind comments and helpful suggestions (but ... umm ... do you really think it's physically possible for the ratbags who create these viruses do do that?) 

As I said in the special note I sent you, it seems we were all victims of email spoofing. But I've since changed all my passwords, removed the option to send attachments with the newsletter and added eye of newt and toe of frog to my cauldron to ward off evil. What more can a girl do?

OK - fingers, legs and eyes crossed that we've seen the last of that little virus.

What would we talk about if we didn't have viruses and the weather, eh? I know many of you have been through some horrendous experiences in the past few days with those low temperatures, so you have lots of horror stories to exchange.

The weather's a subject of constant fascination - especially when you travel to or live in places where there are extremes. We've recently had a week or more of hot weather with very high humidity. A string of days in the mid 30s (90s F) with humidity registering between 75 and 90% tends to be a tad wearing after a while.

The wettest month of 2000 at Bellenden Ker was February when 3376mm was recorded. Of that, 1050mm (or 41 inches) fell in three days during the passage of Tropical Cyclone Steve on February 25-28.(http://www.bom.gov.au/announcements/media_releases/ho/010105.shtml)

So it's no surprise that there were 17 rivers here with major flood warnings over the weekend ... talk about from one extreme to another!

I wonder if all the weather changes these days are real or maybe just part of the when-I-was-young syndrome. Was it really always perfect weather when we were kids? I suppose it didn't matter as much if it rained in those days - in fact it was terrific being at school in the rain. It meant we could take our ballet shoes to school to wear during class and show off in front of the girls who didn't take ballet lessons. We could eat our lunch inside and put on impromptu plays in front of a captive audience. And then in the afternoon, the rain was a perfect excuse to take our shoes off and walk home in the puddles, and of course, while we were already wet, we could spend a bit of time constructing dams in the gullies by the side of the road so we could have races with our stick boats ...

Couldn't let your city kids do that these days, though, could you? Not with all the traffic and oddballs around. Pity. It used to be great fun.

Now, before you start muttering about my indulgent reminiscences, let me point out that all these ramblings do have a point. They show that finding something to write about is easy peasy. Why? Because you have an infinite source of ideas all around you.

Just think of all the different ways you could write about the weather - you could do a book, reminiscing about the weather of your childhood or youth and focus on a different type of weather in each section. We all remember those endless summer days when we were kids; days when we'd head off in the morning with our mates, maybe with a brown paper bag containing a couple of sandwiches and an orange to keep us going, and we'd just play - all day. We'd climb trees and fences and mark out imaginary castles/forts/houses/ships in the ground. These lines drawn in the dirt were all the props we needed for our adventures on the high seas or in outer space or in mediaeval castles. In my pre-teen years, we took our inspiration from the Sunday comics, so we played Laredo Crockett, Swiss Family Robinson and Sir Lancelot a lot ...

Then you could have another section of your book devoted to winter, and for anyone who lives where it snows, there'd be amazing stories to tell. 

If you don't fancy writing on such a personal level, you could interview people who work in places where there are extremes in the weather and write about them and how the weather influences their work. 

Maybe you could do one of those World's Worst-type books with collections of stories about storms, floods, droughts or whatever.

Or you could write a How-to book for children, explaining how the weather works. You could have a series of these from beginner books to teen books. 

What about writing a detailed analysis of changes in weather patterns over the past century?

The possibilities are limited only by your imagination.

What got me thinking along these lines was the happy coincidence of being kept inside by the rain and reading a great book by Marc McCutcheon called, Damn! Why Didn't I Write That? And how many times have you said that after seeing some of the new books on the shelves at your local book shop? Go on ... confess! Yes, I thought so ... Me, too.

While I was reading, my husband kept coming into the living room to check on me because with each new page I read, I made little squeaking noises as I came across yet another successful book I could have written - easily!

Could I have written Simplify Your Christmas; Diary of a Cat; Kids' Questions; Brain Quest (quizzing cards for children); How to Study; 365 Outdoor Activities You Can Do with Your Child; Polish Your Furniture with Pantyhose or 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said (a compilation)? 

Betcha I could've!

These are all real books that Marc lists along with the number of copies each has sold (at the time of publication of this book). Those I've mentioned have sold between 85,000 (Polish Your Furniture) and 14,000,000 (Brain Quest)!

Are you uncertain about how long it might take you to write a book? Marc gives you some ideas on how to estimate the time you'll need to get your brilliant ideas down on paper and ready for a publisher.

How long should your book be? Again, Marc gives advice, "Most nonfiction titles are at least 60,000 words in length, and probably average around 70-75,000 words. Typically, a full-length book has roughly a dozen chapters, with each chapter comprised of approximately 5,000 words ... for a total of at least 200 manuscript pages."

And if you're suffering from the "I'm-not-worthy-syndrome" and feel you don't have the qualifications to write, take heart! There are suggestions for ways to establish the credibility you need to write about any topic. And then there are chapters that explain where to find experts, how to write queries and proposals, whether you should consider engaging the services of an agent - or not, how to negotiate a book contract and how to promote your book.

Read more here: http://www.write101.com/  

This week's quiz:

Of course it has to be weather words this week!

centripetal force, anabatic, doldrums, aphelion, katabatic, syzygy, perihelion, centrifugal force, corona, solstice

1. the point on the earth's orbit that is farthest from the sun 

2. the force required to keep an object moving in a curved or circular path. It is directed inwards toward the centre of the curved path 

3. a wind that is created by air flowing uphill 

4. either of the two times of the year when the sun is at its greatest distance from the celestial equator 

5. the point of the earth's orbit that is nearest to the sun 

6. a pastel halo around the moon or sun created by the diffraction of water droplets 

7. the apparent force in a rotating system that deflects masses radially outward from the axis of rotation 

8. a wind that is created by air flowing downhill -

9. belt of calms and light winds between the northern and southern trade winds of the Atlantic and Pacific 

10.the points in the moon's orbit about the earth at which the moon is new or full

Here's a little story about some Natural Laws: 

I was working in a scrap yard in Southern England during summer vacation at engineering university. I used to work repairing construction equipment. One afternoon, I was taking apart a piling hammer that had some very large bolts holding it together. One of the nuts had corroded on to the bolt; to free it I started heating the nut with an oxy-acetylene torch. 

As I was doing this, one of the dimmest apprentices I have ever known came along. He asked me what I was doing. I patiently explained that if I heated the nut it would grow larger and release its grip on the bolt so I could then remove it.

"So things get larger when they get hot, do they?" he asked.

"Yes," I said, "that's why days are longer in summer and shorter in winter."

There was a long pause, then his face cleared, "You know, I always wondered about that," he said.

I've said this before and you'll no doubt get tired of me saying it again in the future ...but don't you just love the Internet? It never ceases to amaze me what a small world this is. I received these same wonderful old puns from David Joseph (here in Australia) and Albert Couppee (over in San Diego) ... on the same day! Maybe we all just mix in the same circles - the very best circles on the Internet, of course!

Read 'em and weep ... or groan!

A backward poet writes inverse.

A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.

Dijon vu - the same mustard as before.

What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead giveaway.)

A midget fortuneteller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large.

Acupuncture is a jab well done.

And Albert found this:

"But I paid a million dinars for it," the King protested. "Don't you know who I am? I am the King!" 

Croesus replied, "When you wish to pawn a Star... it makes no difference who you are!"

Last week's quiz:

oligopoly, disbursement, monopsony, Keynesian, assets, bonds, monopoly, macroeconomics, debentures, deflation

1. securities issued by companies and the government as a way of raising finance - BONDS

2. a reduction in national income and output - DEFLATION

3. in theory, an industry where one firm produces the entire output of a market - MONOPOLY

4. any possessions that have value in an exchange - ASSETS

5. market dominated by a very few sellers who account for a large proportion of output - OLIGOPOLY

6. a group of economists who believe that changes in government income and expenditure are the most effective instrument of government economic policy - KEYNESIAN

7. study of the whole economy - MACROECONOMICS

8. long term fixed interest loans to companies - DEBENTURES

9. a market in which goods or services are offered by several sellers but there is only one buyer - MONOPSONY

10.the transfer of financial resources and or good and services from a donor to a recipient - DISBURSEMENT

There's always room for one more pin on the Map of the World: http://pub37.bravenet.com/guestmap/view.php?usernum=3170114826  

A Little Something Extra

Here are some interesting sites - just for fun or to inspire you to write about the weather:

Plenty of up to the moment information about the world's weather at your fingertips: http://weather.org/

Answers to common questions about the weather: http://www.weathersavvy.com/Archives.html

USA Today site has oodles of info on understanding climate: http://www.usatoday.com/weather/wclimat0.htm

National Science Foundation site exploring how human activity has affected the world's climate: http://www.exploratorium.edu/climate/

And a day in the life of a Stormchaser! http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/imax/life.html

This nifty little site tells you "what the weather was like for any of 1,500 locations around the United States or Canada on any date from 1973 to the present" http://www.almanac.com/weatherhistory/index.php

As everyone knows, "Damp weather is very hard on the sciences."

Word of the week: Heterophemy (n) The unconscious saying, in speech or in writing, of something you didn't intend to say; unfortunately usually the very thing you've been thinking but shouldn't - ever - have uttered!

e.g. The new groom introducing his wife's mother, "And I'd like you to meet my murder-in-law." 

Then there's a certain leader who said, "I want to remind you all that in order to fight and win the war, it requires an expenditure of money that is commiserate with keeping a promise to our troops to make sure that they’re well paid, well trained, well equipped." 

Here's a long discussion of heterophemies, Freudian slips, Malapropisms and more: http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Fall_2003/ling001/production_perception.html

What did the psychologist give his wife for their anniversary?
A Freudian slip.

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Oxymoron of the week: weather forecast

This is great ... your weather forecast in Latin! http://latin.wunderground.com/ You can get a forecast for anywhere in the world.

Regards,

Jennifer

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