Category: Writing

Why Writers Shouldn’t Talk

Hey, hello! Thanks for reading along! What follows this paragraph is the transcript from a video I shot today – it will be a podcast pretty soon. What’s cool about it is that the transcription process worked… you’ll see. I shot the video and then transcribed the audio at a place called TurboScribe. You get three free transcriptions a day. Here’s what I shot…

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.

Hello, I’m writer, author, and host John D. Reinhart. And you’ve stumbled onto this moment in This Writer’s Life.

So, before we go any farther, you may wonder, what’s the difference between a writer and an author? Well, in my head, a writer writes.

You’re a writer, you write. If you’re writing a book, you’re still writing. You write the book.

It is the authorly part of you that compiles all that writing into the book. Right, it’s the organizer kind of a guy. In a website situation, nobody writes a website, they author a website.

They bring their own written work or the work of other writers, they compile it all into a website. That’s the difference.

The host part, well, me and you, we’re looking at it.

So, here’s the thing. I’m in my garage. I’m doing the laundry.

And it occurred to me what I’d really like to be doing is writing a post for my website, because I feel like I should be doing that, but I can’t because I’m doing the laundry.

So, then I got the bright idea to say, well, why don’t we go speech to text, right, and take video-audio combo and make a post out of that. So, that’s what I’m trying.

And I will tell you the truth. Speaking what you want to say is so much more difficult than writing what you want to say.

I mean, I’m a good writer. I’m not such a good speaker. And this is kind of what I found out.

You’re a writer. You put things in order. You build the sentence that you want. And you realize, eh, that’s not what I want to say. You move things around. You come up with a whole new word. Flip it around, build a whole new paragraph based on that word. That is what writers do.

But think about impromptu speakers like President Obama.

He comes out there and he right off his cuff, makes these long speeches that people write down. Because when you speak impromptuly or however you speak, that’s what you said. And you can’t go back and flip it around and change it.

That’s the big difference between speaking and writing is that, as what I find, I’m not a public speaker. I’m not an impromptu speaker. In fact, I have to tell you this truth.

I’m using a script. So, this is text to speech to text. That’s how well this works for me.

Not my dog. So, if you don’t try something new, you don’t learn anything. So, that’s my little experiment on speech to text.

No, thank you, sir. Thank you for watching. I’ll catch you next time.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.

Yes, it’s a little weird, I know. It’s creepy to see how many times I use the word “so” when speaking impromptu, even with a script!

The upshot of this experiment, aside from a shameless plug for TurboScribe and a podcast episode, is that the spoken word works great for speakers, but us writers, we probably want to just keep on writing!

Thanks for reading along…

Walking the Night

The nifty thing about video is that you can make a pratfall without actually taking one… there comes an age where that’s a real bonus!

I was goofing around with my cell phone, shooting the full moon through some trees, and out popped this dopey video.

Now, there’s a writer’s story in this little 16-second video.

In my head, he steps on a cat. It’s so clear – the cut to the shot of the walking feet, he’s looking straight ahead. I mean, how more clear could it be?

In my wife’s view, a cat attacks him from the tree. She saw the moon through the tree, the guy paying no attention. To her, it’s obvious.

As long as it’s clear that it’s a cat, I’m happy. I’d thought about putting a skateboard on the sidewalk, but that telegraphs the joke in a 16-second video.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy this epic piece of film-noir filmmaking!

Yessss, Your Majesty

You know the writing biz, right? Like any other biz, it’s all about marketing, networking, and growing the brand.

Funny you’d mention brand.

I had a very lovely, very informative online chat over at LinkedIn this morning with a person I only just met today. She inspired me to think again about this career we call writing. Well, some of us call it that…

She pointed out that she considers herself more of a communicator. I took that to mean she’s a linker of ideas. In my head, that’s a technical writer, right? Taking the arcane and making it mundane?

Anyway, she reminded me that this is what I do, too. And it’s great fun. My favoritist thing in the world is to read something and then explain it to somebody else. My poor family. Oh, the things they’ve had to listen to!

With Lucia’s kind encouragement, I shall henceforth refer to myself as Resident Explainer. If the shoe fits…

But that’s not what this post is about.

Back in the day… no, that’s not a good start.

Once upon a time… nope. Been done. How about this:

I have a new website: Kuiper Belt Queen.

It sounds like a riverboat, I know. But it’s my way to house the planetary articles I’m just plain bent on publishing. As Resident Explainer I can scour the NASA and ESA databases for curious and fun details about the Kuiper Belt environs and relay them to you.

But why, you ask. Why? What is the matter with you?

In a year or so, see, I’m moving to New Jersey. I clearly cannot commute to my Southern California job from Southern New Jersey. So, my intent is to build an online resume of articles from which I can pitch myself as a freelance-feature writer-for-hire.

Have Word, will travel.

But, wthe Kuiper Belt?

I mean, come on. Have you seen it? (If you have, I’ll smoke what you’re smoking!) It’s an enormous donut-shaped ring of proto-planetary stuff that surrounds the sun, way out there beyond Neptune.

Evidence for its existence wasn’t even confirmed until 1992, so it’s an unexplored frontier.

YET, and I do mean yet, it most likely holds the keys to our understanding of how the sun and solar system were formed. Sun, planets, life, you and me… connect the dots.

Okay, you have to agree that’s cool.

And, the biggest body in the Kuiper Belt thus far discovered is our old friend Pluto. Pluto! Yaay! Because she’s the big kahuna, she must be the Kuiper Belt Queen!

See how it all fits together?

Another feather in the head of the Resident Explainer’s brand.

It’s all a vast plan, my friend, on the road to a WRITING EMPIRE!!!

Thanks for reading along…

Back to the Front

Okay, what is it now? What preposterous, outlandishly wacky idea is sure to make a gazillion simoleans this time? Don’t get me started!

I had a revelation last week – something that just never occurred to me before in all my born years.

You’re a writer, right? You know how it goes – everybody’s a writer, yadda yadda yadda, right? The difference between a writer and a wannabe writer is that the writer is always writing.

To wit, this thing: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/three-body-problem-solved-john-reinhart-m6zjc

Not trying to prove anything or blow my own horn or you know – well, I am trying to get you to read the article so that I can make a gazillion simoleans from the advertising revenue once I get discovered….

Anyway, my revelation was this: not everyone has an inner Fred Flintstone, or Ralph Kramden, or Oscar the Shark Slayer. Maybe we’re not all searching for a get-rich-quick scheme.

In that same vein of discovery, it follows that maybe not everyone IS a writer, or even a wannabe. Maybe you and me, we’re of a rarer breed than we realize. That’s kind of a big deal, don’tcha think?

Once, three quarters of a score of years ago, I found myself underemployed and with a hankering to change my life for the better. In those days, the Internet was trying to expand, and people would publish just about anything that was three words or longer. During those few frantic, financially fraught years, I churned out over 300 articles on planetary science.

I didn’t make a fortune. Or a living.

But, in 15 months, I gotta take a career with me to New Jersey, where my six-month-old grandson patiently waits. So, for me, right now, it’s back to the Final Frontier. Back to the front! And the above article, dull though it may be, is just the vanguard. More to come!

Where the Little Cars Roam

Where the Little Cars Roam… Sounds like Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Roam, except the words are different. That’s kind of like saying Star Wars is like Titanic, only the stories are different. Well, there it is.

I met a very pleasant young woman this weekend – she sold me my new washing machine. She’s really young, like 20. That’s not a judgement, just an observation. I mean, you and I were twenty, once, right? So, there it is.

She told me she was a writer, although her first book is yet to be completed. It’s a book of poetry, and she’s been at it for the last 8 years.

Three thoughts came to mind.

First, good on you to refer to yourself as a writer! Identifying as such is a hugely powerful thing.

Second, and I told her this, the difference between a writer and someone who wants to write is that the writer writes. She agreed and promptly advised me she’s written tons of local articles and didn’t I just suddenly feel like Mr. High-and-Mighty-Hoity-Toity-stuck-up-old-fart? Rule number one in the world should be to shut your yap and ask questions, ya moron!

Thirdly, if you’re twenty and you’ve been at your tome for 8 years, doesn’t that mean you started when you were twelve? I think more than anything else, that’s massive persistence, to keep at something through the tumultuous teen years!

Well, there you go. I wished her every success, because she deserves it.

See, I’m on my own these days. My wife is on the other side of the country helping manage our very first grandchild. She’s way tougher that I am!

It’s been me, the dogs and the cat since Christmas day. The oldest dog isn’t quite in charge of his bowels, so I have frequent surprises in the hallway leading outside. The middle dog is stone deaf and sticks to me like gum to a shoe every moment I’m home. And the youngest dog ate an epic portion of the dog food I put down for them last weekend, when I flew back east to visit my wife and grandkid, so she’s a portly little beast that wants more, more, more!

So. I. Have. No. Guardrails. No one to tell me “hey, stop being snarky!” It’s not my fault!

Since Christmas I’ve had to buy a new mailbox, a new smart watch, a new dryer and just this last weekend, a new washing machine.

But, that’s how I met this nice writer girl and delivered my pearls of dim-headed wisdom.

In the mean time, in between time, I’ve been slowly using Blender to build a world for those neat little cars to drive around in.

My secret idea is this: I know of a company in New York that makes neat little cars. My guess is that they could use a neat little video to promote their neat little cars, and this is where I come into the story, because I’m moving to New York in the summer of ’26. But that’s a secret, so don’t tell anybody.

So, here I am, sitting in my lonely garret (bedroom) with no company (3 dogs and 1 cat) writing my life story (this post), wishing I hadn’t been so snarky to that nice girl.

But, well, there it is!

Mr. Nolan, You Insult Me, Sir

If you’re sitting at the car dealer, ready to put money down on that snappy red sports car and another you walks in the door and tells you that he’s from the future and you should instead buy the gray sedan because that way you’ll invent a time machine, don’t you believe him. There’s been a mistake.

I mean, with quantum mechanics maybe there’s a very, very, very tiny chance that it could happen, but it’s like a one-in-ten-trillion chance.

You see, I just finished watching Interstellar, the Christopher Nolan film. Man, am I disappointed.

He got me the first time with that movie Dunkirk. A well made, handsomely crafted film right up to that scene where the pilot sets fire to his Spitfire fighter plane to keep it from falling into German hands.

It’s a beautiful scene, the plane blazing away on the twilight beach, the German soldiers running up, the pilot standing proud and defiant.

And then you see that there is no engine in the plane. It’s clearly a plywood mockup, featuring a length of pipe in the place where the engine should be!

Mister Nolan, you insult me, sir! Palming off such shoddy filmmaking as art!

You couldn’t spend fifty bucks and just put a piece of sheet metal in there? Surely you saw the missing engine during post? Did you think no one would notice? Not even airplane nerds?

And so back to Interstellar, an intriguing movie about the nature of time. There are some heart-rending scenes – “don’t leave me, Daddy!” and “you mean there IS no plan A?”

The film begins in a farmhouse on a clearly dying earth…

Stick with me here because this is a good writer’s story.

The house seems to have a poltergeist, except the unseen ghost isn’t scary and is leaving clues instead of breaking stuff. “It’s a code!” Cooper exclaims, and figures out that the waves of dust on the floor are binary coordinates which lead him and his 10-year-old daughter to a secret NASA installation. Believe me, I’m not revealing a thing so far.

Cooper takes off with three others, including pretty Anne Hathaway trying to broaden her audience appeal (I CAN do real drama), into a wormhole and another galaxy and eventually down the maw of an ancient and evidently not-so-violent black hole.

Inside – okay – here comes the revealing. Stop reading if you don’t want know what happens. We’ll wait while you decide…

Still with us? Cool. Thanks 

Inside Cooper screams and whimpers a little bit – fine acting by Mr. McConaughey – and finds himself inside a beautifully rendered tesseract of unimaginable dimensions. I mean, seriously, here the filmmaking is beyond compare. It is stunning.

And then he finds himself inside the walls of that dusty farmhouse from two hours ago. There’s his 10-year-old daughter, and there’s him. He’s gone back in time. That’s cool.

We’re still okay.

Then he starts leaving clues.

Wait, you mean, HE was the poltergeist? HE left the binary clues that made farmhouse-him drive to the NASA installation in the first place?

So, current Cooper would not have gone to NASA if he hadn’t seen the binary signals future Cooper left for him in the dust. 

Doesn’t that mean that future Cooper uses the time machine he’s created to go tell past Cooper to create a time machine? 

You can’t do that! From a storytelling aspect, that’s cheating!  That’s like Prince  Charming knowing the glass slipper was Cinderella’s all along because he secretly told the fairy godmother to give it to her.

That’s a closed loop, with no entry point!

Every time loop must have a beginning, a point of entry. 

But we humans, we like to close loops and tie things up. You can imagine the writers thinking “it’d be so cool if, like, it was Cooper leaving the code…”  So poetic.

Mr. Nolan, you insult me again, sir!

More insulting are the people I’ve met who tell me that’Interstelallar is the best film ever. They’re so impressed by the pompous filmmaking they never even see the flaw in the story!

Granted, it is well made and breathtakingly beautiful. I can’t unsee the thousand-foot waves.

But your wiggly lights and gussied up dancing girls do not blind me to science, Mr. Nolan. Science!

So, the pretty and thunderous Interstellar is off my list of recommended movies. The Texas-sized plot hole cannot be explained away. Like the engine missing from the Spitfire, it’s too obvious to ignore.

And, Mr. Nolan is off my list of great directors. He makes a pretty film, surely, but I find his obvious disregard for the easily-fixed-but-clearly-flawed details quite insulting. It’s as if he’s saying “nobody will notice.”

Well I, sir, am that nobody. 

Trying to Talk about the Ocean

It’s been a minute, I know, since I last wrote about anything serious. I know, I get it.

But my wife’s left me for a baby – a grandkid on the other side of the country. She’ll be back next week, after leaving me to my own devices for a week and a few days. Me, three dogs, and a cat.

The dogs are all upset – I know this because they leave “little bombs” in the most curious places. Oh, yeah! I have to clean that one up, too!

I got in a major car crash last week – rear-ended on the freeway that totaled my wife’s little car. I’d taken it to save on gas – her suggestion, you know. Blammo! They, they came from behind! I’m okay, car not so much.

Somebody, and I don’t know whom, left a plate of yellow citrus fruits on one of my front columns – we have these sort of three-foot-tall columns around the edge of our corner lot – with a sign that said “Limes – free!” and a smiley face.

First, they were lemons, not limes. Second, my house is not a place for you to give away your stuff. There were easily a dozen lemons on the plate – not your friendly “I thought you might like these” kind of plate that normal people put on the porch. Not. Going. To. Happen.

I distributed the “limes” into the compost bin and put the plate back out on top of the column. But I set up a camera, see, so I could see who came back for the plate. They were too sneaky: the plate’s gone and the camera missed them.

It’s because I’ve been binging “Monk” on Netflix in my wife’s absence. If you don’t know, he’s a germophobic Rain Man sort of character who is also a brilliant Holmesian detective who lives in modern day San Francisco. I had no idea there were so many murders there!

It’s a cute show- the acting is good and they’re good at finding awkward places to put a guy who’s terrified to shake hands. Although he’s brilliant, he can’t make simple yes-no choices. So, who do they volunteer to be the Little League umpire? Strike! or ball. No, no, strike. or ball. Do over, please!

So, I’ve been thinking about that movie Soul. It’s a Pixar piece about a musician’s lost soul trying find his way to the promised land.

All he ever wanted to do was play “the big time” – to be a real musician.

Someone tells him this story – I know I’ve told it to you before: a young little fish swims up to the old fish and says “I’m looking for the ocean.”

“Son, this IS the ocean.”

“Nah, this just water!”

I’ve been thinking about writing, and realizing that I’m still looking for the ocean. I’ve written about this before, too, I know.

Hey, it’s been a tough week, okay?

I am so lucky to do what I do for a living. I’m a technical writer for the marketing department of a major manufacturer. I’ve been tasked with producing videos – marketing videos, social media, promotion pieces, training videos, safety videos. I love writing them, and doing the voiceover, and then shooting the footage and building the animations and editing it all together.

There’s this movie-industry-standard 3D rendering software called Cinema 4D that I use to create animations for these things. Because of that, now I get to produce the website renders of the company’s products as well.

It’s a terrific job, and I absolutely love what I do.

For all that, I’m still looking for the Big Time. I was thinking about it today, thinking all of the “yeah, but” things you say when you’re trying to make yourself feel small.

And then came that voice. It sounded like the late James Earl Jones:

“Son, this IS the ocean.”

I don’t know if I should be elated or disappointed.

My wife just needs to come home!

The Thing I Missed

You know how it is, when you’re on a date, and the person on the other side of the  breadsticks has that certain something that drives you to ask more and more questions because you don’t really care what they’re talking about, just that they’re talking?

It’s the sound of their voice – the way they form their words. It’s the authority with which they tell their own story. It’s the way they guide you through their adventure, with details so charming you would swear you were there with them.

It’s one of those dates you wish would never end, where the restaurant closes down around you and you don’t care. Time has flown and you have to get up early tomorrow and you don’t care because the person beyond the breadsticks is simply the most fascinating person in the world.

When the date is done and you’re by yourself,  you think about that person, replaying the things they said in your head.

It’s because that person has something about them, a special thing.

I’ve been on plenty of dates where the beyond the breadsticks person was drop-dead gorgeous, but they didn’t have the thing. Interesting, sure. Fun to look at, oh yeah. Compelling? Nope.

My oldest dog is not a well fellow. At almost 17, he wants to cuddle, and my spidey-sense tells me those opportunities are fading.

Sitting next to him on the loveseat in our three-book library, a copy of my third book, Adventures of a Sawdust Man, came to hand.

I just flipped it open (it was a copy I’d printed for my wife to read) and began to read.

The writing was good, concise. Dialog was funny in the right places and flowed smoothly. Words were well chosen.

Compelling?

Not in the least.

The novel on the other side of the breadsticks was pretty to look at, but so uninteresting. It was genuinely…oh, don’t say it! Don’t say it! Oh, here it comes…

Dull.

Now I understand why agents line up to take a pass on it.

I, of course, think it’s really good. But those are complements from the parents. No, you don’t look fat! Of course not. You’re not dull as a brick. Not my kid.

It’s the command of the circumstances, the sincerity in the words, the flat-out honesty in the feelings that bubble out of the characters that compels you to keep reading. I think.

My guys seem like cardboard cutouts.

The plan from here is to read a bestseller to identify that Thing. To go on a date with a really good book and see if I can pin down what makes it so compelling.

And then apply that to my novel.

From disaster comes opportunity.

The movie ain’t over until the credits roll…

Okabus Dokus

It’s a little known fact that the old Latin term for “okey-dokey” was okabus dokus. Look it up. What did the serving girl say to Julius Caesar when he asked her to get more grapes? I’m telling you, it’s a thing.

Or, maybe not.

I met with some old friends today that I haven’t seen in, like, 35 years. They’re not old, you know, relatively. But I hadn’t seen them for a long, long time.

We were discussing this and that and here and there, and I suddenly got this brain wave. Call me simple – go ahead, everybody else does – but how about this for a metaphor:

When you first start out on your own in the world, you don’t know anything. Here you are, twenty-something, and it’s all so bewildering. You don’t know where you’re going, or what you’re going to do.

One day follows another, and you get along. Careers, lovers, kids, they all come and go. All the while you’re putting one foot in front of the other, doing the best you can.

And then, one day, after a bunch of years, you pause to look back. And not like glancing in the rearview mirror at a red light, but a real look. You examine all the stuff that has happened on your road.

And it’s amazing. You started out at the edge of a dark forest, only seeing that little space just ahead of you.

But now there are towns and people and nations and oceans – all the stuff that you discovered and uncovered on your journey.

And there are the things that you did – stuff you created, accomplishments, awards, accolades, failures, disasters. All right there for you to see.

And loved ones, here in that town, there in that village. Kids, dogs, cats. They’re all there.

And right through the middle of all that is a beautifully paved road. Wasn’t there when you started, but it’s there now, because you paved it.

You linked all those towns and mountains and people and jobs and accomplishments together. You.

No matter where you are in life, at the beginning, the end, or somewhere in between, that beautiful road stretches out behind you, tying all the events of your life into one, continuous expanse of once-unknown but now treasured landscape.

The road ahead? Still an unknown. It’s like those video games where you clear the forest just enough to see what’s coming, but not where the road goes.

Which is cool, right? You can’t change the road ahead – no matter which way you take yourself, the road paves right underneath you.

So, what can you do?

Take a page from Julius Caesar. Put your thumb up in the air, smile, relax, and enjoy the ride.

Okubus dokus.

I can’t Afford to Drown

Once upon a time, in what could only have been a former life, I drowned.  I don’t think it was this life, because, well…

My wife and I went sailing with my college-graduate daughter today. She teaches at a city-run sailing and kayaking camp and has weekend access to the sailboats they use during the week.

If you know anything about me, you know that I have a great love for the exploits of Horatio Hornblower, Captain Aubrey, and my secret man-crush, Captain Bolitho.

C.S. Forester based his fictional Hornblower on the exploits of Thomas Cochrane and Horatio Nelson. O’Brien uses those same logs, plus others he’s researched, for Captain “Goldilocks” Aubrey. And Alexander Kent, the pen name of the well-established author Douglas Reeman, carried a lot of those same stories forward for Captain Richard Bolitho.

All of these fellows sailed for the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, chasing and capturing and sinking French and Spanish ships whenever the plot line needed it.

It’s hard to imagine that strangely elite brutality – packing 700 sailors into a ship of the line, sailing the seas to find a similarly-sized enemy, and then to fire iron balls at it until either he or you could fight no more. Victory is ours! Or theirs…

But, it calls to me. And I’ve written a book called Marigold’s End that predates Napoleon, but features that same kind of brutal combat. I love that book.

If you read it, you will love it, too. Or you might merely like it. Or perhaps even dislike it. Hate it. Loathe it. This isn’t going well.

Anyway, today we took a tiny 14-foot sailboat out into the frothing waves beyond the breakwater. Green waves that blotted out the horizon, lifted us way up so that we could see far down the coast, and then dropped us back into the deep trench again.

My daughter told us that last week one of her 9-year-old campers wasn’t dealing with the rise and fall very well. He leaned over the side for a moment, and then sat back up, much relieved.

“There goes my sausage!” he cheerfully announced.

We felt that the wind had gotten up a bit, so we circled around the 1-mile buoy, and then headed back to port.

I must tell you, I was absolutely panicked. I did my best to hide it, but, in a 14-footer, you are right on the water – like, it’s right there. And those waves were green and huge and omnipresent, and I could feel myself drowning right out there. That boat was surely going to tip over, and I would drown.

She turned the boat so that the waves came under our counter, pushing us back into the safety of the breakwater.

But I was in the water, holding onto a rope slung around the quarter of a large sailing ship, plunging under the wave each time a roller happened by. I can see it this moment. I can feel the cold and the panic and the sense of futility. This moment.

The image stayed with me all the way back to the dock, and rides with me here.

I dusted off my old model of the Black Falcon – oh, no need to be nice. It’s a dreadful model, I know – trying to see if I could shake this drowning feeling. No luck.

Now I know I have to write about it seriously. Deal with the story that’s literally dying to be told. I think I actually drowned while hanging onto that rope.

I’m pretty sure the image pops up in Marigold’s End. Now I have to reread it.

I want to rewrite it, but all rewrite projects are on hold for the next few weeks while I concentrate on selling Sawdust Man.

You see, it occurred to me, and this applies to you, that no one will sell your book for you. You have no representative, no agency, other than yourself.

If you don’t represent your book, it will remain unread. If you don’t sell it, it will never sell, and your story will remain untold.

So, I am actively beating the bushes until I find an agent to represent my current offering, Adventures of a Sawdust Man.

Once that is sold, well, maybe then I can afford to drown.