Many people have become concerned about the possibility of the government reinstating the draft. A rash of rumors and E-mails have been spreading, threatening to turn the whispers of concern into the next urban legend. This sudden concern followed reports that at least two different proposals that had been made in Congress sought to return the draft.

A recent AOL survey questioned voters about which candidate they thought was most likely to restore the draft. When reporters recently asked John Kerry whether he thought George W. Bush would end up restoring the draft, he didn’t say yes, but he didn’t say no, either, further fueling that fire of speculation.

Keep this in mind for a moment as we briefly change topics.

Many Democrats took great exception to Dick Cheney’s comment that implied that choosing the wrong man for the presidency (in his mind, Kerry) could result in America being attacked again by terrorists. Many claimed that Cheney’s comment was completely out of line, because he was using fear as a ploy to unfairly influence people’s vote.

I recently heard a voter being interviewed on a national newscast and I was surprised to hear her say that she couldn’t imagine 9/11 having happened if Al Gore had been in office. I’m not sure how she arrived at such an absurd conclusion; the Oklahoma City bombing, tied to domestic terrorism, and the World Trade Center bombing, tied to Osama bin Laden, both occurred while Clinton and Gore were in office. Gore proposed tougher airport security measures as Vice President in response to the growing threat of terror, then backed off. It wouldn’t be fair to blame 9/11 on Gore’s failure to push those recommendations until they became requirements, but on the other hand, one cannot rule out the possibility that tougher security prior to 9/11 might have at least hindered the terrorists from that particular method of mass murder.

We’re talking about terrorists so willing to kill Americans that the prospect of dying for the cause doesn’t seem like a high price. I really don’t think they are remotely concerned about whether a Democrat or a Republican is in the White House at the time. Making their point (and accomplishing their goal) would seem to be their main preoccupation.

I thought Cheney’s comment was unreasonable as well. The question isn’t whether one candidate or the other will prevent us from being attacked again by simply being elected, or whether the election itself of one candidate or the other will encourage terrorists to strike again: I think that if a Republican is elected, terrorists will have a motive to strike again to dispel the myth that Republicans will prevent us from ever being attacked again. Likewise, I think that if a Democrat is elected, the same terrorists will have a motive to strike again to demonstrate that we are vulnerable no matter what we do. Either way, an attack would have a demoralizing effect on the country, which seems to be part of their terrorists master plan. The question we should be asking is how each candidate will handle the next attack when it does come.

But in any case, Cheney’s critics said that it was tasteless and inexcusable to have made such a remark. Keep that in mind, too.

Now, back to the draft issue. There are two bills that have been proposed to return the draft. You might be surprised to learn that the two primary sponsors of the two bills are Sen. Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, and Representative Charles Rangel of New York, both of whom are Democrats. The bills in Congress are gaining almost no support, but they’re there. And some Democrats aren’t making any bones about the “threat” of a draft:

“Under a second Bush administration, I don’t think we can rule out the fact that the president may try to get Congress to reinstate the draft,” says Representative Diana DeGette, a Colorado Democrat, according to MSNBC.

Political experts say that it would be very unlikely that a draft would get any real political support because politicians know that the voters would hold them responsible during their next re-election bids. Imagine for a moment the sheer horror these Democrats would feel if Republicans suddenly decided to back these measures. Imagine the backlash if the Bush administration announced that this was exactly the thing that needed to happen during such an unpopular war. The fact that the Bush administration hasn’t jumped “on board” with these proposals should tell you something.

But the assumption that the measures won’t go anywhere except into the minds of worried parents isn’t stopping Democrats from using fear as a ploy to attract voters who don’t want to see the draft restarted.

If you’re going to hold Dick Cheney in ill-regard for having tried to play off of voter fears, you must first consider the fact that there are those on the other side of the coin who have no problem doing the same thing. If you’re going to question why the Bush administration would attempt to scare people into voting against Kerry, you have to question why some Democrats don’t seem to have a problem with the same tactic when it happens to benefit their candidate.

After all, why is it not okay to attempt to capitalize on the fears of another terror attack while it is okay to capitalize on the fears of a new draft? Sounds like a double standard to me.

But back to that question on AOL’s poll: which candidate do you think is most likely to reinstate the draft? Many would have you believe that Bush is the only one who offers such a threat. But if the legislation proposed by some of his Democratic brethren is any indication, one cannot rule out the Kerry administration doing so, either. It would seem that if Kerry offered such a suggestion, he would already have some support within his own party!

Now, on to this week’s questions. To play you can either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your journal…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! Enjoy!

1. Who is the last person you took a photograph of?

6. READER’S CHOICE QUESTION #24 from Cherie: What movie character do you most identify with?

MY ANSWERS:
1. My best friend’s family.

6. Wow…sometimes even having the question in advance doesn’t help me answer it. I think I’ll pick Norman Thayer, Jr. in “On Golden Pond.”

Andrea gave the members of the “What If…” writing group a new assignment designed to make us think about how well we know our characters. The assignment itself is here.

I hate writing assignments. Truly. They drive me crazy, but then again, they’re a necessary evil. I know they are recommended for a reason, but I have enough trouble at times motivating myself to write the story I want to write. To then have to take my characters out of context to put them in an unusual situation is that much more of a motivational problem.

Then, there’s the other obvious problem for my little work in progress. I’m writing a novel about a reporter who encounters a psychic, a ghost and at least one vampire. How, exactly, do I decide what is an “unlikely” situation for this character?

Oh, well…just having finished reading a novel written by one of my colleagues that features a strip club as one of the settings, I decided I’d put my main character there. So here is my assignment:

Mark wished he’d been wearing a disguise. It was stupid of him to walk in this dive with only an illogical hope that no one would recognize him.
Glancing around the room, he was at least relieved that he recognized no one except for the girl.
She gyrated around a brass pole to music that sounded like it came from a porn soundtrack. She normally kept her eyes on the ceiling, but occasionally would glance at her admirers.
Mark took a quick sip of his drink and sunk lower in his seat when her eyes locked on his. The game was over; the secret was out.
When the music ended, she rushed off stage and reappeared a few moments later, only slightly more dressed, at Mark’s table.
“We have a lot to discuss,” he said.
“No we don’t.”
“The first thing we need to talk about,” he said, ignoring her protest, “is the man in the corner who’s staring at the both of us.”
“Please don’t ask me about him.” She sat across from him and leaned in to whisper her words. “You don’t know how much trouble I’m in.”
Reaching into his pocket, he activated the miniature tape recorder. “Tell me.”
“No. It’ll get worse for me.”
“It already is,” he answered. “You’re going to be the lead story tomorrow night at eleven.”
“You can’t! You don’t know what they’ll do to me.”
He lowered his eyes.
“Please. You can’t do this to me. They’ll kill me.”
He couldn’t bring himself to speak.
“Don’t you care?” Her hand touched his and he immediately felt his stomach turn over, not because of who she was or what she did for a living, but because of what he was doing to her.
“Excuse me for a second. I’m going to make a pit stop.” He rose and headed for the bathroom. What he really needed was fresh air.

I can’t leave a book store without passing by the bargain books table. Occasionally, I’ll find a hardcover book I’ve been meaning to read that has made it to the end of its shelf life, like James Patterson’s 1st to Die, which I purchased the other day for $4.95. (I’d much rather pay $4.95 for a hardcover than $7.99 for the paperback edition!)

More than a year ago, I found an odd little hardback book called Healing Crystals and Gemstones, by Dr. Flora Peschek-Böhmer and Gisela Schreiber. The book is an alphabetical listing of gemstones and the therapeutic uses and healing effects of each. No, I don’t believe in such things. I’m not sure why I purchased the book, other than I thought that it was an interesting topic. I don’t remember exactly what the price was, but I know it was under $5.00.

My birthstone is Topaz, which, according to the book, stimulates the metabolism and digestion, heightening taste buds. I’m not sure that heightened taste buds are necessarily a good thing for someone who’s trying to lose weight should have, but I’ll still wear my topaz ring on occasion.

But an odd thing happened a couple of weeks ago when I was in the middle of revising my manuscript. It occurred to me that one of the characters is a psychic who is trying her best to decipher a series of troubling feelings she has been having. Such a person might believe in the power of crystals and gemstones. So I went to the shelf and pulled the book and thumbed through it. I was able to create a short scene in which the character rubs a Helidor crystal. In the narrative, I explain that Helidor is praised by crystal enthusiasts for its ability to bring mental clarity to the user. The scene also allows me to give a little background on the psychic herself when I describe how she came to end up with the crystal and how she learned about using crystals and gemstones.

As I said, I kept the scene short…I wasn’t trying to write a sub-novel about crystals, after all. But it gives the character another facet (sorry, couldn’t resist) and blends perfectly with the psychic persona. It makes the character’s belief in the supernatural that much more authentic.

You never know what treasures you might find in the bargain tables of a book store…or how information you find in them might help your writing project when you least expect it!

CBS News has announced that it can no longer vouch for the authenticity of documents that they questioned Bush’s National Guard service. The controversy has united both political parties — briefly, to be sure — in a singleminded condemnation of “the media.”

But those of you who have read this journal for any length of time should know by now that I hate double standards. So I think it’s time to discuss a few of them.

CBS obtained the documents from a former National Guard commander who now admits that he intentionally misled the network about the source of the documents. He told Dan Rather over the weekend that he provided CBS with false information about the document’s source to ease some of the “pressure” being put on him by CBS News staffers who were demanding to know the source of the memos. He claims that he urged the network to authenticate the documents. Why CBS allowed the documents to be aired without the authentication, and why they were willing to trust the source so completely, remains to be explained.

On a personal note, during a good portion of my years in television, I was affiliated with CBS. They are pros. The news division has a solid reputation for a reason. They’re not bad people and not prone to making reckless mistakes. That does not mean, of course, that it can’t happen, as this situation proves. But this incident should not reveal an “overall picture” of operations at CBS News. That would be unfair, and I’d say the same thing if we were talking about ABC News or NBC News.

There is no question that errors were made in this case. My disclaimer out of the way, here are some “Devil’s Advocate” observations about the rampant criticism going on:

Some Republicans insist that Bill Burkett, the retired Texas National Guard officer who handed them the documents, must have a direct connection to the Kerry campaign, since a campaign official discussed “other issues” with Burkett just before the story aired. Yet these same people completely dismiss any connection between the Bush campaign and groups like the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who they say are operating on their own. If we are to believe that the Kerry campaign was directly involved in getting this information on the air, how can we be so quick to dismiss the possibility of a connection between the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and the Bush campaign?

Some Republicans want to know why CBS had allegedly supplied copies of the memos to the Bush administration and the Kerry campaign before the story aired. If it happened, it was done to get the two sides’ responses to the memos. This is hardly unreasonable in a journalistic sense, since both sides’ response to the documents (assuming they were real) would be newsworthy. Anyone would expect Bush to have a chance to respond to the documents. And anyone would expect Kerry — who has chosen to make military service such a major issue in this campaign — to respond as well. You can’t include such responses in your coverage if you don’t show them what you’re asking them to respond to in advance. That should be common sense.

Some Democrats are fuming because this controversy, they say, is focusing attention away from the “real” issue, which has nothing to do with the economy, the debt, or the War in Iraq; they’re angry because the all-important issue of Bush’s military service is taking the back seat here. Why is Bush’s limited service record so important so many years later? If you remind them (as the White House has) that Bush received an Honorable Discharge, you will likely be met with complaints that an Honorable Discharge means very little…that it is entirely possible to fail to meet your duty and still get one. If this is true, I should think that they would be demanding for a complete overhaul of military procedure. If they are, I haven’t found that call, yet. At the same time, they react angrily when anyone questions Kerry’s record, and insist that it is inappropriate to dispute whether Kerry deserved the awards he got in Vietnam. Apparently, only the Guard’s record keeping is lacking. How convenient.

Some Democrats are calling Bush an opportunist who must have taken advantage of special treatment, whether he asked for it or whether it was given to him based on requests from others, and that he has behaved, therefore, in a dishonorable way. Yet many of them back a politician who is using the tactic of questioning the lack of military service of his competitor — the same tactic he denounced when it was used against his party twelve years earlier — for his own gain. Is this not opportunistic as well? Should we not wonder if this is a case of him behaving dishonorably?

Finally, some Republicans insist that CBS intentionally set out to deceive. They are certain beyond any doubt that there is no way CBS could have made an “honest mistake” here. They believe that the information CBS had should have been subject to much more scrutiny before the story was published, and they believe that no matter how reliable CBS claims it thought the information and the source happened to be when it ran the story, the truth is CBS knew the information was suspect and acted anyway. I understand this line of reasoning from the diehard Republicans least of all because they defend Bush, who acted on intelligence information that has — at least so far — been proven unreliable, by saying he was acting on good faith. If we are to believe that Bush genuinely believed that there really were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (whether there are or aren’t) and that he was acting only with the best of intentions to protect America, why are we so certain to rule out any possibility of an honest mistake on the part of CBS? Surely no one is going to sit back and say that a journalistic organization should have known better than to act without double-checking the facts, when we consider the price paid in human life on the other side of that coin.

Obviously the story should have been delayed until the documents had been more carefully reviewed. But beyond that simple fact, it would seem that your opinion of CBS News depends on your own political preference. I don’t happen to believe that CBS News intentionally set out to deceive, but that’s my opinion formed from my contact and dealings with them over the years. I think it’s perfectly acceptible to blame them for being too eager to air the story, but not for being a Kerry propaganda machine.

Every time there is a busy hurricane season, the non-scientists among us begin begin to put on their Mr. Wizard caps and suggest ideas to wipe the monster storms off the map before they reach land.

The latest plan, according to an article from AOL News, (which the rest of the world knows as the Associated Press), is to have a Boeing 747 fly into the storm to dump tons of super absorbent powder into the clouds, thereby drying up the storm from the inside.

There are many obvious questions here for anyone with half a brain:

• Who’s going to fly a 747 into a hurricane?
• How much of the “absorbent powder” would you need?
• What happens when the absorbent powder does its job? Where does it go then?
• Could we kill ecosystems in the oceans if sea life ingests the powder?
• Could we screw up ecosystems on land if the powder makes it that far?
• Who’s going to pay for all of this?

The really obvious question for me is one that most of these amateur storm busters aren’t asking: Why do hurricanes form to begin with?

A meteorologist friend of mine explained this to me over dinner a few weeks ago. I found it so interesting I thought I’d share it with the rest of you. It turns out that a hurricane isn’t merely a case of God looking for a way to liven up the Atlantic in the late summer; the storms actually serve a purpose for planet Earth.

“A hurricane is a giant heat regulator,” my friend explains. “It’s nature’s way of redistributing the heat in the warmer waters of the Atlantic more evenly to the northern waters.” After a hurricane has started spinning, the temperature of the water in that area drops.

I found it fascinating to think of these storms actually having a purpose beyond destruction. They’re not random acts of nature; they’re nature’s air conditioning for the ocean.

Given that fact, I think we’re better off letting Mother Nature decide what’s best. I’d be terrified of what she might come up with to say, “Oh yeah? Well, I’ll show you,” if one of these storm busters was actually turned loose on a hurricane. Somehow, I think Mother Nature is always going to win…one way or the other.

We each have our own pet peeves when it comes to grammar. One of my biggest goes back to 1986.

I was sent to USC to attend a summer journalism workshop that would benefit me as I worked on my high school newspaper. That fall, I would be a junior and would end up being the news director of the paper for the year.

Anyway, the workshop lasted a week or so and focused on many different aspects of school newspaper production: layout ideas, story ideas, news gathering, photography, graphics, and a healthy dose of good writing. It was at this workshop that one of my biggest grammar pet peeves was formed: the improper use of the phrase due to. It was during a copyediting seminar, in which an editor would display story copy on an overhead projector. With a blue pen, he would mark out problems and make corrections to the copy on display. Apparently, I saw the phrase due to crossed out too many times and it just stuck.

I’ve made subtle references to due to elsewhere, but have never explained the correct usage for the phrase. I will attempt to do so now.

Many people are afraid to begin a sentence with the word because, since almost every teacher has said at some point that you should never begin a sentence with because.

So, instead, they start the sentence with due to:

WRONG: Due to illness, the singer’s concert was cancelled.

Why should the teachers claim it’s never a good idea to begin a sentence with because? There’s a good reason for that: they’re trying to make sure we don’t create a sentence fragment in place of a sentence. Consider this typical exchange of a parent and young child.

PARENT: Don’t do that.
CHILD: Why?
PARENT: Because I said so.

“Because I said so” is an incomplete sentence: it’s a prepositional phrase acting as a dependent clause. Though there is a subject, I, and a verb, said, the because at the front requires that the sentence contain more information.

But this sentence, which also starts with because, is perfectly legitimate:

RIGHT: Because of storm damage to the building, school will be closed for one week.

The basic sentence is “school will be closed for one week.” The “because of storm damage” part adds extra information, but can be deleted without changing the meaning of the sentence or making the remaining portion of the sentence a fragment.

So why can’t you just substitute due to in place of because of?

WRONG: Due to storm damage to the building, school will be closed for one week.

Due to is an adjective phrase and should not be used as a preposition. The easy way to remember the correct way to use Due to is to remember that it needs a form of the verb “to be,” (is, are, was, were, etc.):

RIGHT: The school’s closing is due to storm damage.
WRONG: The school is closed due to storm damage.

RIGHT: The child missed school because of illness.
WRONG: The child missed school due to illness.

I don’t expect anyone to change how they write because of this rule, but it’s a rule that’s not known that much, so I include it here. I cringe when I see due to used incorrectly, but I’m one of the few people who recognized when it is used incorrectly.

Of course, in fiction, it’s perfectly acceptable to use incomplete sentences: they can sometimes add tension or make dialog more realistic. I’m not saying you should never write in incomplete sentences…I just wanted to point out the rule about due to.

Now go forth and write as you will!

Now, on to this week’s questions. To play you can either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your journal…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! Enjoy!

1. If you could give your journal a content rating, which would you select: G, PG, PG-13, R, or NC-17?

6. READER’S CHOICE QUESTION #23 from Heather: What secret urge do you have, but never act on?

MY ANSWERS:
1. PG-13

6. To spend a day not bottling up anything inside: to just say everything that pops in my head without regard to how anyone might react.

I recently subscribed to Time magazine, news that should make AOL’s corporate parent happy. Besides the fact that I’m trying to make more time to read, I also figured at least one benefit of subscribing to Time would be that they could then stop offering me a senior citizen’s discount (which, to the best of my knowledge, amounts to a whopping difference of 95¢) off the basic subscription price you can find at the magazine’s website.

In any case, a recent edition featured a story about living longer, and it had one of the shortest tests to “predict” how long you will live that I’ve found. Of course, there’s no way to know for sure…but here’s what it said. How long will you live?

First: Start with a base lifespan of 87. (Gotta like that.)

Then, answer the following questions and add or subtract as necessary:

Attitude: If you’re generally optimistic and able to let go of things that are stressful, then hold at 87. If you’re not, subtract 5 years. (Yeah, lost 5 on that one.)

Genes: If at least some family members have lived into their 90s or later, add 10 years, since longevity runs in families. (Picked up 10 there.)

Exercise: (I’m already getting ready to subtract!) If you set aside at least 30 minutes a day, three days a week for exercise (people do that??), then hold at the current number. If you don’t do that much exercise (which I imagine describes most people on the planet!), then subtract 5 years. (I’m breaking even, at least.)

Interests: Do you like things that challenge the brain? Do you take on activities that are “novel and complex?” If so, add 5 years. If not, go to the store and buy a crossword puzzle book and try again later.

Nutrition: (Here we go again!) Carrying extra weight will shorten your life span. Gee, thanks for the clue. If your diet doesn’t keep you lean, you’ve just lost 7 years.

Smoking: Smoking will shorten your life span. Duh. If you smoke, you just lost 5 more years.

So, according to Time magazine, I’ll live to be 85. I’m excited by that news. That means I’ll be able to enjoy that senior citizens discount for at least thirty years after I become officially eligible!

This entry has to do with two recent events. One of them involves a situation that came to light in the journal community on Friday; the other involves an attack against someone who commented to an unrelated entry here. If you don’t want to read any more, skip this entry. If you intend to read on, please be willing to hear me out all the way.

Journals are supposed to be places where someone can speak their mind. Sometimes one does so and finds that his opinion isn’t popular. There is nothing surprising in this, or at least there shouldn’t be, since different people have different ideas. I know of no two people in the world who agree all of the time on every conceivable topic.

The point is, just as someone who writes a journal should be able to speak his mind, those who read it (assuming comments are allowed) should be able to speak theirs. It is my general policy here not to delete comments unless they contain language that is inappropriate or if they are so off-topic that they have nothing to do with the post to which they are attached. I think I’ve deleted a total of about five comments (with the exception of several deleted when the entries they accompanied were removed).

I have never expected everyone who comes here to agree with everything I say. You are free to disagree with me and my opinions. I don’t mind that. If you keep it respectful, I will listen to you and consider your point of view. My mind has been changed before; it wouldn’t be a first time if it happens in the future.

I don’t walk around believing that I am right about everything. I try to do what I think is right. Sometimes, doing what I think is right means doing what is wrong. It happens. I regret it when it happens, but I’m only human…I never said I was otherwise.

Recently, a fellow journal writer left a comment that disagreed with my position on a certain issue. I felt that her comment was respectful, but I was concerned that she took the matter more personally than I intended. I clarified the position I had and she clarified hers. In the end, I believe we both understand each other’s positions better. At least, I better understand hers. I think that the two of us are far more close to being on the same page than either of us initially realized, which is why I am grateful for that type of dialog: it does open minds.

However, I have just learned that a third party who read her comment here proceeded to send her an E-mail in which that person, as the recipient put it, chose to speak for God, calling her a person who was not the Christian she “pretended” to be but rather was a “pawn of the evil doers.” This person then went on to add that anyone who didn’t agree with the current president must automatically have no morals and don’t deserve to live in this country.

In a word, I am appalled.

Anyone who reads this journal should have known by now that I don’t believe that the Republican party holds any monopoly on Christians. I have stated before that I consider Jimmy Carter to be the most moral president this country has ever seen, and certainly one of the finest and most honorable men ever to hold that office. If you’ll take a moment to remember your history, you may be shocked to discover that he is a Democrat.

Anyone who reads this journal should have known that I have raised my own doubts about which religion is the “true” religion. I recently said:

How do I feel about other religions? That’s where it gets complicated. The religion I accept as true is pretty clear about that. But a big part of me isn’t so sure. It’s not that I doubt that my religion is correct…I don’t at all. I do, however, wonder whether there aren’t other religions that can be correct also? Must God be reduced to one single definition? Could God not appear to other people in many ways and in many forms? Who is to say that the same diety we refer to as God may be the same diety others of a different cultural mindset refer to as Buddha?

I’m fairly certain that I have said before that I don’t think that even those who don’t believe in God are bad people. For whatever reason, they have chosen their own path which they feel is right, just as those who do believe have. It’s their business until they ask a believer to show them why they beleive.

If I could snap my fingers and let everyone on the planet know at once the love of God I have felt in my heart, so that they could all experience it and know it to be as real as I know it to be, I’m not sure that I’d do it. I think there is more value to the individual to find it when the time is right, so that it is a more personal discovery, rather than someone just handing it to you with no emotional connection.

The point is, none of us can really speak for God. We speak for ourselves. We speak for our own conscience. We speak for our own ideas of what is right and what is wrong. When we accuse someone else of being a “bad Christian,” we are stepping over a line we have no right to cross, and I believe that God Himself will have something to say about that action one day.

There is, for some reason, the widespread belief among many that to question the government means being a bad citizen. That’s false logic. Had it not been for those British citizens who questioned their government, this country would likely never have existed to begin with. We have a right and an obligation in a democracy to question what we are told by our leaders and to campaign for changes when we don’t like what we here. That’s what being a citizen is all about.

There also seems to be the widespread belief that just because the current president claims to be doing work he believes is God’s will, that anyone who disagrees with him must be operating in a way that goes against God’s will. That’s false logic, too. I’m not sure I am always in tune with what God’s will is for everything that happens; I think that if I was, I’d understand the way the world works in a much better way. I think, in the end, in one way or another, God’s will shall be done, but I don’t know that I believe that either of the candidates for president this year are the only men who have the capacity to carry it out, nor do I believe that either of them is any more in tune with God’s purpose than I might be.

On Friday, I wrote an entry, as did others, about learning that several in the AOL J-Land family had been deceived by someone who wasn’t what he said he was. I wrote what was in my heart at that moment. Was I angry? You bet. Did I feel I had a right to be? Definitely. Did I handle the situation in the best possible way? No. That was pointed out to me rather quickly, both directly and indirectly.

Those who pointed it out to me directly, after much discussion, prevailed upon me to remove two entries and post a very different one, putting the focus on the individual who had done the deceiving. I admit that this is where the focus should have been from the beginning.

Some — not all — chose to make me out to be the villain because I wrote in anger and didn’t consider the real motive of the person in question.

But as I took a tour of J-Land, I somehow wasn’t surprised to find references to entries made by those of us who posted what we said in anger without thinking things through. Many of those entries — also written in anger — assumed that those of us who had less-than-kind things to say were doing so for only the wrong reasons, that we must be bad people. In short, those people were acting out of anger and doing exactly to those of us who had spoken out what they accused us of having done to that certain journal writer.

I have spoken at length to one particular fellow journal writer about this. I understand her reasons for writing what she wrote in the way she wrote it. I respect her feelings and have apologized to her. I hold no ill will towards her, and I’m glad that she holds no ill will toward me. As she points out, forgiveness forces one to grow beyond who they were. She’s absolutely right and I thank her for that reminder.

But I’ve read other entries by other writers, who say that they have more reason than anyone else to feel pain from those recent events. They say that they are the only ones who know the whole story. And they wrote in anger about what they assumed others’ motives to be without thinking that some of them might have had the whole story as well, as if they really were the only ones who had been hurt.

They weren’t.

I don’t point this out to diminish my error. I was wrong. I admit it.

I simply suggest that those who wrote about the situation and condemned others who were condemning the one person were doing the same thing they were complaining about.

Some of you have been quite kind in suggesting that I had every right to discuss my genuine feelings in my journal, and I appreciate that encouragement. I don’t regret removing those words, because I felt it was the right thing to do.

But if you’re disappointed in me for being proved human, for showing that I am capable of making a mistake, you’ll have to allow that disappointment to grow slightly more as I tell you that I’m disappointed that others who don’t know me made the same type of statements they accused me of making and haven’t made similar efforts to correct that. It has even been pointed out to me that some who formed “friendships” through the common thread of concern for this single writer are now even stabbing each other in the backs. And they seem to want to point the blame at everyone except the person who caused the pain in the first place.

I was wrong. I admit it.

But I’m also a little disappointed to be portrayed as the bad guy here. No matter who is crying for help — and there are several who are — if it’s wrong to place blame on one person, then don’t place blame on anyone. If that offends you, I’m sorry. But I’m just being honest.

My point here is this: we are all human. We have a right to our beliefs. We have a right to our feelings. We have a right to express them. And if the individual journals allow them, we have a right to respond to them. But beyond those basic rights, I think we have an obligation here to each other to frame those responses in a respectful way, to treat others as we would have them treat us, to be fair about our handling of other people’s feelings. No one would want their faith questioned because their viewpoint disagrees with another person who thinks he or she is a “better” Christian. And likewise, no one would want his motives questioned by people who accuse him of being wrong for doing the same of someone else.

I was wrong. I admit it. But I wasn’t the only one who was.

I needed a reminder of that, and I got it. I hope those others who need a similar reminder find it here.

I hope that all of us can take a step back and think about how the events of the past week unfolded. I hope there are lessons for all of us who felt anger in the past week, no matter who became the recipient of that anger. We deserve better from each other.

I don’t mean to throw a new spark onto a fire that is dying down; I just want to make sure that there is something positive that rises from the ashes.

I don’t know what else to say…I only hope that I’ve made my point without reopening any wounds. That has never been my intent.

Andrea made an excellent point in my last piece about rejection, “The ‘R’ Word.” She states, “I don’t think I will handle rejection well…I’ve learned to handle critique well, though. Does that count?!”

Indeed it does! Critique deserves its own mention, too.

Often, we writers confuse one with the other. I’m guilty of that, and I’m sure most, if not all, are. There’s a big difference.

But after spending weeks, months or even years weaving the characters we have created through the “wild” and into a (hopefully) coherent plot intended to leave the reader entertained when all is said and done, it’s sometimes difficult not to take even a well-intended critique personally.

It’s sort of a cruel irony, I think, that writers, who must at some level be quite sensitive in order to experience things emotionally in a way that they can translate into their characters’ motivations must also have a thick skin to protect them from those who question how well they do what they do.

How many people do you have in mind when you feel that your novel is finished who you feel can give an honest, objective critique?

For me, I know of three immediately: two of them are published writers, though neither has published a novel in the same genre as mine. The third is an excellent writer working on a novel of his own. He’s already read the first couple of chapters, and it was his suggestions that promptly had me revising the first few chapters to correct an obvious error I had made that I managed to blindly miss. I think all three would be willing to read my finished manuscript…assuming I can work up the nerve to ask.

Now, on to this week’s questions. To play you can either answer the questions in a comment here, or put the answers in an entry on your journal…but either way, leave a link to your journal so that everyone else can visit! Enjoy!

1. With about 50 days left until the election, you suddenly have the chance to recast the two presidential candidates. Who would you want to replace Bush and Kerry?

6. READER’S CHOICE QUESTION #22 from Robin: Are you a native of the state you currently reside in? If not, how many states have you lived in since the state you’re a native of?

Next week’s “Reader’s Choice” question comes from Heather, who wants to know one of your deep, dark secrets!

MY ANSWERS:
1. I’d like to see John McCain take on Howard Dean. That would be quite a race.

6. Nope. I am one state removed from my native state.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was awakened by a ringing telephone. I had fallen asleep on the couch the night before, having watched some mindless classic sitcom on TVLand or Nick at Nite, most likely, and the television was still on.

The call had come from my mother, who was at work, but had heard on the radio that a plane had crashed into a New York skyscraper. As she told me the news, NBC’s Today show was showing pictures of the World Trade Center where the plane had crashed. We didn’t talk long, but I told her I’d let her know what happened when I found out.

Unlike those who claim to have known immediately and beyond a shadow of a doubt upon seeing that image that we had been the victim of a terrorist attack, that wasn’t my first thought. I recalled an old news story I had read about from 1945, when a B-25 had crashed into the 79th floor of the building on a fog shrouded morning. I could see clearly from the picture that there was no fog…I knew that whatever type of plane had crashed into this building didn’t do so because low-hanging clouds prevented the pilot from seeing it.

Perhaps I subconsciously chose to believe that there must have been some kind of mechanical failure…that typical “hydraulic leak” that is part of so many plane crash movies…that prevented the pilot from being able to steer clear of the tower. I was watching when the second plane hit the tower. That’s when I knew the first crash hadn’t been an accident.

Oddly enough, though, at the time, I thought of another old news story and my mother’s telling of it. She had described being at her sister’s home on Sunday, November 24, 1963, watching Lee Harvey Oswald as police escorted him through the basement of the Dallas Police Department. Right there on live television, they saw murder happen as Jack Ruby shot him. It dawned on me, and I don’t know why my mind jumped to the comparison, that I was watching my own “Oswald moment” that morning.

I called my mom to tell her that a second plane had crashed. I told her that someone must have hijacked both planes. I promised to call back when I knew more.

I was watching Bryant Gumbel who was then on CBS’s The Early Show when he received word in his IFB, an earpiece that allows producers to talk to anchors and reporters, that they were about to switch toalive shot of the Pentagon. “Oh my goodness, oh my goodness.” That’s what I heard Gumbel say as a wideshot from some kind of “sky cam” appeared. It showed a distant shot of the Pentagon with a tremendous plume of smoke.

I work in television, as many of you know. I’m not a reporter, though I once was. I’m not a news junkie, per se, unless there is big news happening at that moment, then I want all that I can get. But wheras I should have jumped up, gotten dressed, and headed to my television station where I could have watched the news wires and satellite feeds from reporters on the various scenes at the same time I was watching the actual on-air signal, I just sat there. I suppose I was still trying to soak it all in.

I knew, once I saw that second plane hit, that there would be nothing specific for me to do that day. That’s because I am a promotion producer: I do those commercials that tell you what’s coming up on the evening news. I also do the spots that tell you why our anchors are better than theirs. At the time, I even added our station logo and airtime to promos for syndicated shows like Judge Judy, Montel or The Andy Griffith Show. But it was obvious that none of that would be airing that day. I knew that it was a given that network coverage would go “wall-to-wall,” that there would be no time for local commercials or promos.

I didn’t think about not going in, because I knew that I would be needed in some capacity. That capacity turned out to be producing spots that could air instead of commercials when the networks would allow local news and programming to resume. Most advertisers were pulling their ads so there would have been few commercials to air. But at the same time, the news and production departments wanted to have the option of having some kind of spots that could run in order to give them precious time to “regroup” if something went wrong.

I produced a series of spots that I called “Enouraging Words.” They basically were little more than motivational music, footage of the aftermath, especially people helping strangers that day, and alternating words or phrases that appeared on the screen. Over the course of the next few days, this is what I did. I sat in an edit bay, looking at footage that had fed from the network’s private news feed, being bombarded with images that some of you never saw because they were too horrific. I produced a music video to Ray Charles‘ rendition of “America.” I produced a thirty-second promo that alternated between shots of candlelight vigils and prayer services and quotations from notable Americans.

Over the next few days, as coverage slowly returned to normal, I had produced several spots that all accomplished basically the same thing, just in different approaches. I was proud of the work, but at the same time, drained from having to see all of that footage over and over again. I can’t imagine what it was like to lose a loved one in the terrorist attacks. I can’t imagine what it was like to be there in person and see it happen. But I can’t forget what it was like to be forced to witness replays of it that I thought would never stop.

Someone asked if I had nightmares after the attacks. I didn’t. My nightmares were in the daytime, not being projected in my mind but being shown on video monitors.

Those of you who visited this journal earlier today will realize that I have done something that I almost never do: I have removed two entries and the associated comments. I hope those who took the time to leave comments here will forgive me for having done so, and I hope after reading this, they will understand why I felt it was the right thing to do.

Earlier, I had written about a fellow journal writer who had, to put it mildly, been somewhat less than honest with his readers. I had first been alerted to the situation Thursday evening, by two different journal writers who had kept in closer contact with him than I had. Both were hurt by the deceit. Both were confused. Both were angry. One of them in particular communicated with me to seek guidance on how to proceed.

I suppose I was still in something resembling a state of shock when I proceeded to write the first of two entries suggesting that some of us may have been “suckered” by an unnamed journal writer. Friday morning, in my second post on the subject, I wrote another entry which gave a few more clues as to the journal writer’s identity without naming him. My overall take on the matter was, what would one say to someone who had deceived so many?

I had the best of intentions in writing these posts. My goal was not to make this journal writer look bad; rather, I felt that others who (at least at the time) still had no idea that they had also been deceived had the right to know that all was not as it appeared. I made a value judgment that the need to know outweighed the journal writer’s need for compassion. Informing other potential “victims” was my intent.

Ironically, I found myself suddenly in the same situation that my posts put the journal writer in question into: my motives were questioned. Just as my posts, in hindsight, carried an assumption that the journal writer who did deceive his readers had done so for only evil purposes, a few accused me of having evil purposes for writing about the matter. Suddenly, I found myself in the same boat with the person I was writing about.

It was explained to me by a small group of friends that I had betrayed the trust of the person who had asked for my advice on the situation by writing about it. It was further explained to me that I had reacted to the news too quickly, in too much anger, and with too much emotion, when I should have taken a step back — quite a few steps back, actually — and mulled it over before writing about the situation. Without them beating around the bush, it was suggested that I failed to consider the possibility that the journal writer in question had his own reasons for deceiving his readers, and that doing so must have been some desperate cry for help.

For someone who generally spends too much time worrying about consequences before acting…for someone who likes to think that he is a rational person, I screwed up.

The person who trusted me with many details of what was really going on (details I would have never made public, incidentally) deserved better from me. I should have responded to her E-mail and given her a chance to deal with the situation rather than writing about it on my own. I am sorry that I failed her.

The people who came here this morning to read about the scenario I described deserved the benefit of a piece written with more thought and more concern for the other side of the story. Someone who believes that there are always at least two sides to every story should have taken time to consider the journal writer’s side of things. Admittedly, I did not, and I regret that.

It is clear to me now, as it should have been before, that anyone who would perpetrate such a fraud in the name of building friendships with people here in J-land must be in a bad situation. Certainly, such a person must have been reaching out for help in a way that the rest of us cannot understand. I know more than many of what was really going on, and the more I know, the less sense it makes. I shouldn’t have been so blind to a truth that seems so obvious now, but I somehow managed to overlook it. Actually, I never even considered it. But looking back at it now, I cannot deny that the person who would do such a thing is clearly in grave need of something. That person, had he visited this journal this morning, would have found no compassion here. I’m ashamed about that, too.

There is a time for anger and a time for level-headed thinking. This is the time for the latter. I jumped the gun in dealing with this disappointment, rather than allowing the rational side of things to shine through.

The journal writer in question relayed to several people a life and death medical struggle. He received many prayers from people genuinely concerned for his well being. I would encourage all of you who now feel as though you have been intentionally deceived that this person still needs those prayers, only in a different way. I hope you will join me in the sincere hope that he gets the help he so obviously needs.

I am sorry for the way I handled this situation earlier. They say that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. I honestly thought that I was operating under the best of intentions at the time. Unfortunately, looking back, I should have thought more about it before writing anything. I should have handled it better.

There’s little else to say, except that I hope everyone concerned will be able to forgive me.

All writers, no matter how experienced, no matter how talented, will eventually face rejection at some point in their career. Hopefully, they’ll get all of the rejection letters out of the way on their first novel until that one publisher decides to take a chance, and that first novel rockets to meteoric success.

Yeah, right.

Okay, we’ll all face rejection and almost certainly more than once. Those of us who don’t see our work passed over will at least receive a list of suggestions to make it better, ways we should rewrite what we have so far. Some of the suggestions will change the story in ways we hadn’t considered.

How do we handle that?

I think it’s a good thing, in a way, that many rejection letters aren’t really letters at all. Some are post cards. Some are form letters that waste a page to say, basically, “No, thank you.” Occasionally, agents or editors will simply mail you back your same cover letter with the words, “Not for us. Good luck” written in the top corner. It’s bad that they can’t seem to make the time to write a single page of unique suggestions that might give the writer an idea of changes that would make the novel salable.

At the same time, though, we don’t have the double whammy of the rejection itself combined with a scathing critique of every terrible thing we did to make us feel like we should toss any hopes of writing as a career (or even a hobby) and crawl under a rock.

The question is, how do you handle rejection? Note that I didn’t ask, “How do you like rejection?” I presume none of us likes to be rejected. Some of us don’t even enjoy being disagreed with. But it happens to everyone…so what do you do to keep the faith and your perspective?