Author: marandarussell

One Minute Monologue – Mine Now

| marandarussell

I’ve been reading a book of one minute monologues, and it inspired me to try my own hand at writing them. Here is my first try, inspired in part by watching the Netflix series “YOU”.

“Mine Now”

We met at an estate sale. You were selling off the remnants of your grandmother’s 80-something years, and I was looking for some cheap antiques. I bent over to sort through a box of old vinyl records, trying to ignore the smell of cat piss and mustiness that permeated the air.

That’s when I spotted you on the stairs – long black hair pulled back into a pony tail, muscular, tanned arms lugging another box of old junk to the sale room.

Our eyes met as you neared the bottom step. You smiled in recognition, though we had never met before. I decided right then that you were mine now, regardless of whether you wanted to be or not. I hoped you would put up a good fight. It always makes the game feel exciting and new…and the eventual conquest more satisfying.

Guest Post: Top DIY Editing Tips

| marandarussell

Today I’m featuring a guest post by Emma Brown. She is going to give out some professional DIY editing tips, focusing primarily on article/essay writing! I hope they can be of use to you!

Top DIY Editing Tips

It’s not enough just to write an article. After all, the first version of the text is a draft. You must make it informative and easy to understand, put it into order, and edit it. It is unwise to show it to the reader right away; the draft must be looked at by an editor. Well, or postpone the article and return later to make the improvements yourself.

Sometimes editing and revisions take longer than the actual writing. After all, any article can be improved endlessly, there is no limit to perfection. But there is not always enough time for such perfection. Our 10 Quick Editing Tips Checklist will help you speed up your work.

10 tips of essay editing

The main principle of editing says the simpler the better. Plain language, easy and understandable words. After all, we are not writing a work of fiction kind of document, but a note that should quickly make one’s point to the reader, solve the problem.

Students and writers often face the problem of essay editing and this is when professional edit essay services online come in handy. A professional editor will edit your essay and deliver it in a timely manner.

Forget about the flawless syllable, excessive expressiveness looks strange in essays on general topics. And even worse if we see this in technical texts about metallurgical equipment. Therefore, take into account the subject of the text, the language of the target audience – everything is individual.

We recommend finding a middle ground, so that the paper does not seem out of place. It is inappropriate to imitate Nabokov in informational articles and descriptions.

Now in detail. Let’s move on to specific recommendations:                                                             

Tip #1.

Clean up unnecessary things. Any text can be reduced by 20% without sacrificing content. To make papers strong, squeeze out the waffling: remove every excess word, without which the meaning of the sentence is not lost.

Tip #2.

Remove hackneyed phrases and cliches. These are english phrases that are used in texts/speech so often that they have ceased to be means of expressiveness. They have become standard, trite, and boring.

Tip #3.

Forget about bureaucracy and colloquial words. Use an informational style so that an assignment about travel does not turn into an excerpt from a dissertation or everyday conversation.

Tip # 4.

Make things clear and give examples. The text must be 100% objective. Omissions, understatements, and uncertainties are not needed here. Add specific, accurate information.

Tip # 5.

Simplify the complex things. Put things in order. Sentences should be clear from the first read through and written simply.

Tip # 6.

Replace verbal nouns. Verbal nouns require weak verbs. Experienced editors are well aware of this issue. This makes sentences more difficult.

Tip # 7.

Don’t overuse leading questions. Such questions allow the reader to identify the article as suitable for them, regardless of whether it is academic writing or something else. These questions relate to the problems of the reader. And if a person internally said YES at the very beginning, then they are already involved.

Tip # 8.

Split the sentences. To keep the reader’s attention and not clutter up the text, divide long sentences into several short ones. This will make the article lighter and save the target audience’s time.

Either way, applying for expert assistance from essay-editor.net, you will get your paper edited and proofread the best way possible.

Tip # 9.

Check repetitions and tautologies. The author may not even notice overuse of words from the same root. After all, work on a small text can last 2-3 hours, during which time the eye gets blurry. But to the reader, these flaws immediately catch the eye and spoil the whole impression of the text. A professional service will not let it happen.

Tip # 10.

Make the text beautiful: work on the design services. The structure of the article plays an important role. Even if the text is super informative and useful, written in plain language, and without a single mistake, it is not a guarantee that it will be paid attention to. Readers may not feel like reading solid text without visual clues. 

Conclusion

Don’t be afraid to cut, divide, and remove unnecessary parts. Only practice will help you achieve perfection. Maximum benefit, minimum waffling, and simplicity are the three pillars on which any successful article is built. But don’t go crazy either – do not overdo it with proofreading, so that the text turns into a dry outline of the original article. Everything should be in moderation. It’s easy to lose track of authorship, which should be the hallmark of your writing.

Mothman Pizza?

| marandarussell

My husband and I went to Point Pleasant West Virginia for a few days to visit the Mothman museum and other touristy-type stuff. While there, we went to a local pizza place that boasted a “Mothman shaped pizza”…not sure it really looks like the Mothman to me lol…

What do you think? Do you see the Mothman there? At least it tasted good, although a few pieces were super olive-y!

Autism – Pros & Cons of Early Diagnosis

| marandarussell

Have you ever thought about the pros and cons of getting an early autism diagnosis? As someone who was diagnosed with high-functioning autism in their late 20’s, I’ve thought about it quite a bit. I thought I would share a few of the pros and cons I’ve considered, but please be aware that these are my personal opinions and come from someone diagnosed with aspergers, so they may not apply to all situations or forms of autism. By the way, when I say “early autism diagnosis” what I generally mean is someone who is diagnosed in childhood, so they grow up knowing they have the condition and with access to services for the condition, as opposed to people who are diagnosed as adults and had to make it through childhood “blindly” in a sense.

Pros

  • Getting a childhood diagnosis opens up a world of support services and other helpful aids to you and your family. From school services to counseling and help with understanding social situations, the information and guidance offered can be immeasurable.
  • You understand from a young age what struggles you are dealing with. You have insight into where you likely have weaknesses and where you may need to work extra hard to succeed.
  • Your family, friends, and teachers understand your sensory issues and give you more leeway in how you react. In other words, you won’t get punished for being terrified of the sound of balloons popping and overreacting by yelling and crying, like I did in 4th grade 😦
  • A diagnosis of aspergers or high-functioning autism allows you to understand why you may feel so different from your peers. Growing up, I always felt like I was different, REALLY different, especially once I hit middle school and all my friends were into boys, makeup, clothes, and their social lives, and I couldn’t care less about any of it. It would have been nice to have known why I felt like such a misfit. To know that it wasn’t anything wrong with me, it was just the way I was made.

Cons

  • Being labeled with a disability from a young age can have a disheartening effect on a child. If the parents, teachers, and other adults around the child aren’t careful, the child can start to feel like they are “broken” or that they can’t do things that the “normal” kids can do. The worse cases of this I’ve seen personally are where the parents make excuses for their kids to the point that the kids never really have to work at anything. That isn’t good for anyone.
  • I wish it weren’t true, but being publicly labeled with autism can cause you to be bullied, mistreated, or left out by the other kids. I believe this is slowly improving, but we still have a long way to go. My husband is a special education teacher, and kids with special needs are still often isolated and can still be victims of social mockery. Unfortunately, it is somewhat human nature to exclude the “others” or the “outsiders”. We really need to work on that as a species.
  • Perhaps one of the best (and hardest) parts of growing up without a diagnosis is that you must learn to adapt. No one makes excuses for you. No one makes exceptions for you. No one medicates your problems away. I had to learn self-control, coping strategies, adaptive behaviors, and come up with creative ways to make life work. Was it hard? Hell yes! Was it good for me overall? Undoubtedly. It made me stronger and more able to cope with the stresses of the real world, which isn’t nearly as kind as school. With an early diagnosis, I would have missed out on those character building struggles.

So there are a few of my personal views on pros/cons of getting an early autism diagnosis. If you have any pros/cons of your own to share or want to share your opinion, please comment below! I would love to hear from you!

Mental Illness – Personal or Societal Issue?

| marandarussell

Do you ever stop to wonder if the exploding rates of mental illness might signify that there isn’t a personal issue going on with many people, but instead, a societal or lifestyle issue? The pandemic has shown without a doubt that outside influences can make huge differences in collective mental health. The isolation, the fear of the virus, the missing out on all the things you love to do – these affected us hugely in the past couple years.

Even before the pandemic though, mental illness had been a steadily growing problem. Most of the time the medical establishment treats it all as a personal issue. You must have a chemical imbalance, a mood disorder, or you are doing things wrong and somehow causing your own problems. But what if WE aren’t causing the problem? What if the system is?

In our world, people have become increasingly isolated and lonely, way before the pandemic started. The internet has brought some great things, but it has also made it so that we rely less on real, local community. We were made to be tribal, group animals, but many of us have lost our tribe long ago. Even when we try to build a sense of community, I feel like many of us have no idea how to go about doing that in our disconnected, busy, hustle culture.

We also live in a world where many people are forced to work ridiculous hours at jobs they hate just to survive. And then they barely survive at that. They are swimming in debt and praying nothing major goes wrong between paychecks. Corporations are treated better and are often given more rights than us. We are told to consume and we will feel better, but that only leads to emptiness and more debt.

If you happen to be disabled, like me, you are often made to feel like you are a drain on society and are weak and useless. Depending on the disability, you can become even more isolated and lonely. Many of us have few close family ties to begin with, and frequently, family members and friends eventually end up moving away from each other so they can get a good job and survive.

And don’t even get me started on the corruption, genocide, and other downright criminal activity the government leeches off us to support. Or how we are out of touch with the natural world around us, and even worse, destroying it at a rapid rate.

Maybe it isn’t you. Maybe it isn’t me. Maybe it is all of us, and maybe it is time we make some huge changes.

Struggling to Blog – Depression or something more?

| marandarussell

Lately I’ve really been struggling to blog. I don’t feel enthusiastic or motivated about it. I’m not sure if I’m feeling burnout or what is going on. Have you ever gone through this as a blogger? If so, what did you do? Did you force yourself to keep to your blogging schedule anyway and just trudge through it? Did you take a little vacation? Find some outside way to motivate yourself?

I don’t think it is simply coincidence that this feeling has come at a time that I have been fighting off a deep depression, but I’m not sure if that is all of it. To be fair, it has been hard to motivate myself to do much of anything lately, but writing seems especially tedious right now, and I feel like I have nothing of value to say anyway 😦

Affirmation of the Day

| marandarussell

I love a good affirmation. I came across this one on a Reddit thread of all things lol, but really liked it and thought I would share. 

"I'm getting better
every day
in every way
than the day before"

For me, the affirmation supports the concept that you should never compare yourself to others, you should only compare yourself to prior versions of yourself and try to improve your life in regards to that.