Where does the time go?
by Jack and Jude 5 Aug 2019 10:35 UTC
When we sail across an ocean, each day will last a week - until we make port and then the voyage becomes a blip that's hard to remember. The years whisk past like autumn leaves in a gentle breeze. So we have been busy polishing the memories of taking our sons around the world when they were young and on the cusp of manhood.
It's not an ordinary tale of sailing the world's oceans and meeting people in faraway lands for we were not ordinary sailors when we sailed from Cairns that first day of February 1984. More than a hundred thousand nautical miles had passed under our keel. We'd been north and south around every ocean, so we knew how to cross them and survive extreme weather.
Our aim this time when setting off was to visit the unique, hard to reach isolated places. And our goal as parents was to teach our children how to be men who could safely manage a ship.
End of an era
Sailors back then were hands-on in every department. There were no satellites, no mobile phones, no Internet, and few regulations. We looked after ourselves or we perished. With NO magic button to save us, we were a self-reliant lot. Some would call that old-fashioned. We call it the good old days.
Jack and Jude, Jason and Jerome meet a lot of folk in a flurry of intense friendship that may have only lasted until we sailed. Amazing people extended a helping hand, asking nothing in return, but we always gave back what we got. That's the best part of humanity. Shame today there's so much suspicion of foul deeds because Earth could sure use a dose of goodness right now.
At the moment Jack and Jude are not sailing across an ocean, we are in the writing zone. We have been for more than a year. Last summer, we hid under a mountain to let memories of long ago take us on those amazing journeys again. This project began in 1988. Writing is time consuming, especially true-life memoirs with lots of facts compiled from journals and logbooks, and then made into an entertaining story.
Around the World in Ever Increasing Circles began just after arriving back on Australian soil, when a younger man's dream of narrating an amazing story, gave way to our need for money and an abode besides a worn-out boat. Since then, life has jogged on at a rapid pace. Our small has family blossomed into a troop of little ones while the world has fallen into despair. Wars broke out. Friendships died as youngsters killed one another, causing sadness to descend from the heavens. Now the planet may be dying.
United Once Again
Jack and Jude know that if we can become united once again, humanity can reach the nirvana of harmony with this world and its creatures. And then, as we experienced, real life will begin for every one of us.
To reach that goal, we have laboured solidly to complete a tale of adventure that we hope will encourage little ones around the world to reach out to Earth. The creation is perfect. Our stories show that.
How to achieve such lofty challenges with little nous
If Jack and Jude could have seen the future, we would have prepared for it—but other details distracted us, like sex, cars, and rock n roll. So we could not fathom why studying our own language was so damn important. Oh, for a TARDIS because a poor knowledge of our language is a barrier to recording our thoughts. Practice makes perfect is an idiom we often hear; it's a truism in reality. Want to be the fastest race driver, practice. Or a glib politician, practice. That means never giving up. Take failure as a sign of what does not work and move on to the next try. Writing is much the same. Even if skills are wanting, practice in all forms of the language will garner a winner.
Writers Tools
While both Jack and Jude have recorded journals since setting off through Africa in the late sixties, Jack has taken his work to a more formal level by jotting down stories that have a beginning, middle and end. Fancy that, a man who barely passed an English exam creating short stories that have grown into books running hundreds of pages.
Just as our partnership has grown into a powerful, unbreakable bond that can endure the most savage storms, together we are working to create better literary pieces. Jack scribbles out a storyline, sometimes in the middle of night, and then reworks that inspiration until it flows with evocative details. Jude then takes over. Having shared small spaces with her man for over fifty years, she knows his moods and thoughts, and his voice as if it were her own. We believe one plus one is far more powerful than two because it's a team of forces that is able to fulfil what the other lacks.
Jude has been the proof reader, fact checker, and provider of ideas for as long as we've been together. Our trouble is neither of us had much schooling. So, on this book, Jack is testing a new tool he calls a mechanical proof reader. What's that you ask?
Computers are taking over
They will land a man on the moon, so why shouldn't they fix up spelling mistakes and bring punctuation inline with the accepted format. More than that, computers can dissect words down to letters and keystrokes and then spew out so many facts mere mortals will shake their heads.
That's where the genius of humanity must come to the fore. We are the masters of those semiconductors and not their slaves. Use them as a tool; they are a wonderful add on.
For the past month, Jack has been investigating several of the many mechanical proof readers. One called Hemingway will try to make every sentence powerful and dramatic; it wore him out. Another freebie threw in so many incorrect suggestions, his head ached. But two hit a sweet spot. Both have free versions. They are OK. But we want the Ferrari, not the Mini Minor. So why settle for a cut above what MS Word will do?
ProWritingAid offers a free two-week premium upgrade that works online by directly uploading a doc file and has an addon for Word and Chrome. ProWritingAid is a UK product that handles several languages.
Grammarly has many positive reviews full of praise used by some big name corporations. It does NOT offer a free trial upgrade. And while its freebie is easy to use, it's only a cut above a word processor that promises much more in the upgrade.
We upgraded both to premium. Why muck about. There's too much on our plate.
Here is what we found - First, the obvious -
These programs will not compose an award-winning story by uttering the subject line and the number of words. The writer still supplies the content, ambience, pace and voice.
Both programs can be adjusted to view the work as - casual, creative, medical, technical, business and academic.
Grammarly FREE will highlight spelling errors, making them simple to correct and will check punctuation, which in my work adds many more commas for introductory phrases, a weakness of mine, and commas to separate independent clauses in a compound sentence when separated by a conjunction.
Grammarly Premium unlocks vocabulary enhancement that examined my work in greater detail. Like the freebie, it worked seamlessly inside Word, my word processor of choice. It also has a browser application that imports documents, but I prefer the Word addon which checks for wordiness and overused words and suggests alternatives. It's so easy to use that I run my piece through Grammarly Premium after joining Jude's suggestions with my work.
ProWritingAid may not suit everyone. It is the other extreme. A computer genie let off its leash. ProWritingAid caused me headaches at the beginning. So much feedback, to use it all would pervert my piece into unreadable mishmash. It calls out "vague" words, prepositions at ends of sentences, words out of order, overly used words, every adverb ending in -ly (I use a lot), it's poison to wordiness. Every paragraph is examined for readability and rate each on five different scales. But it does not present well in my Word Processor. So I upload the file directly into its browser version. But after a month, it's my preferred choice. I have learnt how to understand and use its output because it highlights weak spots, often with a hint to improve it. And I've learnt heaps about the English language. It's my Tardis back to school.
You are in command
Using either, remember; You're the writer and in command. Not every suggestion the programs make is correct. But, dang, I love how they get me to write succinct with more oomph and have me get rid of many vague words that add nothing.
To recap
Grammarly Free is OK, easy to use, but if you are a passionate wordsmith, you'll want the premium that costs US$150/year. We paid half price on special. Grammarly offer monthly and quarterly plans found here.
ProWritingAid Free is OK, but give the free upgrade to premium a try for a month. We paid US$50/year. Costs vary with discounts. ProWritingAid offer monthly, quarterly, and lifetime plans found here.
Both offer discounts to students.
ProWritingAid more than Grammarly highlight repeats, structure, style, consistency, both offer plagiarism checks at an extra cost. So, if you think they may be helpful for you, check them out. Please be aware you may receive follow up appeals to upgrade.
Hey, I'd love to go on, but I must get back to my passion of completing
This article has been provided by the courtesy of jackandjude.com