Read the first page of whatever he gives you. No further. Then when he says, did you read it,your answer is, I only had time to skim it. Then give him one of these lines. If he asks for more specific feedback, repeat: I only had time to skim it. Then give him another one of these lines.

Sooner or later he will turn to someone else to get what he wants. If the whole family joins in this method, he may even decide to join an online writer's group. Push this idea - I think your dad might be as fulfilled critiquing/'guiding' other people's work as doing his own.

****

Have I told you that I really admire the energy and dedication it takes to self publish.

It struck me while I was reading this - witing is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration, isn't it?

I think you're on the right track with self-publishing. JK Rowling got turned down by 14 publishing houses before her first book was bought for $4,000. And look at her now. She could buy and sell those publishers.

I think you're on the right track with self-publishing. Stephen King's first story was published in a soft core porn magazine called "Jugs". Now he's as successful at screen writing as novels. You never can tell how it will end up.

You really have a gift for plotting.

Dialogue is pretty tricky. I like the way you tackle it head on.

Norman Mailer called writing "the spooky art" and I'd have to agree, don't you think?

One man's Grisham is another man's Shakespeare.What matters is what YOU think, if it resonates with you that this is your best effort at telling the story.

Doesn't every writer ultimately write for himself?

I hear there are some online writing communities full of writers like you, not afraid to do the work and self-publish. You should look into that, you have a lot to teach and share.

...that drives the candidates to assure voters that they won't be making decisions based on they, the candidates', education and life experience and ability to consult with many, many more intelligent, experienced people available throughout the U.S. and around the globe. I guess they're afraid of seeming too confident in their own abilities. I guess they're scared of not having someone to blame if things go wrong - which reminds me, if God told Bush to wage war on Iraq, then He is responsible for Bush's low poll numbers, correct? This would seem to suggest that, in the eyes of the U.S. and the world, He made a mistake. So why then, I wonder, are the current crop of candidates slouching towards Washington so darned determined to turn to this guy for more advice? Personally, I'm ready for a President who keeps his own counsel.

"Freedom requires religion" ?????

I think he has that backward - religion *prevents* freedom - for those so blinkered by absolutism they consider the tenets of their faith to be ironclad dictates for the rest of us, and for those who have found themselves on the wrong side of a gun or bomb, dying for someone else's passionate belief that they are right and the people they are killing are wrong, and God agrees.

Romney is just trying to get votes when he says this. Who knows what he really believes - he is as opaque as ever. when he flipped on the abortion issue, he lost me forever. Not because we don't agree, but because he formed his initial pro-choice position as an adult, campaigning for it publicly. It was, presumably, the conclusion of an adult man as close to God then as he is now.

And yet, now, he feels completely different! While I think it is a sign of maturity to rethink a position, Romney didn't really display much when he flopped a 180 on the abortion issue. He saw that it wasn't possible to win the Republican nomination unless he compromised his principles, and so he did.

No wonder he's so anxious to get us to agree that 'freedom requires religion' - - since his stance on everything else is so malleable, taking this sort of global, nonsensensical stance gives him carte blanche to change this beliefs at will, so long as they are 'religious'.

For the record Dawkins and Hitchens are anti-organized religion, Joan, not anti-God. Not believing in something is quite different from being anti- something.

She has appeared in Hanes underwear ads, and they are obviously photoshopped and air brushed. The pics circulating the net (one of her front, one of her behind) are NOT photoshopped and airbrushed, so she appears as she is - heavier, with more cellulite relative to the ads.

She perpetuates the myth of the unattainably thin, perfect body in her ads, and then gripes when the papparazzi call her on it by showing the world what she *really* looks like...hmmm. I don't have much sympathy for her, and I agree with Mikestand - the fact that she indignantly says "size 2 is not fat" shows, as the Hanes campaign did, that she buys into the lie of perfection as much as anyone else.

all that being said - her body looked normal to me; if she's as happy as she claims, she should just give her man a smooch and ignore the rest.