Jnagarya,

I respect you for having a strong opinion and I'm sure others might
share in it. I personally can care less what you think. I say this
because your tone is destructive. You say nothing constructive and
are only taking stabs at me and my editor. Your condescending attitude
turns me off as I am sure it will those who grace you in reading it.

I have what I believe to be some valuable insight in the guitar. That
is what I'm sharing. I could charge someone months to visit my house
and give them lessons or put it in writing and charge them for the
copy. I chose the later. It is less costly to them and frees my time
for doing other things. If I am not eloquent to please a scholar such
as yourself, great! My manner of writing is down to earth and personal.

Lee Prosser is a respected critic for a highly respected web portal,
Jazzreview.com. In his review of "The BEAD Method of Fretboard
Mastery" he writes, "Illustrated, clearly written and clearly
explained, this fine book should be highly helpful to jazz
guitarists...."

There are many others of less or more education who have found the
book to be highly valuable in providing the mental shift they needed
to wrap themselves in what was otherwise a complicated instrument.
Many of them did so despite the fact that they were reading the
original copy with "many" errors.

I admit errors in the book and have worked with others on this forum
and elsewhere to identify them and to move the work into being the
best it can be. There is an errata page where I have documented as
many as have been identified. I plan to continue to publish the "Hot
Revisions" to ensure the most accurate copy is available.

I apologize to those of you who appreciate the book, that you had to
put up with this nonsense, but I'm not going to censor the critics. I
at least have the right to respond to them when they invade my own forum.

The book is what it is and I will make no excuses for it. I don't
regret writing it and I appreciate Rod Williams (Who loves, teaches
and writes poetry!) for all of his help.

JNagarya, You and your friend from Berkley can write your own guitar
book... Good luck with that. Have a good day. You're not getting a refund.

Bob Dietz ?;O)

> beadmethod@yahoogroups.com, "JNagarya" <jnagarya@...> wrote:
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "jnagarya" <jnagarya@...>
> To: <beadmethod@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Monday, November 26, 2007 4:07 AM
> Subject: Writing clearly --
>
>
> As a professional writer and poet, I was shocked to learn from reading
> their work that few well-known poets can't write prose to save their
> lives.
>
> It's even worse with guitarists.
>
> Your excuses are that the editor's field is not music, and yours is not
> writing. I don't expect guitarists to be poets, or professional
> writers, but there is a minimum level of competence that a reader
> should properly expect.
>
> On writing:
>
> Simple premise: Writing is thinking on paper. Our writing is an exact
> mirror image of how--and whether--our thinking is organized and clear.
>
> Simple method: Writing is rewriting; and that means one avoids loving
> one's amazing phrases to the degree that one cannot let them go as they
> are, therefore cannot correct and improve them. It is by means of
> rewriting that one's writing is increasingly organized--bringing "like
> ideas" together is key--and clear.
>
> Tips: If a process is A-B-C, then the description of it should be A-B-
> C. It can't be more than a third draft for the halfway attentive
> writer to still have ideas which should be stated at the outset being
> sprinkled as afterthoughts amid the material by which they should
> instead be followed.
>
> Circles -- whether "Circle of 5ths" or "Circle of 4ths" -- do not
> have "corners". That error brings the reader up short, disrupting his
> progress in "thinking through" along with the writer. That error is
> a "shorthand" which reveals neglect to think through that which is to
> be communicated, and the accurate terms in which to communicate it.
>
> Respect: Writer must respect language--and reader. No mortal has time
> which, when lost, can be replaced. Endeavor not to waste the reader's
> time with having to reread (or worse, puzzle over) the unclear, or plow
> through yet another repetition, or (if they know the topic
> sufficiently) juggle a just-enountered idea back to where it should
> have been before that point.
>
> Spellcheck. This helps locate not only misspellings but also words
> that are run together.
>
> Your editor:
>
> Until I saw the name of an editor on the title page, I thought the
> writing was entirely your own. His field may not be music, but it also
> isn't writing. Then again, authors often "know better" than editors so
> refuse to allow changes which are actually necessary toward increased
> clarity.
>
> Learning guitar is difficult enough without a cheap guitar being an
> obstacle to that learning. And learning the basics of music theory is
> difficult enough without the instructional material being an obstacle
> to doing so.
>
> Perhaps, if I can find the time, I'll give you an example of competent
> editing from the first several pages of one of your chapters in the
> preview download by at least unjumbling a few incoherencies.
>
> None of this is particularly difficult: "The 'Secret' to Successful
> Writing" is: rewriting. And that means rewriting more than a specified
> number of times. One rewrites until it is as clear as one can make it,
> then puts it away for a while -- several weeks, sometimes months. The
> reason for doing that is so the written piece is unfamiliar, as if
> someone else wrote it. As if it's the first time the writer has seen
> it.
>
> Then one pulls it and immediately begins rewriting, from the beginning,
> as one is reading that which appears to have been written by someone
> else. The first few times you do this you'll be amazed at the number
> of errors you didn't see -- many of them glaringly obvious -- during
> the first stage. My respect for the language, and for my thinking, and
> for the reader is such that I often rewrite even the ephemeral, such as
> email, and as I did with this post.
>
> It is, in a word, lazy to rely upon the reader to find your errors for
> you. And, at the same time, you are charging them the price of the
> book for the "privilege" of doing that work for you.
>
> I am interested in that I've seen so far -- the stops and starts caused
> by the failure to sufficiently rewrite being disruptive, frustrating,
> and out-and-out pain in the ass -- but I haven't irreplaceable time to
> do the thinking through for, and in spite of, the author.
>