Prose and Kaa

Pardon me for a moment. I want to steal a few moments of your day to say something. It's going to be a little rambly, and perhaps a bit disorganized, but I hope you'll indulge me.

When Facebook pretty much took over the Internet, killed MySpace, and lured all my friends from LiveJournal and other places, I naturally followed.¹ It's been pretty much crickets here, since. I completely abandoned Twitter.²

But LiveJournal is far superior to Facebook in a fair number of ways. For one thing, I can write more freely here without regard to having only a certain number of characters. For another, there is an accessible archive I can use to go back and see my own posts going back to the very first one in January of 2003. I have—or had—a set of people who regularly read my posts and commented on them. And in spite of my claim in 2003 that I would probably never post anything, this post will be the 2799th post I never intended to make. The temptation to make another post before this one and make this one the Big Round Number Post (2800) is almost overwhelming, but I'm going to try to resist it. :)

I've invested a lot of time in LiveJournal. I've written some of my best material, here. I'm frankly proud of what I've accomplished. And judging from some of the comments I used to get, a fair number of you used to enjoy reading my posts, as well.

Well, dammit, I'm not about to abandon LiveJournal. Dammit, this is just a better venue. Sure, everything I post here is automagically posted to Facebook so people can read it, but that doesn't change the fact that I just prefer writing for this venue.

Nor does this mean I'm going to abandon Facebook, either. But I'm thinking that it's time to cut back there and do more elsewhere. I have three blogs. I have this one, one over on Blogger where I put more philosophical stuff (I even call it Philosophidian (the blog itself is pithily titled "Insert Something Pithy Here") and I have my "Professional Writer Blog," (WriteWright) which, if you've been paying attention—and I couldn't blame you if you haven't been, given the layers of dust, spider webs, and tumbleweeds collecting here—are also automatically duplicated over here. Not always in the most expert of ways. I'm still a novice at getting Wordpress to do my bidding, but I'm learning. If posts occasionally turn too long and you wish I'd just learn to use an <lj-cut>, please bear with me. There's no easy way to get that to happen, apparently.

It's no secret from anyone that I want to be a professional writer when I grow up, but I almost never write. Why is that? I think if I can solve that little conundrum, I'll have answered a fundamental question about myself. But I suspect part of it is having fallen out of the habit of writing here.

But anyway, enough navel-gazing. What I'm leading up to saying is this: I'm back. I want to really make an effort to get back into the habit of making posts here, at Philosophidian, and on WriteWright. This is my fifth post in three days, I think, and I have several more in development.

I've assigned myself the task of making entries "more often." So much for SMART goals, huh? :)

I'm using EverNote to help. I make notes all day about every topic imaginable using this software. I've even started going through my old note-taking software (which only runs under Windows, so is less useful to me; EverNote runs on Windows, Mac, Linux, and my phone) finding all the "[LJ]" notes I made—posts I intended to make, usually half-written or even just half-baked, vague ideas—and copying those over to EverNote so I'll have them with me on the go.

I used to have a set of rules:

1. If it's a short, single sentence thing or a link that needs no explanation, put it on Twitter.

2. If it's slightly longer, isn't worth a lot of writing, or is a link that needs some explanation, put it on Facebook.

3. Everything else goes here, at Blogger, or on my writing blog (depending on topic and target audience)

Over time, Facebook—like the invasive species with no natural predators it is—took over all three of those. They just recently relaxed the strict character limit for statuses on Facebook. It used to be 420 characters, or three tweets' worth. Now you can put multiple paragraphs. I'm sure their intent is to murder all the other social networks out there.

The recent changes . . . have disturbed me. I don't like where Facebook is headed. It wants to be too many things to too many people. It wants all of my life to be public, whether I'm comfortable with that or not. It will be interesting to see how the user base reacts to the sweeping changes coming soon, with music and video being incorporated into Facebook as they go after those markets as well.³

People are reacting to the changes in a couple of interesting ways.

Some are threatening to leave. Google+ just opened recently, and they have many of the same functions as Facebook with a slightly different look and feel, and without being "evil" yet . . . but I just can't get "comfortable" on Google+. It feels like I'm visiting friends I don't know all that well and I'm staying in their guest room with all the furniture they inherited from their grandparents. It doesn't match, it's a bit fragile-looking, and it smells kind of funny. OK, the analogy went somewhere I wasn't intending, but I'm going to leave it. :)

Others are crying foul very loudly . . . but will forget it soon and go back to using Facebook the way they always have. Until the next major change comes along, at which point they'll complain how it's better the way it used to be, with no sense of irony that they hated that as well.

Still others are threatening to abandon social networking altogether. To just unplug from it all and become social-networking hermits. No Twitter. No Facebook. No Google+. Just a phone and email.

But it had a different effect on me.

What it made me do was miss the time I spent crafting an entry, here.⁴ I might spend ten minutes on Facebook. I often spend three hours writing these posts for LiveJournal, because . . . I guess it "feels" more like . . . something permanent. I edit these as ruthlessly as I edit a short story or novel chapter. I try to give them a beginning, middle, and end.

Facebook has a way for you to download your statuses. But it only goes back three months. To get to anything older, you have to manually go to your own profile and start pressing the "back" button. A lot. And don't accidentally refresh the page—it kills all the effort.

Then you have to carefully expand all of your posts out so you can see everything you wrote and all the responses . . . and then and only then can you think about saving the page as raw html so you can use it as a reference for that thing you wrote a year ago about chickens, but then forgot.

I want to get back the feeling I used to have when I'd starting writing a post in my head and couldn't wait to get back to my desk to do it. Now, I'm much more likely to take out my phone and write a few words to Facebook. For a fleeting amusement that goes by in an instant and is quickly forgotten.

I miss Skippy, Bradford, Preston, and even Jürgen. They're still very much parts of my psyche, and I want to bring them out more. Maybe there are even more of them lurking in the dark recesses of my subconscious mind.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I'm back. Hopefully for good. Hopefully not Spammy. Hopefully not like last night's chili.

And hopefully, with old friends and new.

---

1. The only reason I'm on LiveJournal is that all my friends abandoned TinyTIM and came over here in droves. The same ones that flocked to Facebook.
2. There are other reasons for that, most prominent of which is that it's just impossible to keep up with people tweeting and retweeting one another anywhere from 5 to 20 times per day. I got weeks behind at one point and then just . . . gave up. I go back every few weeks, catch up on the most recent hour or two of tweets, and then abandon it again for a while. I still tweet whenever I make a blog post, so this one will be visible over there within minutes of my posting it.
3. Check out the livestream of their F8 conference.
4. Note to telleestmavie: While I did give you blanket permission to punch me in the face if I ever referred to writing as "my craft" unless I was doing so ironically or mocking someone else, this does not quite qualify. There is a certain amount of craft that goes into any writing, and I acknowledge that. I still want never to find myself using the über-pretentious-sounding "my craft." So I guess what I'm saying is "Please don't punch me in the face. Yet."

[As an aside, as soon as I knew what the content of this post was going to be, you can probably guess (from the title if nothing else) what song has been in my head.]

The Shiny™ came back from Apple, all fixed up with a new logic board (the sound card is apparently integrated), a reseated cable which had come loose, and with the hard drive wiped and re-initialized with the latest and greatest version of MacOS. When I got it home, I cranked it up and the first thing it asked for was for me to supply a drive on which I had backed up with Time Machine, and it took about 2 hours to restore it to pre-problem status. I was back up and running in less time than I thought possible (because I used to use only Windows).

Of course, then I started having to type all those ideas I was flooded with into Scrivener.

The good news is that I finally worked out (I think) how magic works in my Urban Fantasy series (la de da, doesn’t that sound high-fallutin’?). This may sound trivial and ho-hum, but you have to remember that I’ve been writing this thing for the better part of two years and have two novels at various stages of completion, plus ideas for a couple or three more. It’s about time I figured this out.

It uses elements from a lot of things that have come before, and probably isn’t unique, but since I’m not writing a “How to Cast Magical Spells” book and am trying to tell a story within the framework, I don’t intend to actually ever lay out how it works for readers. (Plus, that also gives me wiggle-room for changing it as time goes on. :)

There’s definitely some stuff in here from Babylon 5/Crusade, a touch of Star Wars, a smidgen of Dungeons and Dragons, a healthy dose of ancient Greek mythology, a soupçon of The Belgariad, and a sprinkling of Actual Science™.

Now, here’s my question. Although I need to know How It All Works™ (I’m not going to stop doing that ™ thing any time soon, by the way, so get used to it) in order to have some internal consistency (hopefully), how much does or should the reader ever know? Is it enough to leave it something of a black box, or should I sort of have the characters who can perform magic explain it a little bit as they go, for the reader and/or other characters who are not able to do it (and who therefore ‘stand in’ for the reader)?

I’ve seen it done both ways, and to excellent effect. I think it depends on the writing, but . . . still, I’m curious.

Originally published at WriteWright. You can comment here or there.

Background

I have two laptops. I have The Shiny, and I have the most leatherific bag to tote it around in. It is, in fact, one of these, here. I mean, it is not physically possible for me to love it more than I do. (I even referred to it in the past as The Leather.)

I also, of course, have a BookBook, which I use when the other one is too bulky or if I just intend to carry it short distances.

At work, I have a Dell Precision M6500, which is also 17" (and henceforth, I shall refer to it as The Matte (Get it? Shiny? Matte? Oh, I slay me!). Which, of course, should not be confused with Matt. But I digress.

I have the nylon sleeve they gave me for The Matte, and I am sort of required by the nature of my job to bring it to work and take it home with me. Oh, and not lose it. They were very specific on that point . . .

On top of all that, I have a leather backpack from Wilson's Leather that is not altogether unlike this one, here. I use it for everything from accessories for the computers to books I'm reading, gaming supplies, and during Dragon*Con, I live out of it during the day. I shall call it The Backpack.

Problem

Since I have to bring The Matte with me, and I like to have The Shiny with me in case I need to work on something personal (like writing) during work hours, and I use The Backpack to carry other things I might need, I end up coming to work every morning with The Backpack strapped to my back, The Shiny in The Leather over my left shoulder and neck, and The Matte in its nylon sleeve over my right shoulder and neck.

In short, it cuts off circulation to my brain. :) And it's unwieldy trying to walk through the narrow gaps in the parking lot laden like a native guide in a 1940s "safari to deepest, darkest Africa" movie, in which the unlikely pair of usually pasty and annoyingly upperclass white protagonists with fakey-fakey "mid-Atlantic" accents that talk too fast insist on bringing a full bone china tea service—complete with tea cozy—out into the bush so they can "take tea" on the veldt whilst badly integrated, early green-screened lions stalk and kill equally badly integrated, early green-screened zebras or wildebeests in the background, and you ask yourself, "Why doesn't M!buk!u the native guide just break the tea set and leave bwana and bwanette to get their own damned tea?"

<sigh> Where was I? Oh, right.

Desire

I'd really, really, really like a rolling bag that would securely hold both The Shiny and The Matte and have room for the other junk in The Backpack.

Now, The Shiny is thin and light without The Leather. The Matte is . . . well, not. It's a lot heavier, and the power cord and such aren't designed to fit in the sleeve that comes with it. I leave those home, anyway, since there were two sets. But if I'm traveling . . .

Searching online for "dual laptop bags" or "bag to hold two laptops," I run into . . . pretty much nothing. There doesn't seem to be anyone out there, anywhere, that makes something like what I want. To wit: something wheeled and big enough to hold two 17" laptops and accessories. That isn't the size of a Hum-V and twice as expensive. (I mean, there's the Saddleback Leather Duffel Overnight Bag, which I'm practically drooling over, but at nearly $600, it seems a bit overblown, especially considering I'd need to get a couple of sleeves to put the laptops in (probably not this, since that's another $75, each) to make sure they don't jostle around too much.)

So I ask The Hivemind (I'm going to stop doing that, now): Do you know of a suitable rolling bag that is sizable enough to carry all this stuff, doesn't cost a fortune, and won't disintegrate the first time it's used? (You'd likely be shocked by how many things do.)

I'm more interested in things you've actually used/seen than in you doing the same Google search I did and finding the same links I did, without much useful information on exactly how much will fit into the thing. Let's assume that I know how to use Google and that I've done so rather exhaustively. :)

I prefer leather (Really? Shocking . . . ), but any material will do if it's good quality.

I seldom fly, so the whole 'will it fit in an overhead bin or underneath an airline seat' thing is not really a concern for me. Nor is making it easy for TSA to search the bag.

And, since one person I mentioned this to went on at some length about how I should "just" get my IT department at work to image my work laptop and use The Shiny to run a virtual Windows XP, thereby eliminating the need for two computers . . . that isn't really an option. For either me or the IT group here.

I'll be visiting various stores and looking in person, too, of course. And probably drool some more over Saddleback's products. But if you have any recommendations, do let me know. :)

Those of you who know me or who have read this journal for very long have no doubt heard/seen me bitch, moan, and complain about how sick and tired I am of phones that aren't phones and do every damned thing other than make phone calls.

And you've probably also heard/seen me clutch, Gollum-like, at my existing, old-tech AT&T GoPhone (pay as you go), and heard/seen me bitch, moan, and complain at how the exorbitant amounts being charged monthly by my former carriers were nothing short of highway robbery, and that my pay-as-you-go plan was costing me less per month than I had ever paid under a standard plan.

( Clicky. )

 Joe Nickell - Why Investigate the Paranormal? by D.J. Grothe from For Good Reason (Rating: 0)

I took a plunge on Monday kind of at the last minute. There's an independent, college book store near where I work (which means near the Emory campus) called Eagle Eye Book Shop. They host a lot of writer-y events that cater to Atlanta's rather large population of wannabe and published authors.

For four years, now, local author David Fulmer has run what he calls a "Fiction Shop." He calls it this because he says fiction is just like any other hobby/vocation: you have to learn to use the tools properly. He likens it to "Wood Shop" or "Metal Shop" classes in high school.

At any rate, I found out about a week ago that the classes were upcoming, but took place on Mondays from 6:30 to 8:30, which put them not only into conflict with something else I do on Mondays but also with Labor Day. So I sent them a question...and then promptly forgot completely about it.

Then Monday at work at around 5:30, I saw a mention of it on Facebook and realized it was only about an hour away from starting and I had not decided, yet.

I waffled, briefly. It's sure to be a valuable experience. But it's $225. But he has published quite a few books. And they're mysteries, which is kind of what I'm writing. But it conflicts with my Second Life meeting. And I'd have to leave my guests alone for several hours on Labor Day night. And it's eight weeks of commitment. It went on like that for a while, all inside my head.¹

Then, another voice joined in the chorus. Last week I heard a podcast by Lisa B. Marshall², The Public Speaker's Quick and Dirty Tips to Improving Your Communication Skills. In this particular episode that I heard, she was talking about attending an improv class. She interviewed her improv instructor who had a quote that really resonated with me.

Transform your fear of failure into a fear of regret.

That was all it took.

I phoned the book store and asked if there were still any seats open. Turns out there was. One. I told them I'd be there and I immediately left work and headed for Eagle Eye.

Eagle Eye is one of those places that I'd like to own. They have new and used books, the place smells like a library or book store full of old books. In the back is a "readers room" with a couch, some comfy chairs, and a white board. It is in that room that I found David Fulmer and a couple of other author hopefuls when I showed up fifteen minutes or so early. I walked in and David said, "Are you the walk-in?" He had apparently conversed with the others in email leading up to the first class. There are seven of us in the workshop. Each week he will give us a writing assignment to be read aloud to the group the following Monday. Something very short in keeping with the topic of the week's session. This week it was Setting. We have to write 1 to 2 pages maximum of nothing but setting—no character, no plot, no dialogue unless it's part of the setting. Using sight, sound, smell, touch, and taste (in that order of importance, but not necessarily all of them), make the reader be in the place.

I, of course, immediately picked four settings, two of which turn that order on its head because that's how my mind works: a busy diner (smell, sound, sight), a pitch-black cave (sound, touch), a meadow on a sunny day (all five), and a riverbank in the dead of winter (all five).

So my Monday nights from 6:30 to 8:30 for the next eight weeks are booked. It should be interesting and instructive.

---

1. Interestingly enough, talking out loud to yourself in your cube, which would be considered strange or at least "off" behavior for the general work populace, for software developers, it's considered normal. So even if I were to have said it out loud, I doubt anyone would have noticed.
2. I'd provide a link to her personal site, but it's offline right now under renovation.

When I was in middle- and high school, I read ravenously. Science Fiction and Fantasy, mostly, but some Horror, as well. Since I lived in a small town that had only a public library¹ and nowhere to buy books, I ended up in Tuscaloosa at the WaldenBooks (I think; it's been a long time).

They had shelf after shelf after glorious, beautiful shelf of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. At the time, they were shelved in different sections of the store because readers liked what they liked and didn't want to have to bother with all that boring other stuff. :)

I took a notebook with me and a pen. I'd start at the A's and work my way down to the Z's, picking up each book that looked the least bit interesting and reading the blurb on the back cover.

If it still sounded interesting in the slightest, I'd write down the title and the author in my notebook. At my birthday and at Christmas, this list got distributed among anyone giving me gifts and I'd get—no joke—20 or 30 books. Which would be read and shelved by the time the next gift-giving holiday came along.

This is how I discovered "new"(-to-me) authors like Piers Anthony, Anne McCaffrey, F. M. Busby, Stephen King, John Varley, Poul Anderson...the list goes on and on. I didn't care who wrote it, only that it sounded like a good book. I also developed my love for thick, meaty books at this time. If it took up 2 inches of shelf space, it was almost automatically a "good book." (Melanie Rawn, this means you.)

Once I could afford my own books, my consumption of them slowed a bit, and I quit making this long lists, but I'd still browse the shelves and buy 3 or 4 at a time, always on the lookout for "new" authors (Pat Frank, Octavia Butler, Michael Flynn...), but also automatically picking up books by authors I knew and trusted (McCaffrey, Anthony, Anderson, King, Greeno, Radford, Kerr, Kurtz...).

There was a great book store in Tuscaloosa called A Novel Approach that was located in Bama Mall right near the theater. They were a small store, but they had a fiercely loyal customer base. They knew what their customers liked to read, and they made sure to get those books. After they found out I liked, say, C. S. Friedman, they made sure that they ordered all of her books as soon as they were available. And I bought them all. From them.

Of course, they closed when the WalDaltonBorders and Noble-A-Million stores opened in every mall and sucked away all their customers one by one.

I've never stopped buying books. I love to read, and I've expanded my tastes into realms other than just science fiction, fantasy, and horror. But I moved from reading physical books to listening to them on audio because I needed something to occupy my mind while I drove.

Flash forward a few years.

I have a writers group that meets biweekly to monthly at a Barnes and Noble in Duluth or Lawrenceville (I honestly don't know what city it's in; it's on Pleasant Hill across from the Kroger near Gwinnett Place Mall). Some of us have 'split off' from that writers group to form a little readers group. We read the same book and get together after we're all done and discuss it. Kind of with an eye on what the book can teach us about writing or storytelling or other aspects of being a writer.

Oh, and for the enjoyment of reading the books, too, of course. :)

We read Kurt Vonnegut's Sirens of Titan first, then Connie Willis's To Say Nothing of the Dog. Then we were faced with the conundrum of what to read next. One member suggested it be a book by a new author, perhaps the winner of one of the prestigious awards, such as the Campbell or Hugo or Nebula. She even provided us with a rather extensive list that she had compiled.

Looking at the list, I was impressed, but I since I knew nothing of the authors, I decided to fall back on my old habits and just go to the book store and browse to see if I could read the blurbs on the back of the books.

I went to the Barnes & Noble at The Forum in Norcross, which is where my other writing group meets every Tuesday night. (As opposed to my other, other writing group, which meets every Monday night on Second Life. :)

And was sadly disappointed. I've long lamented the dwindling of the science fiction, fantasy, and horror sections of book stores. I hated it when they merged the three, as though fans of one are automatically fans of the other two. But until last night I hadn't really thought about it too much.

If it's not part of a phenomenally best-selling series (like The Dresden Files or Twilight or Odd Thomas), it's likely not in the store. If it's not by an already well-known author, it's probably not in the store. And good luck finding all the books in a series at the same time.

Authors I have never heard of with 10 or 15 books in their series took up entire shelves. If you like Star Trek, Star Wars, Halo, or multi-author series of that sort, you're likely to find what you want.

But armed with "my" list of new, often award-winning authors...I found not a single one on the shelf.

Not.
A.
Single.
One.

Well, that's probably not true. I simply gave up in disgust after I failed to find the first 10 or so that I looked for.

And people wonder why Mom & Pop book stores close down. Hell, they can't compete with the WalDaltonBorders And Noble-A-Millions that carry only the absolute best-sellers, but also sell you high-caloric coffee drinks, music, videos, sandwiches, and other non-book items. And they have (often-)free WiFi.

I wish we could go back to a time when new authors got shelf-space next to their established peers. Where a person could browse for hours and find literally dozens of interesting books by authors they weren't familiar with in their genre of choice.

Where every new book didn't have to be the first in a series in order to get published. I could do a whole rant on that, trust me (says the man who is at this very moment writing a book that is the first in a series, as well as working on the next one and thinking about ideas for at least two more).

I feel like we've lost something that we'll never get back. It's just not the same on Amazon, where you search for Michael Flynn and get four of his books followed by books by every author, editor, or illustrator named Flynn, Flinn or Flend or with an M in their first name, ignoring genre.

You kids GET OFF MY LAWN! Consarn it....

---

1. I am so not knocking public libraries. I caught the bug for books and sci-fi/fantasy/horror in general at the Eutaw Public Library. That place holds very fond memories for me.

I apologize if you see this twice. I posted it on Facebook and then realized it should actually have been put here. :)

Because I often have ideas for...various and sundry things while I'm engaged in other activities, I make sure to have some way of recording these random, precious gems of thoughts as I have them.

In the car, I have a digital voice recorder so I can merely speak my wisdom and preserve it for posterity (or until I transcribe and erase it).

In the shower, I have Aquanotes so I can jot down things even if I'm naked, wet, and covered in soap. (It's happened more often than you'd imagine. I mean the need to write things down while I'm...not that I'm often...you know, I think I'm just going to stop while I'm ahead.)

In my backpack, I have a variety of notebooks and pens and pencils so that if there's time, I can pull out one and write down whatever bit of brilliance has popped into my head.

But as a last resort, I actually bought a wallet from Levenger that holds 3 x 5 index cards (and, you know, money and credit cards and a driver's license) so I could, in a pinch, write down stuff as it happened and in situations where none of the above methods are available to me.

I keep a supply of blank index cards in said wallet. Every once in a while, I go through the used ones—and I use them pretty thoroughly, writing small and filling up a side before flipping it over, usually—and transcribe anything "important" into Info Select, which is a wonderful piece of software everyone should own.¹ It organizes random notes and makes them easily searchable.

So, today was Transcription Day.

And I gotta say, I have some very odd things written down. Not Skullcosm weird, but pretty darned weird. :)

For instance (this is by no means everything; it's just a representative sampling):

Muammar al-Gaddafi to be Jenny MCCarthy's co-host. He was chosen for his ability to talk for 90 solid minutes and say absolutely nothing.

Revenge of the Fluffy Bunnies

New word: transmythsion - passing on myths and urban legends

MANA - gas

Chuck ask body jump after Pratt

purple naked harpsichord

restaurant + mythtv

snowflake method

witch trials - real witch/demon

any seventeen
syllables can become a
haiku, if you try.

Society for the Eradication of Stupid Questions

Now, I ask you: are these the scribblings of a sane mind? :)

Actually, one or two of them I can sort of make out, but I don't know why I wrote them down. Such as the 'purple naked harpsichord' one. Those if you on TinyTIM will get it instantly; those of you who aren't never will, so don't try. :) Revenge of the Fluffy Bunnies is, I think, an actual book title. "Snowflake method" is a method of writing where you start with a single sentence and expand upon it "fractally" until it's a beautiful snowflake finished novel. The "witch trials" is a story idea to write about the witch trials from the POV of a real witch or demon who has to stay hidden while watching innocent people get slaughtered. The thing about Gaddafi might be something I heard someone else say and thought was funny enough to preserve forever. Or it might be original to me. <shrug>

I rather like the idea of the SESQ (Society for the Eradication of Stupid Questions). As for the others? Well...when I remember, I'll tell you, and then we'll all know. :)

---

1. Unsolicited advertisement.

So. NaNoWriMo is almost upon us (well, me, anyway) once more.

Last year, I wrote 51115 words (Scrivener claims it's actually 53455, but who's quibbling?) in 30 days, and that was with Granddaddy being in the hospital.

So, surely, I can pull it off again this year. Surely.

I have the rough beginnings of the glimmer of a hint of a potential possibility of the germ of what might be an idea for something that could be considered the plot of a story I could work on. Maybe. Really, it's an opening scene and a piece of technical information given to me by a friend.

It's not much to go on, granted, but it's something.

Now all I need is characters, setting, plot, conflict...you know. Actual content. :)

22 days. According to Mike Stackpole, you can plot a novel in 21 days. So 22 is a luxury.

I've already created the Scrivener project for the novel, and have set a goal of 50,000 words, and each day I'll create a new document with a goal of 1667 words (50,000 words / 30 days = 1667 words/day). So far the title is Untitled Urban Fantasy. Catchy, huh? :)

So I'll just say this: If you wonder where I am in November, the answer is "Probably in Second Life hanging with other NaNoWriMoers." Or perhaps "Sitting somewhere quiet with cell phone muted typing furiously on The Shiny."

Twenty-two days to fan the ember,
Then thirty days hath November,
...Wait, help me to remember:
What the hell am I thinking‽

Yeah.

Sometimes it's a good idea to point out that even statistically unlikely events can occur. If they're extraordinarily good in their outcome, we often describe it as "miraculous." If they're deleterious in effect, we say things like, "Someone up there hates me." In reality, it's just coincidence.

I have a USB drive that I carry with me at all times on a lanyard around my neck. On it is everything I have ever written, in some form or another. Also, some twelve to thirteen years of my personal journal, the entirety of my old web site, and things like that. Much of it irreplaceable.

Because it's irreplaceable, I make periodic backups, both to another USB drive I keep on my keychain, a third USB drive, and to my work and home PCs. And my old laptop.

So, what are the odds that the following would all occur?

• I'd accidentally remove the USB drive from my work machine while it was saving backups from my journal application, thereby corrupting every file in the directory where some of the irreplaceable data is kept. Namely, journal years 1997 - 2008 + story notes for my novel.


• I'd accidentally remove the USB drive while it was saving a document from the app I use to write stories on The Shiny, thereby corrupting every single file in the directory with all my "submissions" for critique.


• I'd erase all the backups of said data from my backup USB drive in order to carry some video files to a friend's laptop and then forget to clear off the videos and take another backup of my irreplaceable data.


• I'd erase all the backups from my work computer in the interest of saving disk space. Because, after all, I have other backups.


• I'd accidentally erase the backups from my home computer because I didn't recognize what they were, but reason that after all, I have other backups.


• I'd erase the backups from my laptop because it's no longer the one I use most often, but then forget to do backups on The Shiny.


• I'd lose the second backup USB drive.

Keep in mind that all of this occurred over a period of about three months, so none of it yelled "problem!" at me until the moment I corrupted my journal files and went looking for my backups.

And found that there were none. Anywhere.

Luckily—and this is just pure, dumb luck—I managed to locate an ancient copy of the irreplaceable journal files tucked away in the wrong directory on my work hard drive. Because I was attempting to drag and drop the .zip file and it went into the wrong directory. It's quite old, but at least it has copies of my lost, irreplaceable journal files that don't ever change after the year I save them. So I have my journal from 1997 to 2008 back, as well as copious notes I've compiled over the course of a decade for my novel. The current journal file wasn't corrupted, luckily. Gone forever are some of my writing that I had not thought to copy into my journal or put into Scrivener on The Shiny. Luckily, most of it was crap, so I'm not too broken up about it.

What you can learn from this:

1. Never, ever remove a USB drive until it has been properly dismounted from the host computer. Even though you've done it 100 times and it never corrupted your data, all it takes is the one time it does corrupt your data to make a believer out of you.


2. Do backups on a schedule, and never deviate from that schedule.


3. Do backups. :)


4. Never delete allcopies of your old backups, no matter how tempting it is. Keep at least the most recent one, even if you think you have more recent ones on another medium.

Keep in mind that I'm an experienced computer professional who knows better, but because it didn't all happen at once, no single incident screamed "fix it now!" to me.

So...when was your most recent backup? Are you sure? Wanna go check? :)

Wow! Thanks to everyone who voted in my poll. I don't think I've ever had that many people respond. :)

What I learned is this:

1. Pretty much everyone knew what "wards" meant, but the context the first time it's used must make it crystal clear what one is or confusion will result. I thought I did that, but...judging from the comments I received on the printouts from Tuesday, at least two or three of the 13 people had no clue what I was talking about. One of them was the one who said she thought it meant "a small room" or "a hospital wing." Another person assumed I meant armed guards. So...yeah. I smell an edit. And I promise it will not be an "As you know, Bob." :)


2. Although it looks like most everyone was okay with "incinerate spell," a statistically significant number of you suggested that that is very AD&D-sounding terminology, and that in standard English, I'd be better off saying "incineration spell" or "incinerate spell" or "Incinerate spell." The last one implies too much structure for what I'm going for. So I'll end up either using italics to denote a special status for the word or will change it to a more standard adjective form to avoid any confusion. Come to think of it, I'd never say "confuse spell"; I'd say "confusion spell." So, yeah.

Several of the writers group commented that they really liked the way I treat magic as being ho-hum and every-day, making no attempt to call attention to it. Just like people who actually lived in a world where magic had always worked would. We don't go around every day saying, "Oh my God! A small room with magic buttons that opens onto different floors of the building! It's a miracle!" :)

As soon as I think it's ready for prime time, I'll put what I have up here and garner comments from my "fiction" filter (if you're in it, you should be able to see "Killing Time, Part 1"; if not, you have but to ask, but read the caveats on my Fiction Filter entry first.).