It's amazing what writing every day will do for you. Yestereve I realized I was getting darn close to the end of a first draft of my current project, "The Elf of Cotton Street", and that inspired me to spend more time than usual. Today at lunch I reached the last scene.
I feel good. It's a pretty rough draft, with lots of telling and meandering, but it's good work. It's a complete rewrite of the original, and a lot more happens. I feel like I know the characters and the setting very well and I did a ton of work on the background that is bearing fruit now.
I did most of this in a notebook in longhand. The majority of this draft is about 50 pages of handwritten text, double-spaced. Usually I'll take that and type it up mostly as is, then edit that. But I'm thinking that I'll try to only type up the good stuff, because I'm so conscious of the fact that lots of this needs to be edited away, and the pure typing takes forever and seems like a giant waste of time.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Monday, October 08, 2007
They're not trying to be subtle anymore
Please don't accuse Mattel of subtlety in encouraging girls to take the roles of prime consumer in the American family. I laughed out loud when I first saw a commercial for this new product, the Polly Pocket "Pollywheels Race to the Mall" set. At first glance, it just looks like a girl-themed car-and-track toy. But this race has a purpose.
Wanna go to the mall? I’ll race ya! If anyone understands a girl’s passion for needing to shop immediately, it’s Polly Pocket and her friend Lila. And this racetrack set is just the thing to get them to the mall in record time. -- from the Amazon.com product descriptionIf it weren't for this ugly consumerist theme, I think I'd like this toy. Any kid should enjoy the race track, which is set up somewhat like a roller-coaster and has a loop. The addition of tiny doll drivers to the cars, which you don't usually see in this scale, seems like fun. And I can imagine that this would be a toy dads and daughters could see eye-to-eye on. But what a name! What a theme! I'd love to know if there was any consciousness of irony in the team that designed it. And if I ran a mall, I'd have stands selling these at every entry. It's pure genius, and aimed at pre-irony-age kids.
Made it through the first weekend, still writing daily
Weekends are the worst for daily writing attempts for me.
Heh. The reason for my success is basically avoiding people. I had the kids all to myself all Saturday until 6pm. I took the kids for a bike ride in the morning, with 2-year-old Lily in a cart behind my bike, and we ended up stopping at a couple of friends' houses. The second friend invited us to go to a Texas maze at Sweet Berry Farm. I didn't want to go, but Ethan and Chloe did...and the family took them, so that I was able to put Lily down for a nap and then had lots of time to write. And I actually used some of it to write! Fate smiles on me.
- On Fridays we usually relax with TV after putting the kids to bed, and my will to stick with self-discipline-related goals is at a low ebb.
- On Saturdays we're often running around town shopping, running errands, or going to kid events/people's houses.
- Sundays have church obligations and often grocery shopping.
Heh. The reason for my success is basically avoiding people. I had the kids all to myself all Saturday until 6pm. I took the kids for a bike ride in the morning, with 2-year-old Lily in a cart behind my bike, and we ended up stopping at a couple of friends' houses. The second friend invited us to go to a Texas maze at Sweet Berry Farm. I didn't want to go, but Ethan and Chloe did...and the family took them, so that I was able to put Lily down for a nap and then had lots of time to write. And I actually used some of it to write! Fate smiles on me.
Friday, October 05, 2007
If you haven't read Erfworld, it's time
Erfworld is hard to describe. It's a webcomic, I'm sure of that. It's even a gaming webcomic, the height of geekiness. It also has
- fun characters
- unique art
- a fictional world with unique rules, slowly revealed
- a main character who has to learn those rules
- lots of great pop-culture references
- a lot of heart
Writing every day this month
There are a lot of writing goals I can choose from in any given month. I tend to think of my writing goals in month-terms...although I'd hate to trot them out and compare the goals with what I've actually accomplished. I've been working on a project to complete 5 stories for a long long time now....and there's been a lot of NOT-working on it along the way to make it take twice as long.
But an old favorite is to try to go a whole month and write every day. Recently I've been writing more often and enjoying my work on my current story, "The Elf on Cotton Street." So I'm going to try to write every single day this month.
A good friend of mine has recently dedicated himself to working on a novel (go Doug, I can't wait to read it!) and it made me realize that none of my projects are going to get finished unless I make a commitment to them. Of course this realization comes as we are in the middle of remodeling our kitchen. I always seem to think about personal accomplishments when I'm busiest...probably because that's when I feel like I have the least time for them.
Anyway....I just wanted to note this goal somewhere publicly. It's day 5 of October 2007, and I've already written every day so far...and my writing sessions are becoming longer and more fruitful, too.
But an old favorite is to try to go a whole month and write every day. Recently I've been writing more often and enjoying my work on my current story, "The Elf on Cotton Street." So I'm going to try to write every single day this month.
A good friend of mine has recently dedicated himself to working on a novel (go Doug, I can't wait to read it!) and it made me realize that none of my projects are going to get finished unless I make a commitment to them. Of course this realization comes as we are in the middle of remodeling our kitchen. I always seem to think about personal accomplishments when I'm busiest...probably because that's when I feel like I have the least time for them.
Anyway....I just wanted to note this goal somewhere publicly. It's day 5 of October 2007, and I've already written every day so far...and my writing sessions are becoming longer and more fruitful, too.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Search for more than one kind of file at once
I had occasion the other day to try to locate some files on a damaged hard drive, and I discovered that Windows file manager windows support searching for several different file patterns at once. You separate the patterns with semicolons.
This means that you can be viewing a folder in Windows, hit Ctrl-F to bring up the find panel, and enter
*.txt;*.exe
to search for text and executable files as a set.
This is magically powerful. I shortly after verified that my favorite free Windows search utility, Agent Ransack, supports the same syntax. I'm sure it's been around forever, but I bet a lot of casual users don't know about it.
This means that you can be viewing a folder in Windows, hit Ctrl-F to bring up the find panel, and enter
*.txt;*.exe
to search for text and executable files as a set.
This is magically powerful. I shortly after verified that my favorite free Windows search utility, Agent Ransack, supports the same syntax. I'm sure it's been around forever, but I bet a lot of casual users don't know about it.
Do you have a temp folder?
Do you have a temp folder at the root of your hard drive? If not, why not?
I always create a folder c:\temp on any machine I use. I use it as a scratchpad workspace for creating collections of things to be zipped up to send to someone, or for temporarily storing a download, or whatever. Using tab-completion, c:\temp is a super-quick path to reach in any Windows dialog box or command line. And making a habit like this makes it even quicker.
The key fact about anything in \temp is that it can be deleted without heartache. I don't put anything there if I need to keep it. If I run low on space, I can always empty this folder (not that space issues comeup much on today's huge hard drives...).
I always create a folder c:\temp on any machine I use. I use it as a scratchpad workspace for creating collections of things to be zipped up to send to someone, or for temporarily storing a download, or whatever. Using tab-completion, c:\temp is a super-quick path to reach in any Windows dialog box or command line. And making a habit like this makes it even quicker.
The key fact about anything in \temp is that it can be deleted without heartache. I don't put anything there if I need to keep it. If I run low on space, I can always empty this folder (not that space issues comeup much on today's huge hard drives...).
Tuesday, August 28, 2007
Combat spam by highlighting mail from known senders....in Thunderbird
Spammers seem to have been extra-industrious over the past six months. I'm using Thunderbird, whose built-in junk mail filters are catching maybe 70-80% of the spam I'm getting. The problem is that that still leaves me with as much as 30 to 50 spams in a morning's download.
If you use Thunderbird, there's an easy way to highlight the messages that are sent by people who are in your address book. I've posted instructions below. Many other e-mail applications have filters of one kind or another. Here I'm using them to mark matching messages with a color highlight, and taking advantage of the fact that one of the filter options is "in my address book."
Note that the first thing I learned from this was that many of the spam messages are spoofing their sent-from addresses as being MY address. So I had to take my own address out of my address book.
- Create a new filter Tools -> Message Filters
A dialog appears. Click New.
- Name the filter.
- The criteria box has 3 fields.
In the first one, select "From."
In the middle one, select "is in my address book"
In the 3rd one, select the name of your address book. You might have >1 address book.
- At the bottom, in the "Perform these actions" section, select
in the first field, "Tag"
in the second field, choose a tag, such as "Personal"
By default, Personal messages are colored in green. You can change tag color options by selecting
Tools->Options, click the Display button, select the Tags tab
If you use Thunderbird, there's an easy way to highlight the messages that are sent by people who are in your address book. I've posted instructions below. Many other e-mail applications have filters of one kind or another. Here I'm using them to mark matching messages with a color highlight, and taking advantage of the fact that one of the filter options is "in my address book."
Note that the first thing I learned from this was that many of the spam messages are spoofing their sent-from addresses as being MY address. So I had to take my own address out of my address book.
- Create a new filter Tools -> Message Filters
A dialog appears. Click New.
- Name the filter.
- The criteria box has 3 fields.
In the first one, select "From."
In the middle one, select "is in my address book"
In the 3rd one, select the name of your address book. You might have >1 address book.
- At the bottom, in the "Perform these actions" section, select
in the first field, "Tag"
in the second field, choose a tag, such as "Personal"
By default, Personal messages are colored in green. You can change tag color options by selecting
Tools->Options, click the Display button, select the Tags tab
Monday, August 27, 2007
The house of my childhood imagining
When I was a kid, maybe 8 or 12, I imagined what my house would be like when I grew up. And it was a lot like this conversion of a water tower into a house.
What I imagined was a tower filled with platforms that stuck out partway from the walls and overlapped, so that you could move from platform to platform and thus move up the tower, but there was also a lot of open space. So that babies could roll off the edges.
There were bars for climbing, too. It was kind of like an indoor jungle gym, with pillows added so you'd have somewhere to fall asleep after you got tired of playing video games. It was never stated, but I'm pretty sure an awsome game console was included. With a game where you catch falling babies.
See, the incredible unchildproofnessosity of the idea is what impresses me now. My youngest is two right now, and she falls over on improperly levelled floors, or when she steps on a feather.
What I imagined was a tower filled with platforms that stuck out partway from the walls and overlapped, so that you could move from platform to platform and thus move up the tower, but there was also a lot of open space. So that babies could roll off the edges.
There were bars for climbing, too. It was kind of like an indoor jungle gym, with pillows added so you'd have somewhere to fall asleep after you got tired of playing video games. It was never stated, but I'm pretty sure an awsome game console was included. With a game where you catch falling babies.
See, the incredible unchildproofnessosity of the idea is what impresses me now. My youngest is two right now, and she falls over on improperly levelled floors, or when she steps on a feather.
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