Book 3 - still being written

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hgladney
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Post by hgladney »

I haven't been getting a lot done in the last week, but I got quite a bit done in the weeks before that.

Right now, it feels like it needs another five-six months, trying to allow realistically for distractions and time away, even if I really hammer hard to get it done--more like those earlier weeks were, instead of last week!

After I'd put together some new work, I found I could structure the thing a little better, shorten some of the tactical maneuvering, and hopefully add more interest to stretches that felt like a long, painful, muddy slog. (Well, it would be a long muddy slog, but there's other things happening too.) I'm beginning to find that some of the earlier work acts like an outline, just working out what's going to happen. Sometimes that can be axed as "material already covered". But you have to keep your continuity straight, and also make sure you still cover all that ground gracefully in the new stuff. As readers here on the forum already know, I have enough continuity errors already without adding more problems!

In more detail:

I've done quite a bit of work on three scenes. One of these scenes came from the ideas I worked out as I was posting here! This is the scene where Girdeth and her friends are having a "hot weather, white-shirt" day. I also had some serious material hanging fire, waiting to go somewhere, that I wanted to use. So I found I could combine that with the much lighter, fun stuff in a way that I think will be more effective than either one by itself--contrast, you know. (Well, hopefully.) Haven't placed it quite yet, as the hot weather itself is a bit of conflict, but other parts would work really well. Hot weather=more snowmelt from the mountains, and flooding, right??

Then I also had a chapter pop up where there's a wall cave-in, and I want to do some more reinforcement on picking up one of the little orphan boy characters, as a sort of echo of Naga's personal history.

I'd been thinking about several issues regarding the Osa, and how Naga treats *his* prisoners. I put together a scene that worked itself into two chapters where it seems the Osa are not nearly as monolithic as their priests and army in Tan have been trying to look. Whether an Osa opposition party, somewhere back there in the Empire, can do Tan any good at all, and whether the guys will believe it enough to give them a chance, is another whole question.

I also had another chapter with one of Naga's odder fits, where I thought it needed some grounding. I also had some bits with Girdeth's involvement which I'd saved, and I figured out how to combine the two so as both to ground it in the "real" world right then, and also point onward to other stange things they maylearn more about later..

As far as work yet to be done, I've got to simplify and shorten while ironing out continuity issues as I'm doing those chapter rearrangements, as well as pushing in the new stuff.
Also, there's another new bit that I still want/need to do. I mentioned here on the forum an idea about Naga talking to the senior old Sek-blood women in dark clothes. I've got an eye out on a couple of places where I could put it. It could be fairly serious, dark stuff, how the senior Sek-blood ladies aren't real enamored of getting their grandsons enlisted by the Tannese, but they'll let Naga talk them into it, eventually. Or it could be a lot lighter, almost wistful, and I'm not entirely sure of the appropriate tone. Done right, this could be dramatic and convey a lot of information (even possibly shorten what else needs to be said elsewhere!)
clong wrote: Would it help if we constantly harrassed you and reminded you that you need to be making progress (Kvetch is good at that, and so nice about it, too!).
It never hurts!
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
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Post by hgladney »

Kind of frustrated right now.
Can't add a proper page number offset for pagination in second chapter using Open Office 1.1.4. (I found 1.1.9 was unstable for me, kept crashing--and at that, it was *still* working better than MS Office on Windows 98. Wot larks.)

Sounds kinda obvious need to me, but then, hey, I write books.
One file, one chapter, right? Saves a lot of confusion.
Simple books, even.
I'm not even trying to do table of contents, bibliography, footnotes & whatnot. No ii, iv, any of that fun stuff.
Some folks suggested adding a page number wizard for us dummies, at some future point. Not helpful now. So far, the fixes for this one are all buried waaay down in developer's chatter, and I've already blown at least four hours hunting down suggestions and trying them out, and finding that they don't work on my files.
Sigh.

Yes, Brad, I'd reaaaally like some cheese to go with this whine.
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
---Plutarch
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Post by Kvetch »

If it is the same as 1.1.3, which is what I have, insert a manual page break at the top of the first page - you can there choose the offset. Mind you, I don't know how you change it, or remove the page break or anything like that, and you are forced to have a blank page at the beginning of the file. Still, it ought to solve your problem - at least roughly
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Post by wolfspirit »

hgladney wrote:Kind of frustrated right now.
Can't add a proper page number offset for pagination in second chapter using Open Office 1.1.4. (I found 1.1.9 was unstable for me, kept crashing--and at that, it was *still* working better than MS Office on Windows 98. Wot larks.)

Sounds kinda obvious need to me, but then, hey, I write books.
One file, one chapter, right? Saves a lot of confusion.
Simple books, even.
I'm not even trying to do table of contents, bibliography, footnotes & whatnot. No ii, iv, any of that fun stuff.
Some folks suggested adding a page number wizard for us dummies, at some future point. Not helpful now. So far, the fixes for this one are all buried waaay down in developer's chatter, and I've already blown at least four hours hunting down suggestions and trying them out, and finding that they don't work on my files.
Sigh.

Yes, Brad, I'd reaaaally like some cheese to go with this whine.
heather: I'd gladly mail you a copy of Wordperfect 12 for your use. No problems have I ever had with it, and you can offset the pages to whateer extent you want, not only that, you can create a master file, which shows all of hte chapters in one files, all page numbered, but they are still saved as seperate files on there own. I actually paid the $99 for the WP12 Suite, and I figure that I can share it with you, as with your hours, we won't be suing ti at the same time (the lisense allows unlimited installations, so long as you don't useit at the same time, but they don't check that :) )


wolfspirit
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Post by hgladney »

GOLLY, you folks are so nice!
:cry:
Just pull myself together here. Got my tissues. Sniffle, sniffle.
Ahem.
I posted a query on Open Office site, got various answers much quicker than I was expecting. Reposting here, in case kvetch might find it useful.
Several give links to tutorials or user guides (and no, not obvious on their website), several suggest making a master document and linking chapters into it.
I've been a little leery of that, having heard horror stories in the bad old days about how trying to work out master docs could mangle things horribly, but then, MS Word could do *that* without any help back then.

One of those links is here:
http://www.tutorialsforopenoffice.org/t ... ument.html
One has a suggestion similar to kvetch's, for just doing single docs.
http://www.taming-openoffice-org.com/wr ... agegt1.htm

This is where the orginal cites are--since it goes through to some other forum, and it will expire fairly quickly, things can get a little odd.
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.open ... ons/101899

So, let me try the single doc attempt first (wimpy, I haven't mustered up the ovaries to go after it again today) and then see if I'm still hanging up on it there.
And yes, wolfspirit, I really appreciate the offer!!
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
---Plutarch
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Post by hgladney »

Well, hadn't got back to post here, but in fact did try out some of the directions.
Bleaghh.
If your second chapter starts on an even-numbered page, well, too bad. You're tuna on toast with a side of anchovies.
:roll:
It will have to be done to be a master document with chapters as...
I think the word slave is never actually used there, but nonetheless...
:roll:
So I backed off it for awhile and started looking at what else needed doing first, before print out.
Sigh.
I ended up swapping some chapters around and trying to iron out the changes (something I also notice cj cherryh's journal blog commented on as necessary sometimes) and rather than take on the challenge of tweaking a master document to that degree, I've just...sneaked away quietly, leaving sleeping frustrations lie.
It took me awhile to understand that it was a preliminary reconaissance, and we don't have to attack the for'ard line quite yet.
Translation, I have more rewriting to do first before major printout or requesting anybody round here to do beta-reading for me, or any of that.
So, now I've just been trying to get some work done.
Stuff where I need to do it, nobody can help with it, I know how, it's just a matter of applying the brain to the screen.
Oen of Terry Pratchett's Igors would be spitting uncontrollably while singing, in a lisp, "First you squish it all down, and you smear it all around, and that's how you do the hokey-pokey..."
(eeewww, messy!)
Why, you may well ask, is all this word processing garbage Such A Big Frelling Deal?
Now, I know some folks know and use MS Office "tracking revisions" all the time, but I've had it turn ugly on me, and I know what the Beast is capable of. That's why I'm a bit apprehensive about feeding a perfectly innocent mss into the maw of such a creature, trying to understand the whole idea of master documents.

I may need to practice a bit in Open Office to get the bugs worked out, if I decide to do Master Documents in that one.
So I'm trying to think if there's any sample docs that I could try it out on, collection of partial bits or essays or such, which are backed up but not copyright-critical, and that folks would like to see, that I don't mind posting to beta-readers (not something really bad, right?), test it out to see it holds up to emailing to folks, that kind of thing.
Honestly, it may not be that big a deal! Let's be optimists!
Growl. Let's just have some more chocolate and caffeine...

I've conquered worse Wombies than this! Yes, I have! I have conquered the dreaded Access. Well, in a small way. So long as nobody wants it to do cute jobbies that take SQL. And the work-related class for that ate a whole semester's time, no writing done at all. Whimper. I was going crazy by the time I got done with that class.

Side-note: You know, this whole idea you can go back to school after you've picked up any sort of full-time job? The idea you can just wait to pick up a degree (any degree) until later on, when you've got a job?
That propaganda is only for hyperactive folks who don't sleep much.
Hey, wait a minute--heck, during the week, I don't sleep much! It's 2:50 am, folks, and I had about five hours sleep *last* night. This is bad craziness, okay?
I'm taking my toys and I'm going to bed now.
Really I am.
The boring old-fart endless reminiscience (spelling there, anybody?) disguised as lesson here, folks, is get schooling when you are young and silly. Stay in, finish the darn thing, be done. Trying to do it later when you're paying bills (kids or not) is just more of that high-smellin' poo-poo doody stuff you're going to be far too busy cleaning up to get any homework done. Trust me. If it ain't kids, it's dogs. If it ain't dogs, it's fish tanks. If it ain't tanks, it's catboxes. If it ain't catboxes, it's your roomate's iguana.

Also, I haven't ever used Word Perfect, though I've used a fair number of fairly wonk-o-doodle cranky other wps. If I do beg/borrow/buy wolfspirit's WP, how long do you folks think it would take me to learn to use it?

So for time being I'd given up on sequential page numbering, as sorting out how to do it was turning into a waste of time that wsn't fun for those around me.

If you imagine something like the melt-zone around a black hole, perhaps that might convey the unfortunate effect I have on others when I go into one of these fits where my technical needs vs. my abilities are all stopped up like a cheap sewer pipe, and Things Are Not Working.

My cat finds that sitting down and yelling like an infant works for him.
Thre's days I'm tempted to follow his example.
I mean, up until the point where he backs off the problem and attacks it from a different angle. Usually involving something high-smelling.
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
---Plutarch
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Post by mccormack44 »

Heather

I don't know which platform you use (even in cross-platform programs, it sometimes makes a difference).

But I've used MS Word regularly on Apple (OLD Apples) and Macintosh computers without much trouble. HOWEVER, when I wish continuity, I DO NOT ask Microsoft to do it for me. Set up your word processor numbering system so that chapter 1 numbering goes 1-1 through 1-N; chapter 2 as 2-1 through 2-N, though chapter N as N-1 through N-N. If you need totals just add up the final Ns. ( You can do this in a separate Index doc, spread sheet, or database (although I don't quite know why you'd use a database). If your publisher MUST have continuous numbering, WHEN you are done, you can renumber each chapter by setting the numbering to whatever "start with" number you need.

Not very time consuming and probably works with ANY wp. I don't trust a program to track for me, but it should do simple page division and page numbering OK. Plus, in ms., you don't have to worry about "widows and orphans", so you can let the page breaks fall wherever the word processor places them.

Sue
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Post by hgladney »

mccormack44 wrote:Heather
I don't know which platform you use (even in cross-platform programs, it sometimes makes a difference).

But I've used MS Word regularly on Apple (OLD Apples) and Macintosh computers without much trouble. HOWEVER, when I wish continuity, I DO NOT ask Microsoft to do it for me. Set up your word processor numbering system so that chapter 1 numbering goes 1-1 through 1-N; chapter 2 as 2-1 through 2-N, though chapter N as N-1 through N-N. If you need totals just add up the final Ns. ( You can do this in a separate Index doc, spread sheet, or database (although I don't quite know why you'd use a database). If your publisher MUST have continuous numbering, WHEN you are done, you can renumber each chapter by setting the numbering to whatever "start with" number you need.

Not very time consuming and probably works with ANY wp. I don't trust a program to track for me, but it should do simple page division and page numbering OK. Plus, in ms., you don't have to worry about "widows and orphans", so you can let the page breaks fall wherever the word processor places them.

Sue
Thank you very much! I do like the N1, N-2 idea as a numbering system that will tolerate changes until final pagination. I'm familiar with it from textbooks, and it's such a good idea for drafts.

A lot of the publisher's guidelines insist on sequential numbering, and I'm unsure if they'd consider this properly sequential or not. I don't think that DAW's guidelines state specifically, but I could certainly ask first.

Do you know if regular publishing houses would accept that pagination style? It'd sure be a lot faster for me--hey, I'd still have to run a word count total chapter by chapter anyway, right?
mccormick44 wrote: ...HOWEVER, when I wish continuity, I DO NOT ask Microsoft to do it for me...
Oh yes, I agree! This is one more reason I'm leery of attempting master documents.
mccormick44 wrote:...you can renumber each chapter by setting the numbering to whatever "start with" number you need...
This is the problem in Open Office vwersion1.14.
1.19 was unstable, I had to de-install, even though I got to liking it better. They tell me it's a lot better now.
:roll:
I know how to set up the start-with number for a plain document. But it refuses to operate correctly under certain circumstances--it inserts a blank page rather than allowing any isolated document to start with an even number, for instance, and it freaks out on continuing to number beyond the number of pages in the actual chapter itself.
In other words, for an isolated document that does not belong to some master document's files, if you only have 10 pages, but you need the numbering to go up to 45, it stops at 10 (its largest page #) and nothing further shows up on the page nor prints out.
:shock:
This is a pretty big bug to me, but not to everybody.
:(
They're directing me to use a master document.
Well, it's freeware, and volunteers work on it, and in many ways it works better for me than Word.
But I may have to get comfie with master docs, or else shift the files over to something else to achieve sequential numbers.
:roll:
So I've been trying to think of a practice master-file project that might seem enough worth it to make me work through the effort to learn it, and maybe could go to good use.

Posting up here, for instance...
:P
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
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Post by mccormack44 »

I think the sequential numbering thing would vary publisher by publisher.

It is important, because accidents happen; three chapters of ms. on the desk, someone barges through, and 3 scrambled chapters are all OVER the place. However, at Webster Division, McGraw-Hill (my main experience) or Scholastic (text books, alas and WAY before Harry Potter or Tamora Pierce), we would have been happy to put the sheets in 3 piles, 1-whatever, 2-whatever, etc., then sort each chapter. So, for those departments, this would have been sequential enough.

Again, I have had Microsoft word (versions earlier than that in Office X) start at 356 and continue beyond. (I MAY have inserted 1 line page breaks that I never printed out, but I don't think so.)

If Word won't do that for you it COULD be a Windows vs. Mac thing. It DOES sometimes happen, no matter how carefully the cross-platform programmers try to keep the platforms even. Sometimes the fault is in the basic platform architecture. It just WON'T jump through that particular hoop.

(No matter how many people — on EITHER side of the fence — insist that "MY platform is perfect — yours is worse than nothing," the fact is that the platform programs are created by humans, each has strengths and each has weaknesses, and each will sometimes fail to perform as desired.

And speaking of platforms — I read a funny, platform specific take off on the Arab and/or Native American contentment adages: "I complained because I didn't have a platinum G5, until I met a man who used Windows." I think the takeoff is funny even to people who adore Windows.)

Sue
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Post by hgladney »

I should have clarified that Open Office is a shareware program, not Microsoft at all; for platform, I'm using Windows XP on a PC.
It's a known problem in Open Office, they just built in expecting you to use master documents.
mccormick44 wrote: So, for those departments, this would have been sequential enough.
This is nice to know. I also don't want to be weird & funky & difficult, but it'd save a lot of fuss & time for me!
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
---Plutarch
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Post by hgladney »

http://www.livejournal.com/users/theferrett/590724.html

Umm, theferret says some very snarky and harsh amusing things about...
cliffhangers. With some reason, as a died-in-the-wool Star Wars fan.

And various people reply, with comments about...
other cliffhangers. With even better reason.

I'm jes' keepin' my mouf shut, okay?
:butter:
None of those folks know me, or my books, and probably (as a buncha media fans) wouldn't care why it'd be a huuuge BFD to a Teot fan to have waited so bl*** long.
Twenty years.
But I know that *I* have the most patient fans in the multiverse.
:angel:
I don't even feel that I have to pipe up to explain any of this to a buncha embryos, as theferret calls the younger crowd.

I just wish I wasn't proving it!
:roll:
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
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Post by Kvetch »

Well, I'd put the biggest cliffhanger ever as between Malachi and Matthew, personally.
(look, its a joke, and if someone takes me seriously and jumps in saying 'ah, actually there is a greater historical gap between Habakkuk and Zephaniah' or something like that, I'll smack 'em one)

Mind you, that doesn't give you any right to stop writing book 3 I want to point out.
"I'm the family radical. The rest are terribly stuffy. Aside from Aunt - she's just odd."
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Post by hgladney »

Erm...
/blinking at the image of entire conventions of passionately hair-splitting Bible geeks with gimme caps, tee-shirts, in-joke pins, vests covered in buttons, and wheelchair bumper stickers, all going at it hammer and tongs.
:!:
:shock:
/wanders off, shaking head dazedly.

I gotta stop thinking like that, you can get in *all* kinds of trouble.
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
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Post by Kvetch »

/grins at image of splitting hairs with a hammer and tongs
"I'm the family radical. The rest are terribly stuffy. Aside from Aunt - she's just odd."
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Post by hgladney »

Now, those are Biblical hairs, remember.
It might take some pretty big hammers!
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
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Post by mccormack44 »

Oh Heather!

I'll stick to SF cons (off to Archon tomorrow) where I will probably be one of the oldest attendees.

I couldn't convince anyone here that I won't split hairs (though I'm not so good at it as some of you others), but I promise I'll do it gently.

Sue
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Post by hgladney »

Ahh, yes, but I know about y'all Oldest Inhabitants.
Such as fortune cookie warnings:
"Aged men slowly win matches against fast young men."
(Of course they never mention that the old women don't even bother getting into it in the first place.)
Who needs to use all that fuss and nonsense, when you have age and experience on your side?

Or, to quote the Master:
Pratchett says, "Beware of little old bald guys who smile all the time."

PS--hope it's the kind of blast where you have to work at it to get enough sleep, because you're just having too much fun.
And also, hope you can get home in time to recover from it!!
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
---Plutarch
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Post by hgladney »

In one way of counting, half the book is written, ready for a few friendly eyes to check it over.
(In another way, one half of one half is written: half of the new manuscript, which shoved back the original 3rd Teot book, as I've explained elsewhere.)
But hey, seventeen chapters, pulled together, running the streets looking for trouble.
:banana:
In spite of the fact it's nowhere near submission as yet, and this is Certianly Not Public Distribution (everybody hear those capitol letters?)
Not public distribution, with emphasis.
Ask me why if you want to hear more about the complications of North American serial rights.
I can go on a bit.
Brad thought my posting on professional behavior was eye-burning??
Heheh heeheheheeeee!!
Hmm, that was a rather odd scream, wasn't it?
What's that?
Oh, so they always sound like that if you catch them by surprise?
Dear me, if you say so. Well, play nicely, dearies.
No mess on your nice dresses, mind.
Grandmom gets cross when you get bloodstains in the lace.


I'm not handing things round like Dickens or Wilde, trying to sell subscriptions, but I do feel like something's been accomplished.
I wanted to get this done and off to people and hit that benchmark, to use trendy language. (Who, moi, use anchronistic language, hmmph!)
:D
I've sent off various numbers of chapters to some review/editing folks to have them take a look for goofs, continuity problems, boring talking-heads stretches, artificial people wandering off out of their typical character, and simply puzzlement such as, "Who's talking here anyway?" stuff.
Or, in my case, "Who's kicking who, in this bit of action, anyway?"
Some beta-readers I've come to know from this forum, and I have to thank you in advance for both the offer of help and the time and effort involved.

If other folks here are interested and would like to help out, by all means feel free to pm me about it.

I'm trying to neither overwhelm folks with a really big job--because this is a really big manuscript, no joke--and not to overwhelm myself with more emails and demands than I can realistically handle, either. I will also need to ask how you'd prefer to be credited, or if you would rather not be mentioned publicly.

Let me repeat this is the wordsmithing part of things, with lots of hammering and banging and swearing going on.

It's rather like building theater pigpens backstage, compared to seeing the play put on in proper lighting and everybody hitting their cues right, at least *most* of the time.
(There's still an occasional rude noise from the trumpets in the pit, you know, even in a near-final edit. Sigh.)

I know how much work a really serious editing job takes.
(Of course, if the editor is serious enough, the writer goes off in a suicidal haze, but that's another story, for a much colder, foggier night later in the month, right?
Umm, what's that noise, why is the door creaking, and where did the cat go?)


In fandom, this is called beta-reading, after the process of beta-testing games, and is generally about as painful.

It's not exactly the same as a sneak preview, since this is only part of the manuscript, and this is subject to horribly major changes (especially in my case!)
:twisted:
and I'm the editor so far. The only editor.
(The cat ran away, didn't it?
...Ermm, I thought that cat assaulted trucks and small trees, and won, and his middle name wasn't even Greebo?)

:shock:
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
---Plutarch
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Post by clong »

And in the holds across the great land of Tan, there was much rejoicing!

:banana: :clap: :beer: :banana: :clap: :beer: :banana: :clap: :beer:
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Post by hgladney »

Heee!
Either that, or much gnashing of teeth, but those aren't the fun places anyway, right??
Chapter 17 is about midway in the new manuscript, by the way...
:oops:
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
---Plutarch
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Post by Sean Whitton »

:sherlock:

There are a lot of nice emoticons on these forums, arn't there? I think they can be overused though...
Formerly known as 'Xyrael'.

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hgladney
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You're supposed to reward yourself after achieving milestone goals, right?

Post by hgladney »

Took the evening off, went and stuffed myself with sushi, and then went and saw Serenity. Yes, so stuffed that I didn't even eat any popcorn, that's how stuffed.
I'd read reviews that raved about various aspects of this movie.
And yes, at one point, I felt like shouting, "Now *this* is what a space battle is supposed to look like, thank you."
At other points, I found myself wanting to yell something else quite different.
Joss Whedon knows exactly how to play with the tiny minds of his fans.
Precisely. With micrometers.

You're not supposed to bop yourself upside the head to celebrate milestone goals, and end up screaming, "Aaaahahahaahaaaaaa!!" with your tongue hanging out.
Just sayin'.
And I probably left out a few a's.

Yep, it's true, many cries were heard in the land, you know, the usual one oft heard during Buffy:
"Joss, you bitch!"
Ahh well, we'd been warned, and we did it anyway.
I inquired, by the way, why "bitch" was the necessary word in this.
I was told--you heard it here first--that the difference is:
"Bastard is an accident of birth. Bitch is a lifestyle choice."
It's probably a classic tee shirt message, I just hadn't seen it before.
In this case, yep, it's definitely that nasty li'l choice thing.

BTW, for all ya'll tired old farts out there? You know, folks who *know* what a pain it is to get bloodstains outta your best pants? Or else the other end of the spectrum, quiet-spoken folks who don't like pop-scares and don't know what trailers for Romero's Dead movies are about, and won't ever find out in *any* of the known universes?
(They may end up on the news where the neighbor is shown saying, in puzzlement, "But they were always so quiet..." but they won't ever know what those movies are about.)
In either case, I advise that order: sushi first, that movie afterward.
You might not be able to look at a piece of sushi *after* the movie.
Just sayin'.
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
---Plutarch
hgladney
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morning hurryup

Post by hgladney »

Just dropping by to say no, I haven't dropped off the planet or got run over by work...it just feels like it sometimes!
Been busy working on the book, as well, since I dropped loads of reading on my beta-testers--I mean beta-readers. (Those sproingy noises are their brains breaking under so much tortured prose, I promise you. Not just your hearing aid needing new batteries. Ahh, life in the fast lane.)
And yep, there's things need fixing, of course.
Whilst that part of my evil plan for world domination goes walking off robotically into the distance, unsupervised (a key part of many evil genius plans) I continue to pound infitinitesmally forward on the next chunk of chapters, feeling stumped frustrated and irritable with how stupid they are.
Also SOP, no worries there.

Also, do go say hi to Elizabeth Bear, new forum member, and show her why I hang out with y'all lots more time than I ought to!
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
---Plutarch
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wolfspirit
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Post by wolfspirit »

Heather: I have gotten working on the beta-reading today. I couldn't start until I finished my Eagle Board last night.

But other than a couple of pieces of extreme wordiness, no real problems so far in what I have read. I'll be finished it hopefully within the week, barring any major problems.

wolfspirit
hgladney
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Post by hgladney »

Thank you, Wolfspirit!
Anything you can suggest would be a big help, honestly.
I'm aware I don't have a lot of sense of perspective right now, so distinguishing where it's falling off the balance beam and sprawling about is going to be a big start toward fixing it.
And yeah and congrats on getting done with your Eagle Board!
BTW, erm, what is it, exactly? Is this as in qualifying as an Eagle Scout, perhaps--a very big deal, as best I recall?--or is that something else?
Perseverance is more prevailing than violence; and many things which cannot be overcome when they are together, yield themselves up when taken little by little.
---Plutarch
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