tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2085999874806712502024-03-22T09:31:35.744+09:30A Writer's BlogI write, therefore I am.I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.comBlogger73125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-3202297199379562862024-01-01T17:27:00.001+09:302024-01-01T17:38:04.191+09:30The Dread Rewritegday gentle reader, <div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiL1o49wdbfaSrt2plloJDF2-s3NDdeg_HJ-IP6KUQv0sxajgTsgUTV-oQqojlB_PLp5oyBxAuwZCBKRPd05qUFIIhmyK0DpNKnTK9GvsZhmse_1zmQiwTWDuZrxdQZ8J6EtKgYj6puZzODq_K7oSHu5vRVjo1Q5ofQh33eCHPSxzjawvHKb27m0kRFYc/s300/book%201%20Break%20200.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="330" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiL1o49wdbfaSrt2plloJDF2-s3NDdeg_HJ-IP6KUQv0sxajgTsgUTV-oQqojlB_PLp5oyBxAuwZCBKRPd05qUFIIhmyK0DpNKnTK9GvsZhmse_1zmQiwTWDuZrxdQZ8J6EtKgYj6puZzODq_K7oSHu5vRVjo1Q5ofQh33eCHPSxzjawvHKb27m0kRFYc/w221-h330/book%201%20Break%20200.png" width="221" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><v:shapetype coordsize="21600,21600" filled="f" id="_x0000_t75" o:preferrelative="t" o:spt="75" path="m@4@5l@4@11@9@11@9@5xe" stroked="f">
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</w:wrap></v:imagedata></v:shape><span style="font-family: courier;">Now that <span style="background-color: #783f04;"><span style="color: #04ff00; font-size: medium;"> <i><b>The Break of Civilisation</b></i> </span></span> Vol 1 of <i><span style="line-height: 115%;">The Restoration
Legends</span></i> trilogy is out there, both as an <span style="font-size: medium;"><a href=" https://books2read.com/u/mlq6KA" target="_blank"><b>eBook</b></a></span> and as a <b><span style="font-size: medium;"><a href=" https://books2read.com/u/mlq6KA">trade paperback</a></span></b>, I’ve been working on rewriting Vol 2; not just editing but
rewriting significant bits.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: courier;">Originally, that is, way back in 2000 on finishing Vol 1, I ploughed
straight into <span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="background-color: black; color: red;"> <i><b>The Face of the Goddess </b></i></span> </span></span><span style="font-family: courier;">Vol 2 writing </span><span style="font-family: courier;">50,000 words in a couple
of months. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: courier;">I kept my trio of POV characters from </span><i style="font-family: courier;">Break</i><span style="font-family: courier;"> and added two
more, a son of one, and a daughter of the other two. Five POV characters,
complicated, yes? </span></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><b style="font-family: courier;">But wait there’s more .....</b></h4><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: courier;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD-axR8uGrtnaOUobcxScpJGaw76UUFON8Y9QVnEadmdJL3yZUt2pzbz-rlGBe8WjFnsTpS2Yjiu7AlJsGd8af4KWdCp-00DE3OQ1J47Rs9_10Z6RLDEV4pDnr0kdQhppyYKsqBIR-PDS06EbJ_fBQT-XETKlRIPzuBW_jl4vb_QVqwcI6HMWrYbQ_i6s/s2393/2%20The%20Face%20of%20the%20Goddess.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2393" data-original-width="1600" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhD-axR8uGrtnaOUobcxScpJGaw76UUFON8Y9QVnEadmdJL3yZUt2pzbz-rlGBe8WjFnsTpS2Yjiu7AlJsGd8af4KWdCp-00DE3OQ1J47Rs9_10Z6RLDEV4pDnr0kdQhppyYKsqBIR-PDS06EbJ_fBQT-XETKlRIPzuBW_jl4vb_QVqwcI6HMWrYbQ_i6s/w214-h320/2%20The%20Face%20of%20the%20Goddess.png" width="214" /></a></span></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: courier;">I always intended each book would be
a new generation, so I started roughly 20 years after the events in Vol 1. But then I, the author, felt I needed to know
what happened in between and began filling in the 20-year gap, eventually
pushing the story back to where it finished, and adding a 6<sup>th</sup> POV
character. Chapter 1 was now Chapter 42,
60,000 words later, half of them (30,000 words) before the heroine, the
daughter, is born.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
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</w:wrap></span></v:imagedata></v:shape><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 241.2pt; left: 0px; margin-left: 285.7pt; margin-top: 4.7pt; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 161.3pt; z-index: 251659264;" type="#_x0000_t75"><span style="font-family: courier;"><br /></span></v:shape><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 241.2pt; left: 0px; margin-left: 285.7pt; margin-top: 4.7pt; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 161.3pt; z-index: 251659264;" type="#_x0000_t75"><span style="font-family: courier;"><br /></span></v:shape><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 241.2pt; left: 0px; margin-left: 285.7pt; margin-top: 4.7pt; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 161.3pt; z-index: 251659264;" type="#_x0000_t75"><span style="font-family: courier;"><br /></span></v:shape><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 241.2pt; left: 0px; margin-left: 285.7pt; margin-top: 4.7pt; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 161.3pt; z-index: 251659264;" type="#_x0000_t75"><span style="font-family: courier;"><br /></span></v:shape><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 241.2pt; left: 0px; margin-left: 285.7pt; margin-top: 4.7pt; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 161.3pt; z-index: 251659264;" type="#_x0000_t75"><span style="font-family: courier;"><br /></span></v:shape><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 241.2pt; left: 0px; margin-left: 285.7pt; margin-top: 4.7pt; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 161.3pt; z-index: 251659264;" type="#_x0000_t75"><span style="font-family: courier;"><br /></span></v:shape><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 241.2pt; left: 0px; margin-left: 285.7pt; margin-top: 4.7pt; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 161.3pt; z-index: 251659264;" type="#_x0000_t75"><span style="font-family: courier;"><br /></span></v:shape><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 241.2pt; left: 0px; margin-left: 285.7pt; margin-top: 4.7pt; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 161.3pt; z-index: 251659264;" type="#_x0000_t75"><span style="font-family: courier;"><br /></span></v:shape><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 241.2pt; left: 0px; margin-left: 285.7pt; margin-top: 4.7pt; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 161.3pt; z-index: 251659264;" type="#_x0000_t75"><span style="font-family: courier;"><br /></span></v:shape><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 241.2pt; left: 0px; margin-left: 285.7pt; margin-top: 4.7pt; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 161.3pt; z-index: 251659264;" type="#_x0000_t75"><span style="font-family: courier;"><br /></span></v:shape><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 241.2pt; left: 0px; margin-left: 285.7pt; margin-top: 4.7pt; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 161.3pt; z-index: 251659264;" type="#_x0000_t75"><span style="font-family: courier;"><br /></span></v:shape><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 241.2pt; left: 0px; margin-left: 285.7pt; margin-top: 4.7pt; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 161.3pt; z-index: 251659264;" type="#_x0000_t75"><br /></v:shape><v:shape id="Picture_x0020_3" o:spid="_x0000_s1026" style="height: 241.2pt; left: 0px; margin-left: 285.7pt; margin-top: 4.7pt; position: absolute; visibility: visible; width: 161.3pt; z-index: 251659264;" type="#_x0000_t75"><span style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></span></v:shape><span style="font-family: courier;">The reason for all the above
is attempt to explain why I'm rewriting. I'm trying to recover my original vison.
It’s not all bad but I’ve slashed </span><span style="font-family: courier;">40,000 words, from </span><span style="font-family: courier;">the opening, and will reduce the POV
characters to the three children. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: courier;">All that background material that I needed to
know, so I could write with authority I can and will re-use in short stories.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: courier;"><span><span>Speaking of which brings me to the just self published (15/12/23) collection </span></span></span><span style="font-family: courier;"><span> <span style="color: red; font-size: large;"><a href="https://books2read.com/u/47RraN" target="_blank"><b>Colony Worlds</b></a></span></span></span><span style="font-family: courier;">: </span><span style="font-family: courier;"><span>13 of my award winning stories </span></span><span style="font-family: courier;">but that story is for my next blog.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: courier;">ooroo Rob</span></p></div><div><span style="font-family: courier;"><br /></span><br /></div>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com064 Hampden Way, Strathalbyn SA 5255, Australia-35.244513 138.891895-35.244951109648014 138.89135855819703 -35.244074890351982 138.89243144180298tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-54613039190376786012023-06-07T16:41:00.004+09:302024-01-01T17:39:41.563+09:30The winter of my discontent <p> g'day gentle reader</p><p>I'm in my seventy fifth year. That's 3/4 gone should I be lucky enough to live to 100. If you consider 100 a year beginning with spring then I've passed from autumn to the winter of years. So I better get on with it.</p><p>Time to publish the damn trilogy one way or another. As a subscriber to Authors Publish, they send me reviews of publishers 'now accepting' with links to the publishers web sites, often straight to the the submission guidelines. </p><div style="text-align: left;">The first to intrigue me was CamCat, so I browsed the quite extensive advice to authors, one of which was <span style="color: #2e2e2e; font-family: Lora, "Times New Roman", Times, serif; font-size: 1em;"><b>7 Things to do to Your Manuscript Before Submission, </b></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />1. Put your manuscript away</blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;">2. Reread your manuscript. Start to finish. <i>Out loud.</i></blockquote><p>I went no further. My magnificent octopus had been sitting in the bottom file of my PC for 3 years. Strike 1, </p><p>I began re-reading out loud - well not exactly - I had word read it aloud to me. I took over 6 months. strike 2. </p><p>Meanwhile I continued to a short story to WotF each quarter but with less alacrity and it showed; after 8 consecutive successes I missed 2. I had become re-engaged in the world of my novel. </p><p>After filling in their incredibly detailed application form (which, I have to say was one of the most useful writing exercises I have ever done, I now know what my story is about) I find my book is too big for them. Strike 3 your out. </p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIFrDLHipDhd44SNjllbpKYsj2181UEz2hYMWtvmiAYKG6kJAQue5lZqK1qjRpGmo8gU7KmBRWP8WKYJHEYFMmyrL6QGSkUkD9roSfEgJzyn0InXkJ5fb971-99-do9c7ORlD0d3iFROVB87Le8tArXPum4SUvhw5jdfGBgoqdKWEzjMFnrENxxKAd/s1800/The-Break-of-Civilisation-user-preview.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1800" data-original-width="1800" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIFrDLHipDhd44SNjllbpKYsj2181UEz2hYMWtvmiAYKG6kJAQue5lZqK1qjRpGmo8gU7KmBRWP8WKYJHEYFMmyrL6QGSkUkD9roSfEgJzyn0InXkJ5fb971-99-do9c7ORlD0d3iFROVB87Le8tArXPum4SUvhw5jdfGBgoqdKWEzjMFnrENxxKAd/w200-h200/The-Break-of-Civilisation-user-preview.png" width="200" /></a></div><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Segoe UI Historic",sans-serif" style="color: #050505; line-height: 115%;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Segoe UI Historic",sans-serif" style="color: #050505; line-height: 115%;">So in the end I
after 20 plus years in the making and 20 plus rejection I've published my
magnificent octopus, </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span face=""Segoe UI Historic",sans-serif" style="color: #050505; line-height: 115%;">now available for pre-order. </span><span face=""Segoe UI Historic",sans-serif" style="background: white; color: #050505; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 115%;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://books2read.com/author/rob-bleckly/subscribe/1/428714/?fbclid=IwAR2HhhpH_jMdr6pxo_P4tLknkyJ8Dz6z70fAEaOF2zKJxUBqyvAArQnQo90" target="_blank"><span style="border: 1pt none windowtext; font-family: "inherit",serif; font-size: 11.5pt; line-height: 115%; mso-bidi-font-family: "Segoe UI Historic"; mso-border-alt: none windowtext 0in; padding: 0in;">https://books2read.com/.../rob-bleckly/subscribe/1/428714/</span></a><o:p></o:p></p><p>ooroo Rob</p><p>until my next post</p>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-78893541711616164112022-11-24T17:01:00.003+09:302024-01-01T17:36:30.832+09:30Genealogical Consideration
<blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p style="text-align: left;"><span>gday gentle reader</span></p></blockquote>
<p style="text-align: left;"><span>Here's another writing project that occupies my time. Writing biographies for long dead ancestors on WikiTree is both rewarding and fascinating. </span></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: center;"><iframe frameborder="0" height="495" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="https://www.WikiTree.com/treewidget/Bleckly-1/" width="496"></iframe></blockquote><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"> <a href="https://www.WikiTree.com/about/family-tree-widgets.html" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; text-align: center;">embeddable family tree</a><span face="verdana, arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; text-align: center;"> updated live from </span><a href="https://www.WikiTree.com/" style="font-family: verdana, arial, sans-serif; text-align: center;" target="WikiTree free online family tree">WikiTree</a></p><p style="text-align: center;"><br /></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQDKmkp3GyTJRddS8BOvgvnDqrhUyArff_HJuX-JFcDAnTKBJzpz4Y_XFeAs3BMWpAY2RZMS4XGPe-3gvdDfz3W9Jh8OZU93nw3K1V2WAUIZ7H37780cCzqUg2ESXKnRXu3Of1WQTJQR1imTc1_iMOZXpTyjxqJ4Z3vNsgDhXAOJSX8gyzSU2x_AZc/s283/Tree%202022-11-24.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="283" data-original-width="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQDKmkp3GyTJRddS8BOvgvnDqrhUyArff_HJuX-JFcDAnTKBJzpz4Y_XFeAs3BMWpAY2RZMS4XGPe-3gvdDfz3W9Jh8OZU93nw3K1V2WAUIZ7H37780cCzqUg2ESXKnRXu3Of1WQTJQR1imTc1_iMOZXpTyjxqJ4Z3vNsgDhXAOJSX8gyzSU2x_AZc/s16000/Tree%202022-11-24.png" /></a></div></span></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">One of my next stories will use material discovered in a family closet. The things the people did to their children in "the good old days" would today get them arrested. One of my venerable ancestors shipped a couple his sons to sea for wagging school to attend their sister’s funeral. On of them though twice shipwrecked not only survived but made it Australia where fortunately he thrived. I might ot ever have been born otherwise, a scary thought - for me at least.</span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="text-align: left;">As you can see my tree goes back a way. The recently added ( Siminis / Simonis / Simianis / Simionis BLAKEY) is tenuously linked as my Simon's father because he had a son Simon Blakey baptised about the right estimated DOB. Records in the 1600's often lack detail. </span></div><span></span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="596" data-original-width="444" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjtGpJ37p_pnWq3obl_aeqC8K7u6HrzL-0GsWmdFIPXeVEAeQaiURGcNREyvqMsmSbTkDDhYT-EivJe2ILWuGZK8ACesXyxbMM5VG8bNQ2ho8GP5qH8HccDhlCbILMqdWgtG7vzByphY0xu_EVV_FEt4ukd6WnB5GudMFtOWbhGYHvRgx0NmBgitp-e=w149-h200" title="Editorial cartoon depicting Charles Darwin as an ape (1871)" width="149" /></div><div>I hesitate to voice the thought, but like Charles Darwin it appears </div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: red;">I at least have a Simian ancestor</span> </span></b></div><div><br /></div><div>Up unto Thomas Bleckly/ BLEAKLY the record is clear and verifiable as are the next two generation back - as individuals. It's the Links between that are tenuous. They remain in place however until further evidence refutes their presence. It's a work in progress.</div><span></span><p></p><p style="text-align: left;">Unlike some other online genealogical programs that I shall not mention, they're unmentionable, who charge annual fees, and then get you to do all the work putting all your ancestor online have the temerity to effectively re-sell your contributions.</p><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0 0 0 40px; padding: 0px;"><p style="text-align: left;">WikiTree is FREE.</p></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">I love my WikiTree. (https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Bleckly-1) </div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p>ooroo until my next post </p><p>Rob </p></blockquote><span><a name='more'></a></span>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-11856844538769322672021-12-27T16:34:00.008+09:302022-01-04T16:03:38.867+09:30The Persistence of Submitting<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><br />gday gentle reader</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> A story I wrote way back in the last
millennium (1993) under the working title<i> Time Loop</i> won an Honorable Mention
in L Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future contest in 4<sup>th</sup> quarter
2021. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">This is a significant
in a couple of ways.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEim1ZpIXCAy0fv7oXnDCFG-0ty3eOLOVqh7QwbOWh6vJAxPS7gJape5IeJYfc6If4fwLV5oMV9dnGZ8uVA8XEKbVUTpBdbRY5Rnsj1ACAe1FL1yXTXy3hCyOIvISQ2CjWhgdgwHNi47Gu9yRSZUgBTOWtOPgkR1jEZVX_Y1EvA240kt_nlGYoJhH6gt=s250" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="250" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEim1ZpIXCAy0fv7oXnDCFG-0ty3eOLOVqh7QwbOWh6vJAxPS7gJape5IeJYfc6If4fwLV5oMV9dnGZ8uVA8XEKbVUTpBdbRY5Rnsj1ACAe1FL1yXTXy3hCyOIvISQ2CjWhgdgwHNi47Gu9yRSZUgBTOWtOPgkR1jEZVX_Y1EvA240kt_nlGYoJhH6gt=w168-h168" width="168" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"><b><span style="color: red;">First of all, it
means I have won and Honorable Mention in every quarter of 2021.</span> </b>It also makes
it the 6</span><sup style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">th</sup><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;"> Honorable Mention in a row, 7 out of the last 8. (3 out
of 4 in 2020 - 4 out of 4 in 2021) This was also my 18th consecutive quarterly
submission and the 12th award BUT three of the 18 are repeat submissions
(reedited of course) so in fact I have only sent 15 original stories for 12
awards. </span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">You may be right in
thinking the Covid pandemic has improved my writing/editing. For it certainly
the bum's been on the seat for hours longer.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="color: red;"><b>Second of all, this
is at least the fourth time I've submitted the story. </b></span>In the early days I
didn’t keep good records of what I sent where, only how much I wrote, trying to </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">fulfil</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> Hemmingway's idea that the first million words are practice. Persistence
is everything.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Bear with me gentle
reader while I begin at the beginning, a very good place to start I'm told. In
1993 I wrote<span style="background-color: white;"> <i>Time Loop</i> </span>longhand, then typed up my scribble on a portable
typewriter and submitted a paper copy, except this never happened. I never
submitted a single story before I had a computer able to print a perfect copy,
that’s not to say to a perfect story, but a perfect copy of whatever story I
had written.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEieZci4rGt9SRtTfaAVj_HcULuoDJ4ywz_K0p07HDOxNbpJ2Zp8CaSXhp0b3xs3bC5h_ealOdgZODcUDd7COSzQO4yMqLqaqt1TxwCM6k45g57MAhNTc9oVNQ43oW0i-ce8dDKJxbBsmiH0O3yRJHqzBltI6sakrnAz015BAFjAO0fZWmYzIYE-ktUu=s300" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="225" data-original-width="300" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEieZci4rGt9SRtTfaAVj_HcULuoDJ4ywz_K0p07HDOxNbpJ2Zp8CaSXhp0b3xs3bC5h_ealOdgZODcUDd7COSzQO4yMqLqaqt1TxwCM6k45g57MAhNTc9oVNQ43oW0i-ce8dDKJxbBsmiH0O3yRJHqzBltI6sakrnAz015BAFjAO0fZWmYzIYE-ktUu=w208-h156" width="208" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">My first 1980
computer, a <b>TRS-80 Model-1,</b> even after expansion from cassette tape storage to
5 ¼ floppy discs couldn’t cope. It wasn’t until 1996 when I opened "Books
with Connections" an internet café bookshop in Blackwood with 2 computers
I had built to my specification, that I felt it at last worthwhile transcribing <i><span style="background-color: #674ea7; color: white;">Time Loop</span></i> and my full-filing-cabinet's worth of handwritten
stories.</span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Now let's cut back to the
chase. Some current members of the<a href="https://www.blackwoodwriters.com/" target="_blank"> Blackwood Writers Group,</a> (formed in the
bookshop that same year, 1996), with long memories will know the story. It was
workshopped under the title, <span style="background-color: #674ea7;"><span style="color: white;"><i>The Persistence of Memory</i>.</span></span> I sent the
workshopped story to Eidolon and Altair, probably in 2000, but didn't make the
cut.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">After my first success submitting to WotF in 2017, I reworked <i>Persistence</i> (it's short title) changing the protagonist source of
overnight wealth from shares to crypto currency and sent it to WotF for the 2nd
Qtr. 2018. It didn’t rate a mention, </span><span style="font-size: 18px;">honourable</span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> or otherwise.<o:p></o:p></span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Once more into the breech. The contest coordinator had once suggested
previously submitted could be resubmitted. The first time I tried this produced
an Honorable Mention and so I did it again with <i>Persistence</i> now
retitled <span style="background-color: #674ea7;"><span style="color: white;">Days of Future Passed</span></span> (from a Dali painting to a Moody
Blues album) for the 4th Qtr. 2021 and you know the result, another Honorable
Mention. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">It sort of validates
Robert A. Heinlein’s Rule 5. "You must keep the work on the market until
it's sold." (Or wins something)<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;">Ooroo until my next post. I hope you had a Merry Christmas and lets all hope 2022 is a better new year</span><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;"> <br /></span> <div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt;">Rob</span></div><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 13.5pt; line-height: 107%;">PS One may think that because all my posts are about the WotF contest, I don't do anything else. you'd be wrong. but that's another story. </span></div></div>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-42410496493460893262021-07-02T17:40:00.000+09:302021-07-02T17:40:07.478+09:30The story is out there.<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMQC0XPgQZhzBSO0u_kpPBD25RFzW48KKLtH5P-D6oaPWmjZ4FDXPk65sk0Q8xB0PziS2GSgNBSJTr1LgaRX8553E_NKCArBQZpApCSgDo8s43L_dNBY3wjYzBoe_MDXIhw0S647jHSxw/s252/Anti.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="252" data-original-width="173" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMQC0XPgQZhzBSO0u_kpPBD25RFzW48KKLtH5P-D6oaPWmjZ4FDXPk65sk0Q8xB0PziS2GSgNBSJTr1LgaRX8553E_NKCArBQZpApCSgDo8s43L_dNBY3wjYzBoe_MDXIhw0S647jHSxw/w138-h200/Anti.JPG" width="138" /></a></div><span style="font-family: courier;">gday gentle reader </span><div><span style="font-family: courier;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: courier;">I've been experiment with Twitter and story telling but except for the briefest flash fictions, the medium sucks. My much published (online an in print by Antipodean SF) 500 word story "Trojans" took 12 post and had to be massaged, not just to fit, but for each tweet to end on a cliff-hanger so readers would return. <br /><br />In my considered opinion nobody, not even my 5 Followers, read it. So now I tweet links to stories.</span><br /><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-family: courier; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span></p><span style="font-family: courier;">I'm preparing an anthology, titled <i><b>Colony Worlds</b></i>, (a theme I like) all Honorable </span><span style="font-family: courier;">(USA spelling as per certificate) </span><span style="font-family: courier;">Mentions I've received from my submissions to </span></div><div><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: times;"><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; color: #0f1419; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;">L. Ron Hubbard's <br /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; white-space: pre-wrap;"><a href="https://www.writersofthefuture.com/enter-writer-contest/" target="_blank"><b>Writers of the Future Contest</b></a></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: courier;">I'll begin with the first 2 chapters of <a href="https://www.blogger.com/#"><i>The Descent of the Kestrel</i></a> now up on my website https://www.rob.bleckly.com, with more chapters and further stories to come. Why 2 Chapters? It's told from two alternating POV's (points of view). Constructive Criticism is always welcome, no story is ever so finished it can't be improved.</span><p><span class="css-901oao css-16my406 r-poiln3 r-bcqeeo r-qvutc0" style="background-color: white; border: 0px solid black; box-sizing: border-box; display: inline; font-stretch: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-variant-numeric: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; min-width: 0px; overflow-wrap: break-word; padding: 0px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: courier;"><i style="font-weight: bold;"></i></span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: courier;"><i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidNmg6xo-mUoVVu2U1_5z4E-4NSlqZq_zjffpBxP64ISlEPOROkmPbHDik59wyhnmPZym8cVq15-Oy9kdA4rnjxXvCWzLusew-I5W6j9az4sQk42LK4pSZytuFN2dOZ7WNpcaZG69IML0/s258/2017+3+The+Descent+of+the+Kestrel+200.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="258" data-original-width="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidNmg6xo-mUoVVu2U1_5z4E-4NSlqZq_zjffpBxP64ISlEPOROkmPbHDik59wyhnmPZym8cVq15-Oy9kdA4rnjxXvCWzLusew-I5W6j9az4sQk42LK4pSZytuFN2dOZ7WNpcaZG69IML0/s0/2017+3+The+Descent+of+the+Kestrel+200.jpg" /></a></i></span></div><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: courier;"><i style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size: large;"> <u>The Descent of the Kestrel</u></span></i><u> </u></span></div><div><span style="font-family: courier;"><br />9,300 words written 2011 won me an HM in the 3rd quarter 2017 exactly 20 years after my first HM in the 3rd quarter 1997. <br /><br /></span><span style="font-family: courier;">In between I wrote the oft mentioned still unpublished 600,000-word trilogy which obviously improved my skills because 20 years on the competition quality is a lot stiffer, the award categories expanded, and an HM is no longer a finalist.</span></div><div><span style="font-family: courier;"><br />The story is a prequel, the first of five set in my trilogy world "<i>The Restoration Legends</i>." </span><p><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: courier; white-space: pre-wrap;">Doing this now was promoted by my latest HM, the fourth in a row, which</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #0f1419; font-family: courier;"> </span><span style="font-family: courier; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="color: #0f1419;">means my </span><span style="background-color: #2b00fe; color: white;"><b> <span style="font-size: medium;">Silver Honorable Mention </span></b></span><span style="color: #0f1419;"> and the </span></span><span style="font-family: courier; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="background-color: #2b00fe; color: white;"> <b><span style="font-size: medium;">Semi-Finalist</span></b> </span><span style="color: #0f1419;"> can be left </span></span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: courier; white-space: pre-wrap;">out of the anthology</span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: courier; white-space: pre-wrap;">. As posted earlier these two form the opening and concluding parts of a Novel (yet another colony world) It's the </span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: courier; white-space: pre-wrap;">sagging </span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: courier; white-space: pre-wrap;">middle part that needs work.</span></p><p><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: courier; white-space: pre-wrap;">until my next post </span><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: arial; font-size: x-small; white-space: pre-wrap;">(might post about why I like writing colony worlds) </span></p><p><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: courier; white-space: pre-wrap;">ooroo Rob</span></p><p><span style="color: #0f1419; font-family: courier; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></p><p><br /></p></div>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-27830715139527163422021-01-10T14:43:00.015+09:302021-01-10T14:48:38.319+09:30A Fascination with Numbers<div style="text-align: left;"> </div><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">gday gentle reader, </span><span face="Tahoma, sans-serif" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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<div style="line-height: normal; text-align: left;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">On further analysis (see my previous
post) of my eight (8) award-winning stories over 4 years of consecutive
submissions to <a href="https://www.writersofthefuture.com/enter-writer-contest/" target="_blank">L. Ron Hubbard's Writers of the Future Contest</a>, I </span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">have
yet to get a mention in the second Quarter that runs from January 1 to
March 31.</span></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">As Spok would say: <i>Fascinating</i>.
Is it that I slack off during our southern hemisphere Summer, or does the
northern hemisphere Winter put more </span><span face="Tahoma, sans-serif" style="color: black;">northern hemisphere </span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">bums on writing seats for longer periods? I shall turn up the
aircon and try harder this quarter.</span><span face="Tahoma, sans-serif" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; mso-outline-level: 4; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: red; font-family: inherit, serif;">Word Counts</span><b><span face="Tahoma, sans-serif" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">And one more fascinating thing
about my most recent Silver Honourable Mention </span><i><span face="Tahoma, sans-serif" style="color: black;">The Starbuck
Chronicles, </span></i><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">but let me digress a
moment. </span><span face="Tahoma, sans-serif" style="color: black;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">Back in 1999 I won 2<sup>nd</sup> prize
in the 1st </span><a href="https://aurealis.com.au/" target="_blank">Aurealis</a> <span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">Millennium competition for a story that was and had to be exactly 1000
words not </span><span face="Tahoma, sans-serif" style="color: black;">including</span><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;"> the title. But wait there's more,
most of my early submissions to </span><a href="https://www.antisf.com/" target="_blank">Antipodean SF</a><span style="color: black; font-family: inherit, serif;">, under the mistaken impressions that Ion wanted no more than 500 words,
were close to and often exactly 500 words. </span><span face="Tahoma, sans-serif" style="color: black;">By now you're starting to get the
picture. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: 0in;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPvihwEM5tt8c9eRra2y3VJwOf6RmpGGAK8dh2kgrB97Ly68i9HIu5Z21sIVyr_4mJ34cUxt3aqrowyhBO3BifnMzkpsTt8dAPb4HYl6sTyLstCBGKz02aNwlpOGsW90Ef0j3HWkCaQcc/s400/image.png" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="284" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPvihwEM5tt8c9eRra2y3VJwOf6RmpGGAK8dh2kgrB97Ly68i9HIu5Z21sIVyr_4mJ34cUxt3aqrowyhBO3BifnMzkpsTt8dAPb4HYl6sTyLstCBGKz02aNwlpOGsW90Ef0j3HWkCaQcc/w284-h400/image.png" width="284" /></a></div><i><span face="Tahoma, sans-serif" style="color: red;">The Starbuck
Chronicles, </span></i><span style="text-indent: 0in;"></span><p></p>my Silver Honourable Mention has exactly 750 words (not including
Chapter# and title) in each of its <span face="Tahoma, sans-serif" style="text-indent: 0in;">17 chapters. </span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: 0in;"><span face="Tahoma, sans-serif" style="color: black;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="text-indent: 0in;">I am now left to wonder if unbeknown to the judges, the pattern (the
rhythm if you will) of the chapters, played part in the win. </span><span style="text-indent: 0in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0in;">Did it lift it up to Silver H M or lower its
chances of attaining higher or did it not make a scrap of difference. Nevertheless,
I enjoyed the challenge of making a longer story hold together despite the self-imposed
artificial strictures. </span><span style="text-indent: 0in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0in;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-indent: 0in;"><span style="text-indent: 0in;"> ooroo Rob</span></p>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-42212597254401315102020-11-29T08:10:00.003+09:302020-11-29T17:01:24.414+09:30Writing Aids & Awards<p>g'day gentle reader</p><p>The result of all my wailing and gnashing of teeth over writing programs is I decided to buy <span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: white;">Scrivener</span></span>, to organise big projects like my 600,000 word trilogy and an anthology of my <span style="color: #2b00fe;">Writers of the Future </span>awards,</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQgu2UxswdW8kaAQ-2agwhovW3b7pS7b4kxGIvYjckWvSQjtJBNJuPEBoPsUCLNosKe8BuFeyDLY1TSEVrFkOftbemMYN4FDsZ1eACXwxrhEZYyRV1LSdGWT9zTYS4x9DuAW8ps_TcAWw/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="250" data-original-width="250" height="123" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQgu2UxswdW8kaAQ-2agwhovW3b7pS7b4kxGIvYjckWvSQjtJBNJuPEBoPsUCLNosKe8BuFeyDLY1TSEVrFkOftbemMYN4FDsZ1eACXwxrhEZYyRV1LSdGWT9zTYS4x9DuAW8ps_TcAWw/w123-h123/WotF-HM_result.ico" width="123" /></a></div>speaking of which, 2020 was another good year for me. 4 submissions to WotF returned 2 Honourable Mentions and a Silver Honourable Mention. 3/4 ain't bad. Ain't good either. Only 1st 2nd or 3rd count. I did the same only better in 2018. 3/4 and one was a Semi-Finalist.<div><br /></div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb1C-ddabfY_FQZ-VxDpQZ1feNOq0i-QZMUKZ9j8zPJZNhN6eufhrbU06bbWOUQ33IKnmAle9YZFDKISeBVYrs7Vc_mOoUdx8g18fikoghOC9CyexZITwRnjMx4ZOFSRJ1U6vymyDFsSs/" style="clear: right; display: inline; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="102" data-original-width="227" height="110" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb1C-ddabfY_FQZ-VxDpQZ1feNOq0i-QZMUKZ9j8zPJZNhN6eufhrbU06bbWOUQ33IKnmAle9YZFDKISeBVYrs7Vc_mOoUdx8g18fikoghOC9CyexZITwRnjMx4ZOFSRJ1U6vymyDFsSs/w210-h110/image.png" width="210" /></a><div><div><div>The awards however are asymmetric. The Table shows awards given for the Quarter. My Silver HM Qtr.4 was equal 134th. if it had been in Qtr.3 it would have been equal 67th. Conversely my HM ranked better for being in Qtr.3 equal 330th, rather than Qtr.4 where it would've been equal 458th. As the contest grows the competition get stiffer, I am happy to still be winning awards, I must be improving. </div><div><br /></div><div>I also decided to buy <span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: #3d85c6;">ProWritingAid</span></span> (Black Friday sale) for checking grammar and style and everything else chapter by chapter since with anything more than a chapter the incredibly detailed checks it does will slow you down. For example: Part 1 of Book 1 in the trilogy (90,000 words) took 9 mins and gave me 1473 errors and I accidentally hit the [Realtime] button instead of the an [issues] button. It restarted and wasted another 9 mins. And if you don't correct (or ignore?) the errors then save, it restarts next time you open. </div></div><div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3EUVIXNeJvRy2CrRLWkQROe8ZlAlZcAFpzn92SNQDKetkESClUCQOxGgwrXylmMv8N0k_d8B2i9gqme4XbmBloeZSr8QYsk8uqkW-Pmoh28g5duqKBl3IyZm9MGOoT4j7XRhfy2JzOqI/" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="235" data-original-width="251" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3EUVIXNeJvRy2CrRLWkQROe8ZlAlZcAFpzn92SNQDKetkESClUCQOxGgwrXylmMv8N0k_d8B2i9gqme4XbmBloeZSr8QYsk8uqkW-Pmoh28g5duqKBl3IyZm9MGOoT4j7XRhfy2JzOqI/" width="256" /></a></div><p></p><p>The error count was a lot bigger first time around but I had corrected the spelling issues, (again almost exclusively my Character Names) and saves the story </p><p>The firsts lesson: don't open a whole book in <span style="background-color: #3d85c6; color: white;">PWA</span>, do a chapter at time.</p><p>These comments subject to change without notice, I'm on a steep learning curve. </p><p>I practiced with a couple of paragraphs (326 words) from my next sub to WotF, fixed all the issues and then sent it back to gold fashioned, <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS6w2oxYx7CaZxud54VSM2A5aegNPGy99ycJRUt-oT3vZslfvr6pXES5RJVu7J8vJ2KIndqu1tz6NPtywy2axpt1469PEm7n0tJv4Vfb7rT76qvIqzad1B3dxnChCg7J8oKCgNwKWRGGw/" style="clear: left; display: inline; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="39" data-original-width="51" height="26" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgS6w2oxYx7CaZxud54VSM2A5aegNPGy99ycJRUt-oT3vZslfvr6pXES5RJVu7J8vJ2KIndqu1tz6NPtywy2axpt1469PEm7n0tJv4Vfb7rT76qvIqzad1B3dxnChCg7J8oKCgNwKWRGGw/w34-h26/image.png" width="34" /></a>to format ready to submit. Word found a grammatical error <span style="background-color: #3d85c6; color: white;">PWA</span> missed.</p><p>ooroo</p><p><br /></p><p><br /><br /><br /></p></div></div></div>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-78435358481705139772020-11-16T16:23:00.002+09:302020-11-16T16:26:32.453+09:30The GRim error count ... continued <p>g'day gentle reader </p><p style="text-align: left;">as promised ProWritingAid's five remaining errors turned out to be ordinary boring abbreviations of a space opera kind: <span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>comms</b></span> <span style="color: #2b00fe;">(2)</span> for communications , 1 each of <span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>techos </b>(1)</span> and <span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>unsuit</b></span> <span style="color: #2b00fe;">(1)</span>. ProWritingAid informed me there were 'no such words'. The fifth and last error was a preference for air-con rather than <span style="color: #2b00fe;"><b>aircon </b>(1)</span>. PWR also had a couple of</p><p></p><h4 style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size: medium;">style suggestions</span> </h4><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCh8YbNgBXigEc8rdzSr7VB-fMJTnhiAMJMuC1sW07GgXgriI1NC4qmf-wQVfXpWcAam2ubDGboyA1pIvZc270slRGzTTnrg0RhzP0hUk5JulJQSlLHdOlo3pX-WXG1xNnrzwbz-sb0xo/s571/Style.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="197" data-original-width="571" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCh8YbNgBXigEc8rdzSr7VB-fMJTnhiAMJMuC1sW07GgXgriI1NC4qmf-wQVfXpWcAam2ubDGboyA1pIvZc270slRGzTTnrg0RhzP0hUk5JulJQSlLHdOlo3pX-WXG1xNnrzwbz-sb0xo/w385-h144/Style.jpg" width="385" /></a></div><i>hot water spigot:</i> can you use a <span style="color: red;"><b>stronger adjective</b></span> than hot (boiling scalding scorching) This was a simple case of misconstruction, which <i>hot-water spigot </i>solved. <p></p><p><i>and a couple of </i>rubbery eggs ... <span style="color: red;"> <b>readability</b></span> may be enhanced by <i>and two rubbery eggs</i>. It may, but it will also loose the comic flavour - I left that one alone beside Australian usage (er - mine) does not necessarily mean exactly two. (give it a couple of days, she'll be right = 2 at least days.) </p><p><i>hadn’t damaged anything</i> to <i>had damaged nothing</i> <span style="color: red;"><b>readability again</b></span> ( more positive - accepted) </p><p>[ "Both were crammed" into her life pod ] <span style="color: red;"><b>passive verbs</b></span> make your writing less direct. Good advice but the suggestions were nonsensical in the context [ "I/we/they crammed both" into her life pod ] they are already there.</p><p>like Word, PWA wants to convert all<i> We'll have to</i> to <i>We must</i>, but <i>must</i> is not always appropriate it depends on the context. Sometimes what is mean is <i>We aught to.</i> </p><h4 style="text-align: left;">I loved this one </h4><p><span><span style="background-color: #fcff01;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>the electrics are shot</b></span></span><span style="color: #04ff00;">, </span></span>as one character says to the other meaning the electrical circuits no longer function. PWA said <span style="background-color: #fcff01;"><span style="color: #274e13;"><b>they/I/we/it shoot/s the electrics</b></span></span> Seriously? </p><p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim6gLvo6Kuh76c5sh-OnbPtUQEKiXHyiq7-oVc3UpUNzGsaryB3wCM-M15RoptAJhycfPPAmIj4Bs-t7MebSS7XuvxZ9d3ng4uypEHIoIg0PVDgruwH6UHFlnQo96uCFuE6r8wB_JvpJw/s50/big-logo.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="50" data-original-width="50" height="96" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEim6gLvo6Kuh76c5sh-OnbPtUQEKiXHyiq7-oVc3UpUNzGsaryB3wCM-M15RoptAJhycfPPAmIj4Bs-t7MebSS7XuvxZ9d3ng4uypEHIoIg0PVDgruwH6UHFlnQo96uCFuE6r8wB_JvpJw/w96-h96/big-logo.png" width="96" /></a>Of course the program was objecting to the <span style="color: red;"><b>passive verb "are" </b></span>It pays to keep in mind, ProWritingAid et al are sets of algorithms, perhaps a bit more sophisticated than most but still just programs. </p><p></p><p>And it seems to me the program does not yet have a handle on dialog. </p><p>ooroo</p><p><br /></p>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0Hampden Way, Strathalbyn SA 5255, Australia-35.2473053 138.8915645-35.247332680151132 138.8915309723873 -35.247277919848869 138.89159802761267tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-13591279715566655472020-10-05T21:48:00.008+09:302020-10-06T16:27:37.843+09:30The GRim Error Count <p>Once more unto the blog, gentle Readers, once more;<br />
Or finish the story up with our English words<br /></p><div style="text-align: right;">(with apologies to the Bard)</div><p></p>
<p>Now let me be clear from the start. I'm back unto the blog in an effort to promote my writing and lift my<span style="background-color: white;"> profile </span>a little above sea level. All post will now be solely about the writing and nothing but the writing.</p>
<p>My earlier trilogy of blogs begun in 2004 were meant to be about</p>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifTnKGRDqcS_LU2KV2jL3u-4VPUynGY8vaXg2FgXb4U90h0xEa3uZSqLK50y1lcS79jwMQ9r-oShkdacgug4_AC6AVLbfkpq6HounOhIr-k9aQd6QkuSjYk-upjVcfk0HiWUQ2oCZehqM/s200/That%2527s+Life.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: 20px; text-align: center;"><img alt="original blog" border="0" data-original-height="163" data-original-width="200" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifTnKGRDqcS_LU2KV2jL3u-4VPUynGY8vaXg2FgXb4U90h0xEa3uZSqLK50y1lcS79jwMQ9r-oShkdacgug4_AC6AVLbfkpq6HounOhIr-k9aQd6QkuSjYk-upjVcfk0HiWUQ2oCZehqM/w264-h261/That%2527s+Life.jpg" title="Original Blog" width="264" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The original Blog<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="color: #ffa400;">Life:</span></span> called "<i><span style="color: red;">That's Life</span></i>" subtitled 'A Baby Boomer's thoughts on the privilege of aging. (concerned as ever with maintaining my <br />(live donor) kidney transplant)' </p></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px; text-align: left;"><p><span style="background-color: black; color: #ffa400;">the Universe:</span> called "<i><span style="color: red;">A Writer's Blog</span></i>" and tagged: 'I write, therefore I am' survived until 2014 and the one you're reading now that I'm resurrecting. </p><p><span style="background-color: black; color: #ffa400;">and Everything:</span> called "<i><span style="color: red;">Eye of the Robot</span></i>" which was set up in 2004 and got its first post in 2007. I had such plans but it never really got off the ground. </p></blockquote><p>In the end due to failing kidneys and a transplant "<i>That's Life</i>" usurped "<i>Eye of the Robot</i>" which in 2015 was itself transplanted into "A Writer's Blog" (the 2004 entry is embedded in a 2007 post)</p>
<p>So, to begin again as I have begun so many times</p>
<p>gday gentle readers</p>
<p>I've been experimenting with<b><span style="color: #2b00fe;"> </span><span style="color: #351c75;">Pro Writing Aid</span><span style="color: #2b00fe;">.</span></b> I uploaded <i>The GRim</i>, a tongue-in-cheek satirical comedy, or perhaps a comical satire to ProWritingAid.com. (here-in-after PWA) This story analyser (free online to limited of 10,000 word) is supposedly the best thing since sliced bread for writers - assuming writers like sliced bread. Its definitely a step up from grammarly.com, which is only marginally better than words Grammar & Spelling checker.</p>
<p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgtXO8lwe5KWy8J3_6SCBY9Ue5_UxkReeHYV7cFSuWMt5k55-heGXOw1MFAwoQedxvIcThygxKMXYIfecEOq9r8uKxEySz2Mx7rIg0R-PS4_ZxpoU2JecGDh0StIyJAkUoOdgxwCF4LKA/s300/From+Out+Of+The+Dark+200.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="200" height="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgtXO8lwe5KWy8J3_6SCBY9Ue5_UxkReeHYV7cFSuWMt5k55-heGXOw1MFAwoQedxvIcThygxKMXYIfecEOq9r8uKxEySz2Mx7rIg0R-PS4_ZxpoU2JecGDh0StIyJAkUoOdgxwCF4LKA/w97-h145/From+Out+Of+The+Dark+200.jpg" width="97" /></a>The Grim @ 7000 words is one of my shorter stories, and it appears in the anthology <i>Out of the Dark</i>, edited by Robert N. Stephenson and published by Altair Australia Pty Ltd.</p>
<p>PWA found <span style="color: #351c75;"><b>256 errors,</b></span><span style="color: red;"> </span>divided thus: <span style="background-color: #01ffff;">160 grammar issues,</span> <span style="background-color: #fcff01;">63 style issues</span> and <span style="background-color: red;"><span style="color: white;">33 spelling issues</span></span> starting with "unusual capitalisation" in reference to the title The GRim. (as explained in the story GRim is how the characters of the story refer to their environment ~ the Galactic Rim) </p><p>As in most of these programs there is a choice of fixes. In this case "ignore" or "disable rule". I chose to ignored, until it popped up again. I then chose disable rule which PWA chose to ignore.</p><p>As with word, once I added character names to "my dictionary" the spelling issues dropped from 33 to 5. I'll discuss those 5 in my next post.</p><p>to be continued ...</p><p>ooroo for now </p>
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<p></p>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-71716452983372806142014-04-15T10:26:00.000+09:302014-04-15T10:34:14.964+09:30A Writer's Lost Thoughts <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">g'day gentle readers </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I dreamt last night I was a writer. (That's a first - I sometimes have the weirdest dreams or salacious ones, even boring ones but never in any of them, have I been a writer) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">The dream writer was in, metaphorically speaking, a dream location. A farm of magnificent beauty and scale much like a film set. (Recent visits to real film locations like Hobbiton and Monument Valley probably played into the setting. Me the dream writer took notes and photographs much the same as me the real writer does. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">And then me the dream writer had what all writers dream of, sudden inspiration and I dreamt up a solution to a problem, I the real writer has had from book one of the trilogy. At the same time, the dream solution provided the seed for a scene that will become the trilogy's epilogue. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Then I woke up. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br />Now let me digress a moment because the dream solution solved a problem that should never have existed. It arose out of the way I write. I start knowing only where I want to end and make it up as I go along. Problem is I often forget little but significant details made up on the spur of the moment (with good reason at the time) and dismissed until stumbled over during the edit, at which point I scratch my head and say, "What was I thinking?" <br /><br />For example from <b><span style="background-color: #ffe599; color: #990000;">Book 3: The Arch of Restoration.</span></b><br /> </span><br />
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"There seemed to be no end to the flickering torches, they filled the park, the roads and all the gaps between the houses. Jorgena had seen crowds before but this was something else; this was a population on the move, a vast flowing beast like a herd of Wilderbeef." </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF_wHZBrODC4iTOjbk63PKoZRcCoNlyptg5qqKv_e4u6moddBTgMKHTW7vDPTGyD41BgEhId_RLy3dGvENzFMon0hzZPojsOA5aL5HXqxHROCgl69eShqXZdmuOJu5wQbX8hnM3Cq0q8w/s1600/cover-the-Arch.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF_wHZBrODC4iTOjbk63PKoZRcCoNlyptg5qqKv_e4u6moddBTgMKHTW7vDPTGyD41BgEhId_RLy3dGvENzFMon0hzZPojsOA5aL5HXqxHROCgl69eShqXZdmuOJu5wQbX8hnM3Cq0q8w/s1600/cover-the-Arch.png" height="200" width="133" /></a><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Rowena: “I take it the relays are in place.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Jorgena: “Yes.” </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b style="background-color: white;">Author: "Relays? What relays?"</b><br /><br />As Sarah inspects the hull, she wonders why Jorgena went to such trouble to remove her implant but had no objection to her twin daughters having them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b style="background-color: white;">Author: "I'm with Sarah. Why?"</b><br /><br />Thanks to Burnell’s slip as he began the scanning process…<br /><b style="background-color: white;">Author: "What slip?"</b><br /><br />“Look on the bright side,” Jorgena said hiding her one true regret. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><b style="background-color: white;">Author: "Which regret was that?" </b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Now the problem the dream writer solved, which the real writer created at the start of the trilogy, was a headless body in a dam overflow pipe. The scene in Ch7 of Book 1 is a precipitating incident for a major POV character. The problem is - whose body is it, who killed them and how did it get there? </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6_mwYDfmwdukfVq_lp_3BP4rsNiw9VPXoxMLisivgOvz5_0zMPUCuBaX3GFEElAuitqymvoVzy6-WGokZwd-XLiHsqv0vjpB7FN9stos909PUB574jERx1PwdENlnITioYry6AoH3rqA/s1600/cover-the-Break-smaller.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6_mwYDfmwdukfVq_lp_3BP4rsNiw9VPXoxMLisivgOvz5_0zMPUCuBaX3GFEElAuitqymvoVzy6-WGokZwd-XLiHsqv0vjpB7FN9stos909PUB574jERx1PwdENlnITioYry6AoH3rqA/s1600/cover-the-Break-smaller.png" height="200" width="133" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">In creation, I had a few quick thoughts: I'll make it a bloke who is going to disappear anyway and have this person who is both mysterious and powerful do the deed - solved, forget until later, write on, 500,000 words to go. A</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> decade</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">and</span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">500 Kwords later, I have never revisited </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">the question </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">and the first reviewer of Book 1 wants to know who the body belongs to - so do I. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">The original thought for 'who' got blown away, he turns up alive in Bk3. There are no other logical contenders without unbelievable contrivance. It would be better to invent a character and integrate he/she into the story but that adds more words to a book that is way too long already. Secondly, the person I had in mind to do the deed would not leave a body. She has the resources to make a body vanish completely. Then there's the location where body turns up: on a farm in a dead end valley with a single track in. Who would be stupid enough to drag a body all that way then dump it where it is bound to be found. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">So like the above examples, I have to scratch my head and say, "What was I thinking?"</span> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">It plays on my mind and then my dream writer comes to the rescue and writes dream notes which when I wake and look for them, don't</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> exist. </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="color: #783f04;"><b>I do remember however, I have the answer</b></span> but of course, it's not something I want to reveal. </span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijUEWm_3A1o0SlIqK2vdOFz5jnr0FTj4Oc5nVTIq-nb3ScCSGCi1LZGjbv8fCImKpC6ZEd_fOFgQmncnKXxJnWArmAgBs_sBSg0MNtSvy7_7Q0pLCxQ4RpJgwEO7iX2ArsVLJkvmDJhPY/s1600/matrix.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; display: inline !important; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijUEWm_3A1o0SlIqK2vdOFz5jnr0FTj4Oc5nVTIq-nb3ScCSGCi1LZGjbv8fCImKpC6ZEd_fOFgQmncnKXxJnWArmAgBs_sBSg0MNtSvy7_7Q0pLCxQ4RpJgwEO7iX2ArsVLJkvmDJhPY/s1600/matrix.png" height="52" width="200" /></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Here's a hint: Think iconic phrase from </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><br />ooroo until my next post <br />RoB</span></div>
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I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-924617762908590532014-02-25T10:23:00.000+09:302014-02-25T10:36:19.795+09:30Done ... almost <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">g'day gentle readers </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">The title sums up. The summary is done ... almost. As posted on Facebook the result was somewhat uneven and unexpected </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; color: red; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">of the 58,854 word summary for the 581,270 word trilogy</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fce5cd; color: red; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Bk 1: 8,312 / Bk 2: 18,883 / Bk 3: 31,659 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I started summarising chapters and ended summarising paragraphs, so now I'm summarising the summary from book 2 trying to get them all under 10 Kwords. As I say, done ... almost. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">The exercise however, condensing the work to 10%, covering years of effort in a couple months, was useful. Some passages jumped out and smacked me in the face. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6_mwYDfmwdukfVq_lp_3BP4rsNiw9VPXoxMLisivgOvz5_0zMPUCuBaX3GFEElAuitqymvoVzy6-WGokZwd-XLiHsqv0vjpB7FN9stos909PUB574jERx1PwdENlnITioYry6AoH3rqA/s1600/cover-the-Break-smaller.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNjbgzQPMFHMFYoE7gWvrdMMBHDwuLNc-JO4sD5NicyV6D2ufZCo_-OWZ_3N0T0vuln5FHUNoMEFco6hd5S-IiHIy8Uh8TZzCpbnxS24K-naPEJphqyMntc-Q0BPjnaWooOT_n2Udmrdg/s1600/cover-the-Face-small%25281%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNjbgzQPMFHMFYoE7gWvrdMMBHDwuLNc-JO4sD5NicyV6D2ufZCo_-OWZ_3N0T0vuln5FHUNoMEFco6hd5S-IiHIy8Uh8TZzCpbnxS24K-naPEJphqyMntc-Q0BPjnaWooOT_n2Udmrdg/s1600/cover-the-Face-small%25281%2529.png" height="200" width="133" /></a><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">For example: I</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">n <b><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: #990000;">Book 2 FACE</span></b>, I</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> deliberately created</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">a villain (Hyatt), easier and more fun to write than a hero. Then as I summarised the second half of book 3 ARCH, I was struck by how many enemies the poor guy now had. He has to die (the reader will expect it) but I'm hard pressed to settle on which character will do the deed, and satisfy the reader that justice has been done; everyone in book 3 wants to, including his mother.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Again during the summary some of my vague ideas gelled as I got a grip on story as a whole. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6_mwYDfmwdukfVq_lp_3BP4rsNiw9VPXoxMLisivgOvz5_0zMPUCuBaX3GFEElAuitqymvoVzy6-WGokZwd-XLiHsqv0vjpB7FN9stos909PUB574jERx1PwdENlnITioYry6AoH3rqA/s1600/cover-the-Break-smaller.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6_mwYDfmwdukfVq_lp_3BP4rsNiw9VPXoxMLisivgOvz5_0zMPUCuBaX3GFEElAuitqymvoVzy6-WGokZwd-XLiHsqv0vjpB7FN9stos909PUB574jERx1PwdENlnITioYry6AoH3rqA/s1600/cover-the-Break-smaller.png" height="200" width="133" /></a><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">For example: Way back (both in time & words) in <span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: #660000;"><b>Book 1 BREAK</b></span>, I put in a scene where Averil wields two named swords, Willard's and her own. This isn't supposed to be possible with swords keyed to the user. The scene and its problem were left to be dealt with at some future date once the rest was written. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Later I settled on keying the sword to the users DNA in such a way that a close relative (i.e. parent|sibling|child) could also use the sword but that meant I had to make Willard and Averil siblings. That became a new problem; the crux of this tale is these two having a child destined to save the world.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF_wHZBrODC4iTOjbk63PKoZRcCoNlyptg5qqKv_e4u6moddBTgMKHTW7vDPTGyD41BgEhId_RLy3dGvENzFMon0hzZPojsOA5aL5HXqxHROCgl69eShqXZdmuOJu5wQbX8hnM3Cq0q8w/s1600/cover-the-Arch.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF_wHZBrODC4iTOjbk63PKoZRcCoNlyptg5qqKv_e4u6moddBTgMKHTW7vDPTGyD41BgEhId_RLy3dGvENzFMon0hzZPojsOA5aL5HXqxHROCgl69eShqXZdmuOJu5wQbX8hnM3Cq0q8w/s1600/cover-the-Arch.png" height="200" width="133" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">But then during the summarising of <span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: #990000;"><b>Book 3 ARCH</b></span> it became clear what needed to happen and the solution to that problem cleared a heap of other niggling problems throughout books 1, 2 and 3.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Come now, you really don't expect me to reveal the solution </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">ahead of publication. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">'ooroo until my next post </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">RoB</span>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;"><br />
</span> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">As usual despite what life throws my way I do progres, I write (as in summarise, which inevitably includes writing) daily - almost (I did lose 2 days)</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">chapters</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">words</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> <span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">done </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> 322 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">477,163 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> <span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">to do</span> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> 59 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">104,070 </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">I'm now summarising the last part of the trilogy's seven parts? </span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><span style="font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">ooroo until my next post (once the summary is finished)</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: 15px; line-height: 20.790000915527344px;">RoB</span></span>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-67984116161680908262014-01-29T22:25:00.000+09:302014-01-29T22:49:29.151+09:30Revised Standard Edition<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">g'day gentle readers </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">On the day of my last post I reached the first of the two milestone (</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">perhaps millstones) </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">highlighted below .</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv43prxKu-3l9tlTgZJ1wWsYSbBPWLCOvvaEX3_2AJAXeIE6hRoeXt7qxJJ8VtXiVNhaO-HyMmdl6Bk3r9QBHsda0pewhIK6aS_DKOCnk_ojdp3TLGMc3vx2Oz39O5VUA6eafF5TwRFTs/s1600/rsv2.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv43prxKu-3l9tlTgZJ1wWsYSbBPWLCOvvaEX3_2AJAXeIE6hRoeXt7qxJJ8VtXiVNhaO-HyMmdl6Bk3r9QBHsda0pewhIK6aS_DKOCnk_ojdp3TLGMc3vx2Oz39O5VUA6eafF5TwRFTs/s1600/rsv2.png" height="161" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">If only I understood </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">what it all meant. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">The red bits not highlighted are my attempts to clarify what I think I meant. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">To understand how this happened I must plunge into history for a s</span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">alutary lesson in how not to write a novel -</span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> <u>not slow</u>.</span><br />
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</span> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga_tsvVmqzJKankLvpIby0RcMp3IJBli9nwyFBlIuWNGhCaV1DzVuaRxEe_ip29Y1GxaATW6fhx0HzkWqsN1hhmMBosgKJb_J2fmOoX7yWX-tyr8x9AwomRyW5fTJsl2xfP1HjfJdeTQ4/s1600/cover-the-Face-small.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga_tsvVmqzJKankLvpIby0RcMp3IJBli9nwyFBlIuWNGhCaV1DzVuaRxEe_ip29Y1GxaATW6fhx0HzkWqsN1hhmMBosgKJb_J2fmOoX7yWX-tyr8x9AwomRyW5fTJsl2xfP1HjfJdeTQ4/s1600/cover-the-Face-small.png" /></a><span style="color: red;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Book 2: </span><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">FACE</span><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"><span style="background-color: white;"> (The Face of the Goddess) </span>started well, </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">with the </span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">exhilaration of finishing <span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red;">Book 1: </span></span><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">BREAK</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">, which took only a year to write, still </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">fresh</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> in my mind. </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">I had six chapters approx 30K words done when w</span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">e decided to move back from to Adelaide from Sydney.</span><br />
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</span> <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPN5YmcmzJ2tTMKvhPuuXs3Ay7OEFFskdVLCAAbWUs8pYOWEf-7F0WEcfTHeYkspE5xsI2rzHcs8hjHgr1AAZETONiA6OBIgVwC_KGenOZxnPYOsbx9wryeKjJIl4ibVjpQqJXIFFdOC4/s1600/config.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPN5YmcmzJ2tTMKvhPuuXs3Ay7OEFFskdVLCAAbWUs8pYOWEf-7F0WEcfTHeYkspE5xsI2rzHcs8hjHgr1AAZETONiA6OBIgVwC_KGenOZxnPYOsbx9wryeKjJIl4ibVjpQqJXIFFdOC4/s1600/config.jpg" style="cursor: move;" /></a><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">We started a 7-day business and the writing slowed to a dribble. At the same time a health issue I'd had since age 10 reared up so I had an operation, we closed the business and my condition steadily worsened but <a href="http://rob-bleckly.blogspot.com.au/" style="background-color: #cfe2f3;" target="_blank">That's Life</a> <span style="font-size: x-small;">(my other blog)</span>. What I did not understand at the time however was the illness was </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">slowing</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> my mind, </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">not just </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">my body.</span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">A bookshop on weekends and</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">a postal agency Monday-Friday</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">a writer's studio not ever </span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"></span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">The shop had made the writing stop-start but by the time I was free of that my mind was on the blink and the story boldly went where no story should go. I didn't like it, I chopped and changed, inserted 50K words before the original 6 chapters. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Several times I stopped altogether to edit and submit <span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red;">BREAK</span> or edit parts of <span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red;">FACE</span>, drew up timelines, character sheets, glossaries, outlines and even managed a few very short stories (published by <span style="color: #38761d;"><b><a href="http://antisf.com.au/" style="background-color: #cfe2f3;">AntipodeanSF</a></b></span>) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Then I made one of those pebble-in-the-pond authorial decisions, which </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">ripple</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">throughout a manuscript - I changed</span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> the nature and d</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">irection</span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> of several POV character such that the entirety </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">of the</span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> finale, </span><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Book 3: ARCH</span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> shifts a generation.(my original plan)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I restarted the edit with that in mind, changing as required. Problem was that half the time </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">(due to the earlier edits) </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">I didn't have a clue if a change was required. </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Try reading a novel at one sentence per fortnight and you'll get the idea. One tends to lose track of who's doing what with whom.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was working at glacial speed. <span style="font-size: x-small;">(pre globally-warmed glaciers of course)</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Writing/Editing </span><span style="font-size: large;"><b><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red;">FACE</span></b></span><span style="font-size: large;"> </span><span style="font-size: large;">stretched over a decade. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Some individual scenes are good, an occasional chapter is not bad but the separate parts do fit together well and the edit of it got bogged trying to reconcile the mismatches. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I gave up at </span><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">FACE</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">chapter 105 where it says <b><span style="background-color: yellow; color: #990000;">Full edit to here</span></b></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I now ditched </span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">the arbitrary </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">chapter </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">divisions, called each POV change a scene, renumbered the lot and started editing from scratch - Book 1 Chapter 1 - tweaking events to produce the new </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">story arc/</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">thread I wanted through </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red;">FACE</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> and </span><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">ARCH</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">. </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">This time </span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">I got to scene 99 in </span><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">FACE</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">where it says <b><span style="background-color: yellow; color: #990000;">Revised edit to here</span></b></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> ... and life </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">again </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">got in the way. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Forward to the Past: Post transplant and life back to normal. </span></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">I wrote <span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red;">Book 3: ARCH</span> in one year. The trilogy was done and now to edit. <span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red;">BREAK</span> took a month. But </span><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">FACE</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> ah, there's the rub </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">So back in the now</span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> after a long break and needing to come to grips with the sour tale </span><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">FACE</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> had become I resorted to a </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">desperate measure * </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace; font-size: large; text-align: center;">outlining</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> * to integrate </span><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">FACE</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">into a <i><b>revised standard edition</b></i>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">As to said outlining, I'm at scene 23 of </span><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red; font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Book 3: ARCH</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> past the trilogy's dread sagging middle called </span><span style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: red; font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">FACE</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">. Only in outline mind, the edit is still to come. I'll try to keep you posted. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">ooroo until next time </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Rob</span>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-89645192739382135282014-01-21T07:57:00.001+09:302014-01-21T07:57:32.708+09:30Out of the Starting Gate<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">gday gentle readers </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">As I indicated last time 2014 has begun and I can </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">now</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">say with confidence <b>begun well</b>. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga_tsvVmqzJKankLvpIby0RcMp3IJBli9nwyFBlIuWNGhCaV1DzVuaRxEe_ip29Y1GxaATW6fhx0HzkWqsN1hhmMBosgKJb_J2fmOoX7yWX-tyr8x9AwomRyW5fTJsl2xfP1HjfJdeTQ4/s1600/cover-the-Face-small.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga_tsvVmqzJKankLvpIby0RcMp3IJBli9nwyFBlIuWNGhCaV1DzVuaRxEe_ip29Y1GxaATW6fhx0HzkWqsN1hhmMBosgKJb_J2fmOoX7yWX-tyr8x9AwomRyW5fTJsl2xfP1HjfJdeTQ4/s1600/cover-the-Face-small.png" /></a><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">When I left off way back in May last year to do other things like web work and travel </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">I had edited 90% of F</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">ace (book 2 a.k.a. "The Face of the Goddess") and I was </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">struggling. </span><span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">When I say left off in May, that was the end point, the dummy spit, after the effort had dribbled off from a </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">weekly</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> edit </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">15,000-20,000 words to</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> only 1000. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">It's hard now to remember exactly why but it was something like this: despite all my spreadsheets, glossaries and maps I had quite literally lost the plot. I had no idea what the story was about, and remember I was editing a finished work, I had no right to be lost.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">So how do I cram the essence of my sprawling epic back into my tiny brain after a long break. I have </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><b>382 POV changes</b> over the 3 books, call them chapters: <span style="background-color: #f4cccc;">Break 152,</span> <span style="background-color: #b6d7a8;">Face 120,</span> <span style="background-color: #ffe599;">Arch 110.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New;">Last time I tried to summarise the events of each chapter in a spreadsheet</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> but it was too slow, </span><span style="font-family: Courier New;">too unwieldy I needed both the spreadsheet and the novel open and synchronised. Read and digest the chapter, transfer the gist of it to the sheet. </span><span style="font-family: Courier New;">The problem is me, I get carried away </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">with spreadsheets.</span><span style="font-family: Courier New;"> I divided the chapters into mini scenes, put in columns for 'characters mentioned' and for 'new concepts introduced'. Filling the columns required research; </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">too slow, too hard, too damn stupid for words.</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">I'm trialling a new approach. I saved </span><span style="font-family: Courier New;">a copy of the trilogy </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">as at 1/1/2014, </span><span style="font-family: Courier New;">set it up in outline </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">using 3 levels of headings f</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">or book, </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">part</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">and chapter.</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">(</span><span style="background-color: #b6d7a8;"><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Face has 3 </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">parts</span></span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> -</span><span style="font-family: Courier New;"> the others have 2) </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Now</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> </span><span style="font-family: Courier New;">I </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">simply delete each paragraph that isn't essential </span><br />
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<b style="font-family: 'Courier New';"><span style="font-size: large;">to the story line</span> </b></div>
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">as I go. W</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">hat's left, I cull of needless words and re-arrange as the summary. This will
also serve as an outline for my publishers :^)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New;">The old method took me two weeks to do 24 Kwords. At that rate to summarise the trilogy would take a year, not editing mind just summarising</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> to guide the edit. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New;">With the method I'm trialling, I did more (</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">27 Kwords)</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> in the first </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">4 hours</span><span style="font-family: Courier New;">. It's about as fast as I can read and I can already see where changes need to made. Read like this, with an eye for the essence of each chapter, inconsistencies pop out.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New;">addendum</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New;">As of this post 20 days later the trial is over I'm using it and have summarised 60% of the trilogy. Book 1 was a breeze, book 2 to date a slog. I've come to the conclusion that </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">little of book 2 is salvageable.</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> (not unexpected all things considered) Cant wait to deconstruct Book 3. </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New';"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">'ooroo </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">until my next post</span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Rob</span><br />
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I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-59263866207880299232014-01-01T10:37:00.002+09:302014-01-02T21:29:08.934+09:30And so it begins ...<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;">Forgive me gentle readers, for I have lapsed. It has been nine months since my last post.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">My trilogy of new year's resolutions, as posted on </span><a href="https://www.facebook.com/rob.bleckly" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Facebook</a><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> to ensure people will remind me, is to write, write & write. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">(There's 50 words already 52 now 53.) Sorry about that, I don't intend the writing to be trivial but as always I will count and record progress.</span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">I find simply counting and recording what I actually do is reward enough. </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">This year however, I won't set <b>word targets</b>. For me Word targets encourage padding, as has happened in all three of my books where I set a target length for each scene, each scene being a new POV, 3 POV scenes to a chapter. Some scenes end up nothing but padding because the scenes POV character had nothing to say or do that made any difference to the story. Word targets were useful when I started but they have outlived their usefulness.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">That said I have set a few specific goals for 2014. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> 1. Editing the <a href="http://www.rob.bleckly.com/legends5.html">trilogy</a> will be finished this year - I'm aiming for the 30th June 2014 so I can spend the next 6 months promoting it. </span><br />
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<a href="http://www.rob.bleckly.com/legends5.html"><img border="0" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtejNU6pxNnOGumqtyExqhDJ4NPrKJV9-OlQtKe3WS19p6ErdqY8PAWZSllTAtCIb26rLwqjZyBAnyas7Tpgfnkoe0zB-BLwaIoc6ixNUX3ihQ-jDbFFRr9ivrR1Uk9y-7QHHzKXp9dsI/s1600/trilogy2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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</span> <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> 2. I will also complete the 4 short stories I had in mind that are set in the universe of the trilogy and precede the events in the novels. They are as much to help me solidify the background to the trilogy. One is in first draft, another started and the other two mentally planned. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;"> 3. I will blog the progress - monthly at the very least - I have already reduced my attendance to the writers group to once a month (It's a 45 mins drive both ways - costly in time and tires). The other Monday nights will reserved for writing / blogging / editing - whichever is top of the to-do list at the time. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">Anyhow that's the dream. </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;"></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 16px;">"You gotta have a dream, if you don't have a dream,</span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;">How you gonna have a dream come true?" </span><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: proxnov-reg, arial, sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"> <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">South Pacific - Happy Talk </span></i></span></div>
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</span> <span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">and so it </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">begins </span><span style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">... another year, another story.</span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">'ooroo until my next post </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Courier New, Courier, monospace;">RoB</span></div>
I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-47973866581434295182013-04-08T16:38:00.001+09:302013-04-08T16:43:19.516+09:30The story so far<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">gday gentle readers </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">A short end-of-week-14 progress report </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> I'm now behind editing book 2 and cant see any way of catching up as I'm about to make radical changes to the last quarter of it (about 50,000 words) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> I will post later about what, when, where, how and why the changes will be made. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> Suffice to say most of it was written just before my transplant when my kidney function was down to 17% and my toxic mind was poisoning my pen ( er .. keyboard )</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> but progress there has been </span></div>
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<li><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><b>109%</b> of <b><span style="color: #990000;">Break </span></b>(<span style="font-size: small;">finished with 9% more than I started )</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><b>72%</b> of <span style="font-size: small;"><b><span style="color: #990000;">Face </span></b>(the current task)</span></span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><b>6%</b> of <b><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-size: small;">Arch </span></span></b><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">(</span>as I edit what I read to my writers group )</span></span></span></li>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtejNU6pxNnOGumqtyExqhDJ4NPrKJV9-OlQtKe3WS19p6ErdqY8PAWZSllTAtCIb26rLwqjZyBAnyas7Tpgfnkoe0zB-BLwaIoc6ixNUX3ihQ-jDbFFRr9ivrR1Uk9y-7QHHzKXp9dsI/s1600/trilogy2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtejNU6pxNnOGumqtyExqhDJ4NPrKJV9-OlQtKe3WS19p6ErdqY8PAWZSllTAtCIb26rLwqjZyBAnyas7Tpgfnkoe0zB-BLwaIoc6ixNUX3ihQ-jDbFFRr9ivrR1Uk9y-7QHHzKXp9dsI/s200/trilogy2.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> Trilogy overall 58% </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">ooroo until my next post </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">RoB</span>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-75150618857041537622013-03-12T10:25:00.000+09:302013-03-12T11:14:02.018+09:30Shank's Pony<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">gday gentle reader</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">(My last post, "Oh! the pain" was published? or re-published? Friday, I <span style="font-size: x-small;">don't</span> know which. When I began this one I found it sitting in the blogosphere in draft. This one has suffered a similar fate. It was drafted late Friday on a long weekend (in South Australia) hence it is only getting edited and published today 3 days later - life gets in the way of my writings - frequently)</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">I don't care what colour it is, forget the horse I'll walk. The two most important lessons I learned/learnt (choose your own) from the Voyager submission were</span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">F</span>irstly</span> - the editing method that suits me best is the same as I used to write the damn thing - I need to set a solid achievable deadline and daily/weekly milestones by which I can measure my progress. It's a common business ploy that works for me.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6_mwYDfmwdukfVq_lp_3BP4rsNiw9VPXoxMLisivgOvz5_0zMPUCuBaX3GFEElAuitqymvoVzy6-WGokZwd-XLiHsqv0vjpB7FN9stos909PUB574jERx1PwdENlnITioYry6AoH3rqA/s1600/cover-the-Break-smaller.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6_mwYDfmwdukfVq_lp_3BP4rsNiw9VPXoxMLisivgOvz5_0zMPUCuBaX3GFEElAuitqymvoVzy6-WGokZwd-XLiHsqv0vjpB7FN9stos909PUB574jERx1PwdENlnITioYry6AoH3rqA/s200/cover-the-Break-smaller.png" width="133" /></a></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">However with this book [book 1 "Break"] the Voyager deadline was too tight. I was fooling myself that it was ready to publish and all it needed was a tidy up. I was wrong (I often am). During the <span style="font-size: small;">edit</span> I uncovered highlighted notes throughout the book suggesting "needs more" "rework this" "new scene here" Notes <span style="font-size: small;">I</span> had forgotten even existed. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">The fact that I did get it done and send it off, is testament to my wife's forbearance. As said in my last post "</span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">midnight oil was burnt - rest of life put on hold.</span></span>" </span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">Secondly - by reading the novel thoroughly (</span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">looking for places to tighten it) </span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">in a compressed time frame with nothing allowed to distract I got a much better sense of the story as a whole; probably for the first time since writing it. </span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">So two </span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"> weeks ago I </span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">set a new deadline <span style="font-size: small;">t</span>o finish editing the trilogy on 31st July this year 2013 and divied up the remaining work ( stopped - while I fretted and waited for the voyager result). </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">Yesterday I caught up the backlog and went into the black for the first time. Today I stayed there. I'm not fussed by the number per se, I edit to the nearest POV change that keeps it black. </span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXFaPxXKXUgDRg71sCkDHm35LXXYhQbPVIUThykR4uh-Qs093FnnyCcVuBslUE8tpnZBmz4SXdvw_8Aq-KMkpKnKsXtv0brHgg51fXTfJ1uY2eUIOUaGpuV9pkqk5tLa9fQWR5EIfFtUw/s1600/progress.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXFaPxXKXUgDRg71sCkDHm35LXXYhQbPVIUThykR4uh-Qs093FnnyCcVuBslUE8tpnZBmz4SXdvw_8Aq-KMkpKnKsXtv0brHgg51fXTfJ1uY2eUIOUaGpuV9pkqk5tLa9fQWR5EIfFtUw/s400/progress.PNG" width="400" /></a> By coincidence I am almost half way (49%) through editing book 2 and the whole trilogy at the same time. What continues to alarm me however is the size of each keeps growing. I thought editing meant cutting. (simultaneously </span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">I <span style="font-size: small;">occasionally</span> </span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">edit the scenes of book 3 that I want to parse through my writers group - hence a mild increase there) </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">The only figure in the seemingly complex <span style="font-size: small;">tracking sheet </span>I alter <span style="color: #666666;">at <span style="color: black;">the end of each writing day </span><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="color: black;">is</span> </span></span> <span style="background-color: yellow;"><span style="color: #990000;"> new total </span></span> the rest is automatic. <span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: small;">T</span></span>he <span style="color: #990000;"><span style="background-color: #ea9999;"> edited total </span></span> for <span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #666666;">bk2</span></span> only gets adjusted when I think about it. O<span style="font-size: small;">n</span> a daily basis it's up and down like<span style="font-size: small;"> </span>a yo-yo. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: small;">O</span>ne day when this <span style="font-size: small;">trilogy is <span style="font-size: small;">properly publi<span style="font-size: small;">shed<span style="font-size: small;"> I will look back and marvel at the <span style="font-size: small;">Machiavellian</span> machinations I had to use, to convince <i>myself</i>, to get <span style="font-size: small;">on with it and get </span>it do<span style="font-size: small;">ne<span style="font-size: small;">.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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</span></span> <span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">ooroo until my next post</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">rob</span></span><br />
<br />I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-22577516717363433382013-01-24T13:18:00.001+09:302013-03-08T21:04:00.100+09:30"Oh, the Pain,"<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqmf_qnv96JlLfSDbJCdGKuj73U8bs58VXcgn8-BfvOI6sPx81XXWzJ08yvPu-0mzeGJjegSgZnfCZjYgHAyByjkMrn9KPppHOvNXsIBfBsn-6JecTb0PEn1oGyCT34pceTE1aenis4D0/s1600/the+pain.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqmf_qnv96JlLfSDbJCdGKuj73U8bs58VXcgn8-BfvOI6sPx81XXWzJ08yvPu-0mzeGJjegSgZnfCZjYgHAyByjkMrn9KPppHOvNXsIBfBsn-6JecTb0PEn1oGyCT34pceTE1aenis4D0/s1600/the+pain.png" /></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">as Dr Smith <i>Lost in Space</i> <span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">said </span>frequently. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">gday gentle reader</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">, </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> back in October last year I posted that I had</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">"205,000 word to edit in 10 days, leaving a couple for the synopsis and query letter. 20,500 a day - midnight oil was burnt - rest of life put on hold. It got done, it got sent. It is not as good as I would have sent if I had continued as I was."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">That was Book 1 out there at last, and while I waited I thought to edit Books 2 & 3, just in case. As November and December evaporated I slowed down. Then Xmas got in the way. The editing slowed further as the deadline for a result approached. I watched the site daily for an update and </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">frequently </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">checked my emails.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Such is the nature of <b>Hope </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Last night</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">, while I was sleeping (perchance dreaming of publication) I received their boringly standard polite rejection.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu__ctjuYUU1XyAljDXdclplLVT5595dcGK0YMqCwXf0hz7hIM9WXPMTcFKKDa-NT56wI9g3lIaaBRtk1lWIFzhovmFr9sH5S9IxZN-ynhSymx-fcKefQSFB6GYvNgmoGEat6BjuKLFCc/s1600/reject.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu__ctjuYUU1XyAljDXdclplLVT5595dcGK0YMqCwXf0hz7hIM9WXPMTcFKKDa-NT56wI9g3lIaaBRtk1lWIFzhovmFr9sH5S9IxZN-ynhSymx-fcKefQSFB6GYvNgmoGEat6BjuKLFCc/s1600/reject.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Despite that writers have (or should have) an expectation of rejection, when it comes it is not without a degree of pain, the mild pain of disappointed hopes, as Zachary's expression "Oh, the pain." exemplifies.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Don't get me wrong I really appreciated the fantastic opportunity to submit my manuscript direct to a potential publisher. the result though not as I might wish, is nonetheless enlightening. Their <span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;">"thorough and fair consideration"</span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="background-color: #d9d2e9;"></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> means the work needs work. </span></span></div>
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<b><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">I knew that. Its good but it aint yet polished to high gloss. </span></span></span></b></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">I posted my result to facebook (as one does these days).</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">"</span><span class="userContent">Yippee I just received my first rejection for 'Break' - 19 to go ...</span><br />
<span class="userContent"> </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2rxqBopXXeXXozIjhuWuW31LGDW1N3DTb7mhQCxC_ebyd5TmCa_gzwmTEsnf1qOPgCUA-Qm_rxM3SCp4nMOFrvn7L08OsrNHcl7JE9c40p2I2_yOEJ4gcZ3lpWZgKoMtlFGzk9K-nA8o/s1600/Jo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2rxqBopXXeXXozIjhuWuW31LGDW1N3DTb7mhQCxC_ebyd5TmCa_gzwmTEsnf1qOPgCUA-Qm_rxM3SCp4nMOFrvn7L08OsrNHcl7JE9c40p2I2_yOEJ4gcZ3lpWZgKoMtlFGzk9K-nA8o/s1600/Jo.png" /></a></div>
<span class="userContent"> <span class="userContent">Now I can get back to editing it properly.
(i.e. the trilogy as single unified story.) write better, edit harder,
submit elsewhere.</span> " </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">One, long-time writing colleague responded and I replied - Here is our exchange of approaches to publishing</span>.<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">I'm cynical enough to agree with Jo but I want to try the traditional avenue's first - I'll see how I feel after a few more rejections. <br /> </span><br />
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</span> <span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">ooroo until my next post </span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">RoB </span>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-41630244036404853382012-10-19T10:28:00.001+09:302012-10-19T10:30:18.009+09:30A horse of different colour<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">gday gentle reader </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;">Taking a quote from my novel, and extending the <i>wriding </i>metaphor of my last post, <span style="line-height: 200%;"><i><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="color: black;">"First rule of mounted troops, care for your animal or
walk."</span> </span> </i>The animal I had been riding was the <b><span style="color: #cc0000;">trilogy</span> </b>but I got back on a horse of different colour,<b> </b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"><span style="color: black;">a new</span></span><b><span style="color: #6aa84f;"> <span style="color: blue;">short story</span></span></b>, and paid scant attention to the one that had carried me so many miles. At the time the theory seemed sound - to quote from last post - </span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"> </span></span></span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgTgUU3AG4cfFjmXW7UD7FW0AxR0VxJF854PT5r_lmioR97krOAIsvCZgVKshL4tiyyurim0raPVaMweTuCplwqhxbmGAElsKrGBItZADK5sdzHJtv6nLIpzom_C7v7gnWKG-MYr-VjIY/s1600/quote.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgTgUU3AG4cfFjmXW7UD7FW0AxR0VxJF854PT5r_lmioR97krOAIsvCZgVKshL4tiyyurim0raPVaMweTuCplwqhxbmGAElsKrGBItZADK5sdzHJtv6nLIpzom_C7v7gnWKG-MYr-VjIY/s1600/quote.png" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">It worked until I finished the short story,</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"> <span style="font-size: small;">which then had to edited</span></span></b> - oops.</span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"> I now had two animals needing attention and I was walking, it all became too hard, <span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">I fell off - again. </span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"> </span></span></span> <span style="line-height: 200%;">And that's about as far as this silly metaphor will stretch without surpassing it elastic limit.</span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><b>Then <span style="color: red;">Harper Voyager</span> opened their transom for <span style="color: red;">unsolicited manuscripts </span>for 14 days a magnificent opportunity too good to miss</b>. </span> </span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRZ3lAXekqrE-Skq4u8CZlFQ2DjEJN1k5IMhOg9fyYF7qfPg5y-wVrpsRNPQDwDZPnkAs1iLZHYwt8ybYIfzVR6DzIt6it95urevdBiaOt6Z4O87tZVoUOHgp0FdaOdViuFvwMvZQ5KKI/s1600/voyager.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="245" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRZ3lAXekqrE-Skq4u8CZlFQ2DjEJN1k5IMhOg9fyYF7qfPg5y-wVrpsRNPQDwDZPnkAs1iLZHYwt8ybYIfzVR6DzIt6it95urevdBiaOt6Z4O87tZVoUOHgp0FdaOdViuFvwMvZQ5KKI/s400/voyager.jpg" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">205,000 word to edit in 10 days, leaving a couple for the synopsis and query letter. </span></span></span></span>20,500 a day - midnight oil was burnt - rest of life put on hold.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"> </span></span></span></span>It got done, it got sent.</span> </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">It is not as good as I would have sent if I had continued as I was. I now think however that with out the impetus of Harper/Voyager's deadline it might never have got finished. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">There was so much more I wanted to do. For example the story takes place over a year. I have a chart with every POV characters birthday marked. Another has the daily temperature and rainfall for every day of the year. telling details which never got used. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">Then (of course) as soon as it was sent I found an error on the first page - consecutive snatches of dialogue from the same character and the response from the other character in the scene (supposed to be between those snatches) was missing. </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: small;">I now have a new editing philosophy, which works the same for me as the </span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: small;">"write</span></span></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: small;"> book three</span></span></span></span></span> in a year" did to get the trilogy finished, </span></span></span></span></span><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifhFN-Gt82N2Nm1Rw8cRe16JCjdPXKIgkvEVh8g8Dlxqmsv8FisqkR35I2OL5Y76qeVqiAJx4BZBOYZ_4dz5arTebVXDFU0tRnHnxBomWUA_x5RYlEXs6chUGfHKxKXtiKXs2CBPBeSc0/s1600/editing.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifhFN-Gt82N2Nm1Rw8cRe16JCjdPXKIgkvEVh8g8Dlxqmsv8FisqkR35I2OL5Y76qeVqiAJx4BZBOYZ_4dz5arTebVXDFU0tRnHnxBomWUA_x5RYlEXs6chUGfHKxKXtiKXs2CBPBeSc0/s320/editing.png" width="320" /></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="font-size: small;">to wit: For book two I've given myself until the end of the year to edit it (overly generous I now think) The total words divided by number of days give me a daily target to edit. Since today's target was reached yesterday I had time to blog about it today </span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">ooroo until my next post </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"><span style="line-height: 200%;">Rob</span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="line-height: 200%;"> </span></span></span>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-78331924581612506342012-09-07T13:08:00.000+09:302015-09-07T22:10:43.658+09:30Now You Tell Me? G'day <br /><br />Last Thursday by invitation (they made me an offer I couldn't refuse) I had an MRI, that's the tunnel one on the left not to be confused with doughnut shaped CT scanner on the right.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdvehOUsPRi10cSbPpf8v6GyDooMfDQz8m9iwiLH3_G6O9Qs-DGMvK9jdEsfAu7wKxuCdTL47K1QwYQArS_aoo7KF_2o56Df20FShrVwo2apYLlY7mDD0awInA70mi1lKgo-8ES2Q90eY/s1600/MRI.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdvehOUsPRi10cSbPpf8v6GyDooMfDQz8m9iwiLH3_G6O9Qs-DGMvK9jdEsfAu7wKxuCdTL47K1QwYQArS_aoo7KF_2o56Df20FShrVwo2apYLlY7mDD0awInA70mi1lKgo-8ES2Q90eY/s200/MRI.png" width="180" /></a></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUDIQUU_2PQcCR2LP2hqfr8ZBs6VvXBUs6vqTgpQye-qvsmHayf8uJdPlp16IsGkFegOvjeG0r4f5CBzcEWxtqj0WKKQf8fPJ-LzKQACXWg9nLEOewSBNLbTbpoWaRXOzCr-NBhhRZluQ/s1600/CT.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUDIQUU_2PQcCR2LP2hqfr8ZBs6VvXBUs6vqTgpQye-qvsmHayf8uJdPlp16IsGkFegOvjeG0r4f5CBzcEWxtqj0WKKQf8fPJ-LzKQACXWg9nLEOewSBNLbTbpoWaRXOzCr-NBhhRZluQ/s200/CT.png" width="180" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">See the difference? Me Neither. It's all in the technology: Magnets or X-rays</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Anyhow the reason for it is I passed the two year mark in may. Thanks to my wife's magnificent gift of a Kidney, I'm now in my third year of a full life (not the half-life of Dialysis) . </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Here's the offer (badly scanned) </span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSSd7_lYRGET6nk1iHR0es1rsig-8va4KLAFQCZaoYllaawF213V08dQAhEKsEMOQsfUj4p_KPI80458wjd5MoT1hkZSQArr5CtqaW__6MATayFAsZhEkir4_aUB5QoJIh5dnuy7REmiw/s1600/offer.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="80" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSSd7_lYRGET6nk1iHR0es1rsig-8va4KLAFQCZaoYllaawF213V08dQAhEKsEMOQsfUj4p_KPI80458wjd5MoT1hkZSQArr5CtqaW__6MATayFAsZhEkir4_aUB5QoJIh5dnuy7REmiw/s320/offer.png" width="320" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The fine print under the heading </span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="background-color: #fff2cc;"><span style="color: #cc0000;"> <b><span style="font-size: small;">Heart Disease in Renal Transplant </span></b></span></span></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> </span></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Heart disease ...<b> leading cause of death</b> ...in ... kidney transplant recipients ... </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">whoa<span style="font-size: x-small;">,</span> say that again? </span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><b>leading cause of death</b> ...in ... kidney transplant recipients ... </span></span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Okay, okay no need to shout </span> </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><u>highest in the first 5 years post transplant</u> ... even ... with no prior history of heart disease. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">By 3 years ... 40% of kidney transplant people <span style="color: yellow;">( I think they mean recipients not the doctors and nurses)</span> have experienced a heart problem. ... you are likely to have high blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-size: large;">Now you tell me! </span> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">(The <b>bold text </b>and <u>underlined text</u> is not mine.) </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">How could I refuse<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-size: small;"> an offer like that:-</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"> t</span>o find out just how well my ticker was ticking under the new regime.</span><br /><span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: black;"><br /></span></span><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: white;"><span style="background-color: black;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGttTTnb878AxAour7DfkTOBoVS7zfiCQ8Tg5khBOXNhzFD5QjRzLMGZU82YV80Nl4MnTkH9RNFUuFhNQOxNhbPqz0FmiZbHWv_7kfVHwEMV2O1FYTu68IZFBtDUVFyk6OMXtd6SnG41o/s1600/arm.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGttTTnb878AxAour7DfkTOBoVS7zfiCQ8Tg5khBOXNhzFD5QjRzLMGZU82YV80Nl4MnTkH9RNFUuFhNQOxNhbPqz0FmiZbHWv_7kfVHwEMV2O1FYTu68IZFBtDUVFyk6OMXtd6SnG41o/s1600/arm.png" /></a></span><span style="background-color: black;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The experience was neither pleasant nor unpleasant.</span></span></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">I was </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">lying down</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> almost comfortable but for my unsupported arms at full stretch elbows down on the edge of the mattress, the right with a needle taped into the vein. Lucky I'm thin eh. (and not claustrophobic - the tunnel roof is up close and personal.) Still after an hour like that the forearm an bicep muscles did ache somewhat.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Did I mention that at some point around needle insertion someone said something about a 'gusher'. I couldn't get my head around all the monitoring paraphernalia across my chest to see what was going on. I have a vivid imagination. </span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaHNbWg0HpE59Vweg4i9IYhxPS0OqtVAhWvUuPMgE2GPG9G8xUZOGcwkXsopSIQH9rH0mNBEwpxmu8FnVME1Z_SCJv73jZATgxsC87t9snjps7RQ1QtCm9EMZmHKgic3cYEL5QP5_qx1I/s1600/heart.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaHNbWg0HpE59Vweg4i9IYhxPS0OqtVAhWvUuPMgE2GPG9G8xUZOGcwkXsopSIQH9rH0mNBEwpxmu8FnVME1Z_SCJv73jZATgxsC87t9snjps7RQ1QtCm9EMZmHKgic3cYEL5QP5_qx1I/s1600/heart.png" style="cursor: move;" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">At some point during the procedure I was injected with a heart stimulant so they could watch my old ticker go through its treadmill like paces. I was tempted to ask for a copy of the resultant video but it's not wide screen, its black & white, has </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">one character and a plot only a doctor can appreciate: thumpity-thump, </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">thumpity-thump, ...</span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> </span><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The accompanying soundtrack of </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">the magnets banging away was like an atonal heavy-metal rock</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> opera while a voice in my headphones kept telling when to breath in - out - hold - breath normally; over an over again. Despite the mild discomfort and the noise I nearly went to sleep except for the voice telling me to breath. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">As for the implied death sentence by heart attack, its a moot point. Post dialysis transplantees released from a strict diet tend to put on weight leading to high blood-pressure, high cholesterol and/or diabetes which in turn leads to the the above scenarios.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">I'm relieved not to fit the profile, I skipped dialysis, and I have kept off the 14 kilo's I lost in preparation for the transplant. </span>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-1113429571364156502012-01-31T19:11:00.000+09:302012-02-01T06:48:21.471+09:30Get Back on the Horse<div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
gday gentle readers (a long post) </div>
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It took more time that I would have imaged to get back to work. Finishing the first draft of the trilogy did me in. I could not get my head around not have that goal and deadline in front me</div>
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As I moaned on facebook, I felt lost. </div>
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A couple of fellow writer's comments were, as I already knew, spot on - the writing equivalent of 'get back on the horse' but as I pointed out that's easier said than done.</div>
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I could give a list of extenuating circumstances why I was still on the ground staring up at the beast: It was the end of a 10 year project, Xmas/NY, heat wave, new grandson, pizza bar, hospitalisation etc etc <i>ad nauseum</i> - improper Latin but it works for me - I might even get a sympathy (or pity) vote but my 'extenuating circumstances' would still be bullshit excuses.<br />
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Now that I'm back at it, I've figured out why I had the problem (me personally I mean - each writer will have their own way of dealing with falls) </div>
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<b style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="font-size: large;">I need to know the end.</span> </span></b></div>
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That's only half of it but let's start with that. My usual approach for short stories is to <b><i>start as close to the end as possible</i></b>. But to do that I need to know where it ends. I have discovered that the same approach helped get my fingers on the keyboard.<br />
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Lets step back a bit. When I reached that magic moment of finishing the third and final book in the trilogy after 10 plus years at it, the light up ahead was suddenly behind me, there was nothing in front. The concepts of editing it and writing something new were vague notions in the back of my mind, things that I would do someday when I finished. They weren't real. I was wholly focussed on the finish line, crossing it threw me.<br />
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Obviously I needed a new goal, a new end point to aim at, except what I had just finished was only first draft. It needed editing or it would never get submitted - Heinlein's rule 3.<br />
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<b><span style="background-color: #b6d7a8; color: #274e13;"><span style="background-color: white; color: black;">put succinctly:</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana,sans-serif;">1 write. 2 finish. 3 submit.</span> </span></b> </div>
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I plunged into editing - sort of: I made character sheets, birthday calendars, time-lines and detailed maps. I then put the three books into one file, stripped out the chapter breaks and divided it into scenes. That's when the real edit started, that's when the hurdles appeared, (plot holes posted in <a href="http://ozwritersblog.blogspot.com.au/2011/12/tyranny-of-distances.html" style="color: blue;">The Tyranny of Distances</a> and I cringed that so many scenes/paras/sentences/words written a decade ago were simply not up to scratch. I fell off again.<br />
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Why? Well that has to do with the numbers game I played to get finished. The goal for the final book was one year, 180,000 words. (Roughly matching Vol 1 and 2) Simple maths gave me a good measure of progress; 3500 words a week, 500 a day, easy. It worked. I worked. I finished on time on target and I enjoyed the journey as much as the accomplishment.<br />
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Under the pressure of my deadline I always had to move on, to add to the story, to invent new characters and situations. I figured the joy of creation was the missing something.<br />
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Ergo I started a new story. This also gave me a better sense of progress, my daily word count. (counting edited words is close to a zero sum game.)<br />
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But the <b style="background-color: #ffe599; color: #660000;">editing-which-must-be-done </b>was always in the back of my mind and I hadn't started he story with an end. I was writing for the sake creating and feeling guilty that my massive finished trilogy was not being readied to submit. I needed to do both. I needed a goal that was half creating, half editing. </div>
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Half creating equates to 250 words a day.(this blog is more than twice that already) 250 can be done in hour or two leaving the rest of my writing time for <b><span style="background-color: #ffe599; color: #660000;">the big edit</span> </b>yet 250/day still adds up to 90,000 words a year; 5 hefty short stories or a good sized novel. That prospect excites me.<br />
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The tall story above is the result of being thrown and getting back on the horse.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">week 1<span style="color: #cccccc;">_________</span><span style="background-color: #cccccc;"></span>Languishing. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">week 4<span style="color: #cccccc;">___</span>Back on the horse.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXTyrF5i42gYaS9PCy93PAQjnkzLf-20LCX8TSUF2PsQ8g82yj8144EMJWWlaJ7tdWSHrV_I858V-kZnLB4vtJxV3mE6Fy-s4KqA6zoqCXqBpkL3bAN3rLzLZqy1WYSy0MV05XoyxJHQc/s1600/stats+29-1-2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXTyrF5i42gYaS9PCy93PAQjnkzLf-20LCX8TSUF2PsQ8g82yj8144EMJWWlaJ7tdWSHrV_I858V-kZnLB4vtJxV3mE6Fy-s4KqA6zoqCXqBpkL3bAN3rLzLZqy1WYSy0MV05XoyxJHQc/s1600/stats+29-1-2.JPG" /></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">At the same time the editing now progresses - as at right. The orange line is a refinement point, abandoning the fruitless </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">editing </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">word count (except for new scenes). <span style="background-color: #f9cb9c; color: #444444;">22,161</span> is the total of </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">words </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">edited before scenes 26-27. Thus </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">I am now 23,500 words into the edit with roughly 540,000 to go, ie 4% done. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Tomorrow I'll add my 250 plus words to the current story (which now has a known end) and start editing from scene 28 (of 1300 and something) It feels good to be wriding again. </span><br />
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until my next post </div>
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">ooroo RoB</span>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-43900820804583178602012-01-16T09:41:00.000+09:302015-09-07T22:10:43.704+09:30Extreme Measures<div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br /><div style="background-color: #fce5cd; color: #990000; text-align: center;"> <b><span style="font-size: large;">Or how I lost 4 kilo's in 4 day's</span> </b></div><div style="background-color: #fce5cd; color: #990000; text-align: center;"></div><div style="background-color: #fce5cd; color: #990000; text-align: center;"><b> (don't try this at home)</b></div><div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><br /></div>gday gentle readers,</div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBQd0UT95hJ2gZgMo2U3HSB8xBsfrD0JNDZtxJzS1SJU2A02QtzfsrJm6P-JQYgKfGroLR7iPtVaLCE9vap1YuE81zPP4t2ySdAwwPYqNjzD7u6bPE1BYAGSVBxjuGuAX_7OBJA2skJJU/s1600/config.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBQd0UT95hJ2gZgMo2U3HSB8xBsfrD0JNDZtxJzS1SJU2A02QtzfsrJm6P-JQYgKfGroLR7iPtVaLCE9vap1YuE81zPP4t2ySdAwwPYqNjzD7u6bPE1BYAGSVBxjuGuAX_7OBJA2skJJU/s1600/config.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My internal set up<br />the big one is the transplant </td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace; font-size: large;"><b>Thankfully</b></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> I've been able to ignore this blog of late; it means I've been healthy, as healthy as man of my age with a kidney transplant can expect to be. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The drugs I take to keep the kidney from doing a dummy spit do so by scuttling my immune system, not totally mind, just enough; a delicate balancing act.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">But it leaves me vulnerable to bugs that wouldn't bother an uncompromised immune system - <b>Friday 6/1/12 I got one (or it got me) </b>and I went down in a big way; it just couldn't wait the extra week for Friday the 13th. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Everything was fine</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> at the regular Thursday clinic the day before: </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">creatinine level, </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">tacrolimus level, </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">blood pressure, </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">etc ~ cholesterol was a little high but not short term critical.</span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC0H25DWbNuHn6zZvNC-54JNL8nunnSRqllhqEnX7jGb2UNTEGTk4UmD2jrjysJnWXEbZZebuPbVPn-rWN7lF0K4HJZiBkpf5dIawPlfz-vIHHvz4RaOnbBGW4WCtmYgbcRbs4PZnw2Tw/s1600/Godmanchester.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC0H25DWbNuHn6zZvNC-54JNL8nunnSRqllhqEnX7jGb2UNTEGTk4UmD2jrjysJnWXEbZZebuPbVPn-rWN7lF0K4HJZiBkpf5dIawPlfz-vIHHvz4RaOnbBGW4WCtmYgbcRbs4PZnw2Tw/s1600/Godmanchester.jpg" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Friday morning I lost breakfast (the big spit, technicolour yawn) unfortunately only 5 mins after taking my anti-</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> rejection pills</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">. I took </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">another dose </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">and 40 mins later </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">another yawn</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> then the diarrhoea started. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">This picture is provided as a courtesy, you don't need to see me vomiting and/or ... </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">I phoned my renal contact and let her know I was having a good clean out - both ends. My thermometer had a flat battery, I couldn't say what my temperature was but by the time I got to emergency about midday it was over 38'C and I wasn't feeling so hot, vomiting every 50 mins and diarrhoea whenever I sat on the dunny; I didn't dare fart when I wasn't.</span><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHIDe6pEzWlNdx4xXPNx289tZKUzGol3vcv2d7LklQ66MK2o1TaxbbgqormxAQgqMtRJiXu3hWSwJFYpqbZvT-0JLsh9UB3uglZcYiE4N4mIGa0FSm8RTH1ce5BG4l4kg4qjVk4RJnLMQ/s1600/drip.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; margin-top: 0.5em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHIDe6pEzWlNdx4xXPNx289tZKUzGol3vcv2d7LklQ66MK2o1TaxbbgqormxAQgqMtRJiXu3hWSwJFYpqbZvT-0JLsh9UB3uglZcYiE4N4mIGa0FSm8RTH1ce5BG4l4kg4qjVk4RJnLMQ/s1600/drip.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">For the next two days </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">I was on a fluid drip with pre-emptive antibiotics and </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">anti-vomit meds</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> eating nothing because it would only come straight back at me. The vomiting slowed on the third day but the diarrhoea persisted to the fourth. After four days of that I was four Kilos lighter. </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">As an extreme weight loss measure it worked but the experience was not a pleasant one</span> <span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">- as I said</span><br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> <span style="background-color: #fce5cd; color: #990000;"> don't try this at home. </span></span></div><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Curiously the doctors have no idea what I caught, the cultures that grew from blood and stool samples didn't give them a culprit, a vicious mystery bug you wish on your enemies.</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Until my next post </span><br /><i><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><b>(may it be a long way off)</b> </span></i><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">ooroo RoB</span>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-91179409760428804272011-12-26T09:28:00.000+09:302012-01-16T15:40:54.912+09:30The tyranny of distances<div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
gday gentle readers</div>
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I've moved glacially onward from ch2 to ch3 and struck exactly the same problem. </div>
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They say write what you know. Well I've lived in Adelaide, Woomera,
Darwin, Sydney and Bruny Island (south-west of Tasmania) and I wanted to
include my experience of that diverse geography in my made-up world. Hence the mud map made a decade ago resembles and has the rough dimensions of Australia. I set the protagonists home town of<span style="color: #990000;"> Deep Creek </span>in the foothills and the capital <span style="color: #660000;"><span style="color: #990000;">Grundston</span> </span>on the coast then set <span style="color: #990000;">Deep Creek </span>at Adelaide's latitude - where I have lived most and live now.<br />
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The first thing to note is my careless positioning of the main range in my quick sketch <b>-</b><span style="color: #38761d;"><b style="background-color: #d9ead3;"> much further inland</b><span style="background-color: #d9ead3;"> </span></span><b style="background-color: #d9ead3;">(MISTAKE #1)</b><span style="color: #38761d;"> </span>than its Australian template and thereby hangs this tale, quite literally; like that little blue circle on your PC screen that says "I'm thinking I'll get back to you". I wrote book one, the one I'm trying to edit, using this map as a guide,<b style="background-color: #d9ead3; color: #38761d;"> guessing the distances</b><span style="background-color: #d9ead3;"> </span><b style="background-color: #d9ead3;">(MISTAKE #2)</b> and then as I wrote, mentally <b style="background-color: #d9ead3; color: #38761d;">substituting the Adelaide hills</b><span style="background-color: #d9ead3; color: #38761d;"> <b>for the Great Dividing Range </b></span><b style="background-color: #d9ead3;">(MISTAKE #3)</b>. </div>
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The tale hanging tyranny of distances are those between the Mountains and Coast.</div>
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<b>Adelaide 10 miles. </b></div>
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<b>Sydney 40 miles </b><br />
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<b><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="color: #990000;">Grundston</span> </span></b><b>250 miles </b></div>
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So in ch3 when <span style="background-color: #ead1dc; color: #4c1130;">Averil,</span> one of my heroines, sits on rock comparing the roof styles of the town below and the capital she's got damn good eyesight. Locally that's like picking out Adelaide's rooves from Woomera (in the US try seeing Washington's rooves from New York) </div>
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Which brings me full circle. In my last post I figured I had to delay <span style="background-color: #ead1dc; color: #4c1130;">Averil</span> 12 days so she couldnt catch the contingent before they reached the pass 500 miles away. I'd only just measured that distance and calculated the relatives speeds. Now my dividers have wandered further over my map. </div>
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During the original writing I imagined <span style="background-color: #ead1dc; color: #4c1130;">Averil</span> was only a days journey from the contingent's starting point - <span style="color: #990000;">Grundston</span>. I wrote imaging the distance from the mountains to the coast was about 10 miles not 250 miles. At 250 miles its going to take her 12 days anyway. The one-day delay I already had is enough for her to need a horse or a short cut. </div>
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<span style="font-size: large;">The problem resolved itself. </span></div>
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If only I had read ahead I wouldn't have had to write an extra scene (600 words) or wonder how to get her story back on track after it.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYY5hCCbo84I0rhOzoDYZqpKLjZLeo-kr418kanLjzYDkAVesEwxWMAAMqtMTN_Zq-NIBLiBGGbJJiYGOqca6AALEJ-kbilfxSqJze1fTk5cwB5x3wuggypImSysZ2UzXgMRwoJCqswNk/s1600/ecsmall.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYY5hCCbo84I0rhOzoDYZqpKLjZLeo-kr418kanLjzYDkAVesEwxWMAAMqtMTN_Zq-NIBLiBGGbJJiYGOqca6AALEJ-kbilfxSqJze1fTk5cwB5x3wuggypImSysZ2UzXgMRwoJCqswNk/s200/ecsmall.bmp" width="181" /></a>Unwittingly (me being witless) I also have her sister <span style="background-color: #ead1dc; color: #4c1130;">Kezia</span>, in the first scene of Ch3, make the same 500 mile return journey in a single day. That I fixed by having her go only to the next town not to the capital <span style="color: #990000;">Grundston</span>. But even with my godlike authorial powers I can't move these mountains. The story returns to this area in the last book using the later, detailed, upside-down and carefully measured map. </div>
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until my next <strike>post</strike> problem</div>
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ooroo</div>
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RoB</div>
<br />I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-23068868824198927022011-12-12T10:13:00.001+09:302011-12-12T21:26:17.331+09:30The Never-Ending Edit<div style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;">
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gday gentle readers </div>
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I'm still only in chapter 2 (scene 11 of 1302) of the trilogy and still finding non trivial problems about a rate of one per scene.<br />
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The latest is a distance/time problem. My heroine must catch a marching army before it reaches a certain point some 500 miles away. She has been delayed and I put this though into her head.<br />
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<span style="line-height: 200%;">"<i>I
will</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">have lost a whole day; the
contingent will be gone, hard to catch even with a horse."</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">A bit of basic research however shows a marching army even with horse and carts can travel at 3mph.(18 miles per 6hr day) My ultra fit well-trained heroine I let travel 5mph (about half the speed of an Olympic Walker over 30 miles) or 30 </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">miles per 6hr day - as if she would only do 6 hours a day when she is desperate to catch them. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMumjemdUYVbnzorHDfc0f8piNxZJhnvSb4YaA7NNDrv1ZPBZDKSZNO3i6_XEcAkY3lxjSpLEL2egllydorhvtG5ymjCDN23sO8lQYRyk7MtP7wym2NdJjNIBooj16m6APMrWg2YdBAQo/s1600/catch3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMumjemdUYVbnzorHDfc0f8piNxZJhnvSb4YaA7NNDrv1ZPBZDKSZNO3i6_XEcAkY3lxjSpLEL2egllydorhvtG5ymjCDN23sO8lQYRyk7MtP7wym2NdJjNIBooj16m6APMrWg2YdBAQo/s1600/catch3.jpg" /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-fGzHfIUKcv-X3k5LqPTTtxWmfETxWnQO0suDCr0JKtKmlJnxWXm26ctZagjM7m_mC6nU3oDCLg2K3DKHfYJkS6Ao5TNi76gLmfUqwhi94Pbdyy8K-yNDlFnSSA5swV7Xo3_mq0fUFCk/s1600/catch1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-fGzHfIUKcv-X3k5LqPTTtxWmfETxWnQO0suDCr0JKtKmlJnxWXm26ctZagjM7m_mC6nU3oDCLg2K3DKHfYJkS6Ao5TNi76gLmfUqwhi94Pbdyy8K-yNDlFnSSA5swV7Xo3_mq0fUFCk/s1600/catch1.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> But that means she will catch them midday on the third day when they've only gone 45 miles nowhere near the 500 mile cut-off point. Even if I somehow delay her for 3 days she will still catch at the 135 mile point - still well short of the mark </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Did she just think, '<i>even with a horse</i>' perhaps she isn't as well trained as I thought. To make it work I have to speed up the contingent, slow her down, delay her 12 days or rearrange the geography yet again. </span><br />
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Let me add that this was not just a throw away thought, it was
designed to show she couldn't catch them and hence was forced onto a
dangerous less-well travelled path. I just didn't think it through: My map wasn't to scale, I didn't consider the relative
speeds of the contingent and my heroine. <br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">It will have to be the delay, in the context of the remaining 500,000 words, t</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">he other solutions are no longer negotiable. </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">It will still be a hefty rewrite because on her journey out she crosses paths with others </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">in a </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">critical </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">sequence which </span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">precipitates the hero's journey.</span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"> </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6yUoXNw-l8MGD456MAu0BeAk5KprPLGXm3EfsZ1yruONWxHPO9Ri61A3TJyqqBu9MB4_BSZGRbnE6S1wDcMdcXV8VcIQ-3tnJnOgWrtBjYmab2-HIixbI7JiInMSiCw5vzqVPBV3HWYo/s1600/oldmap.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6yUoXNw-l8MGD456MAu0BeAk5KprPLGXm3EfsZ1yruONWxHPO9Ri61A3TJyqqBu9MB4_BSZGRbnE6S1wDcMdcXV8VcIQ-3tnJnOgWrtBjYmab2-HIixbI7JiInMSiCw5vzqVPBV3HWYo/s1600/oldmap.jpg" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"><b style="background-color: #fff2cc; color: #cc0000;">This all came about because my map was upside down </b></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">I'm Australian ergo southern hemisphere ergo if you go north it gets hotter. Naturally I wanted this for my world but my original map had the adjoining enemy continent south of my hero/heroines homelands.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">The southern continent got so big during the telling of the later part of the tale it necessitated turning the entire map upside-down and that's when it all started going wrong. I've spent several days redrawing all the maps to fit the completed trilogy. It's a little more sophisticated (a.k.a. creeping elegance) than those drawn a decade ago. </span></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Yz8iqoysdU4/TuVyA8eMd7I/AAAAAAAAA4s/wmaBBW96y1U/s1600/Preservation-Island.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Yz8iqoysdU4/TuVyA8eMd7I/AAAAAAAAA4s/wmaBBW96y1U/s1600/Preservation-Island.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Created in a FractalMapper8 ~ http://www.nbos.com/</span></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;"></span><span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">Oh well, back to plotting board.</span><br />
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until my next post ooroo </div>
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RoB<br />
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<span style="background-color: #cfe2f3; color: purple;">p.s. Later that same night. On thinking about it a 12 day delay will work nicely but it requires a brand new scene (#1303) in a story that hasn't had a radical change since last millennium.</span> </div>
<br />I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-208599987480671250.post-89669480542491255542011-11-19T16:28:00.000+09:302011-11-19T21:50:53.304+09:30A rod for my back<div style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">
gday gentle readers</div>
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Methinks I have unwittingly done just as my title suggests and made <i>'a rod for my back'.</i> Let me explain. </div>
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Somewhere in my world creating phase I decided my New Earth's civilisation, before it self-immolated should have made a couple of advances beyond old Earth. For this story I chose</div>
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<b>1. Matter transmission</b><br />
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<b>2. A tenfold extension of life expectancy</b></div>
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Nothing new or dramatic just a couple of well-worn SF tropes as backdrop. </div>
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Now all this may seem straight forward until you think (even superficially as I did at the start) about someone living
to be 700 to a 1000 years old. First I assumed that childhood is still
about 20 years (Can't have our heroes not walking until 12 and still in
nappies at 25) Next it occured to me that at the other end they are going to be old, as in
their frail, pain-ridden, health challenged eighties and nineties,<br />
for</div>
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<span style="color: #cc0000; font-size: large;"><b style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">two hundred years</b></span>. </div>
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Now the rod<br />
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but first a crock of ... (keep it clean)</div>
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Background</div>
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My story takes place a thousand years after New Earth's aforementioned planetary self-immolation called in the story "The Days of Fire." The planetary survivors are being helped by an AI they call the goddess who wants to breed a host for its consciousness to wake some orbiting survivors (Sleepers) in hibernation. The sleepers were about to journey forth and colonise another planet - New New Earth (only joking about the name)- when their existing civilisation went pear-shaped. </div>
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Back to the future: To obtain said suitable host the AI goddess has been paddling around in the local gene pool. </div>
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I decided (authors do that you know - a few taps on the keyboard and a whole planets disappear ) that longevity ought to be an inherited trait that has regressed on the demolished planet to the traditional three score and ten. Can't have non-contributing old people using resources - fine while the machines do all providing but The Days of Fire ended all that.<br />
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Cut to the rod: Again for reason of story I have <span style="background-color: #f4cccc; color: #990000;">POV colonists, POV locals of pure colonist stock,</span> (who live to a 1000), <span style="background-color: #d9ead3; color: #38761d;">POV locals with one colonist parent</span> (live to 500) and <span style="background-color: #fff2cc;">POV locals with one colonist grandparent,</span> (250) and a <span style="background-color: #ffd966; color: #7f6000;">POV character of purely local stock</span> (100) Arbitrary life spans decided by author and colour-coded for your convenience. <span style="background-color: white; color: #cc0000;">(Willard, Averil, twins Sarah and Lisa and the heroine of book III Rowena </span><span style="background-color: white; color: #cc0000; font-size: x-small;">(not shown in box)</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #cc0000;"> are locals of pure colonist stock - the other three are awakened colonists.)</span> But that's not all: some of my characters pair up with people who are going age and die before their eyes if my story doesn't kill them first.</div>
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<span style="font-family: "Courier New",Courier,monospace;">None of this was by design. I made it up as I went along and only now when I want to edit the monster are the complexities of differentially aging relationships coming back to bite me. </span><br />
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Here's a 1000 word picture slice of a spreadsheet I spent days of good editing time creating to sort out what's when two or more POV Character gather. I need to know how old they are and how old they look. </div>
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Why do I bother? Because no matter how good the story is, one wrong detail and suspension of disbelief collapses.</div>
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ooroo<br />
RoB </div>I Robothttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00835872132547573607noreply@blogger.com0Adelaide SA 5000, Australia-34.9287264 138.5999453-34.954763400000004 138.5604633 -34.9026894 138.6394273