Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

I'm not sure I entirely understand this strange fascination with people rooting around their family tree. Is it that they want to find out if they are FamousPerson's 10th cousin twice removed? Or if FamousDeadPerson was their great, great, great, etc., aunt or uncle? Dot's late uncle Tom and a cousin whose name I can't remember both got completely into the geneology thing, each producing these massive documents of excruitatingly detailed relationships. Her cousin, who lives in New England, is one of those Mayflower wannabees, which is not to suggest that she's not a nice person. Her uncle: I can't explain. It all seems slightly weird, albeit in a harmlessly amusing sort of way. Family history is all well and good (I enjoy a good anecdote endlessly recounted over the dinner table as much as the next person), but this takes it a little beyond that point. Now my father, in his old fart years, has taken up this slightly loopy and obsessive pastime. His side of th...

Quick update on the writing thing. I continue to wade through the first revision/second draft. What a humbling experience that is. The first chapter thoroughly sucked. We are talking Shop Vac sucked. I held my nose and performed major surgery. I'm not convinced it's wonderful yet, but it is light-years from where it was. Moved a big chunk from a chapter deep within the middle section to a new second chapter; I felt the need to introduce one of the characters much earlier. That was a good plan, since the chapter where this section had formerly lived was way too long. Over the weekend, I went into the Big Filing Cabinet o' Stuff that lives out in the studio and rummaged around until I found some old short stories I'd written about (let's see) 15 years ago. As a commitment to my new writer's status, I joined the Trinity Writer's Workshop last night. They seem to be a good bunch of people. My old friend the Kippster and his wife the Kitty Chick are members (he...

Sat down the other day and reformatted the rough draft to (what I am told is) the generally accepted form for submissions: double spaced, 12 pt Courier. This was made much easier by using a MS Word template called Script Smart I found after much searching on the Internet. It has a number of built-in macros that handle much of the mundane aspects of producing a manuscript, including tracking total wordcount, generating headers, and managing chapter numbering. In addition to novels, it will also handle short stories, poetry, synopses, and other. The only downside I can see is that it does, er, force you to use Microsoft Word. A version that would work seamlessly with OpenOffice.Org would be great. So anyway, after formatting, I had a 345 page document to print out. I tried to do this with an old junk toner cartridge in my LaserJet, but ended up tossing about 100 pages because they looked so god-awful. Ended up going to Fry's for a recycled cartridge ($45). Once printed, my fam...

...Finally! Finished the first draft of the Novel today at 8:22 am: 71,609 words. The next step is to reformat it (doublespace, 12 pt. Courier), print it out (around 350 pages) and start editing. Once I've got a second draft, I'll start harassing all my friends to read it critically and give me feedback. Oh, just in case you were wondering, as much as I'd like to, I'm not planning on quitting my day job anytime soon.

Drove the Saturn Vue into work today while the Saturn wagon was being worked on (owning a Saturn is a little like joining a cult religion). Grabbed my copy of Jefferson Airplane's After Bathing at Baxter's -- their third album. It starts with this long, sustained feedback guitar note. Sounded so good, I restarted it and cranked the volume up another few notches. You've got to love late '60's music. Up until recently, the big attraction of the Vue was that it had a CD player while the wagon only had a radio, one that some jackleg had semi-broken while trying to remove it. For Christmas this year, D gave me a CD player for the wagon. Way Cool!!! Not only does it play regular CDs, but it will also play MP3 CDs, which means you can get 10 hours of music without fumbling around on the freeway, trying to change disks. Driving around in the wagon, which is a much smaller (I would never say cramped ) vehicle and listening to tunes is a little like being in a headphone...