I came in first, with Ge3x and Mira tying for second. The hilarious thing about it is, of the five entries, all of them were dark. With all of music to choose from, all five of us picked “downer” songs.
I can reveal now that the title of my piece was “Nothing Lasts Forever” and it was inspired by “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas. It’s my favorite song of all time.
I didn’t even know most of the songs by the others, so there was no hope of winning the extra prize money. Ah, well. I had guesses. Oddly enough, all my guesses were kind of cheerful. I guess I’m warped that way.
What I’m learning from these monthly challenges is that I kind of like the flash form. Less than 1000 words—our challenges run way less than 1000, usually from 250 to 350—makes you really think about what you want to say, and eliminate needless words and extraneous ideas.
At my Tuesday night writers group (The Forum Writers), we have new writers join us all the time. Some stay, some come and go. But whenever we have a newbie, we make them introduce themselves, tell us what they write, and what they want out of our group. Then we all introduce ourselves in turn, explaining what we write. I usually say some variation of this:
My name is Gary, and I’m currently working on an urban fantasy novel. It’s set in modern Atlanta where magic works, but there are no sexy vampires or werewolves. <insert pause for expected ‘yay’ reaction> I also write science fiction, epic fantasy, dark fiction, and a little horror. I used to do short stories, but my short stuff seems to have developed a pituitary problem.
What can I say? It usually elicits at least a smile. :)
That last part about the pituitary problem, though…I may have to change that. The more I try this extremely short form, the more I like the sense of freedom it gives me. Write 350 words and tell a whole story…then move to the next one. Be done with something instead of incessantly writing it or thinking about it night and day (and night) for months.
Maybe it’s an escapist thing. <shrug> Whatever. I just know that I an enjoying the instant gratification.
As an aside…am I the only person who always adds the “AAH-aaaaaahhh!” in my head every time I hear or see the word “flash” (AAH-aaaaaahhh!)? Surely not. Surely not.
TortureI’ve been so busy with The Project that Ate the Summer™ at work that I’ve had little time to write for the past few weeks. I’ve written some, but not a lot. Most of what I’ve written has been ideas, of which I’ve had a plethora.
Yesterday, after a meeting of the Lawrenceville Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Group, I sat down to work on my novel, and discovered that this was the sentence I had left for myself a couple of weeks ago when I stopped.
Chuck could see [Nick’s] jaw clenching and unclenching, and she realized he was angry. But angry at whom?
Now, I’m sure that when I wrote that, I had some idea who Nick was mad at, and probably even why.
BUT I HAVE NO IDEA, TODAY. None. Zip. Nada. Zilch.
<sigh>
In fact, I have no idea where the 621 words of these scene were headed.
When, when, WHEN am I going to learn to make notes to myself when I stop in the middle of a scene?
In other news, though, I read back over the entire story (54,710 words so far) and was surprised at how much of it I liked. Sure, I’ll have to gut sections of it, and I have several new characters that will have to be inserted into the first part, and I have to give them some side plots and such, but on the whole, I’m still fairly happy with the writing.
And that’s actually a pretty good feeling. Several times I’d find something I wanted to fix and start to edit only to find out that I’d already written myself a note to edit that same section in the same way. So at least I’m consistent.
Now that the æstivorous1 project has been turned over to the capable hands of the QA department, maybe I can concentrate on making some headway in this novel.
And on some other things I’ve got planned, as well.
One of these day I’m going to coin a word that sticks (alas, ‘grammudgeon’ has as yet gained no real foothold), but this is not the time. In Google books, there’s a discussion about primate behavior that uses the word, although spelled without the ‘æ’. Theirs probably means feeding during the summer, while I’m using it in the sense of actually devouring summer itself.
WaitMonday night, the Quillians met on Second Life ostensibly to judge the submissions for the Song Inspiration Challenge for July. Those of us who got on early gathered in the meeting room to listen to the Writing Excuses podcast as a group.
Once most of us were finally gathered, the group moderator cracked open the submission box . . .
. . . and discovered that only three people had actually submitted a story.
<sad face>
So we postponed the judgment night until Monday, August 1, 2011. This should give other people more time to complete the challenge.
A Cannibal StarA few months back, I was doing a series of challenges organized by The Quillians, my writing group on Second Life. I managed to miss out on May’s and June’s challenges because of the Project That Ate Summer™ at work. But I’m back for July.
The challenge was simply this: in 250-350 words, write a flash piece inspired by a song. Bonus for guessing the song!
(The bonus is because what we do is gather together one Monday night at 6pm Second-Life Time, read all the entries, and then vote on which ones we like the most. The votes are then tallied, and the winner gets a cash prize (Second Life in-game cash, that is), as do the second- and third-place winners. This time, whoever can correctly guess which songs inspired which stories gets an additional prize.)
Now, I can’t give the name of the piece or the song that inspired it, because I know some of the Quillians read this blog. :) The name comes from the lyrics of the song that inspired it, so I’ll just call this “Name Withheld” for now. I’ll update this with the actual name and the song later. Or make a new post. Whatever.
Once again, when given a word limit, I tend to hit it exactly. But this time, I hit the LOW end instead of the HIGH end. Hm. Interesting. So this is exactly 250 words.
He parked the ship just inside the orbit of the third planet, the one they used to call Jupiter after a long-forgotten myth. The eyes of the worlds were watching, and he wanted a good vantage point, but it would be stupid to endanger himself just to get a story.
He was not the only one here. The proximity sensors indicated several million other ships of various sizes and configurations, some further out, some closer in. All positioned with an unobstructed view of Earth.
Humanity, in all the forms it had assumed and in all the far-flung parts of the galaxies to which they had migrated, still remembered home, or at least some few of them did. Still felt enough nostalgia to mourn—or at least mark—its destruction. But for most of humanity, Earth wasn’t news. It wasn’t even a distant memory. It had been uninhabitable for several billion years. All that was left was just a burnt husk. A useless cinder.
Still, that cinder was the cradle of one of the most powerful civilizations the Cluster had ever known.
He cut unneeded systems to conserve power, unfurled the solar arrays, launched and programmed the recorders to capture all wavelengths at maximum bandwidth and density in three dimensions. Stellar transitions weren’t predictable to split-second accuracy, but it would happen long before he ran out of supplies.
He got comfortable. When Earth was engulfed by the expanding sun, Man would be here to bear witness, after all.
Hope you enjoyed it. I think I really like this piece. I tried making it longer, but I hated it every time I did.
We’ll meet Monday (7/25/11) night and vote. If you do have a guess as to what song this was inspired by, do feel free to guess. I moderate all comments, so if someone guesses, I can just hold them until after Monday, then let them through. I’m interested to see if it’s obvious.
Evidence or GTFOThis will come as no great shock to anyone that has known me for any length of time, but: I’m a card-carrying skeptic. There. I’ve said it.
Now, by “skeptic,” I don’t mean “that guy who always says ‘nuh-uh!’ every time anyone makes a claim. Nor do I mean the habitual debunker, who feels compelled to—often gleefully—reply all to every credulous chain email with 5 links disproving whatever silly story is contained therein.1
I also don’t mean the kind of “skeptic” that simply doesn’t believe in something because it goes against my particular world-view or dogma or agenda.2
I’m the kind of skeptic that is epitomized by the image of James Randi above: give me evidence or don’t be shocked when I fail to believe your claim.
I don’t believe in ghosts, magic, bigfoot, psychic powers, angels, demons, gods, devils, alien abduction, mermaids, the Loch Ness monster, qi/chi, homeopathy, therapeutic touch, ear candling, or a very, very long list of other things too numerous to mention for which there is simply no well-tested scientific evidence that shows an effect that could not be accounted for by other things such as abnormal psychology, pareidolia, coincidence, or the placebo effect.
When people know or learn this about me and then see the kind of thing I write (science fiction, fantasy (epic, urban, and dark), and horror), I sometimes get the response where they tilt their head to one side and you can practically hear their neurons undergoing cognitive dissonance.
“But…if you don’t believe in any of that stuff, why is that all you write about?”
It’s a very good, valid question. And one for which I didn’t have a good answer. But something occurred to me during lunch, today, and I think I have a glimmer of understanding.
One of the most basic tools in the Skeptic’s Toolbox is this simple question: If X is true, how would that affect the world?
For instance, here’s an example. If homeopathy3 were true, how would that affect the world?
Well, first of all, every time you drank water, you’d get what amounts to a massive dose of medicine that should cure every known disease or ailment. And the irony of homeopathy is that the less of it you drink, the higher the dose.
If that were true, how would that affect the world?
Well, there’d be practically no sickness, because all anyone would have to do to cure themselves would be to drink a glass of water. Doctors and hospitals would only be needed for treating trauma. Drug companies would go out of business. Insurance companies would deal only in accidental death and dismemberment policies. (Alas, no amount of medicine cures stupid.)
There would be no more depression, no more malaria, no more common cold, no more cancer, no more epilepsy, no more ebola, AIDS, herpes…the world would be entirely different.
And if by diluting a substance that causes an effect, you can cause the opposite effect in the body, think of the amazing new illicit drugs! Dilute something that causes pain and taking a miniscule dose of it would cause euphoria. Meth and cocaine and LSD wouldn’t hold a candle to some of the designer drugs you could whip up in your own kitchen sink.
Of course, you’d have to have a way of removing the ‘remembered vibrations’ from water, so there’d be a market for that kind of thing. If for no other reason than to make sure that the human race didn’t go extinct or have a population boom. Think of all the substances out there that cause either fertility or infertility. Dilute those enough, and you have a potent birth control (by diluting the fertility-inducers) or fertility drugs (by super-dilution of fertility-reducing substances).
On the other hand, maybe “regular” tap water is nearly perfectly balanced, so all the things that would cause X and all the things that would cause -X cancel each other out. Maybe diseases are caused by water supplies being slightly tilted in one direction or another. People who could analyze the content of municipal water supplies (or wells) could make a mint by offering to re-balance the water supply.
Imagine a world where you might be hyper-allergic to water, because it contains a massively dilute form of anti-histamine compounds. How would you survive? You’d have to have a way of “detoxifying” the water so you could drink it (i.e., removing the ‘vibrations’; erasing the ‘memory.’)
Ooh, or how about all the estrogen or testosterone that winds up in the water supply? Even if there had never been a drug industry churning out metric tons of artificial examples of both hormones, people gotta pee, and that pee’s gotta go somewhere. If your municipal water supply became gender-imbalanced…if there were too much estrogen and it were diluted enough, it would have the same effect as a massive dose of anabolic steroids. <shudder>.
Do you see what I’ve done, here? This is exactly what a writer does when doing world development. It’s just world-building!
If elves existed, how would that affect the world?
If ships could travel faster than light, how would that affect civilization?
If lycanthropism existed, how would it work? How would it affect the world?4
What if the ancient Mayans were right, and all their gods do exist, and the world really is going to end in 2012?
So I think the answer to the question, “How do you write this stuff if you don’t believe in any of it?” is that by being a skeptic and really looking at the world through a skeptical lens, you’re improving your ability to ask really interesting world-building questions.
Note: I realize that I have said some things here that will not sit well with some people. I will not allow the comments here to turn into a debate. If I have said something here to offend you, I apologize, but there will be absolutely no name-calling, no diatribes, etc. I mention the definition of a skeptic and the negative examples in the footnote below for informational purposes to show readers what I mean—along with the majority of the skeptical community—when I use the word ‘skeptic.’ If you have a differing opinion, you are certainly entitled to it. But we are not going to debate it, here. All comments are moderated. Capisce? Buona.
Well, okay, I actually do this, but it’s beside my point.
In other words, climate-change skeptics, who claim there is insufficient evidence that either our climate is changing or that mankind’s activities have contributed to it significantly; 9/11 skeptics (“Truthers”), who claim to be skeptical that 9/11 was perpetrated by terrorists; “Moon Hoaxers,” who claim that the United States never landed on the moon and that the entirety of the Apollo program was faked on a soundstage; “Birthers,” who claim to be skeptical that President Obama is a US citizen; or Holocaust skeptics, who claim that either no one was killed by the Nazis or far fewer than is generally accepted. In each of those cases, the scientific consensus goes with the overwhelming evidence, but the ‘skeptics’ go against that evidence. The kind of skeptic I’m talking about is the kind that goes where the evidence leads, even if that is to a place his/her sentiments oppose.
This link at Wikipedia does a much more thorough job of explaining homeopathy than I can.
At least one author in the Urban Fantasy genre (Kat Richardson) had one of her characters—a skeptic, amusingly enough—point out that the energy required to literally reshape the tissues in a living being into another form would generate enough heat that any such creature would explode. She uses this to explain why there are no were-beasts in her novels. Vampires, yes. :)
The IdeaIt never fails. When I really really should be doing something else, that’s when ideas come to me.
Alternatively, they come to me when I can least do anything about them, like while I’m in the shower or driving. Luckily, keeping a notepad and pencil in the shower (hey, don’t judge me) and a digital voice recorder in the car have solved those particular problems.
Today, I need to finish something else up. But I keep getting side tracked by this little voice in my head.
Every year, I participate in NaNoWriMo, which if you do a little looking around on this site, you’ll find several references to. The goal during National Novel Writing Month is to write a complete novel of 50,000+ words in just the 30 days of November. You can plan and plot and world-build and character-develop all you want before that; but the entirety of the words of the novel itself must be composed between midnight of November 1st and midnight of December 1st.
Last year, I ripped NaNoWriMo a new one, to put it indelicately. I wrote 78,000 words, then went on to write another 15,000 words or so to get my time travel novel (Killing Time) done.
But this year, I have four unfinished novels, dammit. I don’t need to start another one. But I want to participate. And yeah, I could use the month to concentrate on finishing one of the unfinished novels, but…well, I don’t want to. I think part of the fun of NaNoWriMo is the thrill of writing something new.
For the last month or so on the podcasts Escape Pod, PodCastle, and PseudoPod, they have run promos for a series of 34 stories co-written by four well-known authors (Tim Pratt, Jenn Reese, Heather Shaw, and Greg van Eekhout) that are collectively called “The Alphabet Quartet.” Each story title starts with a different letter of the alphabet.
You may be wondering two things right now. One: Why are there 34 stories if there are only 26 letters in the English alphabet? Two: What do all these disparate, seemingly unrelated facts have to do with the price of tallow in Ecuador? I’ll take those in order.
One: There are 34 because although there were originally 26, some of them were published elsewhere, and the magazine that agreed to publish them (Daily Science Fiction) wanted original works, so the quartet wrote brand new ones to replace the ones that had already been published elsewhere. But those of us who contribute to one of the three Escape Artists podcasts (listed above) get all 34. Because we’re special.
Two: I’m about to tie it all together. Stand back. Watch me.
I’ve been trying to come up with some ideas lately for shorter works that I can play with. Stuff that doesn’t require a bunch of world-building, character development, and plotting. When I heard about the Alphabet Quartet, my brain seized on the idea of writing 26 stories, each one beginning with a different letter of the alphabet. It was a cute idea. I filed it away.
A day or two later, a rhyme from Sesame Street long past (which was also featured in the film E. T.: The Extra-Terrestrial) popped into my head: “A is for Apple. B is for Ball. C is for Cat that sits on the wall.”1 It played over and over in my head.
Eventually, I put the ideas together. To wit: I should write 26 short stories, each beginning with a different letter of the alphabet, but the titles themselves should make a little doggerel rhyme of that sort.
I jotted down a few ideas in Evernote. I tried to come up with single-word titles beginning with each of the 26 letters of the alphabet in such a way that each three-letter combination formed a ‘stanza.’ But the words had to be evocative; that is, they have to conjure up several ideas. They have to give me a spark. And I have to be able to rhyme the final word of the third line of each stanza with the second title. Think that sounds easy? I’m not a poet. :)
Oh, here. This will explain it better than I’m doing.
A is for Apothecary,
B is for Bard;
C is for Clowns that creep through the yard.
D is for Dragon,
E is for Earth;
F is for Forgetting what some things are worth.
G is for Graveside,
H is for Him;
I is for Innocence wrapped up in sin.
J is for Justice,
K is for Kiss;
L is for Lightning: a strike or a miss.
etc. You get the idea.
The third line of each stanza will give a clue to what that letter’s story should be about. And I’m not saying that these are by any means the final choices. Each alphabet word gives me a number of ideas. I especially like “C is for Clown” and “U is for Uranus.” Those are the two for which more or less complete story ideas popped instantly into my head.
So, the idea that came to me while I was trying to do something else—which then inspired me to write this post, which further keeps me from that something else—is that if I write 26 stories of about 2000 words each (on average), that’s more than enough words to win NaNoWriMo, and it gives me a finished “work,” even if it’s not a novel.
Now, if you remove the four days of holiday at the end of November (where we here in the US celebrate Thanksgiving)…well, golly! That equals 26, doesn’t it?
I think this sounds suspiciously like my brain done went and ambushed me with a plan! :)
The irony of this is that I can find no reference of this anywhere on the Internet. I distinctly remember it, yet I’m probably wrong. It would be amusing in the extreme if my misfiring memory of something that never existed sparked this idea. When I get home, I’ll see if I can find ET and watch that sequence to see what it actually says. The one screen capture I saw online shows Drew Barrymore standing in front of a TV on which is displayed “B is for Banjo,” and it is on a wall.
But there’s a reason I’ve been quiet. I’ve been writing and reading a lot. I don’t have a lot of new words all in a row to show for it, but what I do have are redesigned character backgrounds, re-imaginings of characters, new characters, societal development, a rather huge mindmap, background information, a framework and logic for magic . . . and probably about 4500 to 5000 new words. Doesn’t seem like a lot when I summarize it like that, but when you look at it from a certain point of view, all the stuff I’ve written down that no one will ever see will probably nearly double the size of the story when I go back and rewrite it from the beginning. I’ve got about 46,500 words of it written, but most of that will have to be rewritten with all this new stuff taken into account.
Which, unfortunately, means that my most favorite and best darling of all has to go: my first sentence, which is what sparked the idea for the whole novel, which then became a novel series.
The man Nick Damon had come to kill was already dead.
Unfortunately for that awesome first line, Nick is no longer the type to set out to kill someone in cold blood. He never really was, but I just couldn’t give up that line. <le soupir profond>1 “Kill your darlings” has never been so hard. :-/
Anyway, the whole purpose of this post was to ask a question.
My novel, tentatively titled Perdition’s Flames, takes place in modern-day Atlanta, only magic works, but there are no sexy vampires (that do or do not sparkle) or sexy werewolves. Specifically and purposefully, because I’m sick and damned tired of that overused trope.
I picked Atlanta for a couple of reasons. First, it’s where I live, and I’m familiar with it enough to set stories in and around it . . . with a little research. :)
Second, the other cities I’ve lived in have been too small to set something of the kind of scope that I want to write in (diagram that sucker). I have nothing against Tuscaloosa/Northport, Alabama, but the streets do have a tendency to roll up at 10:00 pm. And my hometown is just 1800 people. I think a maniac murdering people left and right would overwhelm the police and the inhabitants.
So, Atlanta. :) One of the great things about Atlanta: it’s a distinctly southern city, but with a lot of added diversity.
But I noticed that in my novel, three of the four main characters are white and three of the four are men (not necessarily the same three both times). Only one main character is a woman, and one is Hispanic2 (again, not the same character). I have a minor character who is Asian (I’m considering changing him to a her), another who is a black woman. A few others are of various races and genders. Picked basically at “random” as I wrote and needed a body to fill a role. And I’ve added a couple of new characters in my head who are both women and who may come back in future stories, assuming I ever get this one written.
I wasn’t intentionally going out of my way to try to have the novel reflect the racial diversity of the city it’s set in, nor was I attempting to gender-balance it. But then it occurred to me that I had no idea if other readers even noticed such things. Or cared, if they did.
I suspect that white, male readers — for the most part, anyway — pay little to no attention; white, female readers may notice the male-to-female ratio of the cast, but may or may not care much about the racial component; and members of other races may pay a bit more attention to race, but maybe not a whole lot.
Again, these are merely speculation, and I have no idea if it’s even in the ballpark of right.
Which brings me to my question. Do you pay any attention to that sort of thing? Does it take away from the story if the city is diverse, but most of the main characters are white guys? (Now, granted, I am a white guy, so I’m probably best at writing from that POV.)
I’m just curious. I don’t really know that I intend to “fix” it. I think I sort of subconsciously/unintentionally stumbled on a pretty good mixture of characters that I’ve grown to like (even though some won’t make it to book 2 <insert dramatic minor chord here>).
Don’t ask me why I decided to ‘heavy sigh’ in French. Like I understand the inner workings of my mind any more than you do? We’re in this together.
I’ve heard that this term may have become derogatory while I wasn’t looking. I certainly do not mean it that way. I just don’t know what else to use, if, indeed, it has taken on negative connotations. I just mean people whose first language is Spanish, but who are living in the US.
Magic Abound[As an aside, as soon as I knew what the content of this post was going to be, you can probably guess (from the title if nothing else) what song has been in my head.]
The Shiny™ came back from Apple, all fixed up with a new logic board (the sound card is apparently integrated), a reseated cable which had come loose, and with the hard drive wiped and re-initialized with the latest and greatest version of MacOS. When I got it home, I cranked it up and the first thing it asked for was for me to supply a drive on which I had backed up with Time Machine, and it took about 2 hours to restore it to pre-problem status. I was back up and running in less time than I thought possible (because I used to use only Windows).
Of course, then I started having to type all those ideas I was flooded with into Scrivener.
The good news is that I finally worked out (I think) how magic works in my Urban Fantasy series (la de da, doesn’t that sound high-fallutin’?). This may sound trivial and ho-hum, but you have to remember that I’ve been writing this thing for the better part of two years and have two novels at various stages of completion, plus ideas for a couple or three more. It’s about time I figured this out.
It uses elements from a lot of things that have come before, and probably isn’t unique, but since I’m not writing a “How to Cast Magical Spells” book and am trying to tell a story within the framework, I don’t intend to actually ever lay out how it works for readers. (Plus, that also gives me wiggle-room for changing it as time goes on. :)
There’s definitely some stuff in here from Babylon 5/Crusade, a touch of Star Wars, a smidgen of Dungeons and Dragons, a healthy dose of ancient Greek mythology, a soupçon of The Belgariad, and a sprinkling of Actual Science™.
Now, here’s my question. Although I need to know How It All Works™ (I’m not going to stop doing that ™ thing any time soon, by the way, so get used to it) in order to have some internal consistency (hopefully), how much does or should the reader ever know? Is it enough to leave it something of a black box, or should I sort of have the characters who can perform magic explain it a little bit as they go, for the reader and/or other characters who are not able to do it (and who therefore ‘stand in’ for the reader)?
I’ve seen it done both ways, and to excellent effect. I think it depends on the writing, but . . . still, I’m curious.
The ScreamI’ve been writing like a fool for the last couple of weeks. Once I figured out how to get past the snag I was . . . well, snagged on, it all started to flow, again. I’ve written two complete chapters, started a third, and added copious notes.
And then I ran up against another snag, but this one didn’t have anything to do with writing. Or at least not directly.
I use a MacBook Pro 17″ (I call it The Shiny™) to do all my writing, and I use a lovely application called Scrivener to do it in.
After an ill-timed mishap involving a falling laptop, a cat, a bottle of Coke Zero (Elixir of Life™), and a USB cable (insert your own interesting story here) . . . I think something was a little wonky with The Shiny. It would play sounds if I had the headphones in, but not through the speakers.
Now . . . I need my sounds. I share a house with someone who goes to bed at 8:00 (because she gets up at 3:00 AM for school), so I wear headphones much of the time, but you can only wear them for so long, you know? I mean, ear-sweat is not a topic to discuss in polite company, so I won’t.
On Saturday I took The Shiny to The Apple Store where I had an appointment with a lovely Genius1 named “Mike.” Of course, when demonstrated for Mike, the problem miraculously went away (and the nearby patrons all got an audio demonstration of my abiding love for A-Ha as their 13th album began to play at high volume), in the way problems since the Dawn of Man™ have gone away whenever demonstrated for the person who is intended to fix it. I can easily imagine two Homo habilis dudes sittin’ around the campfire, chillin’, makin’ flint spearheads. Og can’t get it right to save his hairy neck, but when he tries to show Zug, it works perfectly every time. Of course, as soon as Zug leaves, Og can’t make a single correct blow on his flint with the striking stone.
I also imagine this was immediately followed by the first-ever (l)user joke and the first-ever 3-hour wait on a tech support “hotline.”2 But I seriously digress.
Because of all the symptoms I described for Mike, he suggested—gently, I might add—that the problem was almost certainly hardware-related and that even though nothing showed up on a hardware diagnostic he ran, I should leave The Shiny in the capable hands of Apple so that they might fix whatever might be wrong once they crack it open. <wince>
After assuring Mike that I do, indeed, do regular backups (I use Time Machine—as opposed to a time machine, which would be awesome—and it runs hourly, plus I ran it about 11,394 times in the 15-minute period leading up to the time I needed to leave the house to get to the Apple store on time), I handed The Shiny over and . . . and . . . and left it there. Alone. <twitch> <lip-quiver>
He assured me I’d have it back in about a week. Maybe less.
Since all my writing is on there, I have, of course, been absolutely inundated by ideas. Poughkeepsie3 must be practically empty by now.
Of course, on top of not having Scrivener to write in, I have had to go several days, now, without podcasts.
Podcasts, to put it bluntly, are why you have not heard about me on the national news. You know, along the lines of
MAN, 46, GOES BERSERK IN ATLANTA TRAFFIC, SLAYS 32
“Morons! It’s the pedal on the RIGHT!” — Insane Atlanta man
I can’t stress enough how much of a calming influence they are on me. (I might be exaggerating just a bit.)
Luckily, I have a backlog of some podcasts I’m catching up on, and I’m in no danger of running out of them any time in the next week. But this means I’ll get behind on the ones I regularly listen to. But I’ll catch up. I always do.
So, anyway . . . That’s how my weekend went.
(I’m not <twitch> twitching, yet, am I?)
I’m not being facetious or snarky—that’s actually what they call their support techs. I do wonder, though, if there is a clause in the employment contract with Apple that requires all male Geniuses to grow a beard, whether they really should or not. I’m just sayin’. . .
I can only imagine that the poor drummers’ arms got tired relaying the hold music. . . “Short and hairy and young and lovely, the girl from the next cave goes walking upright, and when she passes, each one she passes goes, “Aaaah!”. . .
There is an old story, probably apocryphal, which claims that Harlan Ellison used to get asked the question, “Where do you get your ideas?” just one time too many, and he finally answered, “Poughkeepsie.” It’s been attributed to others, and some stories say it was Schenectady instead. I’d probably say Walla-Walla.
