Dale C.'s Comments

Author Choices ~Writing Wombats ~ CCCXXVIII by Wendy C.

Nov 21, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 136

Dale C. Nov 21, 2009, 10:37pm EST

Interesting article on the relationship between science fiction and technology. Asks whether science fiction and tech are diverging or if they are still playing off of one another.

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/353485/the-sci-fi-legends-who-shaped-todays-tech

Author Choices ~Writing Wombats ~ CCCXXVIII by Wendy C.

Nov 21, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 136

Dale C. Nov 21, 2009, 9:29pm EST

Another Nano Excerpt:

“I’m glad I’m doing something right. Where’s Heather?”
Amelia pointed and said softly, “She’s having a little tiff with the Haigh chick. Hair will eventually get pulled, maybe even later today, but right now they’re just trying to smile and get the digs in.”
Greg spotted the two. “Amanda Haigh? Looks to me like they’re getting to be good buddies.”
“Yeah, doesn’t it?”
Heather said something and then walked away. Amanda Haigh shot her a look of pure hatred. Greg whistled. “Wow. You sure called that one. If looks could kill my darling wife would have just burst into flames.”
The crowd thinned out, and the pallbearers took the casket to a waiting pickup truck. Reuben and Terry Haigh were among the pallbearers, as was Ermaline.
It was well after noon before the graveside service and the following reception got over. At the end of the reception, Pastor Julius walked over and told them that he was taking his tour bus out to the Lyle farm with the ‘Dunnes’ and a few others. “I can’t look too close to you three. If you mess this up I need to be able to walk away from you and keep my place in the community.”
“Leaving us dangling in the wind,” Greg said.
“Dangling in the wind. That’s a good way to put it. Mind if I steal that for one of my sermons?”
“It’s a common expression where we come from.”
“That’s one thing I did enjoy about being over in your snapshot. I love words and I got to pick up nearly sixty years worth of new ways to play with them while I was over there.”
“Did you do the Peter, Paul, and Mary thing on purpose?”
“Yep. I heard one of their songs while I was over there.”
Amelia shook her head. “Old people cultural references. Boring.”
“It’s all new to us over here,” the pastor said. “The Beatles, Peter Paul and Mary, Bewitched, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and God preserve us, rap, disco, reality TV, and the Brady Bunch.”
Greg watched the Haigh family go by in a pickup truck that was nearly dragging a muffler. “You picked up a lot in a few days.”
“I wouldn’t be a pastor in this community if I couldn’t pick up culture fast. Of course we got twenty years worth of Buddy Holly instead of just a few, and overall we’ve had nearly sixty years of music and movies and television you’ve never seen too. There is going to be a lot of money made in moving that stuff back and forth between the snapshots.”
Ermaline drove by in jeep with Lyle in the passenger seat. She had changed into blue jeans and a grey and black flannel shirt. Tears were flowing down her cheeks and her long red hair flowed out behind her in the wind. Lyle glanced at Greg as the jeep went by, but didn’t smile or acknowledge him in any way.
"She's not really a Neanderthal, is she?" Amelia asked.
"Sure, why wouldn't she be?"
“But she was driving.”
“Yeah, and she comes to church once in a while and eats with a knife and fork, and she wipes her chin with a napkin after she’s done. I imagine she even brushes her teeth, though I’ve never seen her do it.”

Author Choices ~Writing Wombats ~ CCCXXVIII by Wendy C.

Nov 21, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 136

in reply to a comment by John Philipp

Dale C. Nov 21, 2009, 9:01pm EST

Congratulations John!!! And Jamie/Pat/Others, I hope you get your second wind and reach your goals.

Author Choices ~Writing Wombats ~ CCCXXVIII by Wendy C.

Nov 21, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 136

Dale C. Nov 21, 2009, 8:58pm EST

Nanowrite update: The first 18 days of Nano were the best writing time I've ever had. The writing flowed and I felt like I had the wind at my back. Inevitably, that didn't last forever. The last three days have been a struggle. I've kept going, but it's been a struggle to get every couple of hundred words on the page.

All of which goes to show that there isn't some magic formula. The muse is fickle. It was in once-in-a-lifetime form for two-and-a-half weeks. Now it wants to rest. If it decides that it is done for the month I'm not going to complain. I did what I started out to do.

Author Choices ~Writing Wombats ~ CCCXXVIII by Wendy C.

Nov 21, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 136

Dale C. Nov 21, 2009, 8:47pm EST

I agree with Dana. I like having the alternatives and have/will continue to take advantage of them, but traditional publishing is still the gold standard. I just hope it holds together long enough for me to get at least half a dozen books published.

Author Choices ~Writing Wombats ~ CCCXXVIII by Wendy C.

Nov 21, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 136

in reply to a comment by Pat S.

Dale C. Nov 21, 2009, 8:43pm EST

Sorry to hear that, Pat.

Author Choices ~Writing Wombats ~ CCCXXVIII by Wendy C.

Nov 21, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 136

Dale C. Nov 21, 2009, 2:41am EST

Hi all. Need to catch up on the thread.

Historical Wombats CCCXXVII by ~Sia McKye~

Nov 18, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 310

Dale C. Nov 18, 2009, 11:41pm EST

Unfortunately the more you know about a subject the harder it is to accept inaccuracies. I watch movies and have to restrain myself from saying things like "Okay, so the Germans are attacking in M48 tanks (mid-to-late 1950s US design) or obsessing on the identity of the tank and planes in the Indiana Jones movies. Fortunately, I've learned to bite my tongue, sit back and try to enjoy the underlying story.

Nano is still going well for me, but I need to get away from it for a while. A no-guilt 18-hours without even looking at the thing really helps me. The key is the 'no-guilt' part.

Hearing voices (Wombats CCCXXXVI) by Laurie C.

Nov 16, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 309

Dale C. Nov 18, 2009, 12:24am EST

And we're back. And I'm going to bed.

Hearing voices (Wombats CCCXXXVI) by Laurie C.

Nov 16, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 309

in reply to a comment by Judi F.

Dale C. Nov 17, 2009, 11:17am EST

Judi: We've had good experiences with the Acer netbooks. My wife, daughter and I all have them and my daughter takes hers everywhere with her. I don't know if that's what I would buy right now if I was in the market, but we're happy.

You might want to look at full-sized laptops and see how much more they are. I've seen reasonable looking ones as low as $350, though you would need to look around a bit. One issue: I don't know how well current netbooks perform using Windows 7. Ours all run Window XP (except for my old one which runs Linux)

Hearing voices (Wombats CCCXXXVI) by Laurie C.

Nov 16, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 309

in reply to a comment by Laurie C.

Dale C. Nov 17, 2009, 12:02am EST

Go Laurie! Keep it up, and then hit an adrenaline burst somewhere in there and you can make it!

Hearing voices (Wombats CCCXXXVI) by Laurie C.

Nov 16, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 309

in reply to a comment by John Philipp

Dale C. Nov 16, 2009, 11:54pm EST

Nice excerpt, John.

It Sounded Good When I Wrote It (Wombats CCCXXXV) by Beth H.

Nov 13, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 314

in reply to a comment by Dale C.

Dale C. Nov 16, 2009, 2:18pm EST

Dana: No I haven't. Is it worth checking out.

It Sounded Good When I Wrote It (Wombats CCCXXXV) by Beth H.

Nov 13, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 314

Dale C. Nov 16, 2009, 12:02am EST

By the way, the con was a lot of fun this weekend. WindyCon had a Steampunk theme this year. My daughter and I were there the first night, but she had to leave to go to work on Saturday night, so I was on my own Saturday night. That accounts for the weekend word count.

We spent some time in the movie room; watched Up, Hellboy, and part of We Are the Spartans (actually that was on HBO up in the room). I was on three panels: The Science of Steampunk, Mystery Animals (Bigfoot, Lochness Monster, etc), and Africa In Science Fiction.

The Africa panel was the highest pressure one. On one side of me was Mike Resnick, winner of a boatload of science fiction awards and one of the few science fiction writers who has actually gotten science fiction books and stories based on African culture published fairly regularly. On the other side of me, Eric Flint, New York Times best-selling author, who, it turns out, also has a Masters in African History. So how do I manage to contribute something meaningful to a panel with that kind of firepower on it? Well, I did my best and think I did okay, but man was I nervous going into it.

Sunday morning I did Writer's Workshop, where 4 published science fiction writers or editors chewed into one of my overly long short stories (7500 words). One of the critique people said the story was publishable and encouraged me to submit with minor changes. The others liked it, but thought it needed somewhat more extensive work. I ran the first 5000 words of Char through the workshop last year and one of the guys on the panel remembered it, which makes me feel good, since apparently he sees a lot of stories.

As I mentioned, the theme was Steampunk and I felt a little out of place because everyone else was dressed up in pseudo-Victorian clothes. Even the people in wheelchairs had them spiffed up with things that made them look steam powered.

By the way, for those of you who are not into that kind of science fiction, SteamPunk is a kind of retrotech science fiction. It assumes that civilization developed based on steam rather than on electricity--steam-powered computers, lots of gears, etc. Some of the costumes were very cool. Unfortunately I forgot to pack a camera, but you can probably find steampunk style online if you're interested.

I don't know if there are any Steampunk romances, but I'm sure there will be at some point if there aren't already.

It Sounded Good When I Wrote It (Wombats CCCXXXV) by Beth H.

Nov 13, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 314

Dale C. Nov 15, 2009, 6:50pm EST

I hit the 50,000 for Nano earlier today at our Sunday write-in, came home and have been dozing most of the evening. I'm going to keep writing on the NanoNovel until the end of the month, though at a more rational pace, and only after I catch up on sleep and the real life stuff I've been putting off for the last two weeks.

Jamie, Pat, John, Beth, Jill, all of the Nanowriters: Good luck on the rest of the Nano. I hope all of you make it. I can testify that it feels good to be done.

I'm going to celebrate by putting my feet up and watching the "Prisoner" remake on American Movie Classic (AMC) tonight. I hope it's worth watching. As the remake of cult favorite, it had better be.

It Sounded Good When I Wrote It (Wombats CCCXXXV) by Beth H.

Nov 13, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 314

in reply to a comment by Pat S.

Dale C. Nov 15, 2009, 6:28pm EST

Thanks, Pat.

On OpenOffice: OO Writer It does almost everything Word 2003 does, but a slightly different way. Just enough different to be annoying. It's probably a little slower and the icons aren't as pretty, but I use it pretty much interchangeably with Word. You just have to remember to save in .doc format. You can set the defaults so that it does that automatically. The import and export filters for Word files are pretty good, but some more complicated Word stuff still throws OO, though I don't recall having run into that in the last couple of releases.

It Sounded Good When I Wrote It (Wombats CCCXXXV) by Beth H.

Nov 13, 2009 | rating: 10 | comments: 314

Dale C. Nov 13, 2009, 10:38am EST

I don't really have a good handle on how good something I've written is until I've let it cool a month or two, maybe longer. At that point I can usually tell, at least to a reasonable degree.

Of course what I consider acceptable writing has changed quite a bit since I submitted Char to FC1 and it vanished without a trace. The wombats, and especially Lisa, Beth and Judi have raised my standards quite a bit. That's actually becoming a problem in my reading, because I tend to want to go in and line-edit most of the books I try to read these days.

Must turn off editor so I can enjoy the book. But it's difficult to do. The flaws I didn't notice before are glaring.

World-Building Wombats - Wombats CCCXXXIV by Dale C.

Nov 11, 2009 | rating: 8.9 | comments: 311

in reply to a comment by Joyce Frohn

Dale C. Nov 13, 2009, 7:31am EST

Both are good ideas, Joyce.

World-Building Wombats - Wombats CCCXXXIV by Dale C.

Nov 11, 2009 | rating: 8.9 | comments: 311

in reply to a comment by Dale C.

Dale C. Nov 13, 2009, 7:26am EST

A word of explanation about the Perthian reference: My hometown has an ongoing annual 'Word War' with Perth Australia. They have a little under twice the number of Nanowriters that we do, so we go by average number of words from people who actually have word totals. By that measure, we were trailing until a couple of their people who had been cranking out a consistent 5000 words a day hit 50,000 words and slowed down to a couple of thousand per day.

By the way, apparently 3000 words a day is not considered a huge amount for a professional full-time author. Piers Anthony claims to have consistently done it consistently every working day for years. Steve Stirling hits eight to ten thousand a day sometimes when he really gets going on a project.

I've had a big advantage this Nano in that my evening classes all got over at the end of October, (and don't restart until January) which means that I have about half of my normal workload and Wednesdays completely off.

World-Building Wombats - Wombats CCCXXXIV by Dale C.

Nov 11, 2009 | rating: 8.9 | comments: 311

Dale C. Nov 12, 2009, 11:54pm EST

I'm done Nanoing for the night. It's fun watching the Jamie/John Phillips word count race. During the week John sometimes pulls ahead, and then on the weekends Jamie pulls ahead. Meanwhile Pat S is sneaking up on both of them.

In our Word War with Perth we are kicking some serious Perthian butt at the moment. I think that a couple of their mainstay people hit the 50,000 a couple of days ago and slowed way down. I'm going to have very limited Nano time this weekend. Science fiction convention Friday through Sunday. So Jamie, this is your chance to catch up.

Just to show that I sort of have a life outside of Nano this month, we put our feet up watched "Community" and "Parks and Recreation" tonight. My daughter was at work, so it was just my wife and I. That's getting to be more of a pattern as my daughter makes her own life. She has her CNA and works part-time in a Nursing Home. She's also going to community college and is very active there, including being president of the music club.

My step-granddaughter is 2 years and a couple of months old now. She's over quite a bit. My stepdaughter coached the flags kids for one of the local high school's marching bands, so we got to enjoy her daughter's company while she was at the performances and some of the practices.