The Last Chapter Three
First of all, I want to thank all those who listened to my long reading of the first three chapters of "The Majik of Spark" at the writer's group meeting on January 2nd. I truly appreciate the encouragement and comments. I'm a bit squeamish at doing readings, but it was a lot of fun, thanks to all of you.
Since then I have spent considerable time on an extension to the third chapter, which I felt, in its current state, left too many things hanging. I didn't want that to complicate later chapters. I almost decided to let it stay undone while I worked on some big picture things, but since the chapter was already two-thirds completed, I ultimately decided to get it finished now. It took me three tries before I was finally satisfied. I will give a hint: Patient readers of my earlier version of the novel get closer to finding out what happens with Kalydice's locks. I also begin what I labeled the "Artifact thread" that turns up periodically throughout the story.
It may be awhile before I pen the next chapter. I plan to flesh out my chapter synopses into more detail so that the pieces interlock better. I hope that will reduce the amount of re-writing I need to do, which will ultimately speed up the work. That's not to say that things won't change. New ideas can always crop up. My characters always seem to have something to say about their role as well.
I'll be sending out Chapter Three for critique shortly.
Monday, January 13, 2014
Monday, January 6, 2014
Androids Don't Dream Electric RTF
Androids Don't Dream Electric RTF
Yes, the title is a play on Phillip K. Dick's book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" which became the movie Blade Runner.
I was thinking about my dead Windows XP backup computer. I don't actually need it except when the main computer is down. It was painful having them both out of action at the same time, but now that the main computer is up and running again, I haven't done anything about the backup.
I'm partial to desktop computers because I like having a specific place where I go to write, which is my little upstairs office. So, my first thought was that I needed to replace the dead desktop with another desktop. A cheap one I'd only use in an emergency. My second thought was that the only truly critical things I have on my computer is Jarte Plus, an enhanced version of Wordpad that I do all my writing with, and the files that go with my writing projects. I love Jarte's simplicity and excellent, easy to use features. It's Word without the Microsoft clutter. I can get email and Internet access from my Galaxy 3 android smart phone. Everything else I could live without for a few days - I just proved it.
Feeling a little bit like a dinosaur, though, I felt I should at least consider other options, those being laptops and tablets. I like the idea of having a device for writing that I can easily carry around with me. I could write wherever I happen to be. Such as when the Missus throws me out of the house to get me out of her way, or when I have to drag the dog off to the dog park that neither of us like. Ever had a dog that hated to be walked? Never mind, that's a different story.
A laptop would do the trick, but I've tried that in the past and I just didn't like lugging it around, or the heat it generated, or the time it took to boot, or how awkward it felt using it. Maybe I could find a laptop that I did like.
I am also considering a tablet. I'm immediately saying no to the Windows Surface. It has the worst of both worlds - the lousy Windows 8 O/S making for a poor faux tablet, coupled with an expensive, oversized laptop. I might have still considered it, except that it was more expensive than comparable tablets and it forces everything through the Microsoft website for all apps and programs. No thanks.
My wife has an Apple iPhone, and for Christmas I got her the iPad Air. She loves it. As for me,
I prefer an Android tablet since my phone is also Android. Not to mention the cost of switching from Android to the iPhone. I'm also a Kindle reader, which led me to consider the Kindle Fire HDX. Coupled with a matching keyboard (purchased separately) I though it might do the job of small, light and functional. It couldn't use Jarte, though.
Jarte, I was sad to find out, does not have an android or Apple tablet version of their program. There are specific reasons for this. First, Jarte is nothing more that Wordpad with extended features. Wordpad doesn't run on the Android. There is a Google app version of Wordpad that is new (still in beta) which might fit the bill that I could try on my phone. Google also has it's own word processor, free on the Kindle, called QuickOffice. I'll try that one out, too. There are some others, but most of them are focused more on simple note taking, not lengthy writing.
There is one issue in using any non-Windows tablet that surprised me. Just as I use a simplified version of Word for all of my writing, I prefer to save those files in .RTF format. That format is universally accepted, retains all formatting, but isn't bloated by all the gunk of .DOC and .DOCX. Unfortunately, Android devices don't support the .RTF file format. There are apps that claim to be able to read .RTF files, but none support writing to or editing those files. It's a disappointing mystery to me.
What that means is that any files I want to use on a tablet would have to be converted from .RTF to .DOC and back again. Conversion between the two is pretty good, but it's not perfect, and I worry that I would be forever tinkering with it.
However, before I get ahead of myself, I'll test the two apps I mentioned above: QuickOffice and Google Wordpad. And I'll take another gander at those Windows laptops.
Update: After all that research I ended up almost where I started. I purchased a Lenovo Ideapad. It's a 10.1 inch tablet that runs Windows 8. I went with the 64GB version that came with a slot for an SD card as well as a micro-USB port, plus the usual connections of a tablet PC.
I also got a case including a keyboard that also works smoothly. The tablet can be separated from the case/keyboard when I want to just use the tablet.
I love the tablet. The touchscreen is very sharp and responsive. I am quickly getting used to not having an actual touchpad, which is a plus for me. I miss my mouse, but if I get to pining too hard I can install one from the micro-USB port. I sent an email to the Jarte folks about compatibility with Win 8 and they were quick respond that their version 5 of Jarte Plus, which I have, already has touchscreen capability built in. I haven't tested that yet, because of a number of issues that always seem to come with a new device.
Some things have to be changed. I need to replace Windows Explorer with the Firefox browser. I need to strangle Bing and replace it with the Google search engine. I need to wring the life out of MSN so it will stop bothering me. I prefer AVAST! as my virus checker, but McAfee is already installed and working so I'll keep it - at least until it reaches expiration. I did get Microsoft Office running.
I still haven't been able to get my email flowing. Judi says that could be a blessing in disguise. She has her email coming into three devices: her home desktop, her iPhone, and recently on her iPad. I never liked getting email on my phone (texting is so much easier), but I do want to be able to get my email to the tablet. It may take a call to the Cox cable folks, who handle our mail server. Jarte is also installed, but I'm having a license issue with Jarte Plus. I have Jarte Plus on a thumb drive, which works just fine. However, it's awkward on the tablet because of the cable attachment to the micro-USB port, which is very inconveniently placed on the bottom of the tablet, right where the tablet sits on the keyboard case. Sigh. I'll figure it out.
I'm firing this off before I think of more things to add.
Yes, the title is a play on Phillip K. Dick's book "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" which became the movie Blade Runner.
I was thinking about my dead Windows XP backup computer. I don't actually need it except when the main computer is down. It was painful having them both out of action at the same time, but now that the main computer is up and running again, I haven't done anything about the backup.
I'm partial to desktop computers because I like having a specific place where I go to write, which is my little upstairs office. So, my first thought was that I needed to replace the dead desktop with another desktop. A cheap one I'd only use in an emergency. My second thought was that the only truly critical things I have on my computer is Jarte Plus, an enhanced version of Wordpad that I do all my writing with, and the files that go with my writing projects. I love Jarte's simplicity and excellent, easy to use features. It's Word without the Microsoft clutter. I can get email and Internet access from my Galaxy 3 android smart phone. Everything else I could live without for a few days - I just proved it.
Feeling a little bit like a dinosaur, though, I felt I should at least consider other options, those being laptops and tablets. I like the idea of having a device for writing that I can easily carry around with me. I could write wherever I happen to be. Such as when the Missus throws me out of the house to get me out of her way, or when I have to drag the dog off to the dog park that neither of us like. Ever had a dog that hated to be walked? Never mind, that's a different story.
A laptop would do the trick, but I've tried that in the past and I just didn't like lugging it around, or the heat it generated, or the time it took to boot, or how awkward it felt using it. Maybe I could find a laptop that I did like.
I am also considering a tablet. I'm immediately saying no to the Windows Surface. It has the worst of both worlds - the lousy Windows 8 O/S making for a poor faux tablet, coupled with an expensive, oversized laptop. I might have still considered it, except that it was more expensive than comparable tablets and it forces everything through the Microsoft website for all apps and programs. No thanks.
My wife has an Apple iPhone, and for Christmas I got her the iPad Air. She loves it. As for me,
I prefer an Android tablet since my phone is also Android. Not to mention the cost of switching from Android to the iPhone. I'm also a Kindle reader, which led me to consider the Kindle Fire HDX. Coupled with a matching keyboard (purchased separately) I though it might do the job of small, light and functional. It couldn't use Jarte, though.
Jarte, I was sad to find out, does not have an android or Apple tablet version of their program. There are specific reasons for this. First, Jarte is nothing more that Wordpad with extended features. Wordpad doesn't run on the Android. There is a Google app version of Wordpad that is new (still in beta) which might fit the bill that I could try on my phone. Google also has it's own word processor, free on the Kindle, called QuickOffice. I'll try that one out, too. There are some others, but most of them are focused more on simple note taking, not lengthy writing.
There is one issue in using any non-Windows tablet that surprised me. Just as I use a simplified version of Word for all of my writing, I prefer to save those files in .RTF format. That format is universally accepted, retains all formatting, but isn't bloated by all the gunk of .DOC and .DOCX. Unfortunately, Android devices don't support the .RTF file format. There are apps that claim to be able to read .RTF files, but none support writing to or editing those files. It's a disappointing mystery to me.
What that means is that any files I want to use on a tablet would have to be converted from .RTF to .DOC and back again. Conversion between the two is pretty good, but it's not perfect, and I worry that I would be forever tinkering with it.
However, before I get ahead of myself, I'll test the two apps I mentioned above: QuickOffice and Google Wordpad. And I'll take another gander at those Windows laptops.
Update: After all that research I ended up almost where I started. I purchased a Lenovo Ideapad. It's a 10.1 inch tablet that runs Windows 8. I went with the 64GB version that came with a slot for an SD card as well as a micro-USB port, plus the usual connections of a tablet PC.
I also got a case including a keyboard that also works smoothly. The tablet can be separated from the case/keyboard when I want to just use the tablet.
I love the tablet. The touchscreen is very sharp and responsive. I am quickly getting used to not having an actual touchpad, which is a plus for me. I miss my mouse, but if I get to pining too hard I can install one from the micro-USB port. I sent an email to the Jarte folks about compatibility with Win 8 and they were quick respond that their version 5 of Jarte Plus, which I have, already has touchscreen capability built in. I haven't tested that yet, because of a number of issues that always seem to come with a new device.
Some things have to be changed. I need to replace Windows Explorer with the Firefox browser. I need to strangle Bing and replace it with the Google search engine. I need to wring the life out of MSN so it will stop bothering me. I prefer AVAST! as my virus checker, but McAfee is already installed and working so I'll keep it - at least until it reaches expiration. I did get Microsoft Office running.
I still haven't been able to get my email flowing. Judi says that could be a blessing in disguise. She has her email coming into three devices: her home desktop, her iPhone, and recently on her iPad. I never liked getting email on my phone (texting is so much easier), but I do want to be able to get my email to the tablet. It may take a call to the Cox cable folks, who handle our mail server. Jarte is also installed, but I'm having a license issue with Jarte Plus. I have Jarte Plus on a thumb drive, which works just fine. However, it's awkward on the tablet because of the cable attachment to the micro-USB port, which is very inconveniently placed on the bottom of the tablet, right where the tablet sits on the keyboard case. Sigh. I'll figure it out.
I'm firing this off before I think of more things to add.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Cobbling it All Together
PS - The formatting looks awful, I know. I am having issues with blogger.com. Hopefully I will get fixed soon.
While it may not look like it on the surface, I've been actively working on the novel. In terms of real pages completed, I've cleaned up the first two chapters and added additional content to carry forward several threads that have been added. The plan is to read those two chapters during the next writer's group meeting. Most of the work, however, has been under the hood. Several main characters have been better fleshed out with detailed descriptions about their backgrounds and personalities. I also spent considerable time mapping out a chapter by chapter synopsis. That's been a lot of work, but I'm pretty happy with the initial results. The chapter synopsis is my guide. As a result of that work, I was able to tighten the story arcs considerably. The thirty chapters of the latest completed version of the novel has been compressed into eighteen chapters. I hope the changes will move the story along at a faster, more exciting pace.
The book doesn't end at the eighteenth chapter. I have synopses of new chapters nineteen and twenty completed, and I'm not quite done yet. Don't panic, though, a great deal of the original content is still there, so it's not like I'm re-writing the whole thing. Content has been moved around and unnecessary pieces have been set aside (ie, things that don't progress the story). There is a lot of writing still to be done, but a good bit of it is just tying the moved around pieces together and adding connections to the new threads I'm weaving in. I am currently walking through the main threads looking for consistency and relevance. One of my problems is that I've changed my mind a number of times about how some things work that are pretty critical to the story, and I have to nail those things down and get on with it.
Let me use a real example. One fundamental element of the story changes considerably. That change concerns Flea. The character, Flea, was never really fully defined. What is he, exactly? Currently, Flea appears both as a young man and as a musical instrument, a mandolin. The explanations for this phenomenon are lacking in the story, and that creates confusion. Taking a step back, I had to look at the idea of Song and it's effect when present and when absent. Song comes from the Well of the Worlds on Chord. It doesn't reach Spark. However, Song does exist on Spark. Flea is a creature of Chord, stolen from Caretaker Melody by Mela-nnee, and taken to Spark. Flea IS Song, which makes him both precious and dangerous. This new Flea does not play music or transform into a musical instrument. Flea is a sentient receptacle of Song in the shape of a young man. What more he might become will unfold over the course of the story.
While it may not look like it on the surface, I've been actively working on the novel. In terms of real pages completed, I've cleaned up the first two chapters and added additional content to carry forward several threads that have been added. The plan is to read those two chapters during the next writer's group meeting. Most of the work, however, has been under the hood. Several main characters have been better fleshed out with detailed descriptions about their backgrounds and personalities. I also spent considerable time mapping out a chapter by chapter synopsis. That's been a lot of work, but I'm pretty happy with the initial results. The chapter synopsis is my guide. As a result of that work, I was able to tighten the story arcs considerably. The thirty chapters of the latest completed version of the novel has been compressed into eighteen chapters. I hope the changes will move the story along at a faster, more exciting pace.
The book doesn't end at the eighteenth chapter. I have synopses of new chapters nineteen and twenty completed, and I'm not quite done yet. Don't panic, though, a great deal of the original content is still there, so it's not like I'm re-writing the whole thing. Content has been moved around and unnecessary pieces have been set aside (ie, things that don't progress the story). There is a lot of writing still to be done, but a good bit of it is just tying the moved around pieces together and adding connections to the new threads I'm weaving in. I am currently walking through the main threads looking for consistency and relevance. One of my problems is that I've changed my mind a number of times about how some things work that are pretty critical to the story, and I have to nail those things down and get on with it.
Let me use a real example. One fundamental element of the story changes considerably. That change concerns Flea. The character, Flea, was never really fully defined. What is he, exactly? Currently, Flea appears both as a young man and as a musical instrument, a mandolin. The explanations for this phenomenon are lacking in the story, and that creates confusion. Taking a step back, I had to look at the idea of Song and it's effect when present and when absent. Song comes from the Well of the Worlds on Chord. It doesn't reach Spark. However, Song does exist on Spark. Flea is a creature of Chord, stolen from Caretaker Melody by Mela-nnee, and taken to Spark. Flea IS Song, which makes him both precious and dangerous. This new Flea does not play music or transform into a musical instrument. Flea is a sentient receptacle of Song in the shape of a young man. What more he might become will unfold over the course of the story.
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