A Professional Dilettante

Just. Wow.

She made me laugh and she made me nod emphatically.

This is a really cool article: http://www.luciastclairrobson.com/Coming.htm

http://aidanmoher.com/blog/featured-article/2013/05/we-have-always-fought-challenging-the-women-cattle-and-slaves-narrative-by-kameron-hurley/

It's an article I'd like to hang onto for me, mostly, but it's also a damned good article.

Via debgeisler

This is just the coolest thing ever. Film footage of one of my literary heroes, Mark Twain, with his daughters, taken in 1909 (the year before he died) by Thomas Edison.



Yeah, it's "just" silent footage, and the image is really degraded, but still, Mark Twain.

Ganked from jaylake

Over 1300 words today (and over 1100 yesterday), and I finally got to write the scene I've been looking forward to practically since I started the book -- or maybe before, since I think it was a gleam in my eye back when I was writing Repeating History [g].

No, it's not the one that ends with "The End." But I'm getting damned close.

( Possible spoiler. )

If so, I have a question. Where does one go to change how the program shows plain text emails in Windows Live Mail 2011? I know I can't change how it shows up when the other person receives or sends it. What I want to change is the size (and preferably the font) that it shows on my monitor when I'm reading it. Right now the font is tiny and hard to read.

Help?

First, I wrote over 6000 words this week. That's quite amazing, if I do say so myself [g]

And then I embarked on another season of being known by my neighbors as "the lady with all the flowers" (yes, this is a direct quote from a couple of Augusts ago).

Yesterday I spread four bags of compost on the back flower bed. Today I did my annual annual shopping -- snapdragons, petunias, lobelia, alyssum, dianthus, nemesia, larkspur, schizanthus, marigolds (the cool little single lemon yellow ones), and salvia (blue, not red). I think that's it. Then I came home and planted everything, plus sowed seeds for bachelor's buttons, linaria, and more single marigolds. Yes, I'm a confetti gardener (a self-coined term for someone who has to have one of everything -- the result rather looks like someone flung confetti). Then I took a shower -- sweat, mostly, as opposed to dirt. It's warm today. And it might hit 80 by Sunday. Whee!!! I'll have to keep things watered since strangely there's no rain in the forecast for the next week, but the warmth should give them all a good start.

There's still a couple of holes and/or pots to fill, but I'll see what I can find to fill them at the farmer's market tomorrow. Given that this is my eighth season planting this garden, I've pretty much got how many plants to buy down to a science, but it's always fun to finish things off at the farmer's market.

I'll post pictures when things get to the point where they're not just tiny sprouts surrounded by lots of soil [g].

Oh, and on the computer front, the replacement disc for EQ arrived Wednesday, and I installed it today. This means that, except for a few fiddly 8 and Live Mail things I have still to figure out, my computing stuff is back to full capacity. Yay!

Actually, what's going on is that I'm on the final stretch for this manuscript, plus I've told myself that I can't leave for Oregon until I write The End, and the Fabric Depot sale ends on the 27th, so I have to leave by the 26th [g].

But -- almost 1900 words today, through the climax and on to the beginning of the resolution. At this rate, I'll be writing The End in a week, not three.

I love it when all I'm doing is taking the dictation.

Also, I can't tell whether it's the mood-swing-bungee-cord staying at perigee longer than normal that's the result of the writing, or if the writing is the result of the mood-swing-bungee-cord, etc. Either way, it's really, really nice. The spring weather is probably factoring into this somehow, too. Happy Beltane!

Also, silly cat tricks -- I let the boys out for a while this morning, and Teddy didn't come back when Ivan did, so I took a walk around the neighborhood, and found Teddy yowling at the wrong door three doors down from mine. I'd tell him to facepalm, but I'm not sure he's anatomically equipped to do so.

Firstly, I took the camera to the new park I found the other day, and the results are on my blog: http://mmjustus.wordpress.com. It is absolutely enchanting how much better and faster WordPress works with IE10 than it did with either IE8 or Firefox.

Secondly, I had an 1800+ word day today. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I've written that many words of fiction in one day. I may finish this damned book yet. In the throes of the climax, actually, which isn't turning out quite as expected. Which prompts me to ask, so what else is new???

Oh, and I have three Windows 8 questions.

1) Does anyone know how to set the Windows 8 version of Live Mail (as opposed to just Mail, which is an entirely different program) to empty the deleted messages folders (yes, in the plural - don't ask) when I close the program?


2) Does anyone know how to turn the spell check off in IE10? Spell check is an abomination and we hates it, we do. Besides, a spell check in a web browser is just weird. Er, never mind, I guess I already asked this, but I'll leave it here, anyway. I should say that, yes, I've seen the directions that say, go to the Tools menu on the taskbar and click Manage Add-Ons, then click Spelling. That would work very well, except there is no Spelling option under Manage Add-Ons.

3) It appears that you cannot download apps from the app store at the start screen and then install them on your desktop taskbar. This I do find annoying (about the only thing I've found annoying so far, unless you count that expletive-deleted IE10 spellchucker), only because I would like to be able to toggle between Spider Solitaire and other programs on my desktop. Anybody have an idea for a work around? Like maybe where a good place is to download a desktop version of Spider Solitaire? I googled, but there are literally dozens, and I don't know which sites are trustworthy and which will attach nasty spyware to my simple little solitaire game.

Okay, so maybe I was blaming yesterday's lack of words on the wrong thing. Or not.

It did turn out to be a) the end of Chapter 17 (chapter ends sometimes bring me to a grinding halt for a day) and b) finally reaching the climax of the book, which is good but apparently I needed to write what happens just after the climax first so I know it'll all end up okay before I could put James through the climax. Don't ask. This is not the first time this has happened. And I've got about a quarter of the climax written, too, so go me?

Anyway. Over 1200 words, and it looks like this one's going to end up in the 85,000+ word count range like True Gold, not 165,000 cut to 115,000 like Repeating History (and don't let anyone tell you that cutting that many words isn't like the way they killed Yuri Vorbarra, because it is, believe me -- it's an order of magnitude easier to go back and fill in, which I will be doing, than to cut whole scenes, which is what I ended up doing to Charley).