D.M.Weade - Writings

Well, I’ve polished off another project this week and will be getting back to some writing over the weekend and into next week. Today, while waiting for my hosting service to troubleshoot an error on their end, I’m focused on making some maps.

My map of Jaen Isle went off pretty well and was, at the time, an exercise in creativity. I wanted something which was completed and ready for easy reference. It has served the purpose and several people have given me some positive feedback on the quality of my effort.

Right now, with a few more weeks off, I’ve decided to try to complete as much introductory material as possible before giving back in to house/work/organization efforts. As a result, I’m focused on maps.

I have a design in mind for one fictional world and will follow a larger scale effort from what I did for Jaen Isle. There will be a bit more work, as I will be taking the map from Photoshop to Flash and building an online portal for the development and exploration of the world.

It is for a bi-world effort, one in which Earth is a known member of a set of worlds, that I have had the most problems. I need a good map of Earth to use as a base for tracing and developing my own hand-drawn version. Unfortunately, most maps which are large enough for my effort are also folded into an atlas and cannot be easily traced.

To find an answer, I went online to Wikipedia, where I found a variety of excellent resources:

Wikipedia Atlas Portal - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Atlas

Which offered up several nice maps:

The Mollweide projection - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mollweide_projection
The Robinson projection - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinson_projection
And, the van Der Grinten projection - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_der_Grinten_projection

All are excellent for what I’m envisioning, though I believe the Mollweide might be my favorite.

The site also led me to the CIA World Factbook and, with a bit of surfing, their physical map of the world from this list. Now only a JPG, but also a PDF of the world. Excellent for printing and tracing. Now, all I need is a larger printout. Time to call some printer houses.

Realized, I should add some of my other options, if only for my own record.

Marsedit - http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/

MacJournel - http://www.marinersoftware.com/sitepage.php?page=85

Much to do today, but I’ve got a start. Needed to find a nice, basic replacement for Journlr. Took awhile to dig it up online, but I’ve found Ecto - http://infinite-sushi.com/software/ecto/ - with a 21 day free trial. And half the price of other software in the same category. Ecto already did the job of downloading all of the past entries for local backup. Now, I just need to grab some of the work I had in Journlr that was incomplete and make a full transfer.

13% of my battery left and I need to wrap it up.  However, thought I would comment on something which will impact my blogging in the short term.

I’ve been using a program called Journler for a bit over 7 months.  I find it very useful for writing quick blog entries and getting them online with a minimum of fuss.  This is especially true using Quicksilver to call it up.  Makes for an easy few steps from thought to post.

Today, Journler said it was time to update.  I did so and let it restart.  I wrote my first entry and clicked the “blog” button.  Instead of success, the new version asked for access to my blogging software or an Applescript.  I went online and looked for a fix.  None were available.  Their FAQ, wiki and help docs all came back empty on a quick search.

Frustrating doesn’t begin to describe my current state of mind.  This is exacerbated by the fact that the new version is very clearly trying to push me to pay for the software.  Not a problem.  I’m happy to shell out $35 for something I would use regularly.

In this case, however, I’ll be looking for another solution.  Though Journler has helped me, I can’t abide by developers who break something and don’t have a solution for it.  It is shoddy work and certainly pushed me away as a customer.  I guess, next week, I’ll need to set some time aside to find a replacement.

Still on the topic of pages, I was thinking about the time it takes to put out a page of finished material. Here are my basic intuitions on the work so far:

Running it through my head, I think I tend to spend about four hours for 12-14 pages (which is close to the average size of one of my chapters) first draft material, which will probably get edited down to around 10 pages over the subsequent edits. Though, on two occasions, I had to go back and add more context to make sense of the information and scenes I was presenting to the reader. This time includes research (books, online, past notes) and the creation of names and other types of backstory.

It takes me a further two hours to print, correct via red pen, and add edits to digital copy.

Once complete, I take a third pass where I read it through in full screen mode via Scrivener. And I do mean “read,” as in out loud. I need to hear the sentences to best identify whether the grammar or structure are clumsy. This can take anywhere between 1-2 hours.

After I get to a “happy place” in my material, I post it to Word and check out suggestions for grammatical correctness and spelling. I get a few good tips for structure our of Word, but some of the suggestions are ignored in favor of my original narration/description.

The work in Word, combined with posting the text to Wordpress and getting the formatting correct for Commentpress takes about a half hour. Then I create the PDF and load it as well.

Counting this, I get 4 + 2 + 1.5 + .5 = 8. 8 hours/10 pages = 48 minutes of effort per page. Which seems a bit high. I was expecting more around 30 minutes per page. However, I’ve been mulling this over and I believe have become a bit more aware of the small time sucks that eat a bit here and there.

Overall, it isn’t a bad place to be. Not a bad place to be, but to come up with 8 hours per month for a single chapter could be difficult. I’m hoping, through experience and learned efficiency, I can get closer to that 30 minute mark by summer.

At this point, I’ve logged about 80 hours of writing in the last two months.  Not bad overall.  Not anything like 40 hours per week, but a good start at 10 hours per week.

Wow, just finished recreating all of the PDFs for the first five chapters.  Starting with chapter six, I was printing two pages to a sheet.  Mostly to make it easier on individuals who want to print them out in place of reading them online.

As I finished up, I wondered how many pages total had been published.  By my count, it is now over 100, though some of the last pages of the chapters may only include a few lines of text.

Considering a major pillar of my effort was to WRITE, to stay in the creative aspect as much as possible and learn through the creation and storyline management, I think I’ve done well.  Certainly more than I expected.  And I have more written material in the future chapters files.

Overall, I think this has went well.  Chapters 6-8 were a rush, but I felt I was losing momentum and getting too caught up in editing the material to perfection.  And I need to move onto some other projects, plus get out of the house a little, and they needed to be in the can, imperfections expected.

WOW!!!  I MUST BE SUCCESSFUL!!!  I GOT SPAM!!!  Wait.  Maybe everyone gets spam for hot, young ladies.  Oh, well.  Maybe something better next time.

Still, caused me to put Spam Karma 2 in place.  Works well in WordpressMU.  But, you have to activate it in each blog.  Not a difficult procedure and there might be an option for enabling it throughout the WPMU installation, but I’m okay going forward with the default.

Here is the link if you’re needing some anti-Spam automation: http://unknowngenius.com/blog/wordpress/spam-karma/

” ‘A tallow candle, to be good, must be half Sheep’s Tallow and half Cow’s; 

that of hoggs mekes ‘em gutter, give an ill smell, and a thick black smoak’ “

I’ve been bouncing all around Wikipedia, constantly looking up informational resources about various bits of medieval life.  Normally, it is fine for my needs and I can quickly locate the proper term or research whether a memory is correct and move on.  Today was a different story.

I was writing in chapter 8 and noted I was using a candle for a purpose which might require wax.  Memory reminded me candles may be wax or tallow and wax was, by far, the more expensive source.  To that end, I decided a bit of research was necessary to affirm my story.

To that end, I powered up Firefox and did my search, with Wikipedia selected, and dropped in the terms.  I was pushed to the page for ‘candle’ and quickly discovered it was mostly lacking in the type of information I needed.  I surfed Wikipedia a bit and came up empty, so back to a general Google search.

Which led me to an interesting site: the UK’s National Trust (http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-index.htm).  And this specific page - http://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/main/w-chl/w-places_collections/w-collections-main/w-collections-highlights/w-collections-lighting-tallow_candles.htm

It turned out to be an excellent article on the use of tallow candles and how prevalent they were among European households.  Being the type of person I am, I left the page open so I could navigate the site and see the full range of offerings.  To end this entry quickly, it has a great range of historic subject matter about various aspects of British life.  Certainly a resource to keep in mind as continue to develop and write.

Tried, unsuccessfully, to switch from creative to organizational project work yesterday.  Mostly, I was writing new dialogue and story line for a few hours and burned out.  Couldn’t keep going on that level.  So, I selected to back off, drink some tea, and take a go and organizing some specifics.  

Couldn’t do it.  Struggled and failed.  Was it a short term burnout?  Maybe, but I’ve noticed both of those mindsets are unique.  Both seem to require a bit of a difference in how you approach problem solving.  Maybe a bit of right/left brain separation?  I’ll have to continue thinking on this a bit and see if the theory stands up in time.  Maybe I just need more experience until I can switch hats at the drop of one.

Editing, for me, seems to be a completely different effort.  I can shift in and out of edit mode from either.  In fact, it take some significant effort not to edit if I want to read something over to test for flow.  I’m sold that the words you choose and being clear in your communication make or break the story as it is told.  Quirky manipulations can have great effect, but must be tempered with a mind on the reader.  

Just some random thoughts as I was prepping to do some writing today.

The problem with something finally printed is the cementation of prior intent.  One you have set content, it provides and influences context.  It immediately hedges you into a format, a flow, a meaning and specifications.  This works on both the micro and the macro of the story.

As I write, I am printing out the first five chapters.  Honestly, I’m tired of moving through windows to look up prior statements in the chapters preceding six.  Having the print copies next to my keyboard will reduce my need to open programs besides Scrivener.

The straw that broke this camel’s back was my earlier term for the main hall of Agrax Keep.  I was struggling to remember my exact term in the preceding chapter and found myself writing a clumsy way around not knowing and not wanting to break out of my writing screen.  Finally, giving into the need to kill some more trees, I decided to get all of the chapters within easy reach.  Back to analog.