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I'm Back! (Y'all miss me?)
Mar. 26th, 2012 05:09 pmAudrey picked up the computer this afternoon, brought it to my house, and plugged it back in. She forgot to plug in my headset speaker/microphone, however, and I can't clearly see or reach the outlets the plugs are supposed to go into... so I won't be able to watch videos with sound, at least until she comes back Wednesday afternoon -- woe.
Remember my post about how to add closed captioning to your videos? I wish everyone would do that. And I wish YouTube would let folks put captions on vids that aren't theirs (hello, PBS Kids' channel, and Harvard lecture series, I'm looking at you. I don't want to pirate your vids, and repost them on my own channel, but if you refuse to caption them, these are the actions people will be forced to resort to -- just saying).
Anyway, here's what I did over the last five days without you, in order to keep sane (relatively):
1) Came up with the idea of a "Bunny Bag":
Write out, in longhand (because I had no word processor, of course, but writing longhand also forced me to slow down and think deeply about my story, so I'd have a head start when the month of writing rolls aroundand take more time, so I'd have something to do) on one side of a legal pad page the idea for a potential NaNoWriMo/"Camp NaNoWrimo" story. Then fold said page into thirds two ways, and then fold into fourths (fold into thirds, as I normally would for mailing a letter, then turn 90 degrees and fold in thirds again, then fold that into quarters). And then, drop each "controlled wad" of paper into a brown paper lunch sack. A month before the challenge starts, I will reach into the bag and pull one of the them out, And that's the story I write ... of course, like the Doctor, I may decide to ignore the dictates of chance, if, in the moment, I hate what I have in my hand.
Some pages had more white space than others, and some pages had writing squeezed into the margins, but at least that limit helped make certain that each story idea had roughly the same average of detail. And of course, no single story page is folded exactly the same as any other, but close enough so that when I reach into the bag to pick my story for the challenge, I won't remember which is which just by blind feel.
There are eight "bunnies" in the bag. Not as many as the dozen John Steinbeck (allegedly) promised, but enough to make the final choice uncertain, and therefore interesting. Some are stories I've tried my hand at recently, so I'm giving myself a chance to take a second stab at them. But a few are brand new. Only one story idea (from a creative writing assignment from grad school 20 years ago) turned out to be "stillborn" -- got halfway down the page, and realized "There was no 'There' there" anymore.
2. Read Morality for Beautiful Girls, which Audrey lent me years ago, and I promptly forgot about. It's one of the novels in the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that it had a major named secondary character who's a wheelchair user (the protag's adopted daughter), and who is not held up as an object of pity... although the depiction is not without its weaknesses, I still welcome it.
3. On Saturday night, I grabbed the scissors and gave myself a super-short (above the ears), one-handed haircut. My hair is about (probably) 65% shorter than it was on Friday... It ... looks not terrible.
Remember my post about how to add closed captioning to your videos? I wish everyone would do that. And I wish YouTube would let folks put captions on vids that aren't theirs (hello, PBS Kids' channel, and Harvard lecture series, I'm looking at you. I don't want to pirate your vids, and repost them on my own channel, but if you refuse to caption them, these are the actions people will be forced to resort to -- just saying).
Anyway, here's what I did over the last five days without you, in order to keep sane (relatively):
1) Came up with the idea of a "Bunny Bag":
Write out, in longhand (because I had no word processor, of course, but writing longhand also forced me to slow down and think deeply about my story, so I'd have a head start when the month of writing rolls around
Some pages had more white space than others, and some pages had writing squeezed into the margins, but at least that limit helped make certain that each story idea had roughly the same average of detail. And of course, no single story page is folded exactly the same as any other, but close enough so that when I reach into the bag to pick my story for the challenge, I won't remember which is which just by blind feel.
There are eight "bunnies" in the bag. Not as many as the dozen John Steinbeck (allegedly) promised, but enough to make the final choice uncertain, and therefore interesting. Some are stories I've tried my hand at recently, so I'm giving myself a chance to take a second stab at them. But a few are brand new. Only one story idea (from a creative writing assignment from grad school 20 years ago) turned out to be "stillborn" -- got halfway down the page, and realized "There was no 'There' there" anymore.
2. Read Morality for Beautiful Girls, which Audrey lent me years ago, and I promptly forgot about. It's one of the novels in the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series. I was pleasantly surprised by the fact that it had a major named secondary character who's a wheelchair user (the protag's adopted daughter), and who is not held up as an object of pity... although the depiction is not without its weaknesses, I still welcome it.
3. On Saturday night, I grabbed the scissors and gave myself a super-short (above the ears), one-handed haircut. My hair is about (probably) 65% shorter than it was on Friday... It ... looks not terrible.
