Jamie Todd Rubin's Blog, page 378
October 31, 2010
Fall foliage photos
I mentioned earlier how the leaves are at their most riotous. Here are some pictures.
From Fall foliage 2010
October 30, 2010
Tools of the trade
With lots of people posting their initial impressions on Scrivener 2.0, I figured I'd talk about some of the other tools I use since I plan to write about my impressions of Scrivener 2.0 after I've completed NaNoWriMo. Scrivener is, of course my main tool for writing because it does a whole lot of things very well. But there are other tools I use and these are listed below.
Tools for backups
As a writer, the stuff that I write is difficult to recreate should it be lost. Ultimately this is true of any data stored on computer and we have almost all experienced some sort of data loss from which we couldn't recover. Here are the tools that I use to ensure that I never lose any data, whether its the story I'm working on, photos, music, research, whatever.
iDrive for Macintosh . iDrive is a "cloud" backup application that backs your data up to the cloud. The nice thing about iDrive is that you can backup up to 5 computers and so this software is used on my laptop, Kelly's laptop and the desktop that acts as our server. iDrive backs up small files in real time as changes are made. For larger files, backups are scheduled nightly and as long as the computers remain on, the data gets backed up without thinking about it. I pay for 500 GB (1/2 TB) of storage space and it costs about $100/year. The very first backup (which backed up all my music, photos, videos, etc.) took a couple of days, even with the pretty high upload speeds that I have, but all subsequent backups are quick and if the computer is not connected at the scheduled time, the backup takes place the next time it's connected. Restores are easy (you can restore from anywhere using a web browser) and for full-restores they will send you a flash drive with your data if requested. I sleep easy at night knowing that our stuff is always backed up.
Thumb drive backups. After I finish a writing session, I take the extra precaution of backing up my writing data to a thumb drive. I have an Automator script that I run on my mac that backs up all my writing files to the thumb drive. This is perhaps paranoia on my part, but it makes sure that the stuff I write gets backed up if for some reason the iDrive backup doesn't happen for a few hours.
Submission/story tracking
There are now lots of tools out there for tracking stories submissions and other business online, but my methods have evolved over 15 years and center around spreadsheets and so I stick with my own custom system.
The system makes use of a Google Docs spreadsheet–so that it accessible no matter where I go. The spreadsheet has a number of tabs to track things in different ways:
Submission log: lists all of my submissions in order of date, going back to January 1993. I track the story, market, current status, notes, final date, and number of days out for submission. For rejections, the status links to either a copy of the gmail rejection message or a scanned in copy of rejection letter. For acceptances, the entry links to the acceptance note and a copy of the contract and check, all of which are stored in Google Docs.
Publication log: lists all my publications by story, market, publication date, type (original, reprint) and payment.
Story log: list all my stories in order of completion. Each story contains some summary information culled from the Submission Log: # of submissions, rejections, sales, publications and the total payments received for the piece.
Market log: an alphabetical list of all markets to which I have submitted, along with summary info like #submissions, rejections, sales, and the average response time.
Expense log: a list of all writing-related expenses along with links to scanned in copies of receipts for tax purposes.
Calendar and scheduling tools
I use Google Calendar for tracking writing-related events and progress. I have a separate calendar called "Writing" on which I put anything writing related, whether its a meeting of the Arlington Writers Group, a science fiction convention, or other event. I also use the calendar as my "timesheet" for tracking my time writing (important for tax purposes for certain types of write-offs). Each writing session goes on the calendar with a subject something like this:
5-7am Far Away Places (1,635/23,924)
That tells me that on that day, between 5 and 7 am, added 1,635 words to the story Far Away Places, bringing the total word count to 23,924. I will add other notes to indicate revisions, proofreading, research, outlining, etc. I have ben using this method for over a year and it is simple and works well. Once per quarter, I take the data from Google Calendar and export it to my spreadsheet where I can filter it and compute totals. In fact, "Take One for the Road", the story I recently sold to ANALOG, is the first story for which I can give an exact accounting of the total time I spent working on it from first conception to sale.
Domain, website and blog
For a few years now, I own and maintain three domains to use for my Internet presence: jamierubin.net, jamietoddrubin.com, and jamietoddrubin.net. These domains host my website and blog, and these are the tools that I use to make it all work:
DirectNIC : this is the company I use for hosting my domain. They are relatively inexpensive and provide a good set of tools for people wiling to do some grunt work (which means you have to know what you are doing). One of the reasons I chose them is because they provide MySQL database access which is something I wanted for my website.
MySQL : I use this to manage databases, primarily the databases used by WordPress.
WordPress : I use a custom installation of WordPress which I installed on my own and customized some of the code and templates to meet my needs. My installation of WordPress automatically crossposts my blog entries to my LiveJournal account, as well as to Twitter and Facebook.
Other tools
A few other items worth mentioning:
Gmail . I use it for all my email needs. It is by far the best email system I have encountered and I've never had a problem with it. At this point I have it highly customized to my needs, with labels, and filters that make going through my email easy. All software should be this easy and intuitive to use.
Google Docs . When I am away from my laptop, I rely heavily on Google Docs for writing-related functions. While it's no Scrivener, it's the next best thing. I can work on a story, or notes, or whatever and then copy or import them into Scrivener at a later time.
That about sums it up. What tools do you use?
October 29, 2010
Scientifc American gets a face-lift
Beginning with the October 2010 issue, Scientific American has gotten yet another face lift. I've been a subscriber to SCIAM for 15 years and I read each issue cover-to-cover, and in doing so, I've become very comfortable with the look and feel, and where things fall in the magazine. So I was ready to complain about any change just for the sake of the change.
But overall, I'm pleased with the result.
In part that's because the changes they have made seem to mirror the aesthetics of New Scientist, which is my favorite science magazine. Looking at a page in the first half of SCIAM, it looks remarkably similar in formatting and over all feel to a page in New Scientist. This may not be the most original move on the part of the designers of the magazine, but it works from a usability standpoint. For one thing, the non-feature articles almost never span more than a page now. I think some of the headline news is more condensed than it was before and I like the fact that I can read these pieces in their entirety without flipping a page. (There are one or two exceptions.)
The magazine has also reorganized the way it presents articles, columns and features. In this, I generally don't like the change. I was used to a very specific rhythm whereby you started with the editorial and letters, followed by the famous 50-100-150 years ago page, and then by the news. That was followed by all of the opinion columns, and then the features, and finally, reviews. Beginning in October that all changes. You get the editorial and letters, and then 2 short opinion pieces. This is followed by the "Advances" section which replaces the science news. Then an opinion piece on health, followed by a new column, "TechnoFiles" which is an opinion piece by David Pogue. Then you are into the features which is followed by reviews. Michael Shermer's excellent "Skeptic" column has been moved way to the back (page 98 in the October issue), and Steve Mirky's "Antigravity" column follows that, no longer being the last item in the magazine. That's too bad because it was always nice finishing off an intense reading of science with a laugh. Inexplicably, the 50, 100, 150 Years Ago page is now the second to last item (page 102 in the October issue), and the final page of the magazine is a new item called "Graphic Science" which illustrates something of interest using fancy charts and graphs.
There are other minor changes, the most notable to me being the use of Wall Street Journal style illustrations for feature and column authors instead of the photographs they used to use. I'm not sure why one is better than the other, and therefore question the purpose of this change.
I liked when all of the opinion pieces were collected together before the features, but I suppose the magazine designers can't please everyone. I cannot for the life of my understand why the moved the 50, 100, 150 years ago column from the front to the back. I do, however, like the new format of the features themselves. They are all 2-column and make much better and more efficient use of page space, in my opinion.
My last grip is about the binding. Beginning with this issue, the magazine goes from a rounded binding to a flat one, presumably because the flat one allows information to be printed on the edge. It is a mistake. It may not seem like a big deal, but as a regular reader, I like to fold the magazine in such a way the I am only looking at one page at a time. The round binding made that easy, the flat binding makes it virtually impossible. From a usability standpoint, it is frustratingly annoying.
I finished the October issue yesterday and I'm halfway through November. I imagine by the time I'm through November I'll be more-or-less used to the new format, and then, just when I've finally become completely comfortable with it, it will change again.
The onion and the flu: a myth in one act
I received an email message today with the subject "FW: Very interesting – Onion Theory" and I realize that alone should have given me pause, but I recognized the sender's address and took a look at it anyway. The gist of the message is that onions scattered about the rooms of your house can stave off the flu virus, and that everyone should give this a try since flu season is upon us. Here was my response to the message:
Sorry to disappoint, but the onion vs. flu has long since been proven to be an urban myth:
http://www.snopes.com/medical/swineflu/onion.asp
http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/medical/a/swine_flu_facts_onions_and_flu.htm
It's a little disappointing that this stuff still gets spread around (no pun intended) and casts a sad light on the state of our understand of scientific method and principles of science in general.
The narrative of the farmer's tale has some rather gaping logical flaws, to say nothing of completely misunderstanding the biology of viruses.
The best way to prevent the flu, of course, is to get a flu vaccine, which countless double-blind studies have shown, prevents the flu with a higher degree of success than anything else, including onions.
Despite advice to the contrary, trying the onion method can hurt, especially if you are someone prone to getting the flu like a young child or elderly person. Since onions provide no protection, trying this method as opposed to, say, a vaccination leaves you vulnerable to a virus that you've deceived yourself into thinking you're protected against. This can have obvious dangerous consequences.
Sorry to spoil the show, but it's nothing more than snakeoil shammery.
What bothers me most about messages like this is that they uncover just how poor our collective grasp of science and scientific principles really is, and just how easily we'll accept without question something we receive in email, and then pass it along to everyone we know. We've got to do better people! It took my 5 seconds to do a Google search for "onions and flu" and the top two hits were the two links that I included in my message.
What's more is the assertion that cut up onions left around somehow dangerous, an assertion that goes equally unchallenged, and one that is equally false. There is no scientific evidence of this.
There is the question of why even bother replying to these messages. After all, I know that the information is wrong, so who is it hurting? Well, I suppose I could leave it alone, but this is a particular pet peeve of mine and sometimes, I just can't keep quiet about these things.
And just to be clear and so no one missed the point onions won't protect you from the flu.
Finally fall
Driving home from work yesterday I noted that the trees around here are at their most riotous. It has been unseasonably warm for the last few days, but last night a windy cold front blew in and this morning in was in the low 40s when I left the house. It's that combination of cold air and the smell of decaying leaves that I love so much about the fall and that I was simply unaware of for the nearly two decades I lived in Southern California. This is the best part of the season, right now, with leaves colored in ways that even Crayola cannot match, with pumpkins on every stoop in the neighborhood, and skeletons, zombies, princesses and superheroes running around the neighborhood.
I'll try to get some pictures this weekend and post them for you to see, especially for my friends and family living in those sad places where autumn doesn't exist, except as a marking of time between September and December.
It's going down in the 30s tonight. It's finally fall.
T-minus 2 days and counting to NaNoWriMo
I think my count must have been off in yesterday's post. According to the NaNoWriMo website, at the present moment, there are 2 days, 15 hours, 17 minutes and 15 seconds until NaNoWriMo officially begins. Last night I spent about 2 hours on the outline, most of which turned into research for the science and technical parts of the plot line. I'm spending whatever time I can this weekend fleshing out the rest of the outline so that it reads smoothly and (hopefully) usefully, like the outlines I've seen in Mike Resnick's I Have This Nifty Idea…. The setting is starting to feel familiar in my mind and I take that as a good sign. Also, several of the subplot threads are beginning to tie together and I have a vision in my head of a diagram that will show their interrelationshiops.
While I'm not revealing much about the plot of the story, other than to say it is science fiction, probably space opera, I established the time-line of the story last night. The novel opens in 2367 and cover a time period through about 2390 or 2391. However, I like playing with time in my stories and so I will tell you that the novel itself is story that is being told much farther in the future, probably around the year 4000 A.D. about events that took place in the distant past (2367-2391). And while the scope of the actual novel spans about 24 years, relativity and time dilation play a role so that for some of the cast of the novel only experience about 3 years of actual time. I suppose I might as well add that if this novel works out, I have conceived it as part one of three, leading up to an event that takes place very close to that 4000 A.D. date mentioned above.
I'm beginning to feel that excited tingle in my stomach and I'm sure that by Monday morning, I'll be ready to go. For those of you doing NaNoWriMo this year, how are things progressing?
October 28, 2010
Countdown to NaNoWriMo: T-4 days
With just 4 days before NaNoWriMo 2010 begins, my outline got an overdue boost last night from an exercise we did at our Arlington Writers Group meetup. The exercise focused on thinking outside the box. We had to bring some kind of problem with us, and my problem was that the overall plot didn't have enough at stake; that there wasn't enough tying the backbone of the story together. I think I managed to get that part worked out last night, thanks in large part to the exercises we did. I added about 1,000 words to the outline, and the first part of the novel (there are 4 parts all together) is now outlined in detail. Even better, I can start tying this overarching theme into the rest of the novel outline, and it now makes so much more sense even on multiple levels.
Between now and Sunday, I'm also working on taking the outline and creating "scenes" in Scrivener and assigning scenes to days of the month so that I have a good idea of what I will work on, at least for that first week or two of NaNo. And I'm identifying a few scenes that I'm excited to write and holding them back in reserve for those days where the motivation just isn't there.
I worked on the outline in Scrivener 2.0 last night and started making use of some of the new features. Very nice so far. I'm going to hold off posting on the new version in detail until after NaNoWriMo because by then, I will have abused it enough to speak about it with some authority.
October 27, 2010
My NaNoWriMo game plan for 2010
With 5 days left before the start of NaNoWriMo, I thought I'd outline my plan of attack this year. I realize that many people go into this with the goal of just finishing. I finished it last year, but did not emerge from it with a useful novel. (That is not to say it was not a useful experience; on the contrary, NaNoWriMo taught me that I can consistently put out 2,000 words/day if I put my mind to it.) This year, my intentions are somewhat different. I want to come away from NaNo with a novel that I can ultimately clean up and market to agents and publishers. While I have sold short science fiction, and completely dozens of short stories, I have never completed a novel, so in a way this is a double challenge for me.
I am working harder on the outline this year. I have made fairly extensive use of Mike Resnick's book, I Have This Nifty Idea… which contains outlines from real science fiction novels. There are parts of it that I have struggled with and am still struggling with, but I'll still have some time to work out the details. (Not much time, however.) Perhaps my biggest challenge is that I simply don't know how to write a novel and I'm going mostly on instinct here and what I've learned from my peers, and from reading many, many novels over the years. I know little about breaking things into "acts" and only a little on the overall narrative arc of something this long. In that sense, I am winging things, but I suppose so is everyone their first time.
I won't talk about the subject of the novel, other than to say that it is science fiction, that it's working title is Far Away Places, and that my outline describes what might ultimately be a series of three books, that lead up to an ultimate event.
All this being said, here is my game plan:
Prior to NaNoWriMo
Complete the novel outline and REVISE
Get some feedback on the outline from first-readers
Clear the decks on various reading projects, since my reading will be cut down drastically during November
Beginning November 1
Aim for 2,000 words/day between 5-7 am on weekdays and 7-9 am on weekends; this puts me on target for 60,000 words in November
Have an idea about what I am going to write every day; my outline breaks things down into 45 chapters of roughly 2,000 words each. That means about a chapter/day, assuming I stick to the outline.
Identify 5-6 chapters that I am very excited to write, maybe 1/week, scattered throughout the outline. Reserve these for days in which I am not feeling motivated and then write those chapters on those days.
Use the NaNoWriMo preview version of Scrivener 2.0. I've been a Scrivener user for years and this will give me the chance to play with the new features and evaluate the product in a real-life situation.
Rely on my support network, other WriMos, friends, family, colleagues, etc.
Avoid revising, but jot down a lot of notes where I think things aren't working.
Where possible, take advantage of snippets of time in the evenings to work on other writing projects, to get my mind off the novel from time-to-time.
Try to blog every day on my progress.
Try to encourage others that I know participating in the event.
Beginning December 1
At the close of NaNoWriMo, I should have around 60,000 words of what I'm estimating to be a 90,000 word novel. So successfully completing NaNo for me this year is not the end of the journey.
Continue the same schedule, 2,000 words/day, through December 15, which should get me to the end of the novel.
On December 16, a Thursday as it turns out, celebrate in some fashion with the family. I have written a complete novel!
Back everything up (this is done automatically anyway)
Set the novel aside until January 1
Take the rest of the month off for a well-deserved rest.
Beginning January 1
Pull out the novel and read it the whole thing, cover-to-cover to get a feeling for its flow
Identify problem areas and begin revising
Begin querying first readers to see if they are willing to take a peek
Put first 3 chapters and outline up for review at the writer's group
Revise, revise, revise
February/March
Begin identifying potential agencies through SFWA peer and colleague recommendations
Start writing and sending out queries per recommendations
See what happens
I can't plan much beyond that, but at least, if all goes well, the process that starts on November 1 will, 4-5 months later, have me at a point where I am querying agencies on my novel and even if it doesn't sell, I might get some valuable feedback there as well.
Fangbangers of the real world
I can't help but think of those of us who willingly donate blood as the real-world equivalent of True Blood's "fangbangers". Fans of the show might wonder (as I do) why anyone would willingly allow themselves to be bitten by blood-thirsty vampires. And yet we donors do the essentially the same thing, allowing bureaucratic vampires to drain us of our blood. Of course, the blood we give goes to a good cause, "saves lives" as the Red Cross tells us. The blood the fictional vampires drink, well, I don't know what actually happens to that, maybe it's metabolized and then, you know, ends up in a plumbing system somewhere.
Every time I give blood (I do so 2-3 times/year), I feel like it's a bad idea. I wake up on the morning of the donation knowing that I'm going to feel like crap sitting in that chair as the life force is drained from me, and feeling even worse when it is all done, that light-headed, tingly, slightly nauseated feeling that lingers for an hour or so. I do it because, I'm told, it saves lives and my blood type is one that is always needed. But I really don't like doing it. This isn't an attempt to gain sympathy, to have people say to me, "You're so brave for doing this despite hating it." Bravery has nothing to do with it. The sight of blood doesn't bother me. Feeling it drain from my body does, and the rational side of my brain repeatedly urges me to give up the charade and stop donating because it's just too uncomfortable.
But then I think that maybe one day, Zachary will need blood. Or Kelly. And that there's someone else out there, like me, who hates the process, but does it anyway, and that their blood might help Zach or Kelly when they need it most. It's a rationalization and a pretty lame justification, I suppose, but I'm just sentimental enough to fall for it, and so I continue to donate blood, despite the sickly feeling it gives me. And when the Red Cross shows up here at the office next time, I'll once again be first in line, like I was today.
October 26, 2010
To-do list for a Tuesday evening
Some things to get done this evening:
Clean bathrooms
Clear hardwood floors
Clean off my desk
Play with Scrivener 2.0 preview
More work on the novel outline
Just so that it's clear that I started the evening with good intentions.
