lbd

Well, I've started a new book, unfortunately my hate of the second draft process is making the attempt to get a first draft close to final draft quality is making for slow progress. Trying to address tone and choose flowing prose while keeping unnecessary exposition and inelegant descriptive shit to a minimum while still getting across the feel I want for the story, it's so slow.

The screen of my Powerbook is utterly phuqqed, so I'm working exclusively on my shiny Samsung NC10, with the main advantages being that I don't need to keep an eye on the battery life, and the LED screen is bright enough to use easily outside, which is a big bonus over the PB, which was almost impossible to see outdoors on any but the dullest day (when you don't really want to be outdoors)

I also now have a "Delete" key. What the hell were Apple thinking not having a delete key on what became the writers' machine of choice? I'm quickly breaking the habit of having to take care where I put the cursor because of "Backspace only" restrictions. My main problem is being back in Windows. XP is a mature and well rounded environment now, but there are still the nags of working with Windows after the freedom and speed of a Mac. All the little things it keeps doing, like an idiot who is so desperate to be helpful that they just keep getting in your way and making life harder. It's like trying to work with somebody standing in front of you, waiting for you to ask them to help, when you don't need any damned help.

I've bypassed most of this by stuffing it with high quality, non-Microsoft made freeware. After years of using Word, I've found Open Office to be very accessible, and fairly similar in terms of keyboard shortcuts and such.

I had to use IE at first, until I'd got Firefox installed. I can't believe Explorer still doesn't have tabbed browsing? maybe I missed something, but I found no way to do it, and it's not something you should hide. Who the phuqq still wants to open every damned link in a new window? That's the only reason I can figure that some sites still thrust this target="_blank" shit on you, this very blog hoster among them. The only other reason for forcing people to open a new window is if you're desperate they shouldn't navigate away from your site. If your site is any good, they'll come back, quit the new window shit you annoying bastards. Tabbed browsing has been around for bloody years now, I don't want 2 dozen windows shat all over my screen.

Anyway. My friend Kellie, aka "tiny_little_me" back from the dj days left a 4 page suicide note about a month ago, and hasn't been seen since. Her car has been found, but no trace of her has. She was really smart and funny, and had a great heart. The world seems to lose so many of the sort of people it could use more of. Hateful shitwads seem to live almost forever. I don't get worked up about these things though. The last year or more has left me kind of numb to a lot of things.

Tomorrow will be Day 4 of the new book, hopefully I'll pick up some speed as my mind gets back in the habit of writing. I'm not even managing a thousand words a day, which is really the minimum I expect of myself, but my mind feels clumsy right now, so if I were working at that pace I'd just have 3,000 words I mostly hate, rather than the beginnings of something small that feels right all the way through. Oh, one other thing, I can feel the Ctrl+S twitch coming back. I never feel safe in Windows, I've lost too much work to it's flakiness before. Ctrl+S is my safety net.