Round up. Yeehah.

[erastes]

Question: What’s the name for the person one fags for? It’s not fagee, and that’s what I have for now…Is there a proper word for it? or is it just “Soames, whom he fagged for in his second year.”?

Oh-kay – I can’t see any reason why anyone would buy a Kindle, which starts in the UK at £109,

and the better version is  £40 ish more I think, when one can get an Android for £80 that does a bazillion things—can download most Apps, AND has Kindle on it too. *baffled*  Or am I missing something?

So yes, I’m pleased with Snowy. I’ve connected to Livejournal and Facebook with it, have sent emails and have connected to Twitter. I can’t see me using it a lot for social networking to be honest, as I can do all of that with the computers—and Shiny goes with me just about everywhere, but it might be a boon in all the endless hospital visits – we’ll see.

I’m leaving it on today, just to see how long the battery lasts. I suspect it’s only a few hours – about two when connected to the internet – but it would be sufficient for reading. There’s not many times when I’m not near a plug and even if I sat in a hospital waiting room for two hours I wouldn’t want to read every single second.

I have downloaded some of the free books from Amazon, classics like Jekyll & Hyde, Cranford, and The Prince. Stuff I’ve not read, and really should have done…I’ve ordered an SD card, so I should be able to read PDF’s soon which will really help me reviewing for SIN. Hurrah. I wish I’d have it 20 years ago when I went round the world, I can tell you. I remember wishing something like that existed, as all i could take was a copy of Lord of the Rings and I read it about ten times in a year, because English books were bloody hard to get hold of. How fabulous it would have been to take 100s of books away.

I still have many many reservations about ebooks and pirating, but, there’s nothing much I can do to stop it, and well, I loves me Snowy!

If you aren’t listening to Philip Larkin’s “Letters to Monica” on Radio Four at the moment, then you are missing a real treat. Not only is he how I expected him to be, rather morose and grumpy, and a real "this stuff is such crap" author—but he’s also hilariously funny in spots.  I don’t know if he means to be, but the letters really make me giggle, like the time Samuel Beckett called round and all Larkin could remark upon was his awful American haircut which made him look like Atomboy and the time he met E M Forster and the ensuing conversation which followed. A real treat. I shall be downloading the entire week’s series (it’s Book of the Week, so is on all week) for enjoyment later. It’s available on BBCiplayer – and the radio show (unlike the TV) are accessible to Non-Uk listeners. There’s one spot where he starts talking about all the poems he’s got and what the hell he’s going to do with them. He says he can’t give them to friends, as he’s only got ten—and suggests he might end up sending them to bookshops with the proviso they are given away free to any customer who says please.

I have to say that truthfully, I have never EVER heard of Janet Evanovich until today. Obviously I don’t haunt the right shelves in the library.

Interesting: (YMMV) now having Word 97 on my laptop, and comparing it with Open Office – the word counts for the same book, the same file are different.

Word says I’ve done:49087

Open Office says I’ve done:49423

Why is this? No prizes for guessing which one I’m going with. 50k tomorrow! It’s a TAD depressing that people will be writing as much as I’ve been doing for months – just this month!!

 

  - - - - - -

Comments

[angrboda]

Hyphenated words? Word counts them as two words, but OO counts them as one, if memory serves me. Word counters never count the same though. I use ***** as breaks but OO counts them as a word. Liquid doesn't consider it a word.

But think of it this way. Your 50K that it took you months to write is probably 99% better than the crap we churn out in a month because you've had the priviledge of actually considering what you're writing. :) For myself, I'd say that I've come up with some pretty interesting new ways of spelling stuff because I don't edit anything at all at this stage. Speed is key. Backspace is only employed if I don't think I can decipher it later.

[essayel.livejournal.com]

I'd never heard of an Android. That's a much better price than my Sony. I like my ereader too. I've found I can curl up with it and if I fall asleep and it falls on my face it doesn't stun me the way large books do.

Last time I went on holiday - far too long ago - a couple of Stephanie Plum books had been left in the loo. I think JE is fantastic.

As for word count, I think with writing quality is far more important than speed of production.

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

I have Word 98, I think, because Linden Bay insisted on it and I wasn't sure if I could read their Word tracked changes on my Open Office. I use .rtf files on Word so that OO can read them perfectly (it sometimes has problems with .doc files.) Also .doc files contain huge amounts of embedded html which you end up having to remove by hand when you cut and paste .doc entries anywhere. Rtf files are much cleaner, and therefore can't carry a virus.

Is 50K almost finished? You'll have done two novels in the time it's taken me to do one!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

99 percent better.... I wouldn't bank on it.

however I did write a nice sentence today that i was very proud of.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

If I'd had the money, I definitely would have bought a Sony, but - just out of my league, and I don't think they are available here yet

[angrboda]

I wrote a small paragraph with my eyes closed. :) I figure if I'm not paying attention to things like spelling anyway, I might as well rest them a bit.

(Also, be careful, or I'll show you what I've got.)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I have Word 97 on both PCs now - it's ridiculous that I have to use a 13 year old programme, but I don't care - I love that version, it's the one I've always used, was the first one I used after Wordperfect. It's just simple - and GOOD.

No, not finished - nowhere near it - I think it's got another 30k... I'm not really sure (as I don't really know what's going to happen, as usual) I've just turned the corner from cute and sunny into the edge of darkness. I can't help it! Everything I write goes dark. Perahps I should ditch relationships (i can't even call this a romance) and do creepy. or horror.

[beckyblack]

I think various word processors have differenet algorithms (whatever the hell they actually are) for word counting. I've also heard that Open Office has some weird word counting inaccuracy when using "smart quotes."

Re Kindle v your Android tablet, one crucial thing could be that the Kindle isn't backlit, like a phone, iPad, laptop and I assume that Android tablet - which I'm pretty jealous of! Reading on a backlit screen tires the eyes and if using battery power sucks that up very fast, and you can't read it in sunlight. The Kindle and other readers you can read in full sunlight just the way you could with a book. (But you can't read it in the dark of course, without a light!) And the battery lasts much longer, so you could say take it off on holiday for a couple of weeks without bothering to take the charger or have to worry about adaptors and stuff for abroad.

But I definitely appreciate the point about it being a multi-functional device rather than JUST a reader. I've got enough crap to carry around!

[tiggothy.livejournal.com]

Oh-kay – I can’t see any reason why anyone would buy a Kindle
Because it's been advertised on the TV and people don't bother looking any further.
e.g. my boss said about wanting one a few weeks back, and I replied along the lines of I wouldn't want one myself because of how tied in you become to amazon, and her reply (in a tone of voice which said 'don't argue, I know best') rather showed she didn't have a clue what I was getting at. I figured if she didn't want to know, I didn't care how she wasted her money...

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you didn't press on with the information, sounds like she didn't deserve it!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Yes, the battery life is painfully short with this one, assuming its the light that does it.

I have to admit though, if I went to the beach (like the Kindle adverts) I wouldn't take an expensive piece of tech with me!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

please do! :D

[angrboda]

Well, you asked for it. This is a complete copy/paste. I tried to find a particularly bad spot but it all looks like this really. There are even a handful of danish words strewn in here and there if I couldn't remember the english word for something and didn't want to stop to look it up.

Heather looked up and straight up at a woman in withces outfit and with an irritated slightly unpleasant and wild look at her face. That must be Jack's friend then, Carol or whatever her name was. The woman was definitely a good actor, because the look on her face anhd the dangrous glint in her eye made her look almost not even entirely human. It wasn't just that she was wearing witches' clothers either, she also smelled like she hadn't been washed for a week and her hair was wild and messy with biths of bark and leaf stuck in it and it looked like it had been there for a hwile

Heather was suddenly taken by a desire to do some portrait shots of her as the witch, but somehow didn't think it would be such an entirely good idea to ask permission ofr that. So she got to her feet instead from where she ahd been kneeling and took a couple of steps away from the withch.

Yes my whole manuscript is written in LolCat. :) At least I'm not going on and on about stalgmites and stalagcitites in that bit. :p

[lovefromgirl.livejournal.com]

I believe, if I remember any of Roald Dahl's memoirs correctly, that one fags for a prefect.

[seraphim-grace.livejournal.com]

have you never done nano?
it's a great launching pad but it eats your soul....

(check out kindle bestsellers, anything published before 1923 (must check date) is free! load your ebook up with all those classics you mean to read but never did!

I'm rereading lovecraft at the moment and loving it, although it doesn't have the same effect as when i read the mountains of madness in a powerout by candle!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

typos aside, it seems very intriguing! I admit, I use auto-correct a lot. it gives the impression i can spell, when I really really can't. LOL thanks for sharing!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's just prefects though - just all the boys in the top year - there's a good article here.

http://en.academic.ru/dic.nsf/enwiki/659053

[erastes.livejournal.com]

No - it's never appealed, I know my limits, and if I try to write nearly twice my target for the day, I'll fail, and will slip further and further behind.

Nod nod - that's what I said i was doing, loading up on classics, I like free, its my favourite price.

[beckyblack]

Well, quite! Sand! Sea spray! Sea gulls! (Those buggars will steal anything.)

[angrboda]

auto-correct is the first thing I turn off, as is the running spell checker. I find the automatic changing of what I write and the wavy lines deeply distracting.

The plan is when it's rewritten and prettyfied and betaed and stuff to share it somehow if/when I find an archive I like (definitely won't be fictionpress or whatever ff.net's original section is called), so if you're still interested then you'll get to see. IF I ever get that far. :)

[seraphim-grace.livejournal.com]

you can pick up a lot of new books for a fraction of the price too - then you tihnk of one you want and they haven't got it!
or you're reading a series and they've published 1, 2 and 4 as ebooks but not three

nano is a marathon, it's hard and you churn out 50k without revisions, so it doesn't matter if that line sucks as long as it progresses the story
i'm one of those authors who labours over every word so nano can be exhilerating, (also it's a great kick up the arse when it comes to actually avoiding procrastination)
I use Liquid to do my wordcounts because then i don't need to create a master file and it adds all my chapters individually so if/when i make changes they show in the word count as soon as i've saved.
and no paperclip!

my record was 200k in three months, but i would like to point out i was young, niave, and i drank a lot of coffee, and the story came out of me without participation for the most part, I was at uni, my tv didn't work and i had no internet, so i could either study or write! but that was long before i discovered nano, and there are bits of it which are sublime but the vast majority of it is crap.

[alex-beecroft.livejournal.com]

Have you tried creepy or horror before? I bet you'd be great at the classic psychological horror - you know, the one where you can't decide if something terrible is going to happen and then it does and you jump out of your skin.

[tiggothy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, she didn't even seem to understand I was meaning "I'd buy a different brand of e-reader". Grrr. People.

Anyway. *calming thoughts*

I agree with what Alex says up there about you being good at writing scary stuff. I'd've said that after the first time I read Transgressions, but with the little piece you posted the other day? *shudders*

[erastes.livejournal.com]

No - not in original - but I wrote some fairly horrible things in Potterfic - see the story I posted on Hallowe'en. Many people just wrote Lucius as a MONSTER, killing and torturing for no reason, but I liked to find out more about him, explore his family life and then equate that with the things that we knew he did--or often didn't do--in canon.

I don't know. I think I'm gradually drifting towards more "fiction" on the edge of pyschological. It's interesting, seeing where my fingers want to go next!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Thank you dear! hee!