Homo Fabula

Synaptic Misfirings of an unpublished author

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Scientific study on the effectiveness of aluminum foil helmets Quoth: "we find that ... certain frequencies are in fact greatly amplified. These amplified frequencies coincide with radio bands reserved for government use according to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC). Statistical evidence suggests the use of helmets may in fact enhance the government's invasive abilities. We speculate that the government may in fact have started the helmet craze for this reason."

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Novel Progresseth, although for some reason I have had a non-writery day. Thursdays are apparently bad for the muse. This would perhaps be acceptable if I was deeply involved in the creative process, but at the moment I'm just transcribing/editing out of a notebook. I didn't think copying two thousand words needed inspiration, but there you go. There is editing involved as I type, I suppose.

I like the system, incidentally. It's something I read about on Neil Gaiman's blog, hand-writing then typing. It sounds labour intensive, and... well, it is. But writing is, it's not supposed to be a walk in the park. I'm probably going to do multiple drafts on a piece of work in any case - my first draft writing is often irrational, wandering, and devoid of any obvious merit. The second draft is normally Where The Magic Happens (although any magic that is contained in the first draft is absolutely golden), so the retype-and-edit-in-the-process thing actually works pretty well.

There's also the whole pen-interacting-with-paper thing, which I used to be less than enthusiastic about - my penmanship has been compared to cuneiform in the past, more than once in fact - but now I like the interface and I can at least read most of my own handwriting. And it's portable, as well as being fairly lightweight.

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Incidentally, the transcribing is being done on an Alphasmart 2000, a wonderful little device that is a keyboard that stores text. I can transcribe and do nothing else. Not even solitaire. Unless I have a pack of cards to hand. Which I try to avoid.

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