Back On The Job.

This is behind my mother's house. A bit of a climb down, but worth it.

To make a long story short, my computer blew up and I sent it off to our tech people in Londinium, and then I moved household to another undisclosed location.

When I closed out my dad's internet account, set up because I was looking after him and the bill was in his name, I lost a couple of e-mail accounts. When I got my computer back, the program for downloading (or unloading,) pictures from my HP camera was gone. Sticking the disk in seems to do nothing at all, but I always seem to find some bass-ackwards way of doing things and I can in fact get the pictures off.

In a previous post I mentioned that my camera is broken. What this means is that I have to pinch the battery door shut, hold the camera in a vice-like grip and quickly set it up and shoot. Taking the photos off involves a whole lot of death-grip squeezing on the machine and it's a real pain in the pattooties.

It's a good idea to blank that card once in a while, it might speed things up.

Maybe a c-clamp would help. The door can be taped shut, but the tape doesn't hold for very long.

Due to the fact that my e-mail accounts were deleted, I have to hack into quite a few of my accounts and platforms, and re-set the contact e-mail address before I will start getting notifications from them. I have no idea of how many new followers I might have on Twitter, but I can check that using Tweetdeck.

I haven't written a thing in two or three weeks, but sometimes it's good to disrupt the obsession with sales and success and all that sort of thing.

In July, we broke all previous monthly sales records, and that helps to put it in its proper perspective. Maybe I was trying too hard or something. It's only the ninteenth, right?

I still need a rug for under my office chair, and a light of some kind over the computer desk. That's because my touch-typing skills are apparently not the best.

You learn something new every day.

Moving is Disruption.

c2011 (S)


If the occasional disruption is good for us, then moving is probably a good thing.

Every time I come over to my sister's house to use a borrowed laptop and someone else's internet service, I seem to forget my reading glasses. I strikes me that I have a hundred accounts and a seemingly endless stream of passwords. It occurs to me that I forgot my notebook, good old ruled lines on white paper, with a lot of crucial stuff in there, like all them passwords.

It's always cold in her basement. I can't smoke in here. So far I haven't tried to burn a disc on my home PC and bring it here and load it into this (actually my mother's/lent to my brother's/borrowed by my sister's/but she's out of town and now I'm using it) machine. That one box is in a closet at home, and presumably I have at least one blank disc. There are no card slots on this machine.

Clearly the internet is vital to my business and a modern writer can hardly compete in today's marketplace without it. It's only a matter of time. Theoretically I can order it online, right here and now. But there are always other considerations. My mother can save $25.00 if she signs me up...if I order the thing myself, do I have to use my sister's phone number, and then come back and sit here day after day waiting for them to set up an appointment for hook-up? Because I don't have a phone yet, right? That's one of the things I might be ordering...right?

Moving is disruption, which brings fresh insights, or at least makes older ones clearer in some way.

My newly-repaired computer does indeed have new programs on it, (just as predicted in a previous post,) including upgraded Windows XP/professional, and a bunch of new icons on the desktop. The program for taking photos off my camera is gone, so it needs to be reloaded.

I do need a vacation, but in terms of my business, this is all happening at a crucial stage. To backslide or even just waste a whole lot of time is kind of heartbreaking.

The New Newspaper

When pop went into the old age home, one of the first things I did was to cancel the daily newspaper. The Sarnia Observer also includes a weekly paper, Sarnia-Lambton This Week, which is inserted in there mid-week.

The total weight of paper going into the recycle box every week was considerable, probably eight or ten, or twenty pounds per week. This doesn't include paper packaging that goes into the kitchen garbage.

The problem was that there was so much in there that I simply didn't read. I never go the the bars, or a movie, or shopping. I'm not likely to buy a car, or purchase some lawn service. That takes care of the ads. What about editorial content?

I'm not a sports fan. I never read the lifestyles section, because I don't have a lifestyle. I'm not hung up on food, and drink, or recipes for same. I don't care for poltical and economic columnists, who always have some sort of bourgeois agenda, always go back to the same sources time and time again, each of whom also has an agenda, and none of whom want to offend the publishers of newspapers, all of whom also have an agenda.

Anything that comes out of a poltician's mouth is suspect, yet the media seems unable to draw even the most obvious conclusions.

Why pay good money to have someone spew out crap that is patently nonsense, ninety percent of which I don't read, and by the very act of subscribing, support an agenda which I don't accept whole-heartedly?

The paper is mostly online anyway. If I want something, I can go right to the firm's website. When I wanted an apartment, I went straight to the free online ads that are popping up in every community.

The big difference is that I miss the local headlines on a daily basis, and that I don't always go online to that particular site to check the day's news in the local sense. That is the difference: the newspaper was shoved in the box every day. One way or another, we dealt with it, and were perhaps more aware of it.

But there must be a better way. Until someone can sort of justify receiving the New York Times, or the Sarnia Observer, in the e-mailbox, with no paper, no ink, and none of the crap that I don't want in my paper, at a fair price that actually reflects a rational cost-profit structure, then I don't and won't suscribe to a newspaper in the former sense of the term.

In Canada, the journalists just do too damn good a job of justifying things which are expensive to change. You're too damn good at defending the economy from the enemy, who turn out to be a bunch of working people. You're too prone to defend the poor, downtrodden rich against the greedy unemployed.

They say you get what you pay for. The problem is when they try and shove a whole lot of crap that I don't need and didn't ask for down my throat, and never listen to any of my concerns.

You want propaganda? You pay for it, because I ain't interested. You're a gatekeeper? I don't give a pinch of coon-crap, no matter who's doing it.

(Argh!) Borrowed laptops with jammed buttons.

c2011 (S)

(Argh!)

I’m not using my regular machine here today. The trouble with a borrowed laptop is that I can’t put a CD in it, and therefore I can’t work on my new novel. I’m hoping to get my computer back in a few days, or maybe another used one, which will cost money.

If I end up with another used machine, if the programming is all different, it might take a few weeks to figure out where everything is and what all the buttons on the toolbar are for.

The frustration of waiting is a factor, the uncertainty is a factor, and the big concern is that some things on the hard-drive will be missing, although I do burn backup CD’s from time to time. I’m moving in a couple of days, and I haven’t even arranged for internet service. That’s for two reasons. One; I don’t know if or when I will have a machine, and two; there is the whole ‘bundling’ of services thing. So that means no phone or cable in my new place until I get with the program.

With a screwed-up vehicle, back problems and no money, of course moving is another potential nightmare. It doesn’t make sense to fill up the last two boxes and then just sit in relative discomfort and stew for the next forty-eight hours.

It’s cold. It’s really cold for late June, and I for one am sick of it. All that bike riding yesterday took a lot out of me, but it’s just too cold to go anywhere today.

I have too much time to think today. One of the buttons on this laptop is jammed. Try writing your way around that one! They say Winston Churchill had a lisp, and wrote his speeches to avoid the letter ‘s’ as much as possible. I don’t think it’s even possible to do that, but I guess he tried.

There are two things I despise, one of which is waiting, and the other is depending on other people to do what they say they are going to do, and to be there when they say they are going to be there.

The thing to do is to put on a parka and go for a bike ride with my broken camera. As for the minivan, the right front brakes are metal on metal, which stops the vehicle just fine, but it is incredibly irritating, and just when I could do with a little less stress. I plan on moving, and then having it towed. I have to keep insurance on it, or after thirty days, I become a ‘high risk driver,’ and they have the right to charge me $5,000 for car insurance. I haven’t had a ticket in fifteen years, I have never had an accident, and I have thirty-seven years of experience. Oddly enough, I have no idea if I will ever have a vehicle again. City buses take two and a half hours to go four miles locally, so the reader may understand my concern. (You could crawl faster.)

This impacts my life as the government has determined that daily attendance at soup kitchens and food banks is the permanent solution to the challenges faced by all of the adult independent disabled persons of this province. They will hear more about that this October.

Facing Different Challenges

c2011 (S)


When I read different blog posts, there is often a temptation to go into the comments and contradict the writer, or even to 'explain what they're saying.' But the information we seek depends upon our goals, first and foremost, and secondly on our circumstances.

I have never been published by a traditional or legacy publisher. I do not have a backlist, or any previous sales numbers, favourable reviews, or any cadre of loyal fans, followers or readers. What I have is a front-list of three unpublished books, a poetry collection, and a major 'work in progress.'

In the sense that I suffer from the same general angst as any writer, and some of those more specific to independent or self-published artists in any genre, I would prefer not to get into it more than I have to. Some subjects are more hot-button controversial than others. Am I really contributing anything?

What I would counsel or caution other 'writers in the same boat' is this: determine which information it is that you require, and then try to figure out where to get that information. If I'm not submitting to 'brick and mortar publishers,' and have no intention of doing so, what do I need to know about publishing contracts? Ah, but if I do want to do that, why not read up on them? Only then do you require the data.

It's that simple. When I got paranoid about my grammar, I went and looked it up.

Every so often I read a favourite writer's blog, get a few simple lessons in the craft, and then I polish up my work. Stephen King doesn't need to read that blog. I do, and it helps, and maybe I'm not so insecure now!

If I go to submit a manuscript to a publisher, the first thing I want to do is research that publisher. (The second thing, is to figure out if I really am committed to it. I would challenge myself with questions long before submitting.)

Top-selling authors face one set of challenges, mid-list authors out of a contract face another set of challenges, debut authors who are thinking primarily in terms of print and ink with traditional publishers face certain challenges. What might work in a general sense for one group might not work at all for another group.

The challenge is to identify goals and implement well-conceived strategies that bring them into effect. That takes appropriate data, and appropriate decision-making; i.e. some kind of logical thought processes.

My challenge is to acquire data that is relevant to specific challenges, and other than that, it's for the sake of interest, or keeping up with general changes and trends in the industry.

Circumstances and goals define challenges, which helps to identify the required information. It's a filter, and a very specific one.

What we share in common is our working environment, and these are interesting times.