Sunday, December 20, 2009

Recalibrating the Googlamabob

Kind of a quickie, off-topic post, but I think action is required here.

I finally got linked to by another site (Yay!), which turned out to be a site dedicated to crawling other sites and indexing them, somewhat like Google does (meh), and it indexed me based on a search for hysterical pregnancies (uh...).

All of which led to me being, briefly, the fifth top Google result for the search string "'deceive him' preg". Crap!

Obviously, I'm going to be able to get around this in the long run by regularly generating content that's interesting enough for other people to link to. But if, short term, anyone has suggestions for how to get Google to put me in a, shall we say "saner" search category, I'd appreciate the help.

And hey, at least I know people read the Glee post.

Thanks,

--Dave

Saturday, December 19, 2009

Trapped in the Snow




12:57pm... have been up for about an hour and a half. Went outside twenty minutes ago to shovel the walk, knowing it was a futile effort, but compelled by HOA rules to clear the walkway in case some old woman manages to dig through twenty feet of snow only to break her ankle on MY part of the sidewalk.

Total madness, and I gave it up as a bad job in five minutes. Now watching Lina, a one-foot Corgi, try to hop through a foot-and-a-half of snow and watching the E! channel: hopelessly insane people babbling like rhesus monkeys on crystal meth.

What to do with this day? I am singularly unprepared to be trapped in my house for 48 hours, despite running around in a terminal frenzy yesterday attempting to prepare for the inevitable. That was a bad episode - fighting against every stinking man and woman in the city limits trying to gather supplies and complete whatever errands they had left that couldn't be done with two feet of snow on the ground.

I snapped, coming out of the Giant parking lot and seeing a traffic jam that looked to be about twelve miles long, knowing that I had just thirty minutes to reach home, unload the groceries, and then go out again to get dinner for the evening... and realizing at that moment that I had forgotten the booze.

No more chances for liquor, now. We are well and truly shut in. The dog is already driving me mad - wanting to play in the snow, then wanting to come inside, over and over ad nauseum and whining whenever she doesn't get her way. Tim Curry is on the television now, just a sweet little transvestite from Transsexual Transylvania, a terrible distraction.

Can I use this time properly? Can I produce? The dog seems dead set against it. And I just know that when I finally get my head straight and get on a really good writing jag, the damned HOA will pound on my door with big sticks and demand that I shovel the walk.

We don't hold with reason here, they'll tell me. Do as we say, or get out of our neighborhood. We don't want your kind here.

--Dave

Author's Log

Completed an eight-and-a-half page synopsis, which is currently on an editor's desk awaiting review. There is no guarantee that the editor isn't on holiday right now, but if he is I wish him well. Why not? I'm in no rush, and everyone needs a good break now and then.

Currently working on an essay about "my success story", for a contest advertised on Writer's Market. The trick will be to avoid going on an ego trip, get down everything that actually happened leading up to now, and making it sound interesting. If I can do all that, then I will undoubtedly lose to some deserving single mother of three who is working on the next Harry Potter.

Current Reading

Just finished rereading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, by Hunter S. Thompson, and I'm just now moving on to Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72. Thompson's outlook on politics is always enjoyable when things get bad in D.C., although it's becoming more and more depressing to reflect on just how little has changed in the District in the last 27 years.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

Deadlines

I'm going to tell you guys a secret. Come a little closer, okay? I don't want this getting around.

A little closer. Okay.

I love deadlines.

Love love love deadlines. There's nothing else that motivates me like knowing without a shadow of a doubt that something is due on This Day, and if it's not done on This Day then it might as well never be done At All.

I thrive on watching the clock stretch to midnight. I eat hand cramps for breakfast. A hard drive crash just cost me a week's worth of writing? Sir, I accept your challenge.

What I am not so good at are self-imposed deadlines. These are deadlines of a different color. They're a bit... weedy, shall we say. Soft touches, the lot of them. "Yes, I know I said Thursday, but just think of how much better you could do if you took that weekend coming up..."

Self-imposed deadlines = slippage. Or at least they did.

I've got a synopsis due in "a few weeks," editor's words. That's just asking for slippage. I'm not going to stand for it. I don't want to be Johnny Procrastinator. Certainly not where the editors can see.

So: December 11th, one month exactly since the word came down. Written on my calendar in black Sharpie, as close to set in stone as I can get. I will have a complete, fully-featured synopsis ready to go on that date or die trying.

You are all my witnesses, and I fully expect public scorn if I fail. Tar and feathers are to your left.

--Dave

Author's Log

Some character sketches, a dozen sticky notes with plot points written down on them, and some tentative steps towards filling out the parts of the synopsis that lie between The Beginning and The End.

Current Reading

Finished reading Overclocked by Cory Doctorow, excepting the last story in the collection, mainly due to maxing out my renewals at the library. Recommended for people who like their sci-fi to make a strong point about our modern world.

I have started on Cherie Priest's Boneshaker, but set the book down at the end of chapter seven. The premise (steampunk and zombies and airships!) hits all my glee buttons, but if the plot doesn't grab me by the throat in the next few chapters I might give up on this one.