how to write a book (outline) in 30 days

[01cheers]

This is a public service announcement that some of you may hopefully find useful :)

You know I never update my journal, but due to the fact that yours truly is stuck at a tiny railway station in the middle of... not much, save for some Greek temples she has already seen before missing her train and settling down for a 2+ hour wait, I figured I'd

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[01cheers]

Actually, I am very much in Italy still. I had a very packed travel schedule this past summer from late May through mid-September (mostly long-weekend holidays plus short business trips and three week-long getaways) - it was incredibly fun, but then I took it easy for a month and stayed in Rome (also had something to do with my brain being eaten... more on that in a bit); so far, most recent work has been Rome-based. This was the first day trip I took out of Rome since mid-September, to a place called Paestum, the most important ancient Greek colony in mainland Italy (most are in Sicily). It eventually swore allegiance to Rome, and a Roman town grew up around the Greek site. The most notable features there now are three Greek temples; I saw pictures of those ages ago and wanted to see them for years - and finally figured I'd take advantage of the great weather and do it. It is more or less a full-day trip from Rome because of the four-hour one-way train ride (in fact they are 1.5 hours south of Naples); if it were closer I would have thought of going back, but as it is, I am glad I've seen it; it is not a stunning site, but very peaceful, and the temples *are* beautiful. I forgot to bring my memory card into the office, so am pasting a bunch of links instead;

aerial view
two bigger temples
at sunset
another angle
third, smaller temple

Living in the middle of history as I am, I wish you could come visit. Rome alone is worth a few days, and then you have Ostia Antica, Villa Adriana in Tivoli, the "Roman ships" at Nemi, and plenty of other things. I know you are busy enough, but if you ever think of coming to Europe and Italy, give me a shout. I expect to be in Rome for the foreseeable future.

My daily life is an unbalanced pattern of fairly boring stuff and some fun stuff, mostly trips, and I err on the side of caution in not publicising it much to avoid spamming people with the boring part, sticking instead to fandoms, with few exceptions like my Roman parrots picspam a couple of years ago. Earlier this summer when LJ fun dried up I toyed with the idea of setting up a parallel LJ page for the highlights of my travel photos, starting from the old ones, but ran into the issues of (a) the good old ones being pre-digital and hence needing to be scanned, (b) generally being lazy and (c) eventually finding off-LJ things to play with, including a really unexpected and, I admit, slightly silly new fandom (The Dark Knight Rises) that had me write 85K words and counting in six weeks in a sort of euphoric frenzy, just after I thought, as of this past August, that my fic writing days were well over.

On another subject, I am somewhat anxiously, thouhg not closely, following the US campaign and keeping my fingers very firmly crossed. Given my sources, with the Torygraph being a major one, I am hopefully seeing a somewhat biased picture that gives Romney a solid fighting chance, but I still hope that it does not happen! And I remember reading that Joe had a brilliant vice presidential debate :)