Geeking and wittering
I have two thrilling topics for you this afternoon:
Geeking!
So I added a feature to iJournal (wired up the "prefix subjects with security" checkbox) and fixed a bug (subject prefixes are no longer doubled when you edit a post). I should fix the bug in a better way: I should replace [old security] with [new security] in subjects. However, this implementation meets the 80%-good criterion. This was about 15 minutes of work, most of which was spent reading the code. What I'd like to do next is figure out what makes the friends check spin endlessly sometimes. It should time out instead. Must read up on Cocoa threading.
I also need to decide if I'd like to get involved with the Sourceforge project, or if I just want to fork privately and play with it. There are enough chewy tasks to be worked on that this would lead me into a decent grasp of Cocoa. And I have an incentive, because I use LJ clients daily.
Fic wittering!
Yesterday I found myself annoyed that I seemed to be wandering off into a morass of Gilesean angst and not moving my plot forrader. So I pulled back and wrote some lists (which those of you who asked to be on my Scaffolding filter have seen). I also reminded myself my outline & structure. There's a local climax that I need to be writing toward. If I focus the writing on driving toward that, my characters once again have purpose and will cease this meandering.
Meandering for me takes the form of long conversations. Whenever I see I've written a long conversation, I know I've lost my direction.
The trouble with the NaNoWriMo mode is that there is a penalty for going back and editing. My long meandering conversation will have to stand until I have the luxury of returning to edit. My usual writing session works like this:
- Acquire beverage.
- Settle on couch. Remove kitten from Macbook keyboard.
- Read through existing story from start to finish.
- Tweak & smooth wording as I read.
- If I encounter a [[note to self marker]] or a gap, and feel inspired, write.
- If I discovered something in my last session that needs development, I rewrite.
- When I reach the end of the existing writing, start writing new material.
To scale this process to novel-sized projects, I restrict my reading to the section or chapter I'm working on at the moment. However, even that restriction doesn't work well with the NaNo Volume! Volume! Volume! pressure. I have to relentlessly push forward.
The advantage is that my subconscious is unleashed. Or so I hope. It hasn't worked out all that well so far. Yesterday I discovered a Joyce-based subplot in my current section that should serve to provide Buffy with some discomfort. Hadn't realized it until I let Buffy ramble for a while. So that's something.
Geeking!
So I added a feature to iJournal (wired up the "prefix subjects with security" checkbox) and fixed a bug (subject prefixes are no longer doubled when you edit a post). I should fix the bug in a better way: I should replace [old security] with [new security] in subjects. However, this implementation meets the 80%-good criterion. This was about 15 minutes of work, most of which was spent reading the code. What I'd like to do next is figure out what makes the friends check spin endlessly sometimes. It should time out instead. Must read up on Cocoa threading.
I also need to decide if I'd like to get involved with the Sourceforge project, or if I just want to fork privately and play with it. There are enough chewy tasks to be worked on that this would lead me into a decent grasp of Cocoa. And I have an incentive, because I use LJ clients daily.
Fic wittering!
Yesterday I found myself annoyed that I seemed to be wandering off into a morass of Gilesean angst and not moving my plot forrader. So I pulled back and wrote some lists (which those of you who asked to be on my Scaffolding filter have seen). I also reminded myself my outline & structure. There's a local climax that I need to be writing toward. If I focus the writing on driving toward that, my characters once again have purpose and will cease this meandering.
Meandering for me takes the form of long conversations. Whenever I see I've written a long conversation, I know I've lost my direction.
The trouble with the NaNoWriMo mode is that there is a penalty for going back and editing. My long meandering conversation will have to stand until I have the luxury of returning to edit. My usual writing session works like this:
- Acquire beverage.
- Settle on couch. Remove kitten from Macbook keyboard.
- Read through existing story from start to finish.
- Tweak & smooth wording as I read.
- If I encounter a [[note to self marker]] or a gap, and feel inspired, write.
- If I discovered something in my last session that needs development, I rewrite.
- When I reach the end of the existing writing, start writing new material.
To scale this process to novel-sized projects, I restrict my reading to the section or chapter I'm working on at the moment. However, even that restriction doesn't work well with the NaNo Volume! Volume! Volume! pressure. I have to relentlessly push forward.
The advantage is that my subconscious is unleashed. Or so I hope. It hasn't worked out all that well so far. Yesterday I discovered a Joyce-based subplot in my current section that should serve to provide Buffy with some discomfort. Hadn't realized it until I let Buffy ramble for a while. So that's something.