"Behind us, a cliff."
Here's an interesting thing. Inverse relationships between my writing fiction and writing scientific papers. With fiction, I can write more than a thousand words in about an hour, and while I may line edit, I essentially never actually rewrite; usually, what you see in print is what I wrote in that hour. But when I'm doing technical writing - anatomy, biostratigraphy, geology, functional morphology, etc. - I need an hour to write about 200 words, when it's going well. And then I have to rewrite that over and over and over to achieve the desired clarity and economy of language, to follow very journal precise guidelines, etc., and once it comes back from peer review, well, I'm be rewriting it again. (Quick answer: I usually ignore the suggestions of fiction editors; that's not an option with scientific papers.) So, fiction takes a little bit of time to produce a lot of finished prose; technical writing takes a LOT of time to produce a little bit of finished text. And, too, there's this: With fiction, I am writing for thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people. With a scientific paper, I'm writing something that will be read by, if I am astoundingly lucky, maybe a hundred people. More like fifty. Oh, and, of course, no one is paying me to write about mosasaurs, no matter how much more work it takes. So, that's a couple ways that writing as a fiction author and writing as a vertebrate paleontologist are wildly different undertakings. Oh, and did I mention that science writing is at least a metric fuck-ton harder, in the bargain?
Today. Shit, what did the weather do? I did not look outside. I know it was cold. Oh, the high was 44˚F.
Tonight we started watching 1883, the prequel series to Yellowstone, a series we've never seen. We only tried 1883 because we both love Sam Elliot so much. But lo and behold, it's very, very good. Not great. Not Deadwood. Just very, very good, like a nice adaptation of a Larry McMurty novel. Keeping in mind how the prequel is set more than a hundred and thirty years before Yellowstone, it seems like a bold mood by the creators - especially since I feel more and more like I'm the only person who still loves westerns. Anyway, two thumbs up. Four if we're counting Spooky.
And...there's eBay! Have a gander.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
8:26 p.m.
Today. Shit, what did the weather do? I did not look outside. I know it was cold. Oh, the high was 44˚F.
Tonight we started watching 1883, the prequel series to Yellowstone, a series we've never seen. We only tried 1883 because we both love Sam Elliot so much. But lo and behold, it's very, very good. Not great. Not Deadwood. Just very, very good, like a nice adaptation of a Larry McMurty novel. Keeping in mind how the prequel is set more than a hundred and thirty years before Yellowstone, it seems like a bold mood by the creators - especially since I feel more and more like I'm the only person who still loves westerns. Anyway, two thumbs up. Four if we're counting Spooky.
And...there's eBay! Have a gander.
Later Tater Beans,
Aunt Beast
8:26 p.m.