Well, we're going to have to wait a bit for the show and tell (with pictures!) of my colored index card plotting because . . . wait for it . . . my frackin' iMac crashed again. Only this time it took the entire hard drive with it. I swear, I have the worst mac luck ever. I know they are supposed to have better no-fail rates than PCs, but I've sure not found that to be the case. My first iMac crashed and burned (literally) three times, and this newest one has crashed twice in less than a year. Maybe I have the wrong kind of electromagnetic field or something.
Anywhoo, I'm typing this blog post from one of my son's old computers, tucked away in a spare bedroom that is stifling (we are having 94 degree weather today my So Cal coastal community!?) and I am not even sure it can accommodate my camera's software for loading and organizing photos, so that will have to wait until I get my machine back from the shop.
Speaking of computers, I saw one of those tiny ones and boy, are they tiny. Not very usable, I think, so I guess I will shelve that idea.
In other news, I did get a lot of great work done this weekend, culling my Cast of Thousands down to only a dozen or so noble families. Again, I want to evoke the court politics and plotting of the time, not drown the reader in medieval French lineages. And I figure if I was drowning, the reader would absolutely be drowning.
I also got some great character work done using some questions from a plotting template method from Michael Hague, screenwriter extrodinaire. Which may seem somewhat contradcitory--to get character answers from looking at plotting structure--but since I think plot IS character, it actually makes a fair amount of sense. You can check out the template here, but I'll talk about the questions he discussed in his presentation in tomorrow's post. Well, if there is a post tomorrow. I also got a jury summons and may have to go in for jury duty. This might just be my lost week. Thank god it didn't happen while I was on deadline!
8 comments:
Ohh, poor you! At least you have a backup computer for now, right? And this is a good excuse to get a pretty new computer!!!
Also I am excited to hear more about your current writing project.
I've been considering an iMac, but after this and several other horror stories, I think I'm better off with my cranky PC. At least I can tell when it's in a bad mood and about to do something rash so I can backup. Mac's really freak me out with that one-button mouse thing. It's just...unnatural.
Lexi, I think you know about this one--my medieval assasin one? We talked about it once when we were discussing Twilight.
Dave, there are two things I love about iMacs and which nudged me into trying a second one: their compact, all in one design, and the no virus issues. Those two things are worth a LOT. But maybe not this much. :-/
Plus, I had acquired my pc knowledge over a long time, as various operating systems evolved, so to try to tackle one so different (instead of defragging, you repair your permissions, for example) has been a bit of a challenge. Not to mention I miss my keyboard shortcuts.
All computers are frustrating!
We have both Mac and PC in our house and we all tend to gravitate towards the Macs. But I wanted my kids to be comfortable on both, which they are, and of course there are things that you can do on one that you can't do on the other. So for now we'll be staying "bilingual".
I'm looking forward to hearing more about the assassin book, too :^)
Sherrie, that is very smart--having a bilinguil (bisystem?) computer household! Wish I'd thought of that, back in the day. Actually, we are a bisystem household, we're just a lot more literate in one!
My oldest daughter (Senior, graduating in little over a month--oh my!) bought one of those tiny computers and absolutely LOVES it! It amazes me that something so tiny can have Windows on it and go online and everything. She bought it to use at school and writes papers on it, etc. The only thing she doesn't like is that it doesn't have enough memory for Word but it has WordPad so she sends it to herself in an email and then has to print it from the main computer. Very handy when on the go--fits right in her purse.
Sucks about the iMac--I have never used one, I prefer the PC. Anti virus stuff is free anymore on the internet so I don't have to pay for it and I have had very little problems with my PC's. Currently we use a ten year old DELL as our main computer and I have a little Compaq Presario laptop that I use for myself. I put in the hard drive and all the programs myself on the laptop--not too bad, eh?!
Sheri, I just now found your comment. I wasn't ignoring you, honest! It got trapped in my spam filter, for some reason. A whole bunch of stuff did. I'm guessing it was caused by The Great iMac Crash of '09. :-)
Very interesting to know you daughter loves her, but even better to know it won't run Word, since I need it to run Power Point for my purposes. Thanks so much for the head's up! I sure like that it fits in one's purse!
The Acer might run word--or you might be able to put it on a flash drive and run it from the flash drive. I'm not sure how that all works. The little computers do come in different sizes so you might be able to find one with enough memory to run PowerPoint. Hers is the really small one, like only 9 inches long, but there are others that are bigger...
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