Tag Archives: writing

Tools of the Trade

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The above is a photograph of the primary copies of Persuasion I own. I don’t tend to grab every copy I see, I am selective. And cheap. The most expensive copy I have is the “Sentimental Favorite” on the right, The Everyman’s Library edition. The first editions of Everyman were published in 1906 with Northanger Abby and Persuasion being the last of the series at #25. I bought an older copy at Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon, in approximately 2000. Pamela Aidan came out to western Oregon to shlepp around with me and Laura Hile. I was stupid and gave it away in a group marketing campaign. I regretted it the minute I put it in the mail. So, I decided that this edition would be my gift to myself for completing a novella in five months. (You can buy Wentworth’s Christmas Wish on Amazon HERE. It is also available on Kindle Unlimited.)

The book to the left is a cheap book club edition published in a set in 1998. It is truly the workhorse. I had broken apart a cheap Barnes and Noble edition I go in ’97 when I started writing. The set was cheap and I’ve been using this Penguin edition for most of my writing “career.” You can’t see them clearly but it is full of Post-its and book marks for various passages. It’s torn here and there and the plastic coating is starting to come up but she will do for a while longer.

I also use a digital version from the Gutenberg Project. As I write on a laptop, it’s simpler when I need the word search function. Which is more and more often. (The ageing brain is not a pretty sight, y’all.)

Last, is my favorite copy. My son’s partner went to London for her job earlier this year, (2022) and she brought me this edition. It is a Vintage Classic and I love the faux muslin print on the cover. I also love that it is not a standard paperback size. Odd-sized books on my shelves make me happy. I only have one Post-it, marking The Letter, destroying the classy look of it.

All my copies of Austen are important to me. But so are my copies of Patrick O’Brien’s Jack Aubrey series. I don’t have a lot of books. This worked out well for us when we moved across the country this summer. There was stress enough without having to decide who would make the trip and who would be left behind.

It is back to work. Have a pleasant Friday.

Oh, and buy my book:

Where Has YouTube Been All My Life?

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courtesy Kat Jayne on Pexels.com

This summer I went through a bout of depression. I’d like to say I fought like a champion. I fought it sorta. In the morning I worked on a story alteration and the rest of the day I’d watch my husband look for a job. There was the added bonus of  wondering how long we would be without one, because when you’re in your 60s it’s a toss-up in the maintenance biz. Yes, it was stressful. When he finally got a job, I didn’t get over the bout for a while, so instead of drinking–too expensive–I watched You Tube videos.

I know that human beings are voyeurs, me included, but WOW!

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courtesy rawpixels.com

Grocery Hauls and Meal Prep are my favorites. Who knew it could be so restful watching other people enumerate what they got at the grocery store? And there are the craft videos! Motivational videos, speeches by the notorious and the unknown. Home repair and home dec. The number of channels dedicated to Dollar Tree/Store/General is staggering.

Now I know what writers mean about wasting time on You Tube. I thought it was all cats. Nope. Cats and so much more.

A couple of my favorite You Tube channels:
Grocery Hauls and Prep:
FREE TO FAMILY (Frugal living, family, meal prep)
JENNIFER CHAPIN (Home, Recipes, Hauls)
DO IT ON A DIME Dollar  (Store/Home Dec/DIY/Frugal)
AMBIENT RELAXATION (Music and ambient noise to write to)
HEADBANGER’S KITCHEN (Recipes for Ketogenic diet and metal music)
STERLING AND STONE (Writing. Some great vids on plotting and character development. Skip Worst Show Ever vids as they are tiresome with guy antics and language.)

My one caveat, aside from all the wasted time, is that these are not professionals and there’s no production team to point out faux pas. It’s a great exercise in grace. And a great way to see just what you can do with all that Dollar Tree swag!

Skynet is Smiling

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Note: I wrote this blog post using Google Docs tool, voice typing. So no, not all the mistakes are my own.

In the winter you expect to be sick at some point cold flu heart attack from shoveling the driveway something is going to be follow you at some point during the winter months. So, here I am sick as a dog with some sort of gastrointestinal distress. we’ve changed our diet too low carb and I think that may have something to do with it. I don’t have any intention of running into the kitchen in scarfing down a bunch of crackers, but I think today is going to be a high water consumption day.

As an added bonus the dog is vomiting in the kitchen. Fun times

I’ve been messing around with dictation. I’m using Google’s typing with voice. it actually works very well considering it’s free and it’s Google. I suppose everything I dictate is being written down somewhere and kept for future reference just in case I offend all the wrong people. Which is completely possible.

I am having enough success in dictating to the computer that I think I will get a microphone. I have watched a couple of podcast of people who have gone to this method of writing and both say that having a decent though not terribly expensive microphone can make all the difference in the accuracy of the text that you wind up with. Next paragraph

I’m not sure I’m ready to try and write a story this way. with voice typing there is a limited amount of formatting commands that are at your disposal. I don’t want to have to edit for a longer. Then I am writing. Yesterday, I wrote a 3000 word outline of a short story I’m working on and that went very well but the text was very garbled. part of that is that there are a lot of names that even with the names loaded in Google’s dictionary for my account the typing app doesn’t seem to recognize. My hope is that a microphone will solve that.

Above I mentioned a short story I’m working on,. this will a be the second short story. The first one I got four thousand words into and realized that it’s a great story but it’s not going to fit in the Anthology it’s 4. But at least I have four thousand words on what will probably be a novella length peace. The new outline is for a story that I have been noodling with for a while. all I have to do is make myself go light and funny and stay out of the dark corners. that’s hard since it’s in the corners where we always where I always seem to find the most interesting things to play with.

The gastrointestinal distress is burbling a lung and I have to go and I have to go and relieve some stress.

I’m thinking about just posting this as it is without editing out all of The Oddities of Google’s voice typing. it’s actually a lot like hurried texting. I’ll think about it. Later

NOTE: (This note IS edited.) That wasn’t bad for a meandering, unscripted mind dump. And it sounds somewhat like me. I have a tendency to edit the original voice right out of things. I tried WORD’s dictate feature earlier. It has fewer commands than Google Voice Typing. If I keep dictating, I think I see having to buy some software in my future.

Take Care, Sue

Use Protection, Kids. And Lots of It.

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Romance_Travel_CoverFor a while I have been working to arrange a move for my mother. There are lots of moving parts and I’m not all that good at multitasking these days. To keep my sanity, I have been working on a new story.  I finally got far enough in and was confident I would keep with it, so started posting the story on Beyond Austen.  Captain Wentworth’s Guide to Romance and Travel: Lyme Regis is Persuasion without Louisa Musgrove’s fall from the Cobb. This past week I was in the trenches of packing boxes, paper, tapes, and Sharpie markers. Wednesday is the day I had chosen to post and so a week ago I put the flash drive in my computer to retrieve the post, and, VOILA! The drive was emp-ty.

Not a crumb remains.

A few years ago, I took Laura Hile’s loss of thousands of words in a computer crash as a warning and started keeping all my writing on flash drives. A couple of years after that I starting getting serious about organizing my writing, graphics, and private business. Yes, indeedy, I did.

So much for my trying to be grown-up.

I’m thankful for two things: that I was hip-deep in real life and not focused on my writing, and that it took several days to realize that the aforementioned story wasn’t the only thing on the drive.

I’ve now officially lost one whole novel, two partial–each hovering around 175 pages–several outlines of novel ideas, and countless graphics I had created for this and other blogs, and several book covers.

There were many family photos as well, but I have found them on other drives and online haunts of mine.

I am home now and have signed up for an automatic, online, cloud storage service.

Lessons learnt: exhaustion keeps you from going ballistic when the unthinkable happens, and back up your back ups. And then back it all up again.

Nothing is certain.

Except the Web Gods will exact a price.

A Most Happy Day

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To the lady who brought us to this point!

Anyone hazard a guess where they might be and what they might be doing were it not for Jane Austen and her tempting characters?

I’m thinking that instead of writing I’d be working in retail. And at this time of year, that would be dangerous for me and for the buying public!

How about you? What sorts of things would you be reading, or writing had Jane Austen, and the fan fiction craze, come along?

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