Pondering Fireworks

OK, I'm stumped. The neighbors are shooting off fireworks – the big, barely legal sort. No particular color theme – so far I've seen gold, and green, and red.

Birthday? Anniversary? Some important football game? It isn't UCF's homecoming until November.

Columbus Day?

Really?

Whatever. I'm going to go watch the show.

Piglet sounds like Dobby?

I have nothing meaningful to say, other than while I love Jim Dale, and have spent many many hours listening to him, Pooh will always sound like Sterling Holloway to me.

Words that aren’t in Word’s spell checker

I had a little time this morning, and decided to work on the book. I don't usually work on the book in the mornings. I accepted years ago that I am not a morning person, and the things I do early generally need to be - checked. The words were flowing, but the fingers weren't quite up to the task, with a typo every third word or so. I started going back and fixing this – spell check is my friend – when I came to the word asshold. Now, Word knew that wasn't right, but its only suggestions were 'as hold' and 'scold'. It isn't a polite word, but it is a word and if fits my main character in the moment, so I'm using it, and my $400 copy of Word should help me spell it right, right?


Wrong. It won't help me spell asshole or several of the more obvious words I tried. I'm sure most people already knew this, but I don't generally type these words at work, and I guess I've managed to spell them in the book up to now. It knows when it's spelled correctly, but won't correct it if it's wrong. So I went to the internet.* I found a list of words that Word's spell checker doesn't look for here. And added most of them. Sheesh.



*And yes, I realize that this has turned into a way to putz on the internet and not work on the book, but whatever. Oh, and it doesn't know putz either.

Oracle and NaNoWriMo don’t mix

I have learned a lesson today. It is virtually impossible to write coherent fiction at 4:30 in the morning while waiting for an Oracle DBA to call back about a database that shut itself down at absolutely the wrong time.

I did attend the writer's group meeting last week and I think the jury's still out on that one. I'll go to another just to make sure, but… I felt like a third grader suddenly dropped into a college course, like I had no business being there. I did get one good idea out of it. Every November, there is a contest called NaNoWriMo. It's really more of a challenge than a contest. Write a 50,000 word novel during the month of November. I think I might try it, writing out what I've been creatively calling book 4.

One of the people at the meeting said he was planning his own personal nanowrimo during October. I think that's a great idea, and decided to try it – on the current book. It breaks down to 1613 words every day. With a two day late start, I am 3877 words behind.

So I need to get busy – to get caught up. But not at 4:30AM.

 

Book WC: 28064

Hive WC: unchanged