An Arid August

Aside

When I say arid – I don’t mean the weather – we are sinking in the ooze here.

Have you noticed how blogland seems to be on a sort of stand-by just now? Personally I can’t think of a single interesting topic – not that that stops me as a rule - so excuse me whilst I just burble on a bit.

There was a long letter from Sitemeter today- most of which I didn’t understand but there are changes afoot apparently. Recently mine seized up and I realised how much I missed it and enjoy seeing the faraway places visitors come from - even if they don’t utter. I think more people should stick to the maxim- if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Last night my computer didn’t shut down as normal so I zapped it with the zapper. Sure enough this morning it didn’t switch on properly – there was a picture, but nothing to click onto. As usual when all else fails I unplugged and restarted when it VERY sluggishy got going again. This is NOT the time to lose transmission chaps.

Whilst we are being technical (and Boffin is my middle name) I’m getting messages from my anti virus saying ’back up has not completed recently. Please back up or change your back- up schedule.’ They seem to expect me to put a clean disc in every other day or so, whereas I normally back up my story every now and then.

I worked hard yesterday and my dilatory editing moved up a couple of gears. I had to get MTL to calculate how many pages make 10,000 words. I think we made it 29 - to the nearest penny. That reminds me I just found an old wallet in my ‘abroad drawer’ containing 75 euros in notes. Yesterday – on the way to the post, which has moved from a newsagents to the supermarket – I changed it for £54. I did say this was burbling didn’t I?

Finally no-one told me how hard it is to write a synopsis. I had imagined my punchy dozen lines or so would suffice but – just for interest - checked and the general opinion seems to be that it is harder to write than the book. Agreed! For a start you write in the present tense which is quite hard to maintain. Then you have to decide how many pages which can vary from 2-20 and whether to do single or double spacing. Don’t leave out cliff hangers and don’t describe the character’s physical appearance

http://www.essortment.com/all/synopsiswriteb_rqmx.htm I found this very useful as a guideline. At the end of the day I took a rare head ache tablet