Some days I feel like Dolph Ziggler, striding around work, essentially shouting “How damned good am I?” to anyone who will listen. Others I feel like The Great Khali, generally useless and causing annoyance whenever my face is seen.
Today was one of the latter. It’s galling to be unable to fix a computer problem when you pride yourself on being awesome with computers.
*sigh*
Monday will be better.
I thought I would treat myself to an online purchase, and given that I’m constantly setting my stories in theme parks, I thought a book about the various safety failures might give a bit of depth, especially if I ever wanted to go all out and put a bit of a disaster sequence in there. So I purchased Theme Park Safety Failure$ by Jeffrey Stoneking and I’m less than impressed. My review is as follows:
[Note: all indented and italic quotes are taken from the book, word for word.]
I picked this book out of morbid curiosity, I have a love/hate relationship with theme parks, and I think most people have a fear of the accidents that happen in them.
This is not the book for people like me. Or, to be honest, people in general. It’s shallow enough to paddle in, with only vague references to the accidents but little detail (except for the one time when three teenage girls are described in gleeful detail). The author comes across as a smug little so-and-so who can’t wait to tell everyone how he always knew baaaaaaaad things would happen if someone built a ride.
He is particularly sickening when he calls a victim’s legal representative and is astounded they are not sure how to spell the ride manufacturer’s name. In the same story, he refers to himself as being like Bruce Wayne. Throughout the entire anecdote, he repeatedly congratulates himself for being king of the world. I think Jeffrey Stoneking might well be one of the most annoyingly smug human beings of all time.
He also delights in writing about the times he’s had the opportunity to make witty remarks at the expense of the people who design these rides.
When he’s not patting himself on the back for spotting the potential for doom, he’s making reference to his other works. He will bring up a topic, and then point out that you can read about his experiences in a different book. End of topic.
Also, the book contains the particularly distasteful phrase:
“The nationality of the six riders? Japanese. My bet is that their almond-shaped genetic eyes were a little more round, like their Anime cartoon characters.”
There is reference to: “flamboyant, engaging gay men and militant dykes who were busy parading about with raised clenched fists in an effort to generate awareness to their agenda” tucked away in there too, in relation to some confusion at a park where attendees of a non-park-sanctioned Gay Pride event were wearing red t-shirts, as were attendees of another convention, each unaware of the other. The author notes that “thankfully” he was wearing black. The story culminates in a bit of shoving in a queue; this is hardly the kind of hard-hitting story the book summary promises. The author says that when he was shoved he told the punk in question that “he was out of control and further announcing that the amount of gay men would provide him and his buddy an extra female orifice to adore and explore. Anything to be left alone.” I don’t know what this means, but I think I’m supposed to be impressed by the author’s funny retort. All I’m left with is the deep and weary sense that he is a nasty bigoted man.
And just when I think he’s done insulting people, he goes for the disabled, stating that:
“With the amount of vegetable-like disabled children the Make A Wish Foundation bring onboard, some of whom are incoherent to their mere existence.”
Admittedly, in that paragraph, he’s wondering how he could “lug” them to safety, but not for the sake of saving them, mostly to make a point on how irresponsible it is to keep building rides when accidents can happen.
There is no need for this kind of biting description of anyone. “The gay community” would have covered the story above, and “disabled” would have sufficed to explain that he was concerned about someone less than able-bodied exiting a ride in time of emergency. However, he has to slap everyone down with a joyful and spiteful description that reminds everyone that the writer is a middle-class, able-bodied male, and therefore better than everyone else. And don’t think because I haven’t mentioned it he hasn’t taken pot-shots at the overweight either.
It reads like a blog: shallow, biased, occasionally dull with a smattering of spelling/grammar mistakes, topped off with a bit of racism/homophobia. This is not something people should waste their money on. Instead I would suggest that you go to wiki and google anything you find interesting. You will get to read about it with more depth and less smugness.
However, if you like your writing lacking in depth, overflowing with salacious gossip, and laced with prejudice, then this is the book for you.
NaNoWriMo Winner
That is all. The smug “how I did it” post will follow tomorrow. Am rather pleased with myself.
I fell into a major pit recently. In my new attempt to be organised, I came to the conclusion that my book should be 10 chapters long, each chapter would have five scenes and each scene would be around 1,000 words long.
I don’t often structure my books and end up with loads of endless chapters that I can’t seem to break sensibly. Carla Lee, my good friend, will attest to this, as she and I have spent hours of our lives trying to sort out my 2005 NaNo book, which we have co-rewritten, because the chapters just never end.
So this year, I decided that would be how I structured my book.
I was a freakin’ idiot.
I’ve tied myself in knots, written scenes that do not need to be written, and generally muddled the plot trying to adhere to this structure. Also, I’m 30,000+ words in and only one of the thirteen murders planned has taken place.
I didn’t know what to do until last night when I spoke to Carla, who calmly and gently said, “Don’t you think you should structure around the murders?”
And this is why she is a genius and I am not. Hopefully from now on things will be easier. Although if I’d realised the problem sooner, I could have asked her sooner and my story would be a lot better organised.
However, my words are a mess and I’m completely behind my target. Currently, my figures look like this:
| Day | Date | Words Written | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thu, 1 November | 1,780 | 1,780 |
| 2 | Fri, 2 November | 640 | 2,420 |
| 3 | Sat, 3 November | 2,626 | 5,046 |
| 4 | Sun, 4 November | 2,768 | 7,814 |
| 5 | Mon, 5 November | 2,710 | 10,524 |
| 6 | Tue, 6 November | 1,002 | 11,526 |
| 7 | Wed, 7 November | 1,347 | 12,873 |
| 8 | Thu, 8 November | 27 | 12,900 |
| 9 | Fri, 9 November | 1,474 | 14,374 |
| 10 | Sat, 10 November | 1,795 | 16,169 |
| 11 | Sun, 11 November | 2,583 | 18,752 |
| 12 | Mon, 12 November | 1,369 | 20,121 |
| 13 | Tue, 13 November | 1,650 | 21,771 |
| 14 | Wed, 14 November | 2,391 | 24,162 |
| 15 | Thu, 15 November | 1,242 | 25,404 |
| 16 | Fri, 16 November | 84 | 25,488 |
| 17 | Sat, 17 November | 0 | 25,488 |
| 18 | Sun, 18 November | 1,950 | 27,438 |
| 19 | Mon, 19 November | 2,799 | 30,237 |
| 20 | Tue, 20 November | 430 | 30,667 |
| 21 | Wed, 21 November | 1,072 | 31,739 |
| 22 | Thu, 22 November | 2,849 | 34,588 |
| 23 | Fri, 23 November | 498 | 35,086 |
Thankfully, Carla is online today and she’s going to help me out more, by asking insightful questions and trying to get me back on track. And, if I’m honest, it’s her fault I’m off track. She mentioned garden gnomes, and I got excited by a silly sub-plot. Bad Carla!
NaNo is kicking my ass at the moment. It was chugging along nicely until Wednesday when I was exhausted and unable to sleep. I hadn’t done brilliantly that day, but I had put enough effort in previously to stay ahead. On Thursday I got nothing done, I hadn’t slept the night before and felt like hell on toast. Last night I got a few words down, but not brilliant. Currently I’m only 500-odd* words off today’s target.
*Edit – gah, I’m looking at the wrong figures, I’m about 1,500 words off!
So far my figures look like this:
| Day | Date | Words Written | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thu, 1 November | 1,780 | 1,780 |
| 2 | Fri, 2 November | 640 | 2,420 |
| 3 | Sat, 3 November | 2,626 | 5,046 |
| 4 | Sun, 4 November | 2,768 | 7,814 |
| 5 | Mon, 5 November | 2,710 | 10,524 |
| 6 | Tue, 6 November | 1,002 | 11,526 |
| 7 | Wed, 7 November | 1,347 | 12,873 |
| 8 | Thu, 8 November | 27 | 12,900 |
| 9 | Fri, 9 November | 1,474 | 14,374 |
I haven’t added today’s figures to this table because I’m still not done. I will add a word count meter to show where I’m up to though. And also a NaNo one, because I’m interested to see if they update automatically.
So, a pretty good day. Managed to get about 1,000 words done before work, then padded out the rest just now. I am four words over my daily target, which is awesome. I now have to manage this every day for the rest of the month.
Here’s hoping.
So, a First Bus in Leeds did not let me on today. Accordingly, I have sent this letter of complaint to First West Yorkshire, because being flicked twos at after having the bus doors slammed in your face when you’re a girl alone in the dark* is just lovely.
*oh yes, I have no problem playing the weak girly-girl card. I’m short, I have a limp even after my hip replacement, and yes, it is unlikely anything bad would happen, but it certainly adds to the drama, doesn’t it?
The complaint was worded thusly (if you feel it’s “tl;dr”, the gist is First, you suck, and your driver is evil):
I waited at the bus stop for the [xx] bus, opposite the [Pub], heading towards [Home]. There was a crowd of about eight people also waiting for the bus. Despite three people flagging it (at 19:08), it went straight past. Someone (a guy in his 20s) chased it down and it stopped just beyond the bus stop.
I joined the back of the queue, and when it was my turn to board the bus, the driver slammed the door in my face. I knocked on the door and he shrugged with a resigned “ah, what can you do? It’s beyond my control” kind of way (even though it clearly wasn’t beyond his control). I gave him a “what are you doing?” kind of look. Then he flicked two fingers up at me (not the harmonious peace symbol, the other one; if it had been the peace symbol, this complaint would have been even more befuddling). He then drove off.
And just for context, I am not a chav, or a hoodie, or a druggie, or anything that could have been questionable. I was a girl in a suit on her way home from [xx] Solicitors, in the pouring rain, in the dark, on Halloween night. Everything about me screams “when zombies attack, she’s the first to go”. I am thoroughly inoffensive and unthreatening. The bus had at least four seats empty downstairs and nobody was standing.
There was no reason for the driver to reject me other than malicious whimsy, which is probably something you might want to discourage among the drivers, as it probably leads to public inquiries. I used to work for a company that repeatedly had to defend First at public inquiries, though usually for drivers’ hours and early/late running, not malicious whimsy. Although this behaviour does fly in the face of your leaflet with the little old lady on the front being approached by menacing hoodies.
I would be very interested to hear your feedback on this complaint. You can contact me by email or mobile.
Many thanks and happy Halloween.
PS: I am aware that the tone of this complaint is not one of outrage and shock, this is because I am well aware that the person reading it is not to blame for the driver’s failings. However, just because my tone is polite and somewhat whimsical, it does not mean that I am not thoroughly unimpressed with the behaviour of your driver. If it helps you identify him, he looked like an angry egg with a beard. Picture the wrestler, The Big Show, only with grey hair. I’m not being sarcastic, he did look like The Big Show.
Now, imagine this man only ugly and unfulfilled as a bus driver in Yorkshire.
NaNoWriMo 2012 Participant
I’m doing my usual panic/organisation for NaNoWriMo this year. Every year, in the few days before November, my computer lives in a state of overwork, my browser has about nine tabs open, with various articles on how to write and software that helps.
Every year.
I’m trying to distract myself before NaNo starts. One year I plotted and planned to the degree where I knew exactly what would happen, and I never wrote the story, because by the time I got to it I was already bored (clearly, it wasn’t good enough to be a lead story, but I keep hoping one day those characters and their story will be useful). Then the next year I didn’t plan enough because I wrote myself into a corner and gave up about nine days in.
This year I’m trying to plan a fair bit, but not to the point where I bore myself.
I’ve also read plenty of articles, my favourites being these two:
The Snowflake Method – this goes into detail about how to make the most of the planning stage and how to go about it in a sensible way that highlights plot holes and issues before you write into them.
How I Went From Writing 2,000 Words a Day to 10,000 Words a Day – this doesn’t say anything about how to plan, but it does get across the importance of knowing what you’re writing and making the most of every scene. I could summarise, but the whole article is worth reading. I’ve never managed to do 10k more than twice in my life, and I highly doubt I could do it daily, but the idea is sound and I’ve tried to apply it to my writing.
As for software, I download pretty much everything available, and I still haven’t found the perfect software. I still go old school, I write out pages of notes in Writer/Word, and then use the spreadsheet function to organise my scenes. Things I have tried include yWriter and Dramatica (note: Dramatica is pay (with a free trial) and also the website looks like it was designed by a 13 year old in 1998).
Basically, I use OpenOffice for everything. I do actually have a legitimate copy of Microsoft Office on my computer, but still I go back to OO, I like how Writer looks like old Word and I like how lightweight it is. I also find the interface of Calc (their version of Excel) is much more user-friendly than Excel.
I love yWriter, but after awhile I forget to use it, and then it becomes a chore to deal with it, and most of the time it doesn’t really serve much purpose. It’s good for organising scenes, but I still go back to spreadsheets because they’re simple (and, unlike most, I have a major hankering for spreadsheets in my life, I crush on conditional formatting and adore calculations). I like that I can easily see the scenes contained in a chapter, and which characters are present, but at the same time, I have taken to labelling my scenes in Writer and inserting a table of contents to show me what I’ve done, what scenes and whose point of view it is from.
Dramatica I like the idea of, but maybe I haven’t worked out how to use it. First of all you have to answer a zillion questions, and you must have an antagonist, and, mostly due to my inability to use the programme correctly, it generally suggests that my stories ought to go in a completely different (usually nonsensical) direction.
One thing I do think will help is yEdit, for the simple fact that you can set your word target when you open it and it will let you know where you’re up to.
I have a game that I play if I ever have a day off work. I torment cold callers. I have a range of things to amuse me, such as acting like every word out of their mouth is monumentally confusing and I simply don’t understand, or I pretend to cry when they ask for Mr Canfield – that would be my father who has never lived in Yorkshire and has been dead since 1990, sometimes I just swear until they hang up.
My favourite people to torment are the people who call from “the Microsoft”. Generally these scum-sucking twathats call from some “official” offshoot of “the Microsoft”, stating that my computer is sending error messages to their server and that they are here to help.
Usually I just tie them in knots by asking whether I’ve been hacked (am I being remotely controlled), whether I’m infected with spyware or whether I have a virus, and usually I just get “yes” as an answer. Then I pick them to bits.
Today, since I was bored, I decided to see how long I could keep them on the phone. My current best was three minutes. They do not have much patience for the likes of me.
I do this because these people are horrible scam artists and if I hadn’t warned my mother to hang up on them and tell them to go to hell (actually I asked her to promise to say the words “ooooh, that’ll be because of all the porn I’ve downloaded. I’m 72, you know.”) they’d probably have her bank details and she’d be in a corner crying that her computer was broken. It’s mean, picking on people who don’t understand computers. My mother once got concerned that she’d deleted the internet when she deleted her Hotmail account.
Anyway, the conversation when like this:
Scam Artist: Hello ma’am, I’m calling from the Microsoft to tell you that your computer is sending alerts to our server.
Me: You’re calling from where?
Scam Artist: The Microsoft. Ma’am, your computer is heavily infected.
Me: Ooooh, that sounds bad. What do I do?
Scam Artist: Ma’am, we’re here to help. Now, if you could just go to your computer and get online…
Me: But… how is it sending you alerts when I’m not online?
Scam Artist: It’s very complicated, ma’am.
Me: Yes, but how? If it’s not online, it can’t send anything to anywhere, much less to your server.
Scam Artist: It’s very complicated, but your computer is sending alerts. Now, could you please get online?
Me: But – I don’t get it. What are you going to do? You’re not going to make it worse, are you?
Scam Artist: No, ma’am. If you agree to our help, then I will put you through to a senior technician who will take your bank details and take remote control of your computer in order to get rid of the problem.
Me: And what kind of problem is it?
Scam Artist: Your computer is sending alerts to our server. Now, would you please get online?
Me: But what kind of alerts? And how is it sending them if it’s not online?
Scam Artist: Our senior technician will help you.
Me: Ok, I’m done pretending. This is so much bollocks. You are an idiot. Your tone is insultingly patronising and you really need to work on that. When you’re trying to scam a person out of a lot of money in solving a fictional problem, you should be incredibly kind and reassuring and not talk to them like a piece of shit. Also, your script needs revision, you’re a fucking idiot and I know more about computers than you. It can’t send alerts if it’s not online, and FYI, my computer is online, I’m sat at it now, and that really undermines your credibility. And personally, I think you are a scamming piece of shit and you should go home and kill yourself because preying on people who don’t understand computers is fucking cruel. Go on, go home and kill yourself right now!
At this point, feeling incredibly smug, I hung up.
A minute later, the phone rang again.
Scam Artist: Ma’am, you think you’re very smart, don’t you?
Me: Yes, I’m incredibly smart.
Scam Artist: You think you’re really smart. Well, you’re not. You’re an asshole. AN ASSHOLE!
Then the bastard hung up before I could get the last word. He is an asshole. AN ASSHOLE!
The girl who codes. The smug little know-it-all. The nasty girl who has grown out of her fandoms, but is too selfish to give up the sites. The girl who wants to be a writer of teen fiction - but not fucking vampires.
