37 Comments

I thought this trick was only supposed to be for dialogue?

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Dialogue was my streetwalker name

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This is totally worth the risk and I’m waiting for the next translation and the next translation. I don’t care how out there. It’s a righteous experiment

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Speaking of experiments, I've been on a letter writing kick recently. Does anyone know of a mailing address I can use to get a letter to Chuck?

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I thought you burnt your drafts while dancing naked in the woods as some sort of magical neolithic ritual to release the ideas back into the universe?

I guess I was misinformed during workshop. How disappointing.

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One should always be clothed in ceremonial asbestos when burning drafts. Otherwise the embers really sting.

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Nah, it toughens the skin.

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I deep-fry mine.

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I just save copies of projects on a USB. If something were to ever happen to my desktop draft/file, I’ll have that contingency copy on the USB.

Apparently Irvine Welsh lost two projects saved on his laptop recently when he accidentally spilled coffee or something on it and damaged it. He seems to have taken a zen approach to the situation. As for me, I think I’d probably douse my self in lighter fluid and strike a match where that to happen -- which, though it may look like I’m doing tribute to a certain monk who protested the war in Vietnam, is arguably less zen a reaction.

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I wrote a novel in high school, saved it on multiple floppy disks. The world was done a favor when they were lost, sometime, during college? Sometimes Zen is... healthy.

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founding

I have an old disket with my Diablo 2 save file on it packed up somewhere. : ) The 90s!!!

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author

It's hard not to feel the heartstrings tugged by old tech. Monica Drake once bought a Toshiba laptop the size of a briefcase and heavy as a suitcase, for $1600. We admired it but thought she was crazy. In those days I was pecking away on a LetterWriter created by Brother. The screen was the size of a postcard, green characters on a black background.

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Ah. Floppy disks. The task of pulling the tracking strips off continuous-feed printer paper before creating the paper manuscript to send off in nesting boxes. That whole kabuki dance is dead.

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Perhaps the zen approach is to accept the part of yourself that desires lighter fluid bathing as natural as water walking downhill, or was it walking down water hills, or was it walking on water downhill, or was it waking on water hills down as...

GPT error can’t compute

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You are the wind bequeath my wings.

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founding

I keep an external hard drive with everything on it for a backup. I have heard horror stories of fellow creators losing loads of writing or art due to tech failure. Backups are a must!

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Print a hard copy. My computer guy loves to serenade me with stories about how USB drives can just go "poof" and lose all data. This laptop is ten years old, so I've just bought a new one and Computer Guy copied everything onto that, just in case.

In the bad old days I'd written 'Invisible Monsters' on software called WordPerfect4 (purloined from work). When I finally switched to Word, I found that converting to ASCII wouldn't allow me to transfer the file. Having to rekey the whole manuscript was the best rewrite ever.

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founding

Save Early, Save Often - that's my motto

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I wonder if this would work well for writing dialogue for characters who are speaking in an acquired language.

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The French love passive language. Thats why we always gotta bail em out.

This is a joke. They bailed us out first.

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founding

also email a copy to yourself

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'Shot a look' became 'glanced' though. It's quite interesting that it recognised that phrase and simplified it.

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I wonder what Spanbauer would have to say.

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founding

This new trick turned out my newest story. "Turning out" is a prison term. It means Turning someone into a street walker...just so we're clear.

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Yeah, again, Rick Moody talks about this in THE LONG ACCOMPLISHMENT. There IS a difference.

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I don't have to worry 'cause Chuck is my ribbon man. *finger guns* Isn't that right, Chuck?

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Just so long as you have a Selectric that uses ribbon cartridges. Look it up. The IBM Selectric.

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Can't you just stick high-tech brain-reader technology with those sticky little suction ducts that can milk my mind and then you can harvest all my hidden writing potential?

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Woah. Those are neat!

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Maybe you can send me one as a birthday gift. I have an OLYMPIA right now. It works, the keys get stuck sometimes.

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founding

Wonder what was being cooked up in the other dimension requiring a salute. Maybe a little something from the Far Realms?

I will have to try this. Maybe there are some treasures yet to be discovered.

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Thanks for sharing this! I was intrigued by your initial suggestion and still intend to give it a go. A walrus defense. :-P

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