New Stuff to Learn

When I was thinking about retirement, I took to heart the adage that one should never give up learning new things. It went hand in hand with the realization that the science I knew was too far out of date for me to attempt to write science fiction. So I started reading science magazines to try to learn Where Science Was At Now, and wrote in other genres in the meantime.

Shortly after I retired, I started publishing, and that required I learn things like editing, formatting a manuscript into a book, and things like that. (And Marketing, which is a never-ending challenge.)

Recently, I signed up for a one-on-one online class. I didn’t think about it at the time, but ideally, this class would require a camera and a microphone attached to my computer. My computer had neither. I tried to make it work by using my cell phone to call in to the classroom, but the url was long and complicated, and my fat little fingers kept hitting the wrong keys. After half an hour of our hour-long time slot, I suggested we reschedule for the following week, and promised I would have a microphone by then. I couldn’t imagine them being very expensive.

When I mentioned to Hubby that I needed to drive to Best Buy for a microphone (about 15 miles in each direction), he said we had a couple mics he wasn’t using, he’d dig one out for me. Later that evening, I found a giant box on my desk. Inside was a huge Snowball microphone.

Procrastination is a funny bird, but it does tend to light a fire under you when a deadline is looming. My next ‘class’ was scheduled for today. Yesterday morning, I decided I’d better get a move on with getting a microphone set up. I had found a headset with attached mic a few days ago, so I decided to try that one first. But first, I needed software that would record audio files.

Both my youngest son and my hubby suggested I download Audacity because it was ‘fairly easy’ to learn to use it. So I downloaded it AND set it up on my computer, all by myself! Okay, the computer did most of the work, I just hit a button here and there. But I basked in the glory of having done that much.

After much studying of the Quick Guide and a couple of tutorials, I finally figured out how to make a test recording and then listen to it. I was surprised at how tiny the squiggles were on my test recording, and when I listened to it, I could hardly hear anything. So more studying and more testing, and I finally figured out how to up the volume. Success! And a good thing, too, because it was time to make supper.

As we were watching tv after supper, it dawned on me that I had made the volume changes in Audacity, which I would not be using during my class. Obviously, I needed to find some way to adjust the volume on my computer. To make a long story short (I know, too late), I found a couple of places in Settings to test the microphone. If anything, the output may be a little too loud. Maybe I’ll have to whisper during my class.

Anyway, I learned some new stuff. Before this, I had some nebulous thoughts on how I could use audio files. Now that I’ve got a little bit of knowledge on how to make them, those thoughts are already blossoming into full-fledged plans.

Wish me luck!

Advice For Writers

Writers are given lots of advice. Sometimes the advice is good, sometimes it’s not. And sometimes it can only be described as, ‘well-intentioned’.

The first piece of advice I ever got when I was first trying to spread my wings was that I should write every day. I admired my cousin Roy a great deal, and I really thought his writing style was great. But I never could manage to write the thousand words a day that he kept advising me to do.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t have to labor long and hard to get a thousand words written. Most days the words just flowed out of my pen and onto my tablet, and I might get 2 or 3 thousand words written in a day. But then something would happen. A bout of flu kept me down for a few days. I somehow wound up with a multitude of chores to do one weekend, or a big amount of homework to get done. Possibly the family decided to drive up into the mountains on Saturday. I was afraid of heights, so I was allowed to take books to read, but not books to write. Of course, my notebooks never stayed in good shape long enough to finish them, and I certainly didn’t want to lose any pages, so I didn’t think that was a big problem. Except I never seemed to get my thousand words written that day. I had failed!

But in hindsight, I had bigger problems than that. I would start a story and work on it for a few dozens or even hundreds of pages. Then I would lose interest in that story, hide it in a drawer, and start a new one. It wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I actually finished a few stories. And shortly after that, it occurred to me that SOMEbody needed to go through those stories and edit them. I started working with other authors to get some critical feedback.

Eventually, I arrived at the point where I could retire, and I did, anticipating that I would take the 8 hours a day I had spent working and use them to work on my writing. Somehow, that hasn’t happened. I am at my computer daily, working for at least 8 hours, but I am not necessarily working on a story for 1000 words. I have too many other things to do. I am head of a small press, and I am editor, layout person and publisher for my husband. Ditto with my own writing, and editing is much tougher when it’s your own work.

So if you ever see me at a convention, conference, or transportation hub, and I’m pounding away on a laptop, it’s only me, trying to get 1000 words written that day.

Depressing News

I don’t spend a lot of time on facebook or twitter anymore. I find it too depressing. Every day or two, it seems like a friend has lost a family member or a pet to death. Two other friends are facing a medical diagnosis that means a long haul to get the illness taken care of.

It was bad enough when it happened to my friends. It’s even worse when it happens to my own family. John has been ill since mid-November of 2022. We are waiting impatiently for the date when he can get his first operation, which we hope will make it possible for him to get more surgeries done, and he can finally work his way towards health.

And now I find myself stumbling over my own health issues. Some of you may know I had surgery on Mar 1. What I didn’t know until today was that they found ‘scar tissue’ when they did that surgery, and so they biopsied it. I was told today that the biopsy came back negative for cancer. Big sigh of relief. But that scar tissue, located where it is, could cause problems in the future, so I’m being referred to another doctor to figure out what can be done with it.

Yesterday, I saw yet another doctor, and she noticed something was abnormally thick for my age. (Normal would be 4 cm, while mine is 6 cm.) She doesn’t think it’s cancer, but she wants to biopsy it ‘to be sure’.

Needless to say, sometimes I find it difficult to focus on what I’m doing. But I keep trying to farble my way through.

To get back to what I was saying at the beginning of this; I don’t need any more depression or anxiety in my life right now. I’m on a full load of anti-depressants and my anti-anxiety meds have recently been upped, too. I’m sorry if you are going through a hard time, for whatever reason, and I don’t comment on your post. Chances are rather slim that I see it, because FB only sends your post to 7% of your friends. I wish everyone good health and a relatively good life. Just like I’m trying to do for myself.

Update: On the day I wrote this blog, I was unaccountably tired, very achy, and just plain cranky. I feel that crankiness came through, and I’m sorry about that. My circumstances are not anybody’s fault; they are just the hand I’ve been dealt by fate. Some days are better than others, and I will check in on social media when I can.

Indenting Paragraphs

When one starts to publish books, and wants them to look ‘professional’, there are many things one must think about that you probably haven’t stopped to think about before. I think the first thing I ran across that surprised me was the rule, “Thou shalt not indent the first line of the first paragraph of each chapter.”

Huh? Why not? I thought it was a rule that all paragraphs should be indented, unless you are going for a block format, in which case no paragraphs get indented, but you do put a line between the paragraphs, so they don’t become a run-on mess (like this sentence).

But the only explanation was that it was to ‘look professional’. They even went further than that and said that it would be even better to make the first letter of the first paragraph of each chapter oversized and ornate.

For some reason, I found that suggestion silly and downright medieval. What are we, monks calligraphing our way through these books?

I’ve read a lot of books during my lifetime. I tried to think back, remember if any of those books had indented or not indented the first paragraph of each chapter. I didn’t know. I apparently never noticed.

Oh, I did remember occasionally reading a book that had oversized and ornate first letters for each chapter, and I vaguely remembered that those paragraphs were not usually indented. But it didn’t seem to be the norm in the books I read. Sometimes, I struggled to figure out what letter it was, it was so ornate and seemed to have nothing to do with the word it started. I probably thought, “How weird,” and then promptly forgot it as I plowed my way through the rest of the story.

Now I am faced with the question of whether or not I will indent the first paragraph of each chapter in the books that I publish. To be truthful, I want to. It is much simpler to indent all the paragraphs and be done with it. To indent all the paragraphs and then go back and un-indent the first paragraphs, all while trying not to make it a global command, making ALL your paragraphs un-indented… It seems like a tedious and unnecessary endeavor. Too easy to make a mistake. And I have made mistakes during formatting. It’s no fun having to rip out ALL the formatting and then go back and put all the formatting back in again.

But I’m taking a very unscientific survey. What is your opinion of not indenting first paragraphs of each chapter? Do you expect it? Have you ever noticed it being done in the books you have read? Drop me a comment and let me know your opinion.

Ebook Coupon

Have you ever wondered what MoonPhaze books are like? I’ve got a coupon for you. Let’s try a little short fantasy. The title is “Woman on the Dock”, which can be found at https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/108681. The coupon is to get it for free, and the coupon code is BH45S, which is good through Dec 31, 2024. Check it out, and I hope you enjoy it!

Woman on the Dock

“Woman on the Dock” takes place in my Atlan Universe, where tribes of women have certain powers that others don’t have, and are thus called Witches. When their island home was destroyed by a volcanic eruption, their evacuation boats got separated, and pockets (usually just 4 or 5 survivors, from old crones to infants) of these women set up new homes wherever they could hide. Those women who are called Blackbirds—one of the Atlans’ best warriors—are sent out periodically by their village disguised as traders, to search for rumors of other Atlan villages. But as generations go by, it is hard to believe that other Atlan settlements exist.

Inna, coming to a fishing village disguised as a merchant, was shocked to find a woman tied to the dock, battered and near death. She didn’t know the beaten woman, but she was clearly Atlan! And Inna wasn’t going to let one of her kind be treated like that!