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More Than Leaves Are Falling

🍂Fall🍂 is aptly named. Acorns and branches have been bombarding the house all week.

Do More

The reward for work well done is the opportunity to do more. ~Jonas Salk

That little chestnut is often stated wryly, but in the case of my line of work it’s actually pretty reassuring.

Our salesmen have been bringing in new clients at a pretty regular clip, which is absolutely fantastic.

It’s a bit stressful, but it’s far more reassuring to know that we’ve got plenty of work to do, plenty of money to make, plenty of job security.

Actually, I was working on a new project using a tool that I had done some improvement to a little while ago and it’s paying pretty incredible dividends.

One of my annual performance goals is to develop tools that will help to streamline my job. Mission accomplished.

I recently wrote a utility that will read a fat stack of random spreadsheets. These things have been the bane of our data conversion process up until recently. As long as the spreadsheets are arranged in some consistent way, I can use a variation of this program to rip right through them and write them into a useable form.

So, with work well done (relatively speaking) I have the ability to do more (work) with less (spare time).

Huzzah, time to warm up some coffee and take a nap…

Enchanting 🍂Autumn🍂 Nature Scenes

11 HOURS of 4K Enchanting Autumn Nature Scenes + Relaxing Piano Music for Stress Relief

Here’s another video of lovely 🍂Autumn🍂 scenery with tweety birds and soothing music. Does the season deserve any less?

So, I was a bit too busy with work this past week to geek out about any recent sci-fi series. Four day weeks help with focusing on my to-do list, but they don’t leave much room for fun.

Whether I was working or recovering, what I did get to listen to was an irregular bombardment of twigs and acorns.

Wow, it sounds like somebody’s out there throwing hammers on our roof and it’s a not-so-subtle reminder that I’ll have to scamper up there and clean out the gutters.

Good thing I have an extra long weekend to get that done.

Anything Higher

In art, the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can imagine. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

It’s possible that this is why I have such a hard time planning a book.

I am, by nature or instinct, a “pantser”. I put pencil to paper or fingers to keyboard and simply create.

Sometimes (almost never) I have a basic idea of what I expect to write. Most times, it’s pure improv.

The best I seem to be able to do as far as planning and plotting is to define some vague milestones and see whether I traverse them in the course of my writing.

I have had some success with this by keeping the milestones as vague as possible.

This sounds haphazard to most people but everyone has their own process. Some people construct a really tight plan and are able to write to that. Some people chart it out using software like Plottr, which is an excellent piece of software.

My brain doesn’t want to operate in that mode. It barely works that way doing data conversion and software development. Even my IT work is largely a milestone-based process, more than an explicit plan of any kind.

So, what I do is to define a starting point that answers the basics: who, what, when, where, how. Given these general parameters, I play the movie of what comes of that in my mind and transcribe what I’m seeing and hearing.

I have to get myself into a creative flow state so that the movie will play on its own and the writing is as autonomic as breathing. It just happens without me thinking about it. I don’t need to think about it. I just have to let my fingers record what my imagination is rolling out for me.

Now editing is another matter altogether. That’s a very deliberate and concrete process. Thankfully, I have my subscription to ProWritingAid to help me with that bit.

Granted, nothing is a substitute for having a professional editor, but since my available budget is basically nothing and I’ve already got my subscription to ProWritingAid paid up, the substitute is to continue doing it myself for the foreseeable future.

In the short term, and for my Holiday Season Serial Romances particularly, my self-editing will be satisfactory. I have sold a few copies of my previous stories. No negative feedback having been received, I’ll have to conclude that it’s alright for the time being.

I’m not as far along with Merry 🔔 Bells as I’d hoped, but I’ve got the rest of the weekend to catch up on that. Even though work spilled over in a rather egregious manner last night and today, I’ve still got plenty of time to get on with Meredith’s holiday fling.

That’s all for this lovely October weekend. I hope you’re having a lovely time and catching up on your R&R.