More on Yonaguni

It's official.  My brain is fried.  Too. Much. Information.  But oooh, the possibilities here.  Do I attack it from the ancient past or from the point of view of an archeologist who gets drawn into an underwater  world of DOOM?  *snort, giggle*  Was it built by humans?  Aliens?  Dragons?  There is always the tale of the Water Dragon's underwater palace...need to find it, but I think I only have it in Japanese and I am way too brain fried for that right now.  I am now going to eat a bit and vegetate whilst I process all the information I've taken in today.

I swear that I've already written more pages of notes on the facts of the place than I'm allowed for the fiction, but you gotta build your fiction on a sound base.  Reality doesn't have to be believable.  You have to give your fiction readers something to believe in before you can start messing with them.  That's why truth is always stranger than fiction.

Oooh, just found old episodes from the History Channel that have bits about Yonaguni in them.  Darn.  I'll watch one while I eat. I love the History Channel. ^^

Yonaguni Research

Okay, while I let Capriciousness' New PaN sit a bit (it's always best to set a piece aside for a few days so that you can look at it with fresh eyes during editing and rewriting), I'm doing a bit of research for another piece.  There's an anthology with an open call for submissions through the end of October called "Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations".  I'd be willing to bet that no one will think of doing anything with Yonaguni (an underwater site off the coast of Yonaguni Island in Okinawa Prefecture, Japan), so I'm researching away.  I don't know if I can come up with anything Stephen King-esque in 4k words (if at all) but it should be a good exercise nonetheless.

In other, happy news, my new netbook should be here tomorrow.  It was an ebay steal at $75 with shipping and a 16gb sd card.  The netbook is only a 7" model with 2gb solid state hd, but it's just for writing when I'm not home.  I'm going to chuck the nasty Windows CE that is incompatible with anything at all useful and replace it with Ubuntu.  I use OpenOffice.org for my word-processing, but the built in writing program on that lean little os is compatible it and Windows.  Of course OpenOffice works with pretty much everything except Mac's Pages program.  (I miss my Mac.)  ;_;  Ubuntu only takes up a little under 700mb of room on the hd, where my Windows (Vista) folder on my laptop takes up nearly 20 gigs!  The recovery disc (which takes everything back to factory settings) has 9 gigs on it.  Sheesh.

Did I mention that it's bright green?  Purple would be better, but hey, it was cheap, and with Ubuntu One's 5 free gigs of cloud storage and every other way I'll be backing up my work, if it gets stolen out of my locker at work, I'm not going to be out that much $$ or work.  Maybe I'll find some paint that'll work on plastic and write "dreamer" on it in kanji.  That would look awesome. : )

(Hmm, the smilies look odd in this typeface, I'm going to either have to stop using them, change fonts, or accept their lopsidedness.)

Anyway, the fact that it's not going to have room for games (and that there's no internet for me to tap at work) means that I'll be writing on it and not playing.  ^-^  I'll just back it up to the cloud (and my TimeCapsule and my laptop) when I get home each day.  I've been burned by accidental deletion recently, so I plan on complete and total overkill in my backing up from now on.  Anything else can be replaced, but my writing can (for now) only be found in one place, so I'm not taking any more chances.

As soon as I have a little more money, I'll be putting a bigger hd in my laptop (I'm becoming techier by the day ^^), then splitting it down the middle so I can dual boot Windows and Ubuntu.  There are still a lot of things I've bought and paid for that can only be used with Windows (mostly games ^^) but I'm really digging Ubuntu (which is Linux based, very fast loading, and gorgeous for those who didn't click the link).  I've found a 1TB hd for $119, and should be able to scrape that much together in a month or two.  In the mean time, I'm going to be making room (by way of archiving to DVD) on my TimeCapsule against the day I make the switch out.  Fortunately DVDs are relatively cheap and my current hd is only 160gb (half of it music and the rest things I need, so it's always maxed out), so I don't need to make all that much room.  (My TimeCapsule is 1TB, but half is taken up with the backups from my dead Mac . . . which includes tons of pics from Japan and Mexico and music . . . *sniff*)  One day I'll be able to afford a new one (or simply get the old one fixed) and recover all that.  One day.  Oh, for the days of all the overtime I could handle.  How I miss those paychecks.

Capriciousness' New PaN

Done.  8 pages (12pt Times New Roman, double spaced as always) and 2785 words.

Obviously there will be rewrites and edits, though in many ways this is already a third draft.  The question for my readers (some of whom occasionally actually bother to read for me ;_;) will be, is this enough, or does it need another scene?  It's basically just an interview for the airship Capriciousness' Pilot and Navigator position.  Sounds dull, right?  But it's the society that's inherent in the attitudes of the two people that make it different.  I'm going to start drafting out another story in this world.  I may well end up with what amounts to a serial novel, with lots of short stories that flow one into the next.  I think that would be awesome.

Right now, though.  I'm going to step back from it and work on editing that other story.  The working title is From Victim to Apprentice, which sucks.  First thing is to come up with a better title, then I'll get to work on edits (which for me amounts to rewriting).

Getting Started

I figure if I make a habit of posting my (hopefully) daily page count, then my writing will pick up its pace.  I'm rather lazy by nature, so I need to use every little trick to make myself work. ^^;;  So far I've written 2 short stories: Viral r/Evolution  which is 32 pages and 11,855 words long, and an as yet untitled one involving a cat - sort of - which is 11 pages and 4,170 words long.  Tonight, however, I'm going to be taking the notes and early handwritten pages I have from my break times over the weekend and setting to work on a steam punk piece with a bit of a twist. Steam punk is always sort of Victorian, so the girls are in skirts and the boys get to have all the adventures.  Well, in my world it's the other way around . . . well, not the skirts.  I'm not putting my boys in kilts or anything (not that there's anything wrong with men in kilts!).  I don't want to give too much away until I'm done (and it is hopefully sold ^^), but I'm loving it, and my best friend (who is my harshest critic and best advisor) liked the bit I'd written (was all but forced to write) after work Sunday before last.

For now, it's time for dinner (a really yummy, and huge, salad).

See ya in the morning with my page count.  Cross your fingers.