Stephen King's Desk
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk
reading Stephen King's ON WRITING, which I remember had a
pretty good thread devoted to it here, a while back.
I'm not convinced ON WRITING is a 'how to write' book so much
as a 'this is a description of how one writer came to exist'
book. He says himself that large chunks of what he does is
intuitive, so it will, I suppose, be useful for other
intuitive writers. Me, I started to twitch when the refrain
"eliminate all adverbs!" kept coming around. I may start a
"Save The Adverb" campaign... :)
However.
He mentions, towards the end, that you should keep your
working desk at the side of the room. Before you think
that's a "well, duh!" moment, it comes from an anecdote he
tells about buying a gynormous desk and putting in the middle
of his room, under his skylight. King reckons that putting
your desk at the side of the room keeps you humble, and that
life doesn't serve art, art serves life.
That gives me two points, which I don't think came up the
last time ON WRITING was discussed. One was the more general
thing -- I guess I think life _does_ serve art, if only
because art lasts longer. But I also wondered what people
thought he meant.
The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
what other folks here do?
Actually, my all-time favourite place to work is any given
café in London that happens to sell coffee and organic lemon
cheesecake, but this isn't possible on a daily basis... <g>
Mary
--
_ASH: A SECRET HISTORY_ : winner of the Sidewise Award for
Alternate History and the British Science Fiction Association
Award; #5 Locus Recommended Fantasy Novel.
Nicola Browne
news:9nb3rn$t4n$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk...
> >
> He mentions, towards the end, that you should keep your
> working desk at the side of the room. Before you think
> that's a "well, duh!" moment, it comes from an anecdote he
> tells about buying a gynormous desk and putting in the middle
> of his room, under his skylight. King reckons that putting
> your desk at the side of the room keeps you humble, and that
> life doesn't serve art, art serves life.
(I'm not sure I really know what either of those means -
it sort of gets my bullshit monitor bleeping)
>
> That gives me two points, which I don't think came up the
> last time ON WRITING was discussed. One was the more general
> thing -- I guess I think life _does_ serve art, if only
> because art lasts longer. But I also wondered what people
> thought he meant.
Hey in spite of all my success I'm just a humble, regular guy?
>
> The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
> keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
> the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
> living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
> isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
> what other folks here do?
>
> Actually, my all-time favourite place to work is any given
> café in London that happens to sell coffee and organic lemon
> cheesecake, but this isn't possible on a daily basis... <g>
>
>
> I can only think about plots in cafes ( sorry can't do accents)
but mine's a large cappucino and one of those chocolate/fudge
shortbread cakes.
I like noisy cafes best and I chew my pen and stare meaningfully and
artistically into the middle distance, searching for my errant muse and
drawing incomprehensible diagrams that afterwards I can rarely
understand.
To write though,I have to work at my desk in my office with the door
shut until
my children make loud enough 'feed me!' noises. I can work happily with
background noise but I can't write and 'mummy' at the same time!
Theoretically
the computer and office is shared with the rest of the family - but by
covering
every available surface with my stuff and snarling a lot( very
viciously)
I've made it mine!( All mine cue manic laughter..)
-Nicky
>
> _
--
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Daniel Schauer
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in message news:bff9ff4ccc5fd5ab12...@mygate.mailgate.org...
> "mary_gentle" <mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote in message
> news:9nb3rn$t4n$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk...
>
> > >
> > He mentions, towards the end, that you should keep your
> > working desk at the side of the room. Before you think
> > that's a "well, duh!" moment, it comes from an anecdote he
> > tells about buying a gynormous desk and putting in the middle
> > of his room, under his skylight. King reckons that putting
> > your desk at the side of the room keeps you humble, and that
> > life doesn't serve art, art serves life.
>
> (I'm not sure I really know what either of those means -
> it sort of gets my bullshit monitor bleeping)
He talks several times in that book about the concept that he
writes because it fulfills him (art serves life). He is
not a slave to writing (life doesn't serve art). I also
recall him talking about this desk, and how he spent a large
portion of his time drunk as a skunk in front of it. It was
at that desk that he had his final major descent into
alcoholism, and possibly that is why he wants to remain humble.
Dan Schauer
Brenda W. Clough
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>
> The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
> keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
> the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
> living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
> isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
> what other folks here do?
My work area is the computer on its desk in the middle, flanked by two
long large work tables. All surfaces are heavily covered with papers,
yarn, office supplies, magazines, patterns, reference books, etc. I
estimate that less than one square foot of actual desk surface is
visible.
-The- most essential accessory is a good desk chair, to save your back.
Also a chair mat, so it will roll around easily. And a footrest, again
for your back.
Brenda
--
What do you do with a secret?
Whisper it in a desert at high noon.
Lock it up and bury the key.
Tell the nation on prime-time TV.
Choose a door . . .
Doors of Death and Life
by Brenda W. Clough
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
Tor Books
ISBN 0-312-87064-7
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
> keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
> the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
> living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
> isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
> what other folks here do?
>
> Actually, my all-time favourite place to work is any given
> café in London that happens to sell coffee and organic lemon
> cheesecake, but this isn't possible on a daily basis... <g>
Your metabolism must be a lot briskier than mine. I wouldn't be able to
_leave_ that cafe, before too long...
I just know that I have to work in a cluttered space. And without people
around who might come over and ask "Oh goody, what are you writing now?"
I once wrote a fair chunk of my novel while pretending to be taking
notes on my laptop at a seminar on Literary Translation (one that I had
paid good money to attend, alas). None like being forced to sit through
something terminally boring to make you creative. Well, to make me
creative.
--
substitute tin to nit to mail me
Nicola Browne
news:999899097.541338@sj-nntpcache-3...
>
> >
> He talks several times in that book about the concept that he
> writes because it fulfills him (art serves life). He is
> not a slave to writing (life doesn't serve art). I also
> recall him talking about this desk, and how he spent a large
> portion of his time drunk as a skunk in front of it. It was
> at that desk that he had his final major descent into
> alcoholism, and possibly that is why he wants to remain humble.
>
> I haven't read the book, though a large part of it, including 'the desk'
section was serialised in one of the UK Sundays and I read that.
It struck me as irritatingly dramatic at the time.
Maybe I'm just not sensitive to desk symbolism.
I can see that you may want to characterise a fictional creation by
reference
to his/her soft furnishings and room lay out, but real life has always
struck
me as more complicated, less neatly symbolic.
My desk is in its current position because it needs to be close to the
sockets.
Nicky
ken kelly
I have a special wall where I throw books by authors that I really
despise at the moment. Once I make my ultimate critical statement,
the thud resounds, and I leave it to my cats, two psychotic orange
tabbies, to dispose of the remains. They can eat a book in a week or
so between them, though they're not very thorough and leave quite a
mess. They're notably faster with living, twitching, organic matter,
even if not as fast or thorough as all that... they're very sadistic
creatures, ginger-colored, with slanting, slow-blinking eyes... but I
digress.
I have two desks set up at right angles, with three computers running
most of the time. I like to do a lot of things at once. Where I sit
mostly faces out; that seems usually to suit me best. I have a large
TV in the outward direction, and I'm most often watching a movie,
though not always one I'd recommend to a friend. Sometimes it's the
same movie over and over... I did that recently with *The City of Lost
Children*, just in case someone knows what I mean...
I have a couch nearby, too, for reading and lounging and sleeping. I
threw my bed away a few years ago. It might still be outside, but I
haven't looked. There just wasn't enough room for everything.
Shelves upon shelves but every book I want is in a stinking box.
I like either a lot of noise or a lot of silence. It has to be my
noise, though.
It's funny how that is. When you need a lot of noise, it's so much
better when it's your own.
Who's Stephen King?
SAMK
> The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
> keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
> the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
> living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
> isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
> what other folks here do?
My portable computer hangs out in the family room, and most of my writing
now takes place in my recliner. I work out scenes anywhere, though,
especially while driving.
SAMK
sa...@inil.com
Dan Goodman
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk says...
> The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
> keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
> the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
> living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
> isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
> what other folks here do?
I currently live in a bedsit. My computer is on a table which also holds
(minus stuff which really ought to be somewhere else): Telephone. Case
for the glasses I use when at the computer. (Reading glasses, from long
enough ago that they now work well as computer glasses.) A rubber ball
and a golfball, for hand exercises.
I tend to work out dialog while walking. It seems to use the same mental
mechanism which might otherwise be occupied with "What I should have said
was ___."
Opposite to what Damon Knight takes for granted is universal (in
_Creating Short Fiction_, my conscious thinking tends to be in webs of
association and my unconscious mind is better at linear thinking. So,
certain aspects of plotting are worked out in my sleep.
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
Del Cotter
Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> said:
>"mary_gentle" <mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote
>> Actually, my all-time favourite place to work is any given
>> café in London that happens to sell coffee and organic lemon
>> cheesecake, but this isn't possible on a daily basis... <g>
>
> I can only think about plots in cafes (sorry can't do accents)
Don't know what computer you're using, but try Ctrl-Alt-e.
--
Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk
Marilee J. Layman
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
>keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
>the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
>living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
>isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
>what other folks here do?
Not only is my computer right in the middle of the living room/dining
room, it acts as a partial wall between the living room and the
hallway that is here part of the two rooms. It's the only way here to
have the computer so I can see out the sliding glass doors in the
living room and I really like looking out. Also, if I glance slightly
to my right, I see the TV, currently showing a rerun of Farscape.
--
Marilee J. Layman
Bali Sterling Beads at Wholesale
http://www.basicbali.com
Wendy Shaffer
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
> keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
> the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
> living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
> isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
> what other folks here do?
My writing usually gets done in two stages. The first stage
is the Bad First Draft, which gets scrawled out longhand in a spiral
notebook. My favorite place to do this is in a coffeehouse with
a very large glass of iced coffee (in summer) or with a caffe latte
(in winter). Otherwise, sitting at my dining table, or my desk,
which is constantly in danger of disappearing under an avalanche of
papers. However, I have been known to commit first draft almost
anywhere, including on the bus, in the midst of tedious lectures,
and while standing in line to order at the local burger place.
Interestingly, the bus is the only place where I've ever had total
strangers offer unsolicited writing advice.
The second stage is where the first draft gets entered into the
computer, and mangled into something that I can show to another
human being without dying of embarrassment. Formerly, that had
to be done at my desk, since that was where the computer was.
I've just become the proud owner of a laptop, though, so I'm
experimenting.
One interesting thing that I've been doing with the laptop is
trying out writing to music, since it can play CD's and MP3's
through a headphone jack. It's interesting - sometimes I just
like to have noise while I write, and sometimes I find myself
using particular songs to consciously evoke a mood or put
myself in a frame of mind. (I have one set of songs for
a mood that I refer to as "melancholy transcendence" and another
song for "sometimes being subtle is not the right way to
express things". I'm kind of curious to see what other
categories I'll develop over time.)
---wendy
--
Wendy Shaffer
wsha...@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Read my poem "Icarus" at Strange Horizons. (http:www.strangehorizons.com)
Jaquandor
>> keep their work surfaces?
I have an old writing desk in my living room, facing the wall opposite the TV.
It belonged to my grandmother; when she died she left it to my father who gave
it to me upon my wedding. I like to write there.
I will also sit with a clipboard in the papasan chair (is that how it's
spelled?), but I don't like that as much.
For a change of scenery I'll write at the local Borders or the public library,
but not that often.
(I write all first drafts longhand using a fountain pen. Ink-stained fingers
rule!!!)
--
-Jaquandor
"Art, music and philosophy are poignant examples of what we might have been,
had the priests and traders not got hold of us." --George Carlin
jhetley
<mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote in message
news:9nb3rn$t4n$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk...
>
> The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
> keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
> the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
> living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
> isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
> what other folks here do?
Back upstairs bedroom, which is also my home-office drafting room (day job
is architect.) Therefore, my computer is right next to my drafting table,
so that if I need to procrastinate from a design project, I can persuade
myself that I am _still_ working if I sit down to write. Conversely and
contrariwise, if I need to cat-vacuum from the writing for a while, there's
probably something I should be drawing up.
(Of course, that bit of sophistry totally ignores the _other_ computer, the
486 that gets used almost exclusively for playing Master of Orion to the
detriment of both writing and architecture.)
--
Jim
THE SUMMER COUNTRY, a novel of dark contemporary fantasy
Coming in 2002 from Ace Science Fiction & Fantasy
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
I tried ctrl-alt-e and got nothing, the cursor didn't even move.
alt-e, which is what I have set my Word Perfect keyboard for, gives me
the edit menu in Free Agent. ctrl-e gave me nothing.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Ian A. York
>keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
>the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
I work in the living room, too, with the TV etc. But that's because we no
longer have a spare room for my office, which got turned into a nursery a
few months ago. We just bought a house, and when we move in I'll have a
room for an office more or less by myself. I can work out in the living
room (the TV is an anti-distraction; I don't watch TV [except for
baseball] and I loathe it so much it encourages me to keep my back to the
TV and face the computer), but I prefer to work more by myself; I can turn
up music as necessary, and I don't have to answer questions and phones as
often.
My desk is a drafting table that my father rescued from his company's
trash, over thirty years ago. It has the gouges and burnt spots I added
when avoiding homework as a much younger person. I hope to get a new desk
when we move, but it's not a high priority--I'm used to this one.
My chair was rescued from anonymous sidewalk trash by a friend, who
re-upholstered it as practice and sold it to me for three bucks, about ten
years ago. I really need to get a new chair, since this one is really too
low, and it's hard on my arms and shoulders.
Ian
--
Ian York (iay...@panix.com) <http://www.panix.com/~iayork/>
"-but as he was a York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a
very respectable Man." -Jane Austen, The History of England
Brian M. Scott
wrote:
>On Fri, 7 Sep 2001 23:52:00 +0100, Del Cotter <d...@branta.demon.co.uk>
>wrote:
>>On Fri, 7 Sep 2001, in rec.arts.sf.composition,
>>Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> said:
[...]
>>> I can only think about plots in cafes (sorry can't do accents)
>>Don't know what computer you're using, but try Ctrl-Alt-e.
>I tried ctrl-alt-e and got nothing, the cursor didn't even move.
>alt-e, which is what I have set my Word Perfect keyboard for, gives me
>the edit menu in Free Agent. ctrl-e gave me nothing.
Alt-0233 will give you <é> if you're running Free Agent under Windows;
hold down the Alt key while typing all four digits, then release it.
A similar trick will give you everything else in the Character Table
if you know the 4-digit number associated with it. E.g., an
upper-case thorn, <Ş>, is Alt-0222.
Brian
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>I work in the living room, with
>the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
>living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
>isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
>what other folks here do?
Well, I live in a bedsit, so everything is around.
But I have a *big* architect's desk, with quite a lot of stuff on it
and around: computer, various books, phone, big ashtray :-), pencils
and notepads, etc. Plus a big bookshelf on the left hand side of the
table.
The only thing that was on every desk of mine, though, was something
to play music. Although there are times when I need an absolute
silence (when I lose concentration), I'm generally unable to write
without music playing in the background. Usually quite loud music,
both in kind and volume. :-)
vlatko
--
_Neither Fish Nor Fowl_
http://www.webart.hr/nrnm/eng/index.htm
vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr
Mary K. Kuhner
keyboard in my lap; no desk. The current arrangement has my back
to the rest of the room, reducing distraction a little, though
I am rediscovering the pleasures of "radio drama" from listening
to my husband's movie rentals. (Dear gods, but the X-files has
a tin ear for dialog--it must be carried by the visuals.)
I also write on paper at scientific meetings; I've cultivated the
art of listening to the interesting 50% and writing the rest of the
time. Key scenes often get drafted this way and it is also good
for plot-problem brainstorming.
I wrote the capstone scene of WIP part II during a dinner theater
production, and was very pleased. It's not a form of theater I
like; I go for family solidarity. This way I actually enjoyed
it because I could skip the dumb parts....I was surprised that
the writing was okay, though.
In some moods I need solitude and quiet, in others it doesn't matter.
Solitude is important for revision.
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Del Cotter
Lucy Kemnitzer <rit...@cruzio.com> said:
>Del Cotter <d...@branta.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>>Nicola Browne <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> said:
>>> I can only think about plots in cafes (sorry can't do accents)
>>
>>Don't know what computer you're using, but try Ctrl-Alt-e.
>
>I tried ctrl-alt-e and got nothing, the cursor didn't even move.
>alt-e, which is what I have set my Word Perfect keyboard for, gives me
>the edit menu in Free Agent. ctrl-e gave me nothing.
Okay. It sometimes works.
--
Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk
Jo Walton
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk writes:
> That gives me two points, which I don't think came up the
> last time ON WRITING was discussed. One was the more general
> thing -- I guess I think life _does_ serve art, if only
> because art lasts longer. But I also wondered what people
> thought he meant.
I haven't read the book, and the more I think about it the less I can
think what he could have meant. It sounds as if he's saying that art
isn't the most important thing, but surely he can't mean that?
> The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
> keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
> the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
> living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
> isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
> what other folks here do?
>
> Actually, my all-time favourite place to work is any given
> café in London that happens to sell coffee and organic lemon
> cheesecake, but this isn't possible on a daily basis... <g>
I have my computer on a big desk under the window, this means that
some of the time I have to have the curtain closed to block off the
sun. (This might be more of a problem if I lived somewhere where it
rains less.) I'm in the main room -- this house has one big room
and a kitchen and bathroom downstairs. The back half of this room
is the dining room, and the front half is my workroom. In an ideal
world I would rather have a door that shuts, as you have to walk
through this room to get to the bathroom and kitchen, which is a
great excuse to interrupt me.
When I'm really writing I can write anywhere, with noise, without
noise, with interruptions, without interruptions, whatever. But
when I am trying to write and not in that state, anything distracts
me, and that's when I want ritual and no interruptions and my music
and everything just right. I think about writing in lots of places,
but I do almost all of it right here.
--
Jo J...@bluejo.demon.co.uk
I kissed a kif at Kefk
*THE KING'S PEACE* out now *THE KING'S NAME* out in November from Tor.
Sample Chapters, Map, Poems, & stuff at http://www.bluejo.demon.co.uk
Cherith Baldry
>The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
>keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
>the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
>living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
>isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
>what other folks here do?
I have a study at the top of the house. In it I have two desks. Desk (A) is an
old Scottish partners' desk which sits under the window. It's good for sitting
at and staring at the view, *not* for writing, so it gets used for
correspondence, collating, and such. The writing desk, Desk (B) is an L-shaped
assemble-it-yourself affair in the middle of the room over a couple of floor
sockets. It's here because the rest of the room, apart from the window and the
fireplace, is lined with bookshelves.
Personally I can't think of anything more pretentious than calculating
someone's humility quotient from where they site their desk.
'Save the adverb and **** the whale!' (Tom Stoppard (adapted).
Best regards,
Cherith
Sherwood Smith
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
>keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
>the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
>living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
>isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
>what other folks here do?
>
Desk adjacent the window, which means I have to block the cursed sun
late afternoons half the year; otherwise I can look out at grass and a
fountain year round. Surrounded by bookcases, which are a severe
quake hazard, but where else to put them? Separate piles of research
for different projects on floor, requiring very careful stepping.
There are exactly six inches between desk and the waterbed, so one is
already stepping very carefully.
Would love, love, love to have a room of my own, just for space. I
got used to distractions, noise, and interruptions when I was a kid in
a crowded, noisy house, with huge jets thundering overhead every three
minutes, 24/7, to land at LAX two blocks away.
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>Mary writes:
>>The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
>>keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
>>the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
>>living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
>>isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
>>what other folks here do?
>I have a study at the top of the house.
I do too, kind of. I have a sunroom on the second floor at the front
of the house; its broad side faces west and its narrower ones north
and south. It tends to rattle a bit in the winter. It opens off what
was supposed to the the living room of the upstairs apartment of our
duplex, but we have filled that living room with books, so I am a
niche off the library, in fact, which is very useful.
I have an old wooden desk of David's that I use for paying bills and
piling stuff on, and a long formica countertop propped on a filing
cabinet and a wooden brace that holds the computer. The place is
crammed with bookcases and filing cabinets; I can just barely turn the
desk chair around to get out of it. It's also a terrible mess, and
the books I used to research the last novel are still on the shelf in
here, while the ones I'm reading for the present one are cluttering up
my bedroom.
My view is just a few arbor vitae and the street, but I can see the
weather, and I had house sparrows raising a batch of young in the
arbor vita tree nearest my window, and can see dragonflies go by from
time to time.
>Personally I can't think of anything more pretentious than calculating
>someone's humility quotient from where they site their desk.
It sounds pretty silly to me too. If I put the desk in the middle of
the room there wouldn't be any way to have anything else *in* the
room; it's too small -- as it is, getting to the windows to open or
close them involves lying on one's stomach on various piles of paper
and swearing a lot, or else standing precariously on various pieces of
furniture and worrying. If I *could* put the desk in the middle
I would promptly do so just to thumb my nose at this silly theory.
--
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet (pd...@demesne.com)
"I will open my heart to a blank page
and interview the witnesses." John M. Ford, "Shared World"
Lucy Kemnitzer
Where do I find a table of those?
Lucy Kemnitzer
Marilee J. Layman
>Personally I can't think of anything more pretentious than calculating
>someone's humility quotient from where they site their desk.
This is a traditional measure of how important someone is to a
company. If you only have enough room to face your desk at a wall,
you're near the bottom. If you have room to put your back to a wall
and have the desk face into the room, you're near the middle. And if
you can take up enough room to have your desk diagonally, then you're
at the top.
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
> If I put the desk in the middle of
>the room there wouldn't be any way to have anything else *in* the
>room;
That's the point. :) If the company gives you a room big enough to
have the desk in the middle, you're an important person.
Brooks Moses
> On 8 Sep 2001 17:45:02 GMT, pd...@gw.dd-b.net (Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet)
> wrote:
> > If I put the desk in the middle of
> >the room there wouldn't be any way to have anything else *in* the
> >room;
>
> That's the point. :) If the company gives you a room big enough to
> have the desk in the middle, you're an important person.
It occurs to me that this is also substantially more relevant in cases
where one is expected to be meeting with other people while at one's
desk. There's a distinctly different dynamic in talking to visitors
from behind one's desk, as compared to having to turn away from one's
desk and meet them without heavy furnishings in between. You notice
how, in offices where the desks are in the middle of the room, they
always seem to face the door?
- Brooks
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>On 8 Sep 2001 17:45:02 GMT, pd...@gw.dd-b.net (Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet)
>wrote:
>> If I put the desk in the middle of
>>the room there wouldn't be any way to have anything else *in* the
>>room;
>That's the point. :) If the company gives you a room big enough to
>have the desk in the middle, you're an important person.
I *am* the company. I remain persuaded that this is an extremely
dopey metric to use in one's home office.
Brooks Moses
> Marilee J. Layman <mjla...@erols.com> writes:
> >On 8 Sep 2001 17:45:02 GMT, pd...@gw.dd-b.net (Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet)
> >wrote:
> >> If I put the desk in the middle of
> >>the room there wouldn't be any way to have anything else *in* the
> >>room;
>
> >That's the point. :) If the company gives you a room big enough to
> >have the desk in the middle, you're an important person.
>
> I *am* the company. I remain persuaded that this is an extremely
> dopey metric to use in one's home office.
I think it's like the nine-and-sixty-ways thing.
For you, I agree, it's an extremely dopey metric.
For Stephen Kind, it apparently wasn't.
It strikes me as a conscious use of symbols to affect one's mood. King,
clearly, was setting his desk against a wall as a conscious symbol of
his own desired humility. For him, then, it very much was a symbol of
that, and to claim otherwise is, IMHO, silly. Surrounding oneself with
the trappings of corporate power -- a large, heavy, mahogany desk in the
center of the room, facing the door, for example -- because they are the
cultural trappings of that power is, also, a symbol. And, when things
that you use often are chosen for their symbolism, they do affect your
ways of thinking.
Personally, I've got a nice but small and dinky little wood desk that's
constructed more like a table, and it's got one end against the wall
(well, against another larger desk that's against the wall and is more a
storage space for piles of stuff) so that it faces out into the room and
towards the patio. It's done that way because it's a small apartment
with one big common room, and this walls off a small section as "my
space". On the other hand, it also means that when I look up I can see
the windows and the rest of the room.
- Brooks
Brian M. Scott
wrote:
>On Sat, 08 Sep 2001 03:37:26 GMT, sc...@math.csuohio.edu (Brian M.
>Scott) wrote:
[...]
>>Alt-0233 will give you <é> if you're running Free Agent under Windows;
>>hold down the Alt key while typing all four digits, then release it.
>>A similar trick will give you everything else in the Character Table
>>if you know the 4-digit number associated with it. E.g., an
>>upper-case thorn, <Ş>, is Alt-0222.
>Where do I find a table of those?
Depends on which version of Windows you're using. In Windows ME the
Character Map is in Programs - Accessories - System Tools. I seem to
remember that in Windows 95 it's in the same or a similar place. Any
table of HTML numeric character entities will give you the same codes
(without the leading zero). Ah, here we go: there's a list of these
at <http://www.december.com/html/spec/codes.html>. Just drop the '&#'
and pad with leading zeroes to make a 4-digit numeric code.
Brian
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
>Marilee J. Layman <mjla...@erols.com> writes:
>
>>On 8 Sep 2001 17:45:02 GMT, pd...@gw.dd-b.net (Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet)
>>wrote:
>
>>> If I put the desk in the middle of
>>>the room there wouldn't be any way to have anything else *in* the
>>>room;
>
>>That's the point. :) If the company gives you a room big enough to
>>have the desk in the middle, you're an important person.
>
>I *am* the company. I remain persuaded that this is an extremely
>dopey metric to use in one's home office.
Well, sure, but maybe Stephen King feels like a bigger company.
Marilee J. Layman
wrote:
Sure, that's part of it, too, as well as the positioning of the side
chairs.
Karen Lofstrom
I write at a computer on a tiny computer desk in the middle of the front
room. There are two Anthrocarts sitting next to each other, crammed with
computer paraphenalia, telephone, and metal stacking trays. I have just
enough free space for one sheet of paper OR a glass of soda and a plate of
food on the adjoining cart.
The front room is living room plus kitchen, and contains the TV.
When my daughter is home, this frequently means MTV or Comedy Channel
blasting while I'm writing. When the TV isn't on, I'll often put on a CD,
for what I call companionable noise. (I can't claim much in the way of
musical taste.)
I don't have many CDs. My ex-husband took everything relating to music --
all the CDs and records and audio equipment. Right now I have two CDs of
Tongan music, one CD of Hawaiian chant, and two CDs of Hindi film music,
which I have to play in the DVD player and listen to through the TV
speakers. Even though the setting of the WIP is Hawaiian, the Polynesian
music just doesn't work for me as background. So I'm writing about Hawai'i
to the soundtrack of Hum Aapke Hain Koun :)
As soon as I finish doing the accounts tonight, I think I'm going to order
some more filmi music online. So I don't have to listen to the same two
CDs over and over again ...
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't see, Mr Speaker, why we should put ourselves out of the way to
serve posterity. What has posterity ever done for us?" -- Boyle Roche
Cherith Baldry
>>Personally I can't think of anything more pretentious than calculating
>>someone's humility quotient from where they site their desk.
>
>This is a traditional measure of how important someone is to a
>company. If you only have enough room to face your desk at a wall,
>you're near the bottom. If you have room to put your back to a wall
>and have the desk face into the room, you're near the middle. And if
>you can take up enough room to have your desk diagonally, then you're
>at the top.
Yes, but this is a _company_, not some lone writer working in their own home.
I take the earlier point that SK can put his desk where he feels most
comfortable, but as Mary originally quoted him (I haven't read his book) it
came over as general advice for everyone.
Best regards,
Cherith
Rosemary Lake
>I take the earlier point that SK can put his desk where he feels most
>comfortable, but as Mary originally quoted him (I haven't read his book) it
>came over as general advice for everyone.
I skipped around in King's book, and iirc his advice to everyone was to
face the desk to a wall (or keep curtains drawn while writing) so as to
avoid distraction. Also to sit down at it every morning first thing and do
a quota of words before anything else in the day.
I've done both these things off and on for years, always with good results.
Maybe in a dedicated office with all the curtains closed, he could have his
desk in the middle and still not have anything distracting to look at. Or
maybe I skipped that part of the book.
Rosemary
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>My view is just a few arbor vitae and the street, but I can see the
>weather, and I had house sparrows raising a batch of young in the
>arbor vita tree nearest my window, and can see dragonflies go by from
>time to time.
Eh? In an arbor vita? Here, arbor vita is a house plant, looks very
primitive ... actually, like a bunch of very coarse feather-dusters on
smooth twigs.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> >"mary_gentle" <mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote
> >> Actually, my all-time favourite place to work is any given
> >> cafי in London that happens to sell coffee and organic lemon
> >> cheesecake, but this isn't possible on a daily basis... <g>
> >
> > I can only think about plots in cafes (sorry can't do accents)
>
> Don't know what computer you're using, but try Ctrl-Alt-e.
I have a nice Italian keyboard with all the accents (טאילשע, we only use
the acute - or grave - for e), but I never use them on the Internet.
They don't travel well. I wonder how the French communicate
electronically. Or the Germans come to that. We've only got accents at
the end of the words and they're easily substituted with a '.
--
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
substitute tin for nit to mail me
http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
"Hello, my name is Anna, and I write trilogies." -- Anna Mazzoldi
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> I skipped around in King's book, and iirc his advice to everyone was to
> face the desk to a wall (or keep curtains drawn while writing) so as to
> avoid distraction. Also to sit down at it every morning first thing and do
> a quota of words before anything else in the day.
>
> I've done both these things off and on for years, always with good results.
Eh.
I try to do this when I work. Sit down at the computer and don't get up
until you've done your ten pages for the day.
That's why my house is so deperately, despairingly, sickengly dirty
right now.
I have come to the conclusion that since I don't seem to be able to work
in the morning no matter what, I might as well use that time usefully,
and do some cleaning up.
I do, however, miss a window desperately. I do have a window here, but I
live in a row of little houses - it would be something like a - ack, I
can't remember the word and don't know where to go and fish it, I must
have used it a lot - and my study is on the first floor, so it only
looks out on roofs. And the window looks north, so no sunsets.
In the other house I lived in I had these wonderful two long, large
windows, and it was on a third floor so I has a large view of
uncluttered sky, clouds, colors, shapes. I miss it achingly. If I move,
I want a window high up, and looking to the west. I'm willing to trade
the garden for it. I have some views as desktops but it's not the same.
The text stays in front of them, for one.
Holly E. Ordway
>Apropos of nobody:
>
>I write at a computer on a tiny computer desk in the middle of the
>front room. There are two Anthrocarts sitting next to each other,
>crammed with computer paraphenalia, telephone, and metal stacking
>trays. I have just enough free space for one sheet of paper OR a
>glass of soda and a plate of food on the adjoining cart.
In each place we've lived (apart from the first, two-room apartment :)
my husband and I have had one room as the "study room". Well, now that
both of us are out of school, we try to call it the office, instead, but
"study room" kind of sticks. Both of our desks are in it, along with
other things that make studying/working/playing useful, like two large
bookcases (filled with computer books, computer games, literary-theory
books, and books on writing), an aquarium (gives a lot of life and color
to a room), and computer things like a printer.
My desk faces the window, and Noel's (my husband) is against the
opposite wall, so we're not facing each other, but only need to turn
slightly to do so. My desk is a gargantuan, heavy monstrosity of a solid
wooden desk, much larger and deeper than the typical "desk." It has my
computer on it, my daily planner, and generally a pile or two of "stuff
to deal with." It's reasonably tidy as a general rule, though. (Best not
to inquire too closely about how organized the "stuff" in the drawers
is, however...) I don't leave food around on my desk, or things that
would be overly enticing to a kitty, since they *will* end up either
sampled, or pushed off the desk and underneath it in the night...
My husband's desk is equally massive and much tidier; he's also got
additional space from the top surface of a filing cabinet pushed up to
the end of his desk (where the printer is) and a rolling cart at the
other end (with his computer and the firewall computer). The center of
the room is clear, except for a large carpeted cat tree for our cat to
play on (it's his room too :).
We've had a similar setup everwhere we've lived. We like working in the
same room together. I can listen to music on his computer (he has better
speakers than I do), and often do, but either of us can put on
headphones if necessary. I really like having a window in front of me,
so I can look outside while I'm working. Apart from just feeling nice (I
hate being shut in a room without windows and fresh air), it's known to
be good for your eyes to periodically refocus from close work to very
far distance (ie. looking at that squirrel across the way...).
--Holly
Charlie Stross
as <mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> declared:
>The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
>keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
>the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
>living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
>isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
>what other folks here do?
Well, when I moved to Edinburgh I bought a three-bedroom flat. It seemed
excessive at the time, but with Karen and one or more cats in residence
it's filled up pretty fast ... two of those bedrooms are now offices!
The one I claimed for myself is right opposite the main bedroom, next
to the kitchen. Two walls are floor-to-ceiling bookcases. One wall has
two big desks and one-and-a-half filing cabinets shoved against it (one
of the cabinets, a 2-drawer model, lives under one desk). The other wall
has a window in it, complete with cat flap, and a futon/sofabed. There's
a set of speakers under the sofabed; hooked into the file server it's
got about half my CD collection (ripped into MP3 format) on tap.
Most of the fiction gets written on a laptop on the futon. Screen breaks
are enforced rigorously by Sekhmet the cat, who comes and lies on my
hands until I stop writing for long enough to give her some attention.
Journalism gets done at the big file server/workstation on the right
hand desk, with a high-backed swivel chair in front of it.
The left-hand desk, apart from supporting a printer, telephone, firewall,
and half-height bookcase, is overflowing with wires, ointment tubes,
bills, manuscripts, broken computers, and general kipple. It's a big
desk, and it's about three inches deep in Stuff.
At last count, there were approximately a dozen dead/sleeping computers
nestling in obscure and unlikely corners of the office, in addition to the
four live ones (file server, firewall, linux laptop, windows test-bed)
and the PDA's. But then, wearing my computer journalist hat, I _need_
bags of computers. (That's my story and I'm sticking to it!)
I occasionaly used to take the laptop through into the living room to
work on the sofa, but since Karen began building a hovercraft in there
it's been a little inaccessible. (Besides, half her book collection is in
there in boxes, piled up since the series of floods from above we had
last year; I really must do something about buying some more bookcases
soon.) In fact, my office has sort of turned into living room #2, because
with the stereo and the sofa and the proximity to the kitchen (to say
nothing of the boxes piled in the real living room) it's more hospitable.
-- Charlie
Alma Hromic Deckert
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>
>
>where do people
>keep their work surfaces?
>
>Actually, my all-time favourite place to work is any given
>café in London that happens to sell coffee and organic lemon
>cheesecake, but this isn't possible on a daily basis... <g>
>
well, for me neither, since i'm a tad far away from london <g>
i recently moved to the states, so my cubbyhole off the kitchen in the
old house (it used to be some sort of laundry room but the previous
owners of the house had tarted it up with a built in desklet and
shelves, the desk just big enough to hold a computer, the whole room
just big enough to sidle in and sit down...) has been exchanged for my
current office. it used to be the garage, but was converted into a
long, panelled room with four filing cabinets, a niche where
bookshelves were built in and which is overflowing with books, a set
of interconnected desks which used to be doors in a previous life and
now hold two computers (mine and my husband's), the telephone, the fax
machine, and usually a large amount of books, paper, hiliter pens,
paperclips, manila envelopes, and such paraphernalia. next to that is
a large table which holds the printer, another desktop bookshelf, and
my laptop.
the rest of the room has an armchair and a couple of other chairs
squozen into it, and a reading lamp.
there's a large picture window, out of which it is possible to see a
couple of birdfeeders hung in a tree and a birdbath. sometimes
cardinals come down and pose for me. another time i had to quit
whatever i was doing and watch in amusement as a bluejay and a
visiting squirrel went at each other, scolding away, because both
wanted at the seeds and neither would come closer until the other one
had left <g>
A.
Julian Flood
> Mary writes:
> I wondered what other folks here do?
Oh great joy and wonder, and all my dreams have come true <breaks into
tears>, I've been waiting for this thread to re-appear. I use the shed. The
newly refurbished, insulated like a space shuttle, 4m by 5m and ten foot
high ceilinged shed, with double glazing and six double power points, two
foot thick flint walls, and humble bees nesting under the eaves. It was a
major exercise in hoovering under the bed and enabled me not to write for
months on end: first the roof, then the internal insulation, then the
concrete floor with 4" insulation and the beech wood finish, the beams, the
French windows, gibber, brag, froth, rave, bore... Still got the heating to
do, but the two sofas are there, three mandolins with space for four* and
two guitars. Records. Radio/hi-fi. Tapes. Metronome. CDs.
Oh yes, and the computer, files (in the move I found the backup of half a
novel I thought I'd lost so that was all right) dictionaries to hand etc.
The desk needs protection from the pm sun but I can glance right and see the
front lawn and anyone coming to the front door. Now I can go in there and if
I'm bored do that or turn round and look out of the French windows, see the
bonsai, the back lawn, the pond, play music, listen to radio 4, and _never
have to write at all_.
JF
*four months to the Sobell. I need something to use up the time before it
comes. Hmm, maybe I could write something...
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.265 / Virus Database: 137 - Release Date: 18/07/01
Ian A. York
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan <ada...@nit.it.invalid> wrote:
>
>I try to do this when I work. Sit down at the computer and don't get up
>until you've done your ten pages for the day.
Ten pages a day? Please tell me that includes your translation, and you
don't routinely produce ten pages (what, about 2500 words?) of new fiction
each day.
Wasn't it Voltaire who had a servant chain him to his desk every morning,
because if he was physically able to leave he would?
Ian
--
Ian York (iay...@panix.com) <http://www.panix.com/~iayork/>
"-but as he was a York, I am rather inclined to suppose him a
very respectable Man." -Jane Austen, The History of England
Julie Pascal
"Dan Goodman" <dsg...@visi.com> wrote in message
news:MPG.160314598...@news.visi.com...
> In article <9nb3rn$t4n$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>,
> mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk says...
> > The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
> > keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
> > the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
> > living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
> > what other folks here do?
>
(...)
Just curious... is a bedsit also known as an efficiency apartment
or is it something different?
--Julie
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>I have a nice Italian keyboard with all the accents (??é???, we only use
>the acute - or grave - for e), but I never use them on the Internet.
>They don't travel well.
O, they do. :-) See above.
The problem is probably between your Mac and Windows computers.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> In article <1ezgsbf.1jz1n36vjr2aoN%ada...@nit.it.invalid>,
> Anna Feruglio Dal Dan <ada...@nit.it.invalid> wrote:
> >
> >I try to do this when I work. Sit down at the computer and don't get up
> >until you've done your ten pages for the day.
>
> Ten pages a day? Please tell me that includes your translation, and you
> don't routinely produce ten pages (what, about 2500 words?) of new fiction
> each day.
Yes, I meant translation, of course. Ten pages is what I start with:
last time I did fifteen every day, for three weeks. It wasn't fun.
I can on a good day produce ten pages or even twenty of new fiction, but
good days are rare.
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> On Sun, 09 Sep 2001 09:48:52 GMT, ada...@nit.it.invalid (Anna
> Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>
> >I have a nice Italian keyboard with all the accents (??é???, we only use
> >the acute - or grave - for e), but I never use them on the Internet.
> >They don't travel well.
>
> O, they do. :-) See above.
>
> The problem is probably between your Mac and Windows computers.
What we finally concluded is that the problem is that there is no
universal coding system for such characters. They get messed up
travelling from server to server, or so they tell me - anyway, it
happens between macs and wintel machines as well.
This is why on Italian maling lists and newsgroups every single bloody
newbie has to be talked sweetly into not using the accents.
Marilee J. Layman
Yes, and what King is saying is that he's following the logistical
politics of a company.
Dan Goodman
> In article <1ezgsbf.1jz1n36vjr2aoN%ada...@nit.it.invalid>,
> Anna Feruglio Dal Dan <ada...@nit.it.invalid> wrote:
> >
> >I try to do this when I work. Sit down at the computer and don't get up
> >until you've done your ten pages for the day.
>
> Ten pages a day? Please tell me that includes your translation, and you
> don't routinely produce ten pages (what, about 2500 words?) of new fiction
> each day.
Anthony Trollope wrote two thousand words of fiction every day.
_Exactly_ two thousand words. If he wrote the last words of a novel, and
he hadn't made his quota, he started in on the next novel.
Then he had breakfast and went off to work.
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
Alma Hromic Deckert
wrote:
>
>Anthony Trollope wrote two thousand words of fiction every day.
>_Exactly_ two thousand words. If he wrote the last words of a novel, and
>he hadn't made his quota, he started in on the next novel.
>
ye gods, i couldn't live like that.
A.
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>On 8 Sep 2001 17:45:02 GMT, pd...@gw.dd-b.net (Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet)
>wrote:
>>My view is just a few arbor vitae and the street, but I can see the
>>weather, and I had house sparrows raising a batch of young in the
>>arbor vita tree nearest my window, and can see dragonflies go by from
>>time to time.
>Eh? In an arbor vita? Here, arbor vita is a house plant, looks very
>primitive ... actually, like a bunch of very coarse feather-dusters on
>smooth twigs.
These are evergreen trees in the cedar family, native to North
America. They're very common as foundation plantings. They could be
related to your plant, or it could just be a coincidence.
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>> Marilee J. Layman <mjla...@erols.com> writes:
>> >On 8 Sep 2001 17:45:02 GMT, pd...@gw.dd-b.net (Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet)
>> >wrote:
>> >> If I put the desk in the middle of
>> >>the room there wouldn't be any way to have anything else *in* the
>> >>room;
>>
>> >That's the point. :) If the company gives you a room big enough to
>> >have the desk in the middle, you're an important person.
>>
>> I *am* the company. I remain persuaded that this is an extremely
>> dopey metric to use in one's home office.
>I think it's like the nine-and-sixty-ways thing.
That would depend on exactly how King phrased the original advice. He
tends to over-generalize.
>For you, I agree, it's an extremely dopey metric.
>For Stephen Kind, it apparently wasn't.
Oh, I can still say it's dopey; I could work up a gigantic rant about
the folly of taking seriously the corporate world's ways of indicating
status, or of thinking that most of that status means much of anything
really. It would just be dopey on the next level up.
>It strikes me as a conscious use of symbols to affect one's mood. King,
>clearly, was setting his desk against a wall as a conscious symbol of
>his own desired humility. For him, then, it very much was a symbol of
>that, and to claim otherwise is, IMHO, silly. Surrounding oneself with
>the trappings of corporate power -- a large, heavy, mahogany desk in the
>center of the room, facing the door, for example -- because they are the
>cultural trappings of that power is, also, a symbol. And, when things
>that you use often are chosen for their symbolism, they do affect your
>ways of thinking.
This squicks me more than I can possibly express; but then, that is
true of King's work generally, so it is hardly surprising. He can do
as he likes, of course. I think it's bad as general advice, however.
>Personally, I've got a nice but small and dinky little wood desk that's
>constructed more like a table, and it's got one end against the wall
>(well, against another larger desk that's against the wall and is more a
>storage space for piles of stuff) so that it faces out into the room and
>towards the patio. It's done that way because it's a small apartment
>with one big common room, and this walls off a small section as "my
>space". On the other hand, it also means that when I look up I can see
>the windows and the rest of the room.
I like having the windows too. I know people who block off their
office windows and would be or have been perfectly happy having
offices with no windows, or in the basement, and they are welcome to
be that way, but I couldn't do it. Flexibility is a blessing, but I'm
not that flexible.
Dan Goodman
ang...@earthlink.net says...
I might -- just might -- train myself to write exactly 2,000 words every
day. But not that early.
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
John F. Eldredge
Hash: SHA1
On Fri, 7 Sep 2001 17:01:27 -0700, "Julie Pascal" <ju...@pascal.org>
wrote:
I believe that "bedsit" is a contraction of "bedroom/sitting room",
and is the equivalent to an American "efficiency apartment": a
one-room apartment.
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--
John F. Eldredge -- eldr...@earthlink.net, eldr...@poboxes.com
PGP key available from http://pgpkeys.mit.edu:11371
"There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power;
not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace."
Woodrow Wilson
Dan Goodman
eldr...@earthlink.net says...
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
> On Fri, 7 Sep 2001 17:01:27 -0700, "Julie Pascal" <ju...@pascal.org>
> wrote:
>
> >
> >"Dan Goodman" <dsg...@visi.com> wrote in message
> >news:MPG.160314598...@news.visi.com...
> >> In article <9nb3rn$t4n$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>,
> >> mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk says...
> >> > The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
> >> > keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
> >> > the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
> >> > living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
> >> > isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
> >> > what other folks here do?
> >>
> >> I currently live in a bedsit.
> >(...)
> >
> >
> >Just curious... is a bedsit also known as an efficiency apartment
> >or is it something different?
> >
> >--Julie
> >
>
> I believe that "bedsit" is a contraction of "bedroom/sitting room",
> and is the equivalent to an American "efficiency apartment": a
> one-room apartment.
Not quite, I don't think. An efficiency has its own kitchen (not
separated out); a bedsitting room doesn't.
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
Julie Pascal
"Brooks Moses" <bmo...@stanford.edu> wrote in message
news:3B9AB8C1...@stanford.edu...
(...)
>
> Personally, I've got a nice but small and dinky little wood desk that's
> constructed more like a table, and it's got one end against the wall
> (well, against another larger desk that's against the wall and is more a
> storage space for piles of stuff) so that it faces out into the room and
> towards the patio. It's done that way because it's a small apartment
> with one big common room, and this walls off a small section as "my
> space". On the other hand, it also means that when I look up I can see
> the windows and the rest of the room.
With our tax return last year we bought an entertainment center,
which is at one end of the living room and a computer armoire
that matches it that sits at the other end of the living room. It's got
a leg room problem but it's *wonderful* and best of absolutely
all... it closes! I don't have to clean up my mess I can just slide
the keyboard tray in and close the doors.
So basically it's right in the middle of things and people and pets
and noise. I do wish I had a portable computer though. I *do*
have a small laptop but it can't do more than word-process so I
still need my main computer. I use the laptop when I want to
write while being all "companionable" and sit with my husband
in his room while he works on his computer stuff. (Transfering
files back and forth is a hassle so I end up with some things and
bits and pieces in either place. Argh!)
The noise doesn't bother me. I'm really good at shutting it out
when I know that I'm not going to be needed at frequent short
intervals by those people making the noise.
--Julie
Irina Rempt
> Anthony Trollope wrote two thousand words of fiction every day.
> _Exactly_ two thousand words. If he wrote the last words of a novel, and
> he hadn't made his quota, he started in on the next novel.
What if #2000 was "the" (and #2001 was not "end")? Didn't he ever
write to the end of a sentence? I'm sorely tempted to get something
by Trollope - it's probably in Gutenberg by now - and run a script on
it to see if it's really in neat 2000-word chunks.
Irina
--
ir...@valdyas.org http://www.valdyas.org/irina
------------------------------------------------------------------------
| Circular definition: see "circular definition". |
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> Then he had breakfast and went off to work.
How I envy people who can get some work done before lunch, let alone
before breakfast.
Boyd & Michelle Bottorff
> The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
> keep their work surfaces?
I WAS working at a picnic table in the park.
After the kids were in bed, I'd take the dog, walk to the park, unfold
my keyboard, pop my Palm in it, and type away for an hour or so, and
then call the dog and walk home.
However I just dropped my Palm onto a hard, cruel concrete surface, so
it looks like I'm back to the spare-room cum office. (Although I think
I'll keep up the tradition of going for a walk first.)
Since I've generally got a baby crawling around, and at least one other
family member playing video/computer games in here, this location is
hardly a quiet and isolated back room. :)
Michelle Bottorff
--
Family webpage: http://home.sprintmail.com/~mbottorff/index.html
Lady Lavender's Filksongs: http://www.freemars.org/lavender/index.html
25r:2a:1p
Elizabeth Blatt
mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
> He mentions, towards the end, that you should keep your
> working desk at the side of the room. Before you think
> that's a "well, duh!" moment, it comes from an anecdote he
> tells about buying a gynormous desk and putting in the middle
> of his room, under his skylight. King reckons that putting
> your desk at the side of the room keeps you humble, and that
> life doesn't serve art, art serves life.
>
> That gives me two points, which I don't think came up the
> last time ON WRITING was discussed. One was the more general
> thing -- I guess I think life _does_ serve art, if only
> because art lasts longer. But I also wondered what people
> thought he meant.
I haven't read the book; but what it sounds like he's saying is that he
does not recommend rearranging how one lives to suit what one does, one's
art=writing: and that by putting his desk in a location he thought most
evocative for his writing (but not necessarily comfortable or appropriate
for his own preferences_), he was serving his writing=art above himself.
He was making his art the literal as well as figurative center of his
life--thus the later move of the desk to the edge of the room where it
could remind him of humility. And in making that move, he was putting
writing=art at the service of himself (rather than he serving it).
Elizabeth
Karen Leonard
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan wrote:
>
> Del Cotter <d...@branta.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> > >"mary_gentle" <mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk> wrote
> > >> Actually, my all-time favourite place to work is any given
> > >> cafי in London that happens to sell coffee and organic lemon
> > >> cheesecake, but this isn't possible on a daily basis... <g>
> > >
> > > I can only think about plots in cafes (sorry can't do accents)
> >
> > Don't know what computer you're using, but try Ctrl-Alt-e.
>
> I have a nice Italian keyboard with all the accents (טאילשע, we only use
> the acute - or grave - for e), but I never use them on the Internet.
> They don't travel well. I wonder how the French communicate
> electronically. Or the Germans come to that.
They have been using little 'e' for the umlaut for years. Either next
to the vowel in question or above it, depending on the typeface. The
esset character, the one that looks like beta and means double-s, gets
rendered double-s in an amazing number of typefaces. I got thru
several years of HS German, and a year of college German, without
needing to decode the old-fashioned German Gothic letters at all.
Getting an enye for the occasional Spanish word, now, that frustrates
me. And I don't want to revert to adding a 'y' next to the 'n' in the
way that canyon came to be spelled when its spelling got standardized in
English. It's too late, I think, for tricks like that, by maybe a
hundred years or so.
(I did figure out how to do it in Word, if I don't mind a character in
some other mismatched font, but in email? Oh, well.)
k.
Zeborah
> Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>
> > Then he had breakfast and went off to work.
>
> How I envy people who can get some work done before lunch, let alone
> before breakfast.
Right at the moment, I won't allow myself to touch the computer before
I've at least *nibbled* something for breakfast. Because last Friday I
suddenly realised I hadn't eaten more than a snack provided by work for
48 hours, and I frightened my supervisor by bursting into tears while
discussing a problem class. Writing and email and such may keep me
sane, but it's not going to do much good if I'm starving....
Anyway, I can get work done before lunch if the muse is bubbling, but if
she's gone on holiday then I'll be lucky to do it before I go to bed.
Zeborah
--
Semper ad eventum festinet. -- Horace
"Always party hard at social events." <eg>
http://www.crosswinds.net/~zeborahnz
Elf Sternberg
Wendy Shaffer <wsha...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> writes:
>In article <9nb3rn$t4n$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>,
>mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk wrote:
>> The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
>> keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
>> the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
>> living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
>> isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
>> what other folks here do?
>However, I have been known to commit first draft almost anywhere,
>including on the bus, in the midst of tedious lectures, and while
>standing in line to order at the local burger place.
The _only_ place I write these days is on a city bus. Having
two children and a house to maintain, my only chance to write is while
commuting to and from the office, and since it's a half-hour ride either
way, I pull out the Linux-based laptop and churn out somewhere between
500 and 1500 words in that thirty-minute period. When I get home, I
type in 'commit' and what I've typed gets saved on my household
networks' Revision Control System. (Yeah, I'm a geek.) When I finish
the first draft, I sit at my desktop, pull it back out of RCS and go
through the edit, revise, and outline phases, then push it back onto the
laptop for another cycle of re-writes. I seem to have absolutely no
trouble getting into flow on a bus, probably out of habit.
>Interestingly, the bus is the only place where I've ever had total
>strangers offer unsolicited writing advice.
I've never had that problem. I've had people read over my
shoulder, and I was assaulted once by a woman who I suspect was off her
medication; she kept demanding that I tell her "the horses that are
gonna win tomorrow," and wanted me to "use [my] computer to tell the
world about how [her] sister was found dead under a city bridge and the
cops ain't doing nothing about it." She also rattled off what sounded
like her social security number. The police officer who came to
restrain her was very gentle with her.
Elf
--
Elf M. Sternberg, Immanentizing the Eschaton since 1988
http://www.halcyon.com/elf/
Today is gone, today was fun. Tomorrow will be a better one.
From there to here, from here to there, funny things are everywhere.
Brenda W. Clough
Elf Sternberg wrote:
>
> The _only_ place I write these days is on a city bus. Having
> two children and a house to maintain, my only chance to write is while
> commuting to and from the office, and since it's a half-hour ride either
> way, I pull out the Linux-based laptop and churn out somewhere between
> 500 and 1500 words in that thirty-minute period. When I get home, I
> type in 'commit' and what I've typed gets saved on my household
> networks' Revision Control System. (Yeah, I'm a geek.)
I wrote my entire first novel on buses and Metro trains. But back in the
Juraissic I used pencil and paper.
Brenda
--
What do you do with a secret?
Whisper it in a desert at high noon.
Lock it up and bury the key.
Tell the nation on prime-time TV.
Choose a door . . .
Doors of Death and Life
by Brenda W. Clough
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
Tor Books
ISBN 0-312-87064-7
Dan Goodman
> Dan Goodman wrote:
>
> > Anthony Trollope wrote two thousand words of fiction every day.
> > _Exactly_ two thousand words. If he wrote the last words of a novel, and
> > he hadn't made his quota, he started in on the next novel.
>
> What if #2000 was "the" (and #2001 was not "end")? Didn't he ever
> write to the end of a sentence?
I suspect he did enough pre-planning in his head to avoid that.
> I'm sorely tempted to get something
> by Trollope - it's probably in Gutenberg by now - and run a script on
> it to see if it's really in neat 2000-word chunks.
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
Wendy Shaffer
(Elf Sternberg) wrote:
> In article <wshaffer-47FC29...@agate.berkeley.edu>
> Wendy Shaffer <wsha...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> writes:
>
> I seem to have absolutely no
> trouble getting into flow on a bus, probably out of habit.
Public transit is a pretty nice environment for writing. It can
be crowded and noisy, but there aren't many really compelling
distractions present. Unless somebody nearby is having one of those
irresistibly eavesdroppable conversations, and I always figure I can
mine those for material.
> >Interestingly, the bus is the only place where I've ever had total
> >strangers offer unsolicited writing advice.
>
> I've never had that problem. I've had people read over my
> shoulder, and I was assaulted once by a woman who I suspect was off her
> medication; she kept demanding that I tell her "the horses that are
> gonna win tomorrow," and wanted me to "use [my] computer to tell the
> world about how [her] sister was found dead under a city bridge and the
> cops ain't doing nothing about it." She also rattled off what sounded
> like her social security number. The police officer who came to
> restrain her was very gentle with her.
Wow. I've never encountered anyone quite that weird. The oddest
one I got was a guy who talked my ear off for an entire bus ride,
telling me that I should never ever take a writing class, because
teachers and classes would ruin my creativity. In the brief
spaces where I could squeeze a word in edgewise, I attempted to
persuade him that I had no intention of taking a writing class,
and that there was a bit more to writing than sheer unfettered
creativity. I don't think I made much of an impression -
having triggered a really good rant, I was then superfluous.
---wendy
--
Wendy Shaffer
wsha...@uclink4.berkeley.edu
Read my poem "Icarus" at Strange Horizons. (http:www.strangehorizons.com)
Boudewijn Rempt
I really like writing why commuting by train - Dutch trains are
very comfortable, at least if you travel first class. It means three
hours of uninterrupted work (except very occasionally for the rare
visit of a train guard) a day. I've used the opportunity for the
past months for getting work done on a non-fiction book (on Python
programming).
I do have a perfectly satisfactory study at home, though, with a nice
desk (made for my great-grandfather) next to the window, a comfortable
chair for reading up stuff and smoking a pipe, a book case filled with
debris from my past profession (linguistics) and everything - but I've
often thought of just gettting on a train to start writing. It also
helps that I don't have an internet connection on my laptop :-).
I can't get used to checking in stuff in my cvs server, though - still
copying back and forth!
--
Boudewijn Rempt | http://www.valdyas.org
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>Vlatko Juric-Kokic <vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr> wrote:
>
>> On Sun, 09 Sep 2001 09:48:52 GMT, ada...@nit.it.invalid (Anna
>> Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
>>
>> >I have a nice Italian keyboard with all the accents (??é???, we only use
>> >the acute - or grave - for e), but I never use them on the Internet.
>> >They don't travel well.
>>
>> O, they do. :-) See above.
>>
>> The problem is probably between your Mac and Windows computers.
>
>What we finally concluded is that the problem is that there is no
>universal coding system for such characters.
Um, there is. Unicode.
>They get messed up
>travelling from server to server, or so they tell me
Hm, shouldn't. But probably do, because not every server *or
programme* is configured to support 8-bit characters. Of course, I'm
talking about Usenet. Sending files as attachments should have no
problems.
>- anyway, it
>happens between macs and wintel machines as well.
Wintel ... haven't heard that one for a long time. :-) Anyway, even MS
started supporting Unicode, so Mac is the only heretic now.
>This is why on Italian maling lists and newsgroups every single bloody
>newbie has to be talked sweetly into not using the accents.
Heh. Tell me about it. :-) The same happens here, with newbies who
have misconfigured readers.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>In article <r7boptchlkd7a6j5b...@4ax.com>,
>eldr...@earthlink.net says...
>> On Fri, 7 Sep 2001 17:01:27 -0700, "Julie Pascal" <ju...@pascal.org>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >"Dan Goodman" <dsg...@visi.com> wrote in message
>> >news:MPG.160314598...@news.visi.com...
>> >> In article <9nb3rn$t4n$1...@thorium.cix.co.uk>,
>> >> mary_...@cix.compulink.co.uk says...
>> >> > The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
>> >> > keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
>> >> > the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
>> >> > living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
>> >> > isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
>> >> > what other folks here do?
>> >>
>> >> I currently live in a bedsit.
>> >(...)
>> >
>> >Just curious... is a bedsit also known as an efficiency apartment
>> >or is it something different?
>>
>> I believe that "bedsit" is a contraction of "bedroom/sitting room",
>> and is the equivalent to an American "efficiency apartment": a
>> one-room apartment.
>
>Not quite, I don't think. An efficiency has its own kitchen (not
>separated out); a bedsitting room doesn't.
In the States? I have something that can be counted as an efficiency,
then. But the name here is one-room apartment.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
Dyer-Bennet) wrote:
(arbor vita)
>These are evergreen trees in the cedar family, native to North
>America. They're very common as foundation plantings. They could be
>related to your plant, or it could just be a coincidence.
A quick research:
Oriental arborvitae looks very much like what we call a decorative
cypress http://www.kansasforests.org/CTPFAQ/oriental_arborvitae.htm
Actually, it is a cypress :-). A Russian cypress.
http://www.orst.edu/dept/ldplants/mide4.htm
There are several arborvitae here:
http://www.hortsource.com/conifergallerymain.htm
All of them cypress-like.
So, no, not a single one of them is what I had in mind. And I can't
find anything at the moment. I'll have to check with my sister, she
has one. Or I possibly mixed things up.
Brooks Moses
> On Sun, 09 Sep 2001 20:12:40 GMT, ada...@nit.it.invalid (Anna
> Feruglio Dal Dan) wrote:
> >Vlatko Juric-Kokic <vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr> wrote:
> >> The problem is probably between your Mac and Windows computers.
> >
> >What we finally concluded is that the problem is that there is no
> >universal coding system for such characters.
>
> Um, there is. Unicode.
The fact that there is such a code, and that it is claimed to be
universal, does not mean that it is in fact universal in the sense that
all programs and systems use it. In particular, Unicode does not apply
to plain-text documents without formatting information included -- that
is, what are often misnamed "plain ASCII" files.
But I see, upthread, that this bit of the conversation appears to be
specifically aimed at messages in messaging systems (such as email and
usenet), rather than simply the problems with saving files in "plain
text" format that started this side of the thread.
On the other hand, just because Unicode is claimed to be a "universal
code" for email and news-type use still doesn't mean that it is actually
a universal code that one, in practice, can expect everyone's computer
to use.
Anyhow, before realizing that this bit of thread was about usenet, I did
type up a bit of explanation of where problems in plain-text format
arise, so I'll leave it in:
There are (at least) two standards for how a plain-text (that is, with
no attached "format" information) 8-bit document should display.
DOS-based systems tend to use the ASCII standard for plain text, whereas
Windows systems use ANSI. (I'm not sure about other systems, but I
think they usually use one of the two.) The first 128 characters (that
is, everything within 7 bits) are the same between the two, but after
that -- which is where the accented characters live -- they two are
substantially different.
Problems, then, arise when one saves a file as saved as "plain text" in
one system, and one then expects to read it as "plain text" on another
system that or program that uses a different encoding.
> Wintel ... haven't heard that one for a long time. :-) Anyway, even MS
> started supporting Unicode, so Mac is the only heretic now.
I don't think MS supports Unicode in plain text files. If it does, it's
not plain text. And, beyond that, just because MS supports Unicode
doesn't, as far as I understand things, mean that all Windows-based
messaging programs support it.
- Brooks
Elf Sternberg
Wendy Shaffer <wsha...@uclink4.berkeley.edu> writes:
>> I seem to have absolutely no trouble getting into flow on a bus,
>> probably out of habit.
>Public transit is a pretty nice environment for writing. It can be
>crowded and noisy, but there aren't many really compelling distractions
>present. Unless somebody nearby is having one of those irresistibly
>eavesdroppable conversations, and I always figure I can mine those for
>material.
I had exactly one of those horrible conflicts of interest the
other day; trying to edit a manuscript on the one hand, trying not to
overhear this awful dialogue between a woman and her boyfriend, who had
apparently packed his bags the night before, but with whom she
nonetheless rode the bus with even this morning on their way to work.
She looked *devastated*, and he couldn't resist trying to cheer her up.
I finally put my headphones on.
Elf Sternberg
bo...@rempt.xs4all.nl (Boudewijn Rempt) writes:
>I can't get used to checking in stuff in my cvs server, though - still
>copying back and forth!
I decided to start using CVS after a crash and a backup made my
life a hell; I must have lost 100,000 words. Backing up once a month
didn't cut it; having multiple, auto-backed-up repositories run daily
was much easier to manage. It helps that emacs can automatically do all
that for you with it's very smart "do the right thing" with respect to a
document system-- if your document is old, update it from the
repository; if it's new, merge it with the repository; if there's a
conflict, show the conflicts, let you fix them, and then submit the
changes.
Using emacs has been nice. Without all the bells and whistles
of a full-blown "word processor," I have a powerful text editor that
saves and backs up my work automagically, has spell and grammar
checking, a thesaurus, and even supports CNDB, my home-grown character
name database (206,000 names sorted by gender and nationality; "give me
10 Armenian female names, stat!"). And while, with TeX, I can have
professional-quality postscript manuscripts in a flash, I'm not
encouraged to twiddle with fonts and layouts and stuff when I should be
writing. The toolbar on Word is a handvac for cat hoovering...
Rosemary Lake
Dan) wrote:
>Rosemary Lake <r...@rosemarylake.com> wrote:
>
>> I skipped around in King's book, and iirc his advice to everyone was to
>> face the desk to a wall (or keep curtains drawn while writing) so as to
>> avoid distraction. Also to sit down at it every morning first thing and do
>> a quota of words before anything else in the day.
>>
>> I've done both these things off and on for years, always with good results.
>
>Eh.
>I try to do this when I work. Sit down at the computer and don't get up
>until you've done your ten pages for the day.
Well, literally not getting up isn't good. Walking around or exercising or
fixing a snack or something helps. It's just that I try not to get involved
in 'real life' during that time. If the writing is moving at all, I don't
cut it off thinking "I have to do X instead". I let the writing continue
till I've done at least the quota, or spent a couple of hours typing about
something (even if it's just diary etc).
>
>That's why my house is so deperately, despairingly, sickengly dirty
>right now.
>
>I have come to the conclusion that since I don't seem to be able to work
>in the morning no matter what, I might as well use that time usefully,
>and do some cleaning up.
Morning isn't the best time for everyone. I find I get different kind of
material at different times. Mornings I get images, outlines, new ideas.
Actually putting in the action and detials of a scene and identifying with
the characters is easier after a meal.
I'm trying keepiing a log of food, exercise,etc side by side with a log of
how many words of what kind of stuff I get at what time of day.
>
>I do, however, miss a window desperately. I do have a window here, but I
>live in a row of little houses - it would be something like a - ack, I
>can't remember the word and don't know where to go and fish it, I must
>have used it a lot - and my study is on the first floor, so it only
>looks out on roofs. And the window looks north, so no sunsets.
Might fill it up with houseplants.
Rosemary
Rosemary Lake
>Anna Feruglio Dal Dan <ada...@nit.it.invalid> wrote:
>
>> Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com> wrote:
>>
>> > Then he had breakfast and went off to work.
>>
>> How I envy people who can get some work done before lunch, let alone
>> before breakfast.
I hope I have some success some day, so someone will ask the secret of my
success and I can tell them "Six impossible things before breakfast."
>Right at the moment, I won't allow myself to touch the computer before
>I've at least *nibbled* something for breakfast. Because last Friday I
>suddenly realised I hadn't eaten more than a snack provided by work for
>48 hours, and I frightened my supervisor by bursting into tears while
>discussing a problem class. Writing and email and such may keep me
>sane, but it's not going to do much good if I'm starving....
>
>Anyway, I can get work done before lunch if the muse is bubbling, but if
>she's gone on holiday then I'll be lucky to do it before I go to bed.
Snacks by the computer? I cover the keyboard with Saran Wrap to keep crumbs
out.
Seriously, metabolisms differ, and a check for low blood sugar is a good
idea. I have pre-diabetic hypoglycemia, ie bouncing blood sugar. Food makes
me high or sleepy. So my sugar level is most normal before breakfast. So
when I'm getting good stuff, I skip breakfast and lunch, which is not
healthy. I should keep healthy snacks on the desk and eat one nut at a time
or something.
The highs are good for writing fun scenes, tho.
Rosemary
Jay Random
Vlatko Juric-Kokic wrote:
>
> Wintel ... haven't heard that one for a long time. :-) Anyway, even MS
> started supporting Unicode, so Mac is the only heretic now.
The Mac OS has supported Unicode for several revisions now. Application
providers are another story, alas.
Lucy Kemnitzer
<clo...@erols.com> wrote:
>
>
>Elf Sternberg wrote:
>
>>
>> The _only_ place I write these days is on a city bus. Having
>> two children and a house to maintain, my only chance to write is while
>> commuting to and from the office, and since it's a half-hour ride either
>> way, I pull out the Linux-based laptop and churn out somewhere between
>> 500 and 1500 words in that thirty-minute period. When I get home, I
>> type in 'commit' and what I've typed gets saved on my household
>> networks' Revision Control System. (Yeah, I'm a geek.)
>
>I wrote my entire first novel on buses and Metro trains. But back in the
>Juraissic I used pencil and paper.
I do a lot of my plotting and drafting with a pencil in these
wonderful Japanese notebooks, when I'm substituting and I get a prep
period or my poor darlings have to do something I can't really
interact with them during.
I can get a lot done that way, especially the difficult bits. But
when I'm rolling I prefer to use the computer. For one thing, my
hands can take more and faster and more intense work when it is on the
computer than when it is with a pencil. For another thing, I can type
close to how fast I can compose, but I can't do that with a pencil.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
<vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr> wrote:
>Hm, shouldn't. But probably do, because not every server *or
>programme* is configured to support 8-bit characters. Of course, I'm
>talking about Usenet. Sending files as attachments should have no
>problems.
>
I have tried several ways to preserve accented characters in email
attachments and in the text of email and it always comes out goofy.
The stupidest is accented u coming out as two pound-sterling
characters.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Cherith Baldry
>What if #2000 was "the" (and #2001 was not "end")? Didn't he ever
>write to the end of a sentence? I'm sorely tempted to get something
>by Trollope - it's probably in Gutenberg by now - and run a script on
>it to see if it's really in neat 2000-word chunks.
I believe that he really did stop in the middle of a sentence.
When I was told this fascinating bit of information, it was 500 words that he
did, not 2000, but the principle remains the same.
Best regards,
Cherith
Magnus Olsson
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan <ada...@nit.it.invalid> wrote:
>the acute - or grave - for e), but I never use them on the Internet.
>electronically. Or the Germans come to that.
Well, I can't speak for the French or Germans, but I can ay something
about how we Swedes handle it. (The Swedish alphabet contains
the letters å, ä and ö, which aren't considered accented
letters, but full-fledged members of the alphabet).
Nowadays, it's not much of a problem on the Usenet, since almost all
Swedish servers and clients handle ISO-Latin, so that's what we tend
to use (and that's what I used above - hope it turned out OK on your
server). Email is slightly more tricky; most people use MIME, some
use ISO-Latin. Smart mail programs handle this, but some people use
not-so-smart programs that get things wrong, but mostly it works.
Twelve years ago, it was almost as easy: People used "Swedish ASCII",
which is ASCII with some character codes re-mapped, so that the
same character would either show as ä or { depending on how you
had configured your terminal or printer. This was of course a major
hassle when you had a terminal that coudln't handle the Swedish
character set, but after a while one learns to read text quite well
even when "I den långa ån är en ö" ("in the long river there's an
island") is displayed as "I den l}nga }n {r en {".
The period inbetween was a period of confusion, when some people
used the 7-bit characters, some used ISO-Latin, some use the IBM
PC's character set, some used the Mac character set, some used MIME,
and mail and news programs sometimes tried to convert character sets,
sometimes didn't, and more often than not just chopped off the
eight bit (turning åäö into edv, whoich was *very* confusing).
--
Magnus Olsson (m...@df.lth.se, m...@pobox.com)
------ http://www.pobox.com/~mol ------
Magnus Olsson
Magnus Olsson
Karen Leonard <kleo...@hiline.net> wrote:
>
>
>Anna Feruglio Dal Dan wrote:
>> I have a nice Italian keyboard with all the accents (טאילשע, we only use
>> the acute - or grave - for e), but I never use them on the Internet.
>> They don't travel well. I wonder how the French communicate
>> electronically. Or the Germans come to that.
>
>They have been using little 'e' for the umlaut for years.
Centuries, rather. I forgot to write in my earlier post that the
same system can be used in Swedish as well: צ -> oe, ה -> ae and
(not applicable to German) ו -> aa.
>I got thru
>several years of HS German, and a year of college German, without
>needing to decode the old-fashioned German Gothic letters at all.
I don't know if you mean to imply that umlauts or double-s are
confined to Gothic letters, but they're not. Gothic is bascially
just a font, or family of fonts.
Daniel Schauer
"Vlatko Juric-Kokic" <vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr> wrote in message news:9frppt446nm3qk45b...@news.hinet.hr...
> Wintel ... haven't heard that one for a long time. :-) Anyway, even MS
> started supporting Unicode, so Mac is the only heretic now.
MS is still a heretic. Their unicode encoding schemes are, in typical
MS fashion, almost-but-not-quite-like everyone else's.
Dan Schauer
Daniel Schauer
"Elf Sternberg" <e...@drizzle.com> wrote in message news:10001597...@yabetcha.drizzle.com...
> Using emacs has been nice. Without all the bells and whistles
> of a full-blown "word processor," I have a powerful text editor that
> saves and backs up my work automagically, has spell and grammar
> checking, a thesaurus, and even supports CNDB, my home-grown character
> name database (206,000 names sorted by gender and nationality; "give me
> 10 Armenian female names, stat!"). And while, with TeX, I can have
> professional-quality postscript manuscripts in a flash, I'm not
> encouraged to twiddle with fonts and layouts and stuff when I should be
> writing. The toolbar on Word is a handvac for cat hoovering...
And writing TeX macros isn't? You have more discpline than I.
Dan Schauer
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> >They get messed up
> >travelling from server to server, or so they tell me
>
> Hm, shouldn't. But probably do, because not every server *or
> programme* is configured to support 8-bit characters. Of course, I'm
> talking about Usenet. Sending files as attachments should have no
> problems.
Yes. E-mail suffers from this as well.
>
> >- anyway, it
> >happens between macs and wintel machines as well.
>
> Wintel ... haven't heard that one for a long time. :-) Anyway, even MS
> started supporting Unicode, so Mac is the only heretic now.
The servers are the problem, not the end machine, or so we concluded
after a lot of scuffles ("It's _your_ bloody computer fault!").
--
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
substitute tin for nit to mail me
http://www.fantascienza.net/sfpeople/elethiomel
"Hello, my name is Anna, and I write trilogies." -- Anna Mazzoldi
Anna Feruglio Dal Dan
> I have tried several ways to preserve accented characters in email
> attachments and in the text of email and it always comes out goofy.
> The stupidest is accented u coming out as two pound-sterling
> characters.
Zipping the file (compressing the file with a program that generates a
file with a .zip ending) usually makes even the more recalcitrant
program behave. Sometime ago we used to have this problem, me and Anna
and Emiliano, my partner, because we were all using Word but on
different machines and with different versions. Zipping usually improved
things.
Now, mysteriously, the problems seems to have solved themselves. I guess
Anna upgraded to Word 2000, and I'm on Word 2001, and Emiliano now got
himself a mac, and anyway, everything flies smoothly between us.
Especially when we save files as rtf, of course.
Mark Brown
> > The other point was the more frivolous one -- where do people
> > keep their work surfaces? I work in the living room, with
> > the TV, etc., and I think that comes from many years of
> > living in a bedsit; I now can't work up in a spare bedroom in
> > isolation, I need to be in the centre of things. I wondered
> > what other folks here do?
My desk is currently set up in the elbow-like area between two lobes of my
living room. The apartment is set up with an L-shaped living area, a kitchen
("inside" the L), and a bedroom and bathroom through a doorway on one side
of the L. On the other side is a balcony that is currently inhabited by a
pair of planet-sized spiders (!). I don't go out there.
The desk faces the wall, and I can look over my shoulder to see the TV.
Often, I just have MuchMusic playing in the background (or MP3s, or CDs; I'm
a music man). If something half-decent is on, I'll type during commercials
and turn the chair around when the show's on. When there's a show on I
actually ~like,~ I abandon the PC entirely and sit on the couch.
Mark
"Except for Buffy; I now have night-class on Tuesday." :(
Elf Sternberg
rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) writes:
>I do a lot of my plotting and drafting with a pencil in these wonderful
>Japanese notebooks...
The paper in those things is amazing. Between those and my
Clairefontaine sketchbook, I haul around a lot of paper along with my
laptop.
Elf Sternberg
"Daniel Schauer" <dlsc...@mediaone.net> writes:
>
>"Elf Sternberg" <e...@drizzle.com> wrote in message news:10001597...@yabetcha.drizzle.com...
>> And while, with TeX, I can have professional-quality postscript
>> manuscripts in a flash, I'm not encouraged to twiddle with fonts and
>> layouts and stuff when I should be writing. The toolbar on Word is a
>> handvac for cat hoovering...
>And writing TeX macros isn't? You have more discpline than I.
I think it's more of a mindset. I don't use italics or boldface
in my fiction, so I tend to write just plain 'ol text files. When I'm
done, I'm *done*, and putting up TeX headers, footers and the rest is
just form, not function. It's a way of getting it to the printers
rather than something to distract me from the process of writing.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>On Mon, 10 Sep 2001 14:29:23 -0700,
>Brooks Moses <bmo...@stanford.edu> scripsit:
>>I don't think MS supports Unicode in plain text files. If it does, it's
>>not plain text.
>
>I recommend to you a web search on UTF-8.
>
>You've made a bunch of errors of fact trying to support your main point,
>which is that not all messaging clients support unicode, and is true.
And I didn't claim that Unicode is uniformly supported by all and
sundry. It definitely isn't.
>It should also be noted that Windows isn't standards compliant about
>*anything* having to do with character sets.
They dropped their windows encoding and accepted Unicode, as far as I
know. For instance, Georgia is encoded in ISO 10646-2, which covers
Basic Latin (probably pure ascii) and Latin-1 Supplement. Tahoma
covers even more and is on OpenType layout tables. It probably means
you can use it on your Linux, Graydon.
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>On 10 Sep 2001 00:12:32 GMT, pd...@gw.dd-b.net (Pamela Dean
>Dyer-Bennet) wrote:
>(arbor vita)
>>These are evergreen trees in the cedar family, native to North
>>America. They're very common as foundation plantings. They could be
>>related to your plant, or it could just be a coincidence.
>A quick research:
>Oriental arborvitae looks very much like what we call a decorative
>cypress http://www.kansasforests.org/CTPFAQ/oriental_arborvitae.htm
>Actually, it is a cypress :-). A Russian cypress.
>http://www.orst.edu/dept/ldplants/mide4.htm
That's not what I've got.
>There are several arborvitae here:
>http://www.hortsource.com/conifergallerymain.htm
>All of them cypress-like.
I've got Thuja occidentalis, which is not a cypress; it is also, so
far as I can determine, not a cedar, in the sense that it it is not
designated Cedrus. However, western red cedar, another tree native to
North America, is also not Cedrus, so it seems possible that I really
did hear Thuja occidentalis called some kind of cedar and assumed it
must be true in the botanical sense. Since people seem to toss the
term "cedar" around fairly casually. Or they've been messing their
categories around again. Those botanists. You can't turn your back
on them for a moment.
>So, no, not a single one of them is what I had in mind. And I can't
>find anything at the moment. I'll have to check with my sister, she
>has one. Or I possibly mixed things up.
I wouldn't understand how a person could possibly do anything like
*that*. 8-)
If you find out the scientific name I'd love to go find a picture of
it.
--
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet (pd...@demesne.com)
"I will open my heart to a blank page
and interview the witnesses." John M. Ford, "Shared World"
Brooks Moses
> Brooks Moses <bmo...@stanford.edu> scripsit:
> >I don't think MS supports Unicode in plain text files. If it does, it's
> >not plain text.
>
>
> You've made a bunch of errors of fact trying to support your main point,
> which is that not all messaging clients support unicode, and is true.
>
> *anything* having to do with character sets.
A quote I came across last night: "Never express yourself more clearly
than you think" [N. Bohr]. Sigh. Guilty as charged, and I probably
knew it at the time.
- Brooks
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>On Mon, 10 Sep 2001 22:16:32 +0200, Vlatko Juric-Kokic
><vlatko.ju...@zg.hinet.hr> wrote:
>>On Sun, 9 Sep 2001 22:56:21 -0500, Dan Goodman <dsg...@visi.com>
>>wrote:
>>>In article <r7boptchlkd7a6j5b...@4ax.com>,
>>>eldr...@earthlink.net says...
>>>> On Fri, 7 Sep 2001 17:01:27 -0700, "Julie Pascal" <ju...@pascal.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>> >"Dan Goodman" <dsg...@visi.com> wrote in message
>>>> >news:MPG.160314598...@news.visi.com...
>>>> >> I currently live in a bedsit.
>>>> >Just curious... is a bedsit also known as an efficiency apartment
>>>> >or is it something different?
>>>> I believe that "bedsit" is a contraction of "bedroom/sitting room",
>>>> and is the equivalent to an American "efficiency apartment": a
>>>> one-room apartment.
>>>Not quite, I don't think. An efficiency has its own kitchen (not
>>>separated out); a bedsitting room doesn't.
>>In the States? I have something that can be counted as an efficiency,
>>then. But the name here is one-room apartment.
>
>so an efficiency is what we call a bachelor apartment? (a place with
>its own bathroom, and a kitchen that isn't a separate room from the
>room that serves as bedroom and living room)
>
>does a bedsit have its own bathroom or does one share?
>
>*still confused*
>
So am I. We don't have "efficiency apartments" or "bachelor
apartments," we have "studio apartments," which are one room, with a
kitchen area usually set off by a counter and maybe cabinets hung from
the ceiling, and a bathroom. I don't think we have any _separate_
units without their own kitchen facilities and bathrooms outside of
residence hotels, convalescent hospitals, assisted living
institutions, like that. A residence hotel is just exactly a transient
hotel, except you pay by the month and you can live there forever. A
lot of hotels and motels of the cheap and horrible variety become
residence hotels, particularly when they are subsidized under one or
another welfare - homeless abatement - AIDS disablility - or suchlike
program.
We need a lot more of this kind of housing, actually, because our very
poor end up very often living in cars or in the woods. We've got
another squat camp, this year, down by the river, calling themselves
"Camp Paradise" (named after a former tourist place turned senior
mobile home residence called "Paradise Camp"), and the city council is
all tied in knots because they don't want to be guilty of turning them
out when there's no place to go, but there's no way to keep it clean
enough to protect the river, either.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
Dyer-Bennet) wrote:
Okay, here we go.
http://www.botany.com/thuja.html
These evergreen trees are found wild in North America, Korea, Japan
and China. They are very pretty trees and are hardy in most parts of
North America where the soil is suitable and atmospheric conditions
are fairly clean. The leaves of this tree, also known as Arborvitae,
Northern White Cedar, and Swamp Cedar, are scale-like and overlap each
other tightly against the twig.
I can't find any arborvitae that's not that, either, except for one
apparently gormless site that refers to the same plant as cedrus.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
Separate bathroom and a kitchenette. That is, a small but separate
kitchen. there are apartments with kitchens integrated into the room
layout.
>does a bedsit have its own bathroom or does one share?
Its own. People don't count it as an apartment otherwise. It's just
rooms.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>I can't find any arborvitae that's not that, either, except for one
>apparently gormless site that refers to the same plant as cedrus.
Well, of course, I mixed things up. Or my sister did. :-)
The plant I meant was a drac(a)ena, or a dragon tree. I visited a
friend yesterday who has one. She said that some of them belong to the
yucca family. Another muddle. :-)
BTW, the only cedar I ever saw was certainly a Lebanese cedar, you
know the one on their flag. This was in a park here in Zagreb. But it
fell down several years ago because of a heavy snowfall.
Sorry, can't find any pictures at the moment, have to rush.
Vlatko Juric-Kokic
wrote:
>>Tahoma covers even more and is on OpenType layout tables. It probably
>>means you can use it on your Linux, Graydon.
>
>Not without paying Microsoft money for it
See http://www.microsoft.com/typography/faq/faq8.htm where it says
that Web core fonts can be downloaded, installed and used on Web pages
by anybody. No Tahoma, but other fonts with OT layout tables are
there.
Elf Sternberg
iay...@panix.com (Ian A. York) writes:
>In article <1ezgsbf.1jz1n36vjr2aoN%ada...@nit.it.invalid>,
>Anna Feruglio Dal Dan <ada...@nit.it.invalid> wrote:
>>I try to do this when I work. Sit down at the computer and don't get up
>>until you've done your ten pages for the day.
>Ten pages a day? Please tell me that includes your translation, and you
>don't routinely produce ten pages (what, about 2500 words?) of new fiction
>each day.
Oh, come on. I rolled out 1200 words of new fiction in the
first hour of this morning. On my best days I do 8000 words routinely.
My outliner lists over 200 story ideas so coming up with things to write
about isn't hard. I may never finish a few of the things I've started,
but I can duck and weave "writer's block" to my heart's content
regularly.
Jay Random
Elf Sternberg wrote:
>
> In article <9nfrne$gud$1...@news.panix.com>
> iay...@panix.com (Ian A. York) writes:
>
> >In article <1ezgsbf.1jz1n36vjr2aoN%ada...@nit.it.invalid>,
> >Anna Feruglio Dal Dan <ada...@nit.it.invalid> wrote:
>
> >>I try to do this when I work. Sit down at the computer and don't get up
> >>until you've done your ten pages for the day.
>
> >Ten pages a day? Please tell me that includes your translation, and you
> >don't routinely produce ten pages (what, about 2500 words?) of new fiction
> >each day.
>
> Oh, come on. I rolled out 1200 words of new fiction in the
> first hour of this morning. On my best days I do 8000 words routinely.
> My outliner lists over 200 story ideas so coming up with things to write
> about isn't hard. I may never finish a few of the things I've started,
> but I can duck and weave "writer's block" to my heart's content
> regularly.
>
> Elf
>
> --
> Elf M. Sternberg, Immanentizing the Eschaton since 1988
> http://www.halcyon.com/elf/
If I were willing to use mangled English like `immanentizing the
Eschaton', if I were writing cookie-cutter potboilers, & if I never
bothered to revise anything, I could crank out 8000 words a day in my sleep.
Like most fiction writers, however, I spend a good deal of my working
time doing something other than type. That something is called
`thinking', & most of us find it indispensable if we're to produce
fiction of any value at all.
Don't come the prolific genius with us. Isaac Asimov himself did not
crank out 8000 words a day `routinely'; nor did Robert Silverberg, even
in his twenties, by the end of which he had (so he claimed) published
over 7,000,000 words of fiction. As your name is conspicuous by its
failure to be mentioned in the same breath as such authors, one must
infer that your reported volume is achieved only with some significant
sacrifice of quality.
(Postscript, some minutes later: I have glanced through portions of your
Immanentized Eschaton. I have no wish to introduce a full-blown flamewar
to this newsgroup; _ergo silebo_.)