Writing is easy, writing well is hard 🙂
Need fuel:
That is so true. Back in the days when I did a great deal of public speaking I learned that it is far easier to give a 20 minute presentation than a five minute presentation.
ÛÏI usually write at night. I always keep my whiskey within reach; so many ideas that I canÛªt remember in the morning pop into my head.Û
-William Faulkner
I bought a 15.6" hp pavilion laptop at Office Depot/Max yesterday. On Sale $450. Windows 10 (new experience for me). 8gb RAM. 1tb harddrive. The sales guy says the video card is much better than the one in the Dell that they also have on sale. The Dell is dinky, would almost fit in my pocket. This computer will mostly live at home. It has a 10 key pad on the right like a standard keyboard which is very handy.
Bought a new wireless mouse for wife's computer. It's a logitech. The old Microsoft wireless mouse (at least 10 years old) is getting intermittent, aggravating. New mouse is great. I can also get her a Logitech wireless keyboard, same transmitter, apparently. I have a wired mouse but she wants wireless. Have to keep the boy wonder from disappearing with the mouse ;-).
We get to the checkstand, computer rings up 699.99 (display in 6" type clearly says $499.95). Guy says go ahead and put your credit card in and we will fix it in a minute. She gives him the evil eye and says we aren't paying anything until you fix the price. We had the mouse, paper and printer ink too. Manager scrambled around and then lowered the price manually.
DO NOT MESS WITH MY FINANCIAL ADVISOR, CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER, CORPORATE CONTROLLER, ETC.!
James Fleming, post: 360821, member: 136 wrote: ÛÏI usually write at night. I always keep my whiskey within reach; so many ideas that I canÛªt remember in the morning pop into my head.Û
-William Faulkner
One of my favorite Raymond Chandler quotes:
"I hung up and fed myself a slug of Old Forester to brace my nerves for the interview. As I was inhaling it I heard her steps tripping along the corridor." -Philip Marlowe, from The Little Sister (Raymond Chandler)
Dave Karoly, post: 360768, member: 94 wrote: Writing is easy, writing well is hard 🙂
Need fuel:
David-
Please send out at least your DRAFT to me.
Cheers,
Derek
DEREK G. GRAHAM OLS OLIP, post: 360826, member: 285 wrote: David-
Please send out at least your DRAFT to me.
Cheers,
Derek
Derek-
I'm almost there, it may be a day or two. Now that I have a computer to write on, it should go faster, except I have to get it running today. That always seems to burn up hours.
Dave Karoly, post: 360827, member: 94 wrote: Derek-
I'm almost there, it may be a day or two. Now that I have a computer to write on, it should go faster, except I have to get it running today. That always seems to burn up hours.
David-
Thank you.
May I ask what a young feller is doing up so early ?
Tiz 10:36 here.
Cheers,
Derek
I find writing easy. What I find frustrating is that the most eloquent, perfectly-spelled and phrased, best selling text on my screen turns into a poorly phrased, misspelled rambling rant on the other side of my "print" button!
I cut my teeth on an Underwood manual ttypewriter back in the 60s, writing sports stories for the local newspaper. Tripled spaced to allow for the editor's proofreading marks. This is the origin for carriage return/line feed in word processing.
The main aim for the stories was to spell everyone's name correctly.
I recall that the lino type operators would chain smoke and sip laced coffee all day long ... it wasn't enough that the molten lead pot was at nose level. Sadly, few of these guys are still with us.
DEREK G. GRAHAM OLS OLIP, post: 360831, member: 285 wrote: David-
Thank you.
May I ask what a young feller is doing up so early ?
Tiz 10:36 here.
Cheers,
Derek
I got up at 0530, coffee, some editing before Acolyte duty at the 0800 service (Episcopalian-your Anglican).
When preparing a presentation or writing something other than a forum post, I tend to spend a lot of time gathering materials and shaping topics in my head. That part of the process may take several weeks. I found that creating an outline and tweaking it here & there while in the info gathering phase helps me organize. But I tend to ramble so much in my writing now, no telling what kind of nonsense might result if I try to use a voice-to-text program. My rough drafts tend to be 1.5 to 2 x the length of my final version of any writings.
I refer to the Chicago Manual from time to time, and try to apply what I remember from Strunk & White. I should probably make more use of each of those writing guides.
Random kibitzer: "Well, you're a writer. Writing is easy for you."
Me: "In much the same way that wrestling is easy for a wrestler, or teaching for a teacher, or . . . ."
Cheers,
Henry
Studious he sate, with all his books around,
Sinking from thought to thought, a vast profound:
Plunged for his sense, but found no bottom there;
Then wrote and flounder'd on, in mere despair.
Years ago, when my wife was in graduate school, I did all her "typing". Neither of us had taken typing in school and my use of a computer at work had me typing at least a little bit. She wrote on paper and then I put it in the computer for her to edit. Once the document is in the computer it is much easier to compose and edit. Since I don't "touch type" I would read a sentence and type it in. I learned WAY more about medicine than I ever wanted.
Andy
Andy Bruner, post: 361115, member: 1123 wrote: Years ago, when my wife was in graduate school, I did all her "typing". Neither of us had taken typing in school and my use of a computer at work had me typing at least a little bit. She wrote on paper and then I put it in the computer for her to edit. Once the document is in the computer it is much easier to compose and edit. Since I don't "touch type" I would read a sentence and type it in. I learned WAY more about medicine than I ever wanted.
Andy
Fortunately I had the foresight to take a typing class in 7th grade. I used an old manual typewriter. So I can type by touch, at least the letters. I have to look at the keyboard to do the numbers. I can 10 key pretty well to; learned that using Sierra Cybernetics COGO at my first full time Surveying/drafting job. Sierra Cybernetics was setup to use numbers for commands, 1=traverse, 2=inverse, 3=bearing-bearing intersection and so on. I hadn't used it for over a decade when I joined California State Parks and the Surveyors there were still using it. I was using AutoCAD mostly but the old school surveyor, Ray, said he wanted "comps" so he could "check it." So I used Sierra Cybernetics COGO to do that; like riding a bicycle. That's one thing I really like about Microsurvey COGO; I can mostly do everything on the 10 keypad so it goes fast.
I couldn't write by talking to a computer. I ramble too much as it is; talking would be confusing and I think I would have a jumbled mess.
It's funny to spend weeks writing something then I can read it in 5 minutes; geez is that all I've done LOL.