Episode #215: Writing Is Diagonal When You Want Linear

Caught a squirrel eating al dente during a moderately warm morning walk. Them acorns and brown grass blades are certainly good eats indeed.

I are, once again, back in the blogging saddle. Took a month and a half blogging hiatus to catch up on my writing before switching gears to release this new novella of mine. I should clarify that it wasn't so much as a hiatus, as it was creating a series of posts from one particular seed of an idea, which led to the hiatus.

So, during my blogging hiatus I experienced a few writing related annoyances that I would like to share with ya'll. Some ya'll may find amusing, others not so much. But all were things that I have experienced just so that you don't have to. In no particular order of importance, they are as follows:

1} US Copyright Office: Since I was coming out with a new published work (novella), it would make sense for me to go through the laborious prospect of recovering my account on that website, which I had last logged into back in 2021. After coming to a standstill by locking myself out trying to reset my password, I contacted their IT support, who surprisingly enough got back to me in one-tenth of the way through the maximum ten day deadline.

One of the petty annoyances that they reminded me of was that in order to get the most out of the website, a Win PC was "required", along with either Firefox or Edge for a browser. No other OS or browser would give you the "best experience ever". The other was their version of a password meme: sixteen characters, minimum; at least three UPPER and three lower case; at least three numbers; at least two special characters; you can't use the previous eleven passwords; and you must change every 30-60 days. Oh and, you can't use words that contain all three of the same letter (e.g. eerie). 

I had a ton o' fun performing that task. Reminded of the non-user friendly websites that my home state currently maintain.

2} Being forced to spend more money than I really wanted to on a cover: Okay, this sounds whiny, but hear me out. I actually wanted to bring out my upcoming novella in early January '24, and to achieve that goal, I contacted my go-to book designer to get the ball rolling in late November '23. Long story short, she basically went AWOL for what I'm guessing to be, three and a half months. From mid-November '23 to about late Jan/early Feb '24, she basically ghosted her own website. No reason was given for her disappearance, as far as I was able to tell. She did manage to update it to a degree, but lost me as a customer.

So this thrown lug wrench forced me to solicit writer friends in my FB writer's group for suggestions. Fortunately for me, I received some excellent recommendations and selected one that was the most economically viable for me: 100 Covers/Book Cover Design. I say economically viable, in that they offered three different price points based on what you need, plus ways to add more later, also based on what you need later as opposed to now.

Now even though I am thoroughly happy with my current graphic designer, I am annoyed that I was ghosted by my previous designer. I mean, the very least that she could do would've been to change her auto-reply to something that stated something along the line of going on hiatus and a short explanation for said hiatus. If she had done that, I could've saved myself about two months worth of aggravation, not only with the cover, but with everything else associated with the process.

3} Finish up book #3 of my four part series: When is a final chapter not a final chapter? Well, to quote the Fire Marshall Bill character from MadTV, "Let me show you something!" 

I spent the better part of three weeks of actually writing a four page synopsis of what characters I have and what plot points are associated with them, along with possible scenarios of how the book is going to end and who will be moving forward, among other things; then we switched gears and performed one final edit of all five binders (added another 10% in notes); then we spent that final week of mentally plotting out how to write that final chapter.

And as the old saying goes, the meticulously crafted outline consumed itself with a side of fava beans and a fine Chianti to wash it down.

By the time I finished writing the required lead up to the battle, I was struck smart by the revelation that I needed to add a "final" final chapter, because there was no way I was going to write a 40 +/- page chapter to finish out this book.

So......yah. Writing a final chapter is just as easy as putting your hand inside the garbage can to throw something away...and missing the garbage can. 😖

Have a Happy Monday, and remember, if you need to have a good laugh, just think about all the bad grammar being tossed around by people who aren't smarter than a fifth grader, but are 4 times older than a 5th grader.

{c} 2024 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved