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Eclectic Musings, On Writing, Thoughts on Writing

In the Clouds (of Data Storage)

January 31, 2012

Writers storing working drafts of a novel electronically need to have the assurance that their work will be there from one day to the next. As computers have been known to crash and fail, taking hours and days of hard work with them, “cloud” storage makes a lot of sense for writers.

What is “cloud” storage? Okay, I’m not a tecchie, so the best I can come up with is that the “cloud” here is some sort of magical place in the Internet ether. Anyway, it’s outside your personal PC.  This means if your PC crashes, your data is not lost. Also, you can access your data from any computer anywhere. You just need to enter your login and password.

Unexpected trip to Paris? Forgot the thumb drive with the latest draft of your novel? No problemo. You can lean back on your cafe chair on the Champs-Élysées, fire up your PC, sip your espresso, and retrieve your document from the “cloud” – because, really, in the heart of Paris, you do want to put in those eight to ten dutiful daily writing hours, don’t you?

Well, we’ll talk about work-life balance in another post. Back to the “cloud.”

Two “cloud” data storage softwares I find useful are: Evernote and Dropbox. Both are free. Dropbox can be downloaded at dropbox.com

I really like Dropbox; it allows you to create folders and store documents within those folders – all outside your potentially unreliable personal PC.

You can access your files online, or download Dropbox to your PC so that it becomes an extra folder which contains all the subfolders and documents you choose to store there.

Evernote which you can download from evernote.com is nice because you can access the data you store there from your smart phone as well as from any PC, as with Dropbox. For me, however, the way Evernote is structured, it is handier for jotting down ideas or notes versus storing data/documents.   Note: There is a hint of a “storm cloud” over data storage in the “cloud” due to some people using cloud storage systems to exchange pirated files. Google “Megaupload” to find out more about this.

The only real concern for users like me would be if Dropbox or Evernote might one day be handed down a ruling that they can no longer store information. Then I might need to find an alternate storage system. But in situations like this, host sites almost always give users ample warning. Even Megaupload users were given several days’ warning before the site closed down. I believe it is unlikely that Dropbox and Evernote will ever shut down, but I am mentioning the concern as it’s a topic of discussion currently.

Another “cloud” storage option is Amazon.com’s JungleDisk.com. I back up some of my data on JungleDisk. This is not a free program but it’s not pricey either. I pay only about $2/month. Jungledisk allows you access to your files from any of your PC’s if you have more than one; but it’s not designed for sharing files, so it probably doesn’t face any threat of ever being shut down. Once you download it, Jungledisk becomes an extra drive on your computer from which you can access your files. Or, you can just login to the jungledisk site and access your files from there.

In my opinion, Dropbox’s design makes it the easiest to work with for storing and accessing notes and manuscripts.

I also have some data stored on a Western Digital external drive with a 1,000 Gigabyte (huge!) capacity for storage. But I don’t trust hardware storage entirely. Have heard too many stories of data lost. I purchased my WD drive at BestBuy. (Read the reviews previous purchasers have kindly supplied, and look for a model that has met expectations among reviewers.)

Image courtesy of Akakumo via Flickr

 

Eclectic Musings

More Uncommonly Good Autobiographies

December 29, 2011
Part 2 of my 12/11/2011 post: Following, in no particular order, are some of my favorite biographies, autobiographies, diaries, collected letters, etc.

Elizabeth von Arnim, who was born in 1866, wrote three books which are autobiographical in nature – Elizabeth and Her German Garden, The Solitary Summer, and All the Dogs of My Life. My favorite is the last, All the Dogs of My Life, written in her senior years. She tells her life story vis a vis the dogs she has owned in various phases of her life – starting with her happy childhood, going on through her problematic marriages – the first to a domineering Prussian minor aristocrat she dubbed the “Man of Wrath,” the second to the older brother of Bertrand Russell, a marriage which has been described as “disastrous” and which ended in acrimony and separation. When her first husband went broke, Elizabeth availed herself of one of the very few options women had in the 19th century to make a good living for themselves: she took up her pen and wrote a bestseller, and then another, and then another. Perhaps her best known work today is The Enchanted April as it was made into an Academy-award nominated movie in 1992. The Enchanted April also happens to be one of my favorite books. It is a celebration of female friendship with four women joining forces to escape a bleak gray rainy London by finding a resourceful way to rent an Italian castle that will immerse them in a Spring of “wisteria and sunshine.” The two who are married even manage to include their husbands in ways that heal frayed marital bonds. In All the Dogs of My Life, von Arnim’s resolutely cheerful but never cloying (and always reality-bound) personality shines through in full force. Note: Elizabeth von Arnim’s work is now in the public domain and much of it is available free online.

C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, Surprised by Joy, and A Grief Observed aren’t usually classed as autobiographies. But few books are more intimate or personal. From all that I’ve read about C.S. Lewis, once he’d espoused Christianity, he lived his belief. And he left a wondrous legacy in the clarity with which he explicated the case for Christianity, as well as the 24/7 challenges of living a Christian life. “Jack,” as his friends called him, didn’t sugarcoat Christianity. He didn’t “leave out the hard parts.” But neither did he take a hard denominational line to Christian belief and Christian living. “It is at her centre,” Lewis wrote, “where her truest children dwell, that each communion [of Christians] is really closest to every other in spirit, if not in doctrine. And this suggests that at the centre of each there is something, or a Someone … who speaks with the same voice.” Mere Christianity is one man’s examination of the human condition and his honest attempt to find a meaningful and hopeful answer.

P.D. James, whose first mystery novel, Cover Her Face,  was published when she was 42, has known phenomenal success. Her novels are regarded as not only mysteries – but also as literary novels. James’s dark novels startle and intrigue, as all good mysteries should do, and leave you feeling enlightened as she peels back layer after layer disclosing her characters’ true motivations. In her book, Time to Be in Earnest, subtitled “a fragment of autobiography,” she shares her thoughts on a variety of subjects – ranging from details of her earliest years, her observations on the development of the mystery genre, and the sorrows of her marriage to Connor White, a doctor who returned from service in World War II so damaged he had to be institutionalized intermittently until his death in 1964, two years after Cover Her Face was published. The parts of herself James shares in Time to Be in Earnest remind us of the great rewards an earnest dedication to craft can bring, but also remind us that those we deem great successes have often borne burdens we might never guess at.

Eclectic Musings

Three Uncommonly Good Autobiographies

December 11, 2011

Following, in no particular order, are some of the biographies, autobiographies, diaries, collected letters, etc., I keep stored on my Kindle. Reason: these men and women offer thoughts and observations that make for interesting companionable reading. On days when lively conversation is nowhere to be found, and I am in the mood for brilliant or thought-provoking chit chat, I have these ready-made friends to turn to – and I don’t even have to prepare coffee or cake!

An Autobiography, Agatha Christie – Agatha Christie could never be a bore. She is too skilled at presenting written information that hooks the reader into her world. Her Autobiography is filled with the sorts of anecdotes and details you’d expect from a woman who lived a pretty interesting life – surviving two world wars, forging a career for herself as the top-selling mystery writer and one of the most successful playwrights of all time, surviving a traumatic divorce, reinventing herself as the wife of an archeologist (husband number two), traveling with him on archeological digs to Ninevah and Petra, and then coming home to England, cream cakes and tea. A great rainy day – or anytime – read.

 

Martha Gellhorn with Ernest Hemingway, 1941

Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn, edited by Caroline Moore – Martha Gellhorn took pains to place herself where the action was in the 1930’s and ’40’s. She is best known for having been one of Ernest Hemingway’s wives. But she was accomplished in her own right as a journalist and, especially, as a war reporter. She corresponded, among others, with Eleanor Roosevelt and H. G. Wells, as well as with Hemingway, and her letters, written from 1930 to 1996, are those of a free spirit finding her way, often admirable, often flawed, making mistakes, landing on her feet and growing wiser but never less passionate with the advancing years.

Big Russ and Me, Tim Russert – I still miss Tim Russert. He was an outstanding moderator on Meet the Press. As an interviewer, he didn’t pull any punches but he was always courteous and fair, and you just knew he’d done his homework each and every time. He was the consummate journalistic professional. Big Russ & Me is a valentine to his father, the “Big Russ” of the title. It also provides much of Tim Russert’s story, sharing with us the influences – church, community and family – that shaped him into the outstanding professional he became. The dictionary defines “wholesome” as “conducive to or suggestive of good health and physical well-being; conducive to or promoting moral well-being.” Tim Russert was the epitome of “wholesome” and his book continues to be a good influence on this ol’ world, just as the man himself was when he was with us.

 

Image of Martha Gellhorn: Wikimedia Commons

On Writing, Thoughts on Writing

The Work of Writing

November 14, 2011

 

Anthony Trollope, "Novel Machine"

One author writing about Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope – one of the most successful writers of his day – called him a “Novel Machine.” 

Trollope’s first novel was published in 1847 while he held a full-time job as a post office civil servant. For the next 20 years, while remaining in his full-time job, he was able to produce at least a book a year and sometimes three. During his lifetime, he penned 47 novels and 16 additional books.

Trollope woke up every day up at 5:30 am and had a cup of coffee. he would then read what he had written previously for half an hour, then he would write for the next two and a half hours. His output was 1000 words per hour. In two and a half hours, he produced – about 10 modern manuscript pages a day. This, Trollope wrote, in his autobiography, “allowed me to produce  over ten pages of an ordinary novel volume a day, and if kept up through  ten months, would have given as its results three novels of three  volumes each in the year.”

Today, most of us admire these workmanlike habits. What is fascinating, however, is that when Trollope’s Autobiography was published posthumously, after his death in 1882, his reputation took a nosedive. Why? Because Victorian literary sensibilities were taken aback by an author whose means of producing work were apparently so mechanical. Victorian critics felt true poets and authors produced work in the throes of “inspiration.”


The Victorian sentiment is often subtly promulgated by Hollywood – how many scenes have we seen where a writer writing is clearly rapturously transported by his/her work? Okay, it happens. But waiting for “transport” can be like waiting for Godot.


Stephen King was once asked what was the secret of writing success. His answer: “Bum glue.” (Bum here being the British word for the part of your anatomy that needs to be parked in front of a word processor for a good chunk of time in order to produce a manuscript.) Hmm, why does it not surprise me that Stephen King has been prolific too?

On Writing, Thoughts on Writing

What a Critique Group Can and Cannot Do for You

November 6, 2011

 

Here are some of the benefits a critique group can offer a writer:

  • Valuable feedback – When your writing is fresh on the page, it’s sometimes difficult to judge its merit. Critique group partners can give you the benefit of a reader’s objective perspective on your work.
  • Valuable suggestions – Members in your group can point out weak spots and problem areas in your work, and may suggest resources – books, software, contacts, etc. – of which you were not aware.
  • Accountability – Your group will meet regularly – weekly or monthly, or somewhere in between. As the point of the group is to share work and invite comments and feedback, these regular meetings provide you with an added impetus not to procrastinate.
  • Encouragement – Good critique group partners provide honest feedback but do so in a way that encourages further effort.
  • Camraderie – Writing is a solo profession. It’s you and the blank sheet of actual or virtual paper. Meeting with a critique group alleviates that. Critique group partners can validate you as a writer even before you get published.
  • Speeding Your Trajectory to Publication – You aren’t working solely on the basis of trial and error any longer. For me, this is the key benefit of a critique group.


What a critique group cannot do for you, and what it is unfair to expect:

  • Editing and book doctoring – That is what professional book doctors, editors and ghostwriters are paid to do. Critique group partners can comment on your work, and point you in the right direction. But the decision-making responsibility regarding specifics of plot and structure, and the time-consuming heavy lifting of actually working through a novel or short story remain with the author.
  • “Thinking through” your story lines and all of the other issues associated with creating a fictional world in specific detail – This includes theme, setting, characterization, etc.


Critique group partners may and should offer suggestions to address any problem areas of your work you wish to discuss or which they bring to your attention. At times, a partner might suggest something that works beautifully as a specific or key fix for a problem area. But at other times, they may only bring your attention to an issue and you will have to think through how to fix it.

Your critique partners are not being grudging if they do not always offer specifics, by the way. It’s just that writing is thinking, and your particular story issue may need research, careful analysis and consideration; or, it may even need to be “put on a backburner” for your subconscious mind to work on and to come up with that perfect creative solution. Resolving story issues like this are part of the challenge – and the exhiliration – of writing!

About

Jessica Hatchigan has taught writing at Wayne State University in Detroit and at workshops and seminars across the U.S.