Deidre Knight's Blog: Spam Retaliation

Sunday, May 15, 2005

Spam Retaliation

Well, although I wanted to search online for an icon of a fist slamming down on a Toshiba laptop, I decided instead to go read the recent Smart Bitches entry, which made me laugh when I wanted to scream.

So, I woke this morning and had a--get this! Spam hung in my inbox that kept forcing outlook to load and load and load and load and load and load the same emails repeatedly. It appears that I will have to deinstall my Outlook when, my blog readers will recall, this is my writing weekend. I'm going to force my OCD tendencies out of the way, however, and get at least seven good pages written first. Anyone ever noticed that seven pages are, relatively speaking, easy enough to write, but that in hitting eight or beyond you're truly climbing past base camp? At least for me.

Now I shall go begin those seven, dare I hope eight? Pages.
d

13 comments:

Jaci Burton said...: How's the coffee taste this morning, Deidre? *g*

I'm jealous of your writing time! I have to take my 16 year old daughter to the mall today, thereby wiping out any chance at all of getting any writing done. I'm a marathon shopper but she exhausts me!

Ugh on the spam. I loathe spam. I get more spam in my Outlook than real mail. Good luck avoiding the need to fix it ;)

Jaci; 10:14 AM
Deidre Knight said...: Ah, Jaci, don't envy too much. Remember I'm the same woman who might go two weeks without a single moment to write--it's one reason hubby is so sweet to give me occasional writing weekends. It's really paid off big time too. I had a huge breakthrough last night and got up and wrote some more until 2:15 in the morning!

Coffee is even good too. If only the outlook weren't acting up. :)

Enjoy your day!; 10:31 AM
Diana Peterfreund said...: 20 pages?!?!?!?! My friend Marley does that, and more, and I don't know how it's possible, She only says, "I type fast." I assure you, the typing speed is not the problem. It's the brain speed. Seven pages is even good for me. I'm more of the 3-5 kind of person, and right now, I've got myself on a nice, even, non-stressful schedule of two.

Which I just hit, so I'm ahead of the game today.; 10:35 AM
Deidre Knight said...: Diana,
Twenty pages is far from usual for me. But I do find that the more I can really dig in and lose myself, the more I produce, whereas if I stick to shorter blocks I never really engage. I think all our brains are mapped differently. Trust me, I'm no Novelique. :)

It's raining. A wonderful, steady rain, so I'm going back to Blank Page to battle him away.; 10:49 AM
Anonymous said...: Eveerybody has their own comfort level with how much they can type at one sitting. I think whatever works for you is the right amount. :)

Spam. I never used to get any in my email and now, while not tons, there is more than I like. At least (knock on wood) it's benign stuff so that's something.

Deidre, thanks for the blogrolling link. I looked at it and even tried to create an account but--in the end--I found it too confusing LOL. I find going into my template and adding links that way easier.

Hehehehehe I guess it goes to show that with this, as in with page count, we all have methods that work best for us. :); 11:00 AM
Deidre Knight said...: So true, Bonnie! I was confused by it at first. It isn't hard to just add the links, I know. Thought I'd "pass the word" along.

I so agree that what we write relates to our own temperments. Everyone's creativity works according to the way they're wired. My hubby who has 22 books in print writes very slowly, but his first draft just about IS his draft. He used to joke that if I knocked my head 20,000 words popped out, but the truth is my pages are much rougher than his. It's personal style and personality as much as anything else.; 11:23 AM
Anonymous said...: Yup :) And I guess it isn't so much how we get to the finished manuscript but that we actually get to the finished manuscript :)

And hey, I appreciate you passing the word along :); 11:36 AM
Shannon McKelden said...: I can often do 20 pages at a time, but I also NEED to have a longer length of time to write. Like Deidre said, if I have short periods of time, I never really "engage" and it's rarely worth it. I admire those people who can write 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there. That is SO not me. But give me 6 hours, and I can crank out 20 pages on a good day. Average is probably about 12-15, though.

However, I write VERY heavy on the dialogue, which frequently puts my mss at a far higher page count than I want, so I have to go back and tighten up a lot. :-)

Shannon; 11:40 AM
Diana Peterfreund said...: My drafts are closer to finished, too. I do a lot of editing as I write, then go back after every three chapters to clean up, streamline and pretty up.

I'm also very heavy on the dialogue, Shannon, but I tend to think that HELPS my page count. LOL.

Thanks again, Deidre, for the fascinating discussion topic.; 12:34 PM
Deidre Knight said...: I tend to do my polishing up when it's noisy. My quiet time is so rare that I have to go, go, go. Then, when I'm: in an airport, on a plane, sitting while my kids watch a movie, whatever, I can polish and streamline. I think my work style emerges quite a bit from the pace of my life.

I love big dialogue sections! LOL! It's so fun to just roll and roll and then realize you've jammed out 10 pages pretty easily. :)
D; 12:56 PM
Jeanne Damoff said...: Like Diana, I edit as I write, so I rarely produce what could be called a true first draft. However, if ideas are flowing fast and furious, I go ahead and spew the story, refusing to succumb to Perfectionist Man's anal insistence that I labor over each phrase until I've composed the verbal equivalent of a Mozart concerto. :P

But then, when I go back and re-read the previous chapter before launching into the next--to get my bearings and whatnot--I inevitably wind up pruning and polishing before I can stand to move on.

I also work best with big chunks of uninterrupted time. I love getting lost in my characters' heads. Once I reach that zone, I don't want anyone or anything to call me back until I've come to a place of closure. I know some people can do ten minutes in/ten minutes out, but it pushes me to the edge of schizophrenia.

Yeah, so, I sort of went off on a ramble there. I'll stop now.; 6:14 PM
Marley Gibson said...: My ears were burning! LOL! When I'm in the writing groove, I can really crank anywhere from 12 to 20 pages. And yes, the 85 WPM does help, but I think what it is is that when I'm in the blood fever of a story, I see it in my head like a motion picture. At that point, with the fast typing, I'm just literally transcribing what I'm seeing in my head. LOL...only other writers would understand this, eh? = ); 10:56 PM
Deidre Knight said...: Marley, you sound just like Gena! I think my fast typing (about 90-95 wpm) definitely makes a difference. I hadn't actually thought about that! LOL!

D; 9:38 AM