If these guys are right…

…we'll see a lot more movies and books about kids growing up. Oh wait…r>;-)

Writing: Is the Process the Solution?

It seems like that, if you take a closer look at Howard Michael Gould on "Page Fright", that is. To be honest, this is pretty much the way I'm approaching my own book-projects or articles (the longer ones; blog-posts are handled in a different way, or not, it depends ;-)). Every writer should read the above mentioned post. But (you guessed it, didn't you?), there is something I have to add and spare you the learning-experience in the process.

Especially when starting book-projects, Backups, no BACKUPS, no [louder] BACKUPS. They not only give you some peace of mind, they are an insurance for everybody involved, thus they should be distributed to another location (hint: gmail for example). Let's face it, even the most elaborate work ends up as a couple of kilobytes, or a megabyte max when zipped, so what's keeping you from storing it somewhere else? Right, nothing. What about the format of the backup? Either XML or some other format that transports well between different programs (with the added bonus that you're able to compress it into really small files).

The proof of the pudding was the size of the compressed XML-files of a 400-odd page book compared to the same book in Word-format, the former was about 500 KB, the latter some two to three megabytes. It might be not your cup of tea (or coffee), but, in worst case, XML can be changed in almost any text-editor available on a computer. This is not to suggest, that everyone should start writing in XML, but to take a closer look if the software used for writing is able to export the data in this format (and read it back in without loosing anything, of course). It might save your day, when your writing-software wants to phone home before letting you make an important change and there is no way of connecting to the Internet. Just a thought.

Technorati Tags: writing, backup, XML

Technorati Tags down? [update]

Is it just me or is there a problem at Technorati and the tagging system? I just researched (OK, clicked) the Vampire Chronicles tag and have been told, that there are no tags for the subject. Strange, indeed.

For the un-initiated, searching for a tag displays a list of blog-posts tagged with this, well, tag.

Everything is working OK again, no idea what happened.


Technorati Tags: Technorati, Tags

Some Books are like old Friends

I mean it, seriously. The current project is (almost) finished and I wanted to read a book. The question is, am I able to really enjoy reading a new book, or do I need something familiar, a.k.a. one of my all-time favorites? I don't think I'm ready for option one, yet. Working on a book is just that, work. Appreciating the narrative of a new book requires, IMHO, a different mindset than the one I have right now. Therefore I decided to search my all-time favorites and found just what I needed:

Good Omens

I bought the UK-paperback years ago – the first edition is from 1990 – I went through the book at least three to four times and enjoyed it immensely. The same goes for this time around, I really love this book.

Back to my opening statement, isn't it nice to open a book, feel right at home, paired with the expectation of the things to come? Basically the same as watching one of your favorite movies, you know what to expect, you know how it ends, you're free to enjoy this work of art. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett delivered just that – if you are into British humor, of course.

The book is still available and there will be a new paperback edition hitting the US-shores in December, if I understood it right. So, if you never heard about this book, take a look.

Technorati Tags: Books, Neil Gaiman, Terry Pratchett, Good Omens