Joseph Barbera 1911 - 2006

I just got the news, that Joseph Barbera had died on 18. December. Now both fathers of the Flintstones, the Jetsons and Scooby-Doo are gone.

Thank you Joseph, for everything.

Good Writing/TV: E-Ring

The TV-show E-Ring is [IMHO, of course] one shining example for good writing. Granted, the better the writing, the higher the probability to get some people on the fences. I'm not talking about the subject, I'm talking about the execution of the job, it is flawless. Why don't we see more fast-paced TV-shows like this?

A quick detour: Fast-paced—in that respect—does not imply 120 cuts per minute (or more), as sometimes shown in CSI:NY. I like all incarnations of the CSI-franchise, but CSI:NY always goes to the bottom of my subjective list, if the editors think they need to do faster cuts to increase the pace of the story. But that is another post … ;-)

Back to E-Ring. It might be easier for the script-writer(s) to compose a convincing story, if they can rely on excellent actors. And E-Ring like, e.g. The 4400, has an excellent choice of actors and actresses. Dennis Hopper as Col. McNulty and Benjamin Bratt as Maj. Tisnewski are to be considered a gift for every writer. The same goes for Aunjanue Ellis and Kelly Rutherford. OK, I have to cut into this list; there has been no actor or actress in E-Ring (regarding the episodes I've seen so far) who seems to be wrong for the part or wouldn't have been my first choice, as well. It would be interesting to hear from the writers, if they would have casted someone else for certain parts, though. I'm not saying that I know all actors and actresses available, but it simply fits.

This is a TV-show which I consider as a good example how things should be done.

Technorati Tags: TV-Shows, E-Ring, Dennis Hopper, Benjamin Bratt, Aunjanue Ellis, Kelly Rutherford

A peaceful Thanksgiving to all

May your turkeys be big ;-)

Gadget abuse?

Don't get me wrong here, I love my gadgets as much as any other guy (I don't think it's a guy-thing any more, by the way), but the article Knock off the gadget abuse now gave me some food for thought.

My new way of writing shuts off some of the distractions, and I think most writers are with me on that one: Being interrupted while writing is a Bad Thing™. So what about other times, e.g. research? Sometimes we are able to work our way through the material without being disturbed, at other times, though …

OK, one has to differentiate: There are people we should be available for, but at all times of day, or night for that matter? As I said, it's a judgement call, isn't it?

Technorati Tags: writing, being disturbed, gadgets

Writing: Doing it the Analog Way

I started a new book a while ago — no computer-stuff this time — and decided to do it in a real old-fashioned way: I'm writing longhand (for all the computer-kids out there: using pen and paper). Hearing that Neil Gaiman does the same thing, more or less, when he was interviewed at Cranky Geeks 30, just helped. ;-)

The whole thing started out with one of the most feared things while writing a book[scary music, please]: THE BEGINNING. I had pondered over several versions, but came to no conclusion how to tackle it. Then the usual happened: Inspiration hit me while sitting on a train; my 12" has been acting up again (does not recognize the battery any more) and the only thing in reach was a legal pad. I grabbed it and wrote four pages in one go, besides one short interruption by the conductor, that is. The experience was wonderful, no distractions, no IMs, no e-mail, nothing. Words or phrases I wasn't sure about got a curly line, to be looked up later. I was able to write down my thoughts without any detours. Don't laugh, try it yourself. It is quite a different thing compared to hacking away at the keyboard.

The process (might be refined in the future, I'll let you know) works like this:

1. I write on a legal pad or my Moleskine.


2. After a while, I read the material again and


3. type it into the computer and


4. do the re-writes as I go.

Seriously, give it a try. Comments via e-mail, please. I'm still fighting with the comment-function.

Technorati Tags: Writing, longhand, writing a book in longhand

Books: 'American Gods' by Neil Gaiman

I finished reading American Gods by Neil Gaiman a couple of days ago. Actually, not the edition the link in the sentence before points to, but a paperback edition containing the authors preferred text, means the book contains material which was edited out of the original prints. Let's call it a directors cut for the sake of simplicity.

As mentioned in the post Some Books are like old Friends, I am a big fan of Neil's collaboration with Terry Pratchett. American Gods was the first book I read written by Neil alone.

So what is my verdict? I ploughed through the book in three days, reading at every occasion that presented itself. It is fantastic. It's some kind of mystery-thriller with a good sense of humor, and that is all I intend to say about it. I don't want to talk (write?) about anything else of the story, because I fear I would spoil a great experience for all people who didn't read the book, yet. I would even recommend to everyone not to look to closeley on the book's website, you might rue it, because you found something, you're not supposed to know yet.

The only author posing a similar problem (regarding his books) I know, is Tom Holt. If you ever tried to describe one of his books in enough detail to interest someone in a book written by him, you know what I mean. If you never read a Tom Holt novel, get one while buying American Gods. We are done her, head for the bookstore!

Technorati Tags: Neil Gaiman, American Gods

It's not only web-design

The post If Architects Had to Work Like Web Designers provides an interesting insight into the downside of designing an website. But the scenario can be applied to almost all creative works to be executed, IMHO.
It actually reminds of a writing-project I did once. ;-) On the other hand, my experiences in the last couple of years have been positive, due to competent editors. Nothing beats an editor who understands you and what needs to be done for a book.

Writers-Block is a Myth!

Don't shoot! Hear me out. Granted, the thing called Writers-Block can be a real problem for everyone putting words on a screen or paper for a living. The term describes the fact that the writer is stuck in the flow of the story and does not know how to continue or is simply lacking inspiration. Writing is a craft, an art form, but why haven't we encountered the term Painters-Block then? Or how does a painter / graphic artist deal with a lack of inspiration? I've been told that they start drawing doodles or something completely different; basically they try to get the thing which hinders the flow of creative thoughts out of their system. Interesting, isn't it?

Let's get back to the loathed writers-block. The writer tries to focus on the storyline, wants to further it and zilch, nothing, nada. What happens more than often, in my experience at least, is not that the brain is suddenly devoid of all inspiration, but some other idea is creeping through the mind, blocking the flow of thoughts regarding the story we are working on. Sounds familiar? Thought so. Why don't we borrow from the painters and try to get this idea out of our system by writing it down? Trying to avoid it and focus on something else doesn't work most of the time – been there, tried that. Even if we think that we lost all inspiration, think harder, isn't there something else blocking your flow? Writing this thing down helped me tremendously and I thought I should share the idea.

Technorati Tags: Writers-Block

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

A Glitch in the Matrix, no Template, Sorry.

There was a little glitch in the template, that prevented not only the viewing of the blog, but seems to disable the Atom-Feed, at least temporarily. Apologies for that.

Still, the new Blogger is awesome. I'm almost done with a bigger project—more work than it seemed when I took the tast, but to whom I'm talking to… Sometimes it's simply hard to judge a writing project.
:-)

I'll be back soon, promised.

Movie: National Treasure

I watched National Treasure for the fifth or sixth time yesterday (DVD). I know it's an older movie, I'm still trying to get through my backlog. ;-)

IMHO: It is a story well told. Not flawless, but really gripping. I wouldn't watch a movie that often if it's not well written, even the comical sidekick works (something I'm not always too fond of). Kudos to the actors / actresses / actorpersons(?) as well, the story wouldn't work without a good cast. The well written dialogs and the impecable timing of the cast executing them carries the story over a couple of, let's say, hard to believe plot points, that would not work otherwise.

For example: Nicolas Cage's and Diane Kruger's characters should sport a visible download-socket. Why? Because they seem to have the contents of Wikipedia and Enceclopedia Britannica available for their perusal at any given moment. Granted, there a people in this world with a lot of knowledge at their disposal, but still… On the other hand, seeing the cast spending lots of time in a library might be believable, but is boring to watch. It would slow down the story to a grinding halt. The camera-work and the production design adds to the believability (is this a real word?) of the film, I'll try to catch a re-run in a movie-theater—if possible—just to see the sequence when the treasure is found in its full glory.

I really like the movie and would recommend it to everyone with a fable for fast-paced action which tells a story as well.

Technorati Tags: National Treasure, Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, good writing, Movie

Books: Finished reading Blood Canticle by Anne Rice

I finished reading Blood Canticle by Anne Rice, the latest incarnation of the Vampire Chronicles I got hold of. As mentioned in this post, I really liked the book. Now I'm done reading and I have to say: I really like this book.

IMHO, it maintains a subtle balance between the style of the first couple of books in the Vampire Chronicles series and the more contemplative tone of the later ones. I'm not saying that I didn't like the narrative used in the later books, but I'm still not done with Blackwood Farm, yet. BTW: It seems to me, that having at least an idea what is going on in another series called Lives of the Mayfair Witches by the same author helps to enjoy Blood Canticle even more.

I recommend this book to all readers of the older books, new readers should start from the begining, means start reading the other books first. Interview with the Vampire is still an all-time favorite of mine, the same goes for the other books in the series.

Technorati Tags: Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice, Books

RSS looks weird

Yes, the RSS-feed looks a bit weird at the moment. I switched to the blogger beta and the blog was transfererred. All posts seem to have the same publishing date in RSS. New posts should not be affected.

Just in case you need to know. :-)

Layout changed, Content stays

Longtime readers might notice that the layout has changed, the content is still the same. I'm still fighting with the new system to add an e-mail address that is not that easy to harvest for spammers.
Cross your fingers, please. ;-)

A Faster Way to Train the Spellchecker in OS X

Every author has to love the built-in spellchecker in OS X. Sure, most of the applications in use by authors come with their own spellchecker, isn't it fun to add new words to all of them? That's what I thought. I don't know about you, but I prefer the systemwide solution any time. ;-)

It is just a question of right-clicking to add new words to OS X's spellchecker, but what about transferring lists from one Mac to the other, or bulk-insertions? Let's try the Macintosh-Way™: There has to be a dialog somewhere. Sorry folks, not this time (I could not find a GUI-way of doing this). OK, we have to follow the path of the Geek.

If we never added a word to the custom dictionary in the past, we have to do so now. Type a word, e.g. the name of one of the characters in the new book that's always garnished with this wiggly red line, distracting our attention. Right-click and add to the dictionary. Now comes the geeky part, go to the Library folder in your home-directory and into the folder named Spelling contained in there. You should find a file named en (if you should work in more than one language, then there might be other files as well). Open the file with a suitable text-editor, e.g. TextWrangler or BBedit and you'll see that the added word is in the file followed by a delimiter (looks like a question-mark turned upside-down). Now you're able to add new words to your hearts content (don't forget to copy the delimiter) or paste the words from another machine into this file.

Check your spelling while doing so! ;-)

To cut a long story short, this seems to be the easiest way to add new words to your custom dictionary, used be all well-groomed Cocoa apps.

Technorati Tags: OS X, OS X Spellchecker

Do you want syrup with this book? (On-Demand printing woes)

Lee Goldberg writes about the Espresso Book Machine in his post The End of Book Warehouses?. There are some valid considerations to use such a system, but I buy most of my new books because I had a chance to leaf through the pages first.

Call me old-fashioned, but discovering new authors/books is a hands-on experience [at least for me], so if a book-merchant – utilising said machine – is willing to produce all the books I might be interested in for me to have a look first, I'm fine with the system.

I have to agree, though, that the method allows to purchase books faster that are on my shopping-list anyway. But the latter would pose a problem for the likes of Amazon, printing a book in a matter of minutes beats overnight delivery all the time. ;-)


Technorati Tags: Books

Books: Blood Canticle by Anne Rice

I recently got hold of the book Blood Canticle by Anne Rice.

I'm into the first 80-odd pages of the book and have to say: GREAT! Great story-telling, great scenes, in short: I love this book. It is so different to Blackwood Farm. The main difference – at first glance – is the fact that Lestat does the talking again, means he has written the book.

I found the book by accident, I wasn't actually looking for another book by Anne Rice since I was not able to finish Blackwood Farm, yet.

I'll keep you posted…

Technorati Tags: Vampire Chronicles, Anne Rice, Books