tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post4071110510950432904..comments2023-10-03T11:41:21.191+01:00Comments on The Truth About Lies: White pebbles and burning issuesJim Murdochhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-29004358718617065342008-02-21T12:21:00.000+00:002008-02-21T12:21:00.000+00:00Glenn, backing up once a year is probably not ofte...Glenn, backing up once a year is probably not often enough. I keep copies of my work on two separate machines. I also use <I>Word's</I> own backup option when I'm working on a piece to make sure I have two copies in case one gets corrupted.<BR/><BR/>In <I>Word</I> when you hit <B>Save As</B> select <B>Tools</B> from the menu bar, from there select <B>Save Options</B> from the pull-down menu and tick the <B>Always create backup</B> copy box. It will then always save a <B>.wbk</B> copy of your document in addition to the <B>.doc</B> file.<BR/><BR/>The reason I'm a bit paranoid about backups is due to the fact that, due to a computer mishap, when I was transferring the final copy of my first novel from floppy disk to my hard drive I managed to corrupt the damn thing and the last backup I had at the time was only 40000 words long. I literally had to rewrite the last 10000 words again working from, what I'm grateful to say were excellent, notes. I have to say there was no talking to me for a good couple of days after that.Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-5866473679498902222008-02-21T00:02:00.000+00:002008-02-21T00:02:00.000+00:00I save all my poetry & fiction, too. And I tend to...I save all my poetry & fiction, too. And I tend to think there's something worthwhile in it; that's harder to maintain when actually reading it, but, still, there's the occasional spark or jolted memory in what otherwise ought to be tinder.<BR/><BR/>For awhile I didn't make any effort to save my blog writings. Then I realized how much I'd written and in the rereading how much more interesting it was than that ancient yellowed juvenilia. So now I archive it in a Word file. And once a year or so I remember to do a backup.Glenn Ingersollhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10674475308395975995noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-59356045134322319852008-02-19T11:54:00.000+00:002008-02-19T11:54:00.000+00:00Jim: I will check out Shooting the Past. After I g...Jim: I will check out <I>Shooting the Past</I>. After I get my copy of <I>Fresh</I>.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-83132083022612976192008-02-18T11:04:00.000+00:002008-02-18T11:04:00.000+00:00Very interesting, Gabe. I think you would apprecia...Very interesting, Gabe. I think you would appreciate the <A HREF="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Poliakoff " REL="nofollow">Stephen Poliakoff</A><BR/>drama <A HREF="http://www.amazon.com/Shooting-Past-Lindsay-Duncan/dp/B000FL7CC8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1203331987&sr=1-1" REL="nofollow"><I>Shooting the Past</I></A> if you have not seen it already. It's about a photograph library that is threatened with demolition and to be honest the drama is almost worth watching simply for the photos let alone the stories that get woven from them.Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-70529230239980639202008-02-18T09:15:00.000+00:002008-02-18T09:15:00.000+00:00Jim, just a couple of anecdotes.1I recall picking ...Jim, just a couple of anecdotes.<BR/>1<BR/>I recall picking up a shell from the beach when I was quite small. I took it home with the intention of making something from it. What, I have no idea, but I was on that sort of kick at the time. I was inconsolable when at last I realised that it was utterly useless. How could something that beautiful be useless?<BR/>2<BR/>The one piece of writing I wish I still had was the first poem I ever finished to my satisfaction. I was into cycle racing at the time, and it was a ballad, the story of a race told from the perspective of the victor. (Me, I suppose!) it was a parody of the John Masefield poem about a fox - can't recall the title off-hand. Rubbish, but I wish I had it.<BR/>Don't know how either of those might help anyone, though.Dave Kinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08430484174826768488noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-50940340491440818602008-02-17T23:07:00.000+00:002008-02-17T23:07:00.000+00:00I have a friend who for more than 20 years has wri...I have a friend who for more than 20 years has written a weekly column for the NY Times Real Estate Section on historic buildings in NY. His fascination is in the lives of the people who lived in the buildings, not so much on the buildings themselves. He will as much tell you that in 1896 Mabel Smith raised and sold rabbits in the garden that was behind the brownstone at 20 West 34th Street as to tell that it is the building where Brooke Astor lived out her last years.<BR/><BR/>He spends his professional days reading old records, pouring through personal diary entries, handling old photographs, wandering from library to museum, talking with folks that know the recent past, sifting through the most mundane of details of the human history.... and once a week he writes a column.<BR/><BR/>He took me to a private library one day in Manhattan that has a collection of documents that is kept in a vault that people need to wear face masks and gloves to enter. There are no windows or any sunlight that would accelerate the decay of the books. Actually, he took me to the part that could be entered and showed me the locked door for the part that we could not enter.<BR/><BR/>I have, from my friend, gained a very deep respect for the incredible value of the personal diary as a window on the lives of common people of our past.<BR/><BR/>I do not keep a diary.<BR/><BR/>At the Thomas Edison Historical Site in West Orange, NJ many years ago they built an underground vault for document storage. It is temperature and humidity controlled. They say that they have 1M documents connected with Edison stored there.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-33560430310856627912008-02-17T18:09:00.000+00:002008-02-17T18:09:00.000+00:00Gabriel--that's hilarious. And I have to say the l...Gabriel--that's hilarious. And I have to say the loony character's diary is far more interesting than mine!Conda Douglashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12972790965426924941noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-63463274056764548812008-02-17T13:44:00.000+00:002008-02-17T13:44:00.000+00:00As an exercise for myself, Dick, I've been taking ...As an exercise for myself, Dick, I've been taking part in the daily-ish challenge from <A HREF="http://unskilledpoet.blogspot.com/" REL="nofollow">Unskilled Poet's</A> site. Normally I can't be bothered with these things and I'm not sure what prompted me this time but I've managed to pull something together for every one. I don't feel the need to add every one to my canon of work mind (which I keep in a four-ring binder and is so heavy you could beat someone to death with it, a metaphor which never ceases to amuse me). Some of them made it. I usually give the poems to my wife and ask, "Is it a keeper?" but she thinks I should hang onto everything.<BR/><BR/>It was the blogs I was thinking about, not that I have any pressing need to delete my early entries yet. I'm still coming to terms with what they mean to me and I'm not sure I've an answer yet. I was thinking I might rework a few into articles and repost them on some of these sites I keep joining but never quite get round to writing articles for. We'll see.<BR/><BR/>It's like the article in <I>The Telegraph</I> a wee while back revelling in the title <A HREF="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2007/12/07/do0706.xml" REL="nofollow">Philip Larkin - poet or pop star?</A>. I grued when I read it (I felt embarrassed for the man) and I thought about the poem I wrote for one of the girls I used to work with who happened to mention how she hated pulses – I wrote a poem in lisp entitled 'Repultith Pulthiths' – and how I'm glad no copy exists; it's <I>not</I> what I want to be remembered for.<BR/><BR/>It's not that I think the poem was garbage to pick up on your point, Carma, because it actually wasn't, it was quite clever, but it served its purpose. It was designed for one person's pleasure. It did what it was intended to do. It made her happy. I got a hug out of it. All was well with the world for a few minutes.Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-24980958865608960432008-02-17T08:26:00.000+00:002008-02-17T08:26:00.000+00:00A good post, Jim. Hang on to it all: it's to do wi...A good post, Jim. Hang on to it all: it's to do with where & what you've been.<BR/><BR/>I have stuff in a tattered ring binder from my teens. Awful, awful rubbish, nearly all of it, trying so hard to be Ginsberg/Kerouac. But my English teacher, the poet Brian Merrikin Hill, read it all with great forbearance & spoke to me quietly & kindly about writing from what you know.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-19798326639349526672008-02-17T03:54:00.000+00:002008-02-17T03:54:00.000+00:00I kept all of my college essays and papers. It's a...I kept all of my college essays and papers. It's a good way to make comparisons. Inadvertently through moving I lost a few stories and was sorry that I had. Why would someone throw away something they created unless they thought it was garbage?<BR/><BR/>But then again it is all a matter of preferance.Carma Dutrahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13552905128829205617noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-36216113991428595312008-02-17T01:07:00.000+00:002008-02-17T01:07:00.000+00:00I'm not so sure that Pound was that wrong, Gabe. W...I'm not so sure that Pound was that wrong, Gabe. When I look back over all my writing most of it has been me working out things. It's why I keep drifting back to the same ol' topics time and time again, I'm trying to find better, more accurate, more concise ways of saying what I've been trying to say all my life. <BR/><BR/>I've often wondered what odd lines of mine like that would make it into a book of quotes. I have several books like that and even the greats like Wilde and Shaw are lucky to get a page to themselves; most end up with two or three entries. I could probably warrant half-a-dozen on a good day.Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-86277681097337070602008-02-16T22:35:00.000+00:002008-02-16T22:35:00.000+00:00conda,Movie I watched this afternoon, Angel in Kra...conda,<BR/><BR/>Movie I watched this afternoon, <I>Angel in Krakow</I> has a character a bit loony who insists that the angel (a scruffy overweight Polish guy sent down to earth from Heaven to do a good deed daily) read his writing, his diary, that reads, "Monday. Yes. Tuesday. Yes. Thursday. No." then insists the angel read on to the next page, "Friday - Theology!" The angel looks at the writer who bursts out laughing as if the final mystery has been revealed. The angel says, "Oh, you are a..." "Journalist," shouts the loony guy.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-64646786663095174522008-02-16T22:28:00.000+00:002008-02-16T22:28:00.000+00:00For the most part other people save my crap. I try...For the most part other people save my crap. I try to save it only to the extent that I am still working on it... all of it that I run across I am still working on.<BR/><BR/>I regret having lost the short story so many decades ago that my mother remembers as the one that she likes. She keeps asking me if I have found it again. She has never liked as well any of my other attempts over the years. Since it was my mother put up with and encouraged most of my youthful enthusiasm, and had to listen to me, and had to listen to me talk about what I was trying to do, I hold it still to this day a measure to write a story that she would enjoy.<BR/><BR/>I do have assortments of earlier work laying about. I don't find it all so terribly bad. I do still have the faculty to remember what I might have meant then. But I also have for years been a practitioner of either throwing away everything that is total crap, or working harder to try to produce less of it.<BR/><BR/>Another thing Pound said was that all a writer ever has of worth to say in their life they could put on one sheet of paper... that was bombastic hyperbole... then again, a life as a writer can be spent trying to figure out which of all the papers is the 'one.' I am still sorting through my old papers and making news ones in search of that one special key to the mystery.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15887517793752604788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6327348657265652781.post-39582404071751077032008-02-16T22:20:00.000+00:002008-02-16T22:20:00.000+00:00There's only one type of my writing that I want di...There's only one type of my writing that I want disposed of when I die: my diaries. I don't think it will be a problem though. Anybody who reads these really personal lists of events and the weather will be bored to tears in a half page!Conda Douglashttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12972790965426924941noreply@blogger.com