Droid Camera

While driving home from Zion Nat'l Park a couple of weeks ago i snapped some pics when it was my turn to be a passenger. I'm always amazed at the quality of pictures you can get with a phone camera. I mean those are some serious cloud pictures and i got them by pointing the damn Droid out the front windshield.

I guess phone cameras are getting better and better. This is a test post, by the way. I'm experimenting with posting from my Droid while riding home on the 6 Parnassus MUNI bus.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.6.4

Writing Life: My Three Month Timeline

Pictured here is my three month timeline which shows all my writing projects and steps I want to take. Each project has its own color. I thought about just making a list of steps and printing it out but realized I'd have to keep printing out the list every time it changed. I also thought about using index cards but didn't feel right about wasting an entire card on one task. With the color coded post-its I can move things around, add tasks, subtract them. Also, I can see at a glance where I am with each project even from far away.

It's such a relief not to have all that stuff in my head, weighing me down, and I love that I can just glance to my right to see where I am and what I need to do next. I love it!

End of October Junk Mail

Here's what's going on with me:

• I'm still unemployed. I'm looking for a job but it's pretty tough out there. I'm approaching the ceiling of my salary range and I'm getting low balled salary-wise. The funny thing is employers want someone who has my level of experience but don't want to pay for it. I suppose they'll hire someone they can pay a lot less who says they can do the job. Good luck with that. Word to the wise: if you're looking for a job and have a lot of years of experience, stay away from labor and unemployment law firms. They don't pay shit and they want a ton of trial experience. Fuck that.

• Further to the previous item, if it turns out I can't get a job without taking a big pay cut it might be time for me to leave the law altogether and do something I really like. No sense getting paid nothing and working like mad for attorneys. I don't know what I'd do but I'm sure I can think of something. Any suggestions?
  

• I'm almost done with my short story. It's an employee ghost story. I had it critiqued at my writing group and I'm going to submit it for publication. We'll see how it goes. I'm looking at it as a learning experience, an experiment as in "how many times can I submit this thing before someone finally says yes?"

• I'm going to draft the next novel during November's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Damn, that's less than a week away! I'm betting I'll finish the required 50,000 words before Thanksgiving weekend. We'll see how I do. Heh.

• My newest obsession is the BBC TV show "Sherlock." Here's the trailer link. They're showing it on PBS right now though I don't know the schedule since I still don't watch TV. I read about it and noted it was created by two writers who work on "Doctor Who." I'm a long time "Doctor Who" fan. I told my brother and he ordered the DVDs from Amazon.uk. We watched the entire series, then watched them again with commentaries, and watched the documentaries in mid-September. There are only three episodes but I just LOVE them! They're coming out with a second series next year. My brother and I are hating that we have to wait that long for the next episodes.

• I'm still working on my current novel. I'm in the research phase which is substantial since this is a historical novel. By my calculations I should start working on the third draft by mid-January. I'd hoped to go back to Nuremberg and Ansbach to do more research in December but that's not going to happen. I really wanted to be there for the Christmas Market and the snow.

• At some point I'm going to polish up "FailSafe" (my weird story on "Fainting in Coils"), rewrite and expand "The Asides," probably write a new side story or two for it, and turn it into a hardcover book. In fact, I may include the other two super personal stories starring me and Mr. Gryphon, including "The Coda" and the story about the nightmare. I may even include a section with my favorite posts with Mr. Gryphon in a separate section though I'll probably rewrite, polish some of it. Why not? I might even attempt to illustrate it but I think that's way too ambitious for me. My mother writes poetry and we went onto Blurb.com to create a beautiful softcover book of her poems. Some of my photography is in the book. Her poetry book is so gorgeous that I'm going to do the same for "FailSafe." I'll likely only create one, maybe two. It's just for me. I have no intention of trying to sell it. I'll probably do this in January as a way to take a break from writing the third draft of my novel.

That's pretty much it. Thanks for reading. More substantial posts to come a little later.

Trip to Zion National Park - The Pictures

Enjoy!

Zion National Park October 2010