D. Lee Jackson

Words and Music

Uninterruptible Power Supply Battle Won!

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I really owe my wife a lot after today—she’s the one who can move around on the floor without her ankles, knees, or scoliosis screaming at her. Anyway, she went above and beyond the call of duty, straightening out a rat’s nest of cables, plugging in power lines to the Uninterruptible Power Supply, and basically listening to me freak out any time she plugged anything in anywhere. In the end, though, everything seems to be working without blowing the circuit breaker. I now have an almost fully-functional music composition computer plugged in and working.

I say “almost” because of two issues—short USB cables. My Wacom Bamboo’s cord is Way-Too Short for a right-hander with a computer on their left side. The same goes for the USB cable that came with my new MIDI controller keyboard. Replacements have been ordered via Amazon Prime and should arrive by Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Sonar X3 is talking to my SC-88 again, after a much-too-long period of silence. The Lexicon Omega is functioning, my MOTU MIDI micro lite is working between Sonar and the SC-88, and my Adam audio monitors aren’t complaining about being plugged into an Isobar power strip instead of the UPS.

Next item up will be an experiment to see if I can run Sonar X3 and Adobe Audition CS6 at the same time, with Sonar handling MIDI playback duties and Audition recording the result through the Omega. I’ve got two monitors in an over/under configuration, so I should be able to see both at the same time.

My wife said it was good to see me sitting at my music computer again. I’m too tired to know right now, but I sincerely appreciate her help and support through this entire process.

Comments? Questions? Please feel free to use the Contact page. Thank you for reading!

Writing in One Direction, or Several?

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I’ve admitted before that I’m a “pantser” when it comes to writing. I get story ideas in my head and enter them into the old laptop, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. There are times, however, that I have a Point A and a Point B in my mind, with no clear path on how to get from one to the other—or worse, several possible paths. How do you deal with such a situation?

In my case, I think I’ve found a solution. Scrivener. If you’ve never heard of it, follow the link and have a look around. It’s got a reputation for having a steep learning curve, but once you go through the tutorial that comes with it, you’ll have all you need to get started. I got talked into trying it during the editing of the first book in my sci-fi series, and I liked enough about it to make the switch away from LibreOffice for the main writing duties for the second book.

Okay, enough of the free publicity. Back to the topic at hand.

One of the things that Scrivener allows you to do is split a chapter into scenes. It stores them on a document tree and with the virtual equivalent of a 3×5 note card, so that you can click on one or the other and immediately go to work on it. In one view mode, you can see the cards against a corkboard of sorts, and even move them around to get your scenes in the proper order. I’ve used this ability to re-order the sequence of events in chapter one of book two, and believe me—it’s a time saver.

One other thing the note cards allow (and the main reason for this post) is the ability to duplicate scenes and work on them as different versions. Not sure you like the ending of a scene, but you want to keep the start? Make a duplicate and edit that copy’s ending. Still not sure? Make another duplicate and edit it. Repeat until done. There’s even a color-code system that lets you tag a card as an “early version,” “first draft,” or even as “rejected,” depending on how you feel.

I’ve brought all of this together in my latest chapter, following the steps above. Using Scrivener’s split-screen function, I have the cork board of cards on one side of the screen and their contents on the other side. This lets me flip back and forth between different versions of a chapter without losing my place or having to worry about keeping track of version numbers, file names, and so on. As the title of this post suggests, I’m exploring several (read: three) different ways to get from Point A to Point B, all on the same screen, and all without fiddling with multiple documents.

Now, how one actually gets from Point A to Point B is beyond the scope of this post, except to say that you don’t have to set one version in stone and alter it later if you’re a pantser like me. Sure, you can use this same technique in something like LibreOffice, as long as you don’t mind keeping track of filenames on your own. It’s just a lot easier if you’ve got a tool like Scrivener to help you along.

Questions? Comments? Please feel free to use the Contact page!

Herding Cats and Writing

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Many of you may remember the “Herding Cats” commercial from several years ago. This is close to what my wife has been trying to do for the past few days since the Garland EF-4 tornado, as I mentioned in a previous post. The only difference is that the cats she’s after are in hiding, either outside the disaster zone or inside the “Red Zone” (i.e., the area deemed too dangerous for anyone to enter).

I’ve thought about her efforts and have come to the conclusion that there is a similarity between her attempts at herding cats and writing. Don’t get me wrong: I am not comparing anything to the level of effort she has put forth (which has been Herculean, considering the chaos and red tape she’s faced). I merely state that what she’s trying to accomplish is similar to what writers have to face whenever we pull out the writing implement of our choice.

First, a confession: I am a pantser. I spent more than a year chasing ideas that had been running up and down the alleyways of my mind. Whenever I’d get one idea in order, another one would either pop up or get out of line. I spent a lot of time going after these stray ideas and getting them back into the herd, only to find that another idea had gone astray when I returned.

There are people who would laugh and give me a hearty “I told you so” over this—people who outline or pre-plot as many details as possible before making keystroke one on their computers. I won’t argue against their methods. For them, they work. I would still suggest that they are gathering their own herd of feral felines and trying to bring them into the final corral as they create their outline/plot/whatever.

I believe ideas don’t come to anyone in the form of an outline. Creativity doesn’t work that way, as far as I know. Non-pantsers still have to herd their own cats, but they spend time chasing them down and putting them into the chute of an outline/plot/etc. before they start writing their novel proper. In short, I believe they do the same thing that a pantser does, but with an extra organizational step between herding and writing.

I can’t work that way. My ideas are seriously feral—even my musical ideas. I have no chutes in my brain with which I can organize my thoughts into a semi-orderly procession before letting them out onto the page. I can only set out a few traps, see what ideas crawl into them, and use them as each trap slams shut.

The point here is that everyone who writes has their own group of cats to herd, be they pantser or organizationalist. You just have to figure out how you want to spend your time chasing them.