* * * * *
                                        
        Jet planes, robot autopsies, Hallowe'en, colds and novel writing
                                        
It's been a fun few days here in the Facility in the Middle of Nowhere.

The Kids' father arrived on Wednesday, much to the delight of the Kids and
myself—I'm sure Spring [1] was a bit ambivilent about it. Also on Wednesday I
could feel a cold slowly coming on.

Thursday the cold hit me. Also, the Kids and their father flew off to
Colorado for the next two weeks or so. We'll have a nice and quiet (and
clean! It's so clean! And it'll stay clean!) home for fourteen days!

[Robot Autopsy I] [2] [3][Robot Autopsy II] [4] [5] Friday brought Hallowe'en
and a full blown cold down on me. Spring spent the day decorating the place
and carving pumpkins, and I spent the day in a haze of sleep and vegetation
in front of the television.

> The secret of becoming a writer is that you have to write. You have to
> write a lot. You also have to finish what you write, even though no one
> wants it yet. If you don't learn to finish your work, no one will ever want
> to see it. The biggest mistake new writers make is carrying around copies
> of unfinished work to inflict on their friends.
> 
> I am sure it has been done with less, but you should be prepared to write
> and throw away a million words of finished material. By finished, I mean
> completed, done, ready to submit, and written as well as you know how at
> the time you wrote it. You may be ashamed of it later, but that's another
> story.
> 

“Jerry Pournelle [6]”

Today I felt half-human (although still far from doing much) and started on
the first bit for National Novel Writing Month [7], banging out about a
thousand words today. A thousand words of pure crap, but a thousand words
none-the-less. Only 49,000 left for NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month)
and 999,000 if I'm following Jerry Pournelle's advice. 

And that pretty much brings us up to date.

[1] http://www.springdew.com/
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2003/11/01/thumb.robot.1.jpg
[3] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2003/11/01/robot.1.jpg
[4] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2003/11/01/thumb.robot.2.jpg
[5] gopher://gopher.conman.org/IPhlog:2003/11/01/robot.2.jpg
[6] http://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/myjob.html
[7] http://www.nanowrimo.org/

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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