ROW80 Update

A Round Of Words In Eighty Days Update

Just under 10 days left. I am pretty frazzled and I want to get to the read through, and last rewrite. I need to let my brain rest a little, so I'm thinking I will probably switch my minutes goals away from blog posts and into reading. (Or a mix.)

Sunday Day 69 - 0 Minutes. Full day, needed time off. (But did get to see Arthur Christmas -- very fun.)

Monday Day 70 - 137 minutes. Wrote three blog posts. One of which I posted that night. Also did some organizing and schedule work off the clock.

Tuesday Day 71 - 41 minutes. Wrote part of a new series on discoverability. But it was partly exploratory writing -- I think I wrote a lot more words, and a lot more repetitive words, than are necessary to my point. And I'm not sure I actually got to my point yet.

Posting Schedule?

Just one more post this week: I'll be posting Thursday an update on my pricing experiments. (Although I might slip in a quick post of interesting links and videos on Friday or Saturday.)

One of my unofficial goals is to start the year with enough posts to cover me over the next dare period (Jan-Mar) for at least two posts a week for this blog (aside from updates) and also a short blog tour. I've got quite a few rough drafts of posts in a folder, but no sense of discipline in figuring out what posts I want to put up now, and what later.

Frankly, I'd LIKE to post some things I haven't written yet and don't feel like writing now.

I'd also like to get back to posting short stories, and by golly, I realize we're getting darn close to Christmas, aren't we? On Monday, I will post one of my favorite little stories -- a seasonal Noir story called "Deadmen Don't Eat Fruitcake."

Movies Seen

This past few days I've mostly been watching things on YouTube.

Death at Broadcasting House (Phoenix 1934). I really don't know if this is actually in the public domain, but I've never seen it on tape or disk, so I don't feel guilty about watching it on YouTube. As with a lot of British films of the period, it's awkward and stagey, and the poor soundtrack makes it hard to hear everything the fast-talking actors say. Also, like so many mysteries of the time (Brit or US) the sets and costumes look so much alike much of the time, it can be hard to follow who is doing what to whom, especially at the beginning.

Still, it's a fun story: in a busy night at an early equivalent of Radio City Music Hall (i.e. Broadcasting House in London), a murder is committed live on the radio during the broadcast of a murder mystery show. This picture is short, and light on story -- much of the time is filled with the real life variety acts going on in other recording studios -- but reasonably fun to watch. (68 minutes.)

Wilful Peggy (Biograph 1910) An early Mary Pickford two-reeler. She had only started in pictures a year before, and had been making dozens of short films (like two a week) for D.W. Griffith. Griffith had a thing about ethereal wilting maidens, and Pickford was always fighting him on that. So he let her play this one the way she wanted, in a story about a spunky young peasant girl who is married off to a old nobleman, and can't get the hang of courtly manners -- but also is pretty darned good at taking care of herself when she gets into trouble.

This two-reeler is in two parts (one 10 minutes and the other 3 minutes) and most of the fun stuff happens toward the end.

See you in the funny papers.