Monday, June 9, 2014

Day 61 - More Plotting Than Writing

I still seem to be stuck in non-verbal mode.  But I'm also really slow on technical stuff right now.  That is, I am easily stymied when I sit down to do something like layout a paper book.  I think that is due to sleep deprivation, though.  (Also the fact that Apple changed some really ridiculous things when it moved up to Mountain Lion operating system.  Like.... they removed "Save As" from their apps, and put in autosave --without warning!  I lost some good work because of that!  But I found a hack that puts it back the way it's supposed to be.  Most of the morning lost.)

I also think I'm a little burned out on In Flight just now.

On the other hand, I seem to be able to do plotting tasks that I was stymied on earlier (when I could write just fine), so maybe this is working out.  I worked mainly on the next two Starling and Marquette books, both of which excite me quite a bit.  And I started early prep work on a story I'm calling "Death of a Plain Girl" as a working title.

And I'm also reading.  This is what usually gets me back into verbal mode.  I'm beginning to warm up to Louise Penny, as I hoped.  And I'm still working my way through more old Frances and Richard Lockridge books.

I discovered something cool: Archive.org has started something it calls the "Open Library" where you can virtually borrow lost books that are not in the public domain from libraries which legally own them.  (They also have some sort of interlibrary loan process for a lot of books that aren't available as ebooks, but I haven't looked into that.)

There are quite a few Lockridge books there - many of which are available as ebooks. I also found some early (lesser known and out of print) books by Charlotte MacLeod, and a good many of the Trixie Belden books. 

I would like to be able to review out of print books and then send you to where you could read them yourself, but so far a lot of those books are only available there as paper copies.

All the same, it's kinda fun to go there and borrow a book, and read a couple of chapters, and return it so others can read while you're doing something else.  (You can keep the books for two weeks, I think, but I figure, why?  Why not check it out only when you're reading it? (Unless it's a popular book with a waiting list.)

See you in the funny papers.


2 comments:

Elizabeth Spann Craig said...

I love Louise Penny's books...total fan. But I do think there might have been a warming up period for me.

Is Trixie OOP?!?! Oh that makes me sad, if that's true. I have most of the set here, I think. Loved those books as a kid.

The Daring Novelist said...

I was sleepy when I typed that last night. I meant that as two separate facts. You can find a lot of OOP books there, and you can find other books there too. (It's whatever the member library has.)

I had a hard time finding the original 5 Tixie Belden books for a while -- and I believe they were doing like they did for the Stratemeyer books; rewriting them every generation. It's possible you could find the original, or at keast earlier, versions of such books, depending on what the libraries have.

It's like stumbling across a library that doesn't throw things away.