In today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* Not Tag Line Verbs
* More on Ways to Backup Your Files
* Testing Office 365 Alternatives
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quotes of the Day
“What progress we are making. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me. Now they are content with burning my books.” Sigmund Freud
“Every standalone is a new shot at discoverability.” Chuck Wendighttps://terribleminds.com/
“Just because some corporate drone is familiar with what books sell doesn’t make them an expert on what children should be reading. It does, however, represent virtue signaling to other members of the NYC hive mind.” The Passive Guy
Not Tag Line Verbs
In today’s Kill Zone blog, Terry Odell wrote a rare good post titled “How Are They Talking?” You can find it at https://killzoneblog.com/2023/08/how-are-they-talking.html.
I thought the comment I left there would make a good topic for today here as well.
As I’ve written in this Journal more than once,
Any tag line verb should indicate a form of utterance. In other words, you can’t “smile” a line of dialogue. As [Odell] indicated, “said” is the best tag line verb out there, precisely because it is invisible.
However, there are many horrible so-called instructors who teach writing students their tag lines should be interesting. Of course, that defeats the purpose of the tag line, which is to let the reader know which character is talking, but unobtrusively.
As a former editor, I’ve kept a list for several years of inane tag line verbs I’ve seen in manuscripts, everything from “ejaculated” to “sentenced” to “trotted out.”
The list currently contains around 200 verbs, none of which indicate a form of utterance. Anyone who would like a copy should email me at harveystanbrough@gmail.com.
If you’ve encountered any odd verbs in tag lines, please also email me. If the verb (or verbs) you offer isn’t on the list, I’ll add it and give you the non-fiction ebook of your choice as a reward.
For the record, a “tag line” is a bit of narrative that can’t stand alone (doesn’t make sense by itself). For example, “She chuckled” is a brief descriptive narrative that makes sense by itself, not a tag line. “She said,” however, requires something else in order to make sense.
If it were erroneously used as a tag line, “She chuckled” would look like this:
“Let’s have fun tonight,” she chuckled.
Um, nope. You can’t chuckle a line of dialogue. The correct construction with the same words would look like this:
She chuckled. “Let’s have fun tonight.”
If you believe this topic is boring, maybe focus for a moment on being a professional and learning the tools of your trade. If that doesn’t do it for you, consider how many times using tag lines correctly will keep readers from hurling your books across the room. (grin)
More on Ways to Backup Your Files
Re yesterday’s post on ways to backup your files, Russ Jones left an excellent comment:
“To save myself the hassle of keeping up with/plugging in/unplugging a thumbdrive/flashdrive to back up my critical files, I use a 1 TB, 1000 MB/s external SSD that I keep more-or-less permanently connected to a USB port on the back of my computer. I paid $120 for it on Amazon a couple of years ago, but since then the price has dropped to only $70.”
You can find the same solid state drive (SSD) at https://www.amazon.com/ADATA-SE800-IP68-Rugged-ASE800-1TU32G2-CBK/dp/B07V1H939C/ref=sr_1_3.
You can also find a 1TB USB C Flash Drive for only $31.97 (20% off) at https://www.amazon.com/WANSISEN-MacBook-Storage-Android-Computers/dp/B09DX76WD5/ref=sr_1_7_sspa.
For my own purposes I split the difference and bought a Netac 250GB Portable SSD (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B088BS3BDD/ref=sspa_dk_detail_9) for $26.39 (41% off). The read, write, and transfer speeds were important to me, and I only want to back up my writing (not photos, videoa, etc.).
My entire HarveyStanbrough.com folder is currently less than 19GB, and it contains all my writing plus other things, so I don’t think I’ll outgrow this device anytime soon. (grin)
But key in “portable SSD,” select the size you want in megabytes or gigabytes from the dropdown list, and go exploring for yourself.
All of this brings up another point, too. The external hard drive (or thumb or flash drives) are a great option for those who don’t trust the cloud or who understand (as I do) that the cloud can be gone in an instant.
All it would take is for a rude sboot to kick a plug out of the wall, figuratively speaking. And with constantly increasing cyber-threats (at least as presented by “news” organizations), that is a distinct possibility. Can you say “a world without the internet?”
In the final analysis, I decided it’s better (for me) to set up and maintain a redundant combination of cloud and mechanical storage, which is why I just bought the Netac 250GB Portable SSD.
I personally recommend plugging in the SSD at the beginning of each day and unplugging it at the end. For connectivity and risk if your computer gets fried from a surge (but of course, you have an appropriately resistant surge protector, right?), the external SSD is no different than a thumb drive.
Probably it wouldn’t hurt to have a paper copy of everything too, but that’s a step too far for me, aside from the products that are already published in paper.
As always, your path will probably differ, and that’s perfectly fine.
Testing Office 365 Alternatives
I recently downloaded both WPS Office and LibreOffice, two viable alternatives to Microsoft Office 365. (Apache OpenOffice was last updated back in 2014.)
I learned from my wife that we just renewed our annual subscription to Office 365 in June. So I have the better part of a year to decide which office program I want to use in the future.
Since I have that safety net, I’ll be writing with LibreOffice Writer and WPS Office, maybe bouncing back and forth, maybe writing one story with one and the next with the other. May the better program win.
That should give both of them a real, practical test, at least for my requirements. When I’ve decided how to rank them and why, I’ll report back here.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “Why Do Streaks?” at https://deanwesleysmith.com/why-do-streaks/.
See “Series vs Standalone: Cage Match” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/series-vs-standalone-cage-match/.
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 1030
Writing of Blackwell Ops 9: Cameron Stance
Brought forward………………………… 4087
Day 1…… 1595 words. To date…… 5682
Day 2…… 2101 words. To date…… 7783
Day 3…… 2573 words. To date…… 10356
Day 4…… 1588 words. To date…… 11944
Writing of Rose Padilla (WCG10SF5)
Day 1…… 4283 words. To date…… 4283
Day 2…… 3963 words. To date…… 8246
Day 3…… 1463 words. To date…… 9709
Day 4…… 2445 words. To date……12154
Fiction for August……………………… 18460
Fiction for 2023………………………… 133007
Fiction since August 1………………… 18460
Nonfiction for August…………………… 13600
Nonfiction for the year……………… 163500
Annual consumable words………… 296507
2023 Novels to Date……………………… 2
2023 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2023 Short Stories to Date……………… 4
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………… 73
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)… 221
Short story collections…………………… 31
Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
As a reader, it seems to me that whenever a writer uses “creative” attributions instead of the simple, straight-forward “said” it’s an attempt by the writer to convince the reader that s/he, the writer, is what’s special about the story, rather than the story itself. It’s essentially a peacock, preening, “Hey, look at me! I’m a brilliant ‘AUTHOR’! See how erudite I am?” To which my response is “If you have to use a bunch of ten-dollar words to tell your story, you’re not much of a storyteller.”
I couldn’t agree more, Russ.