In today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* The Novel
* Someone at Google Sucks
* Of Interest
Quote of the Day
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” Isaac Asimov
The Novel
I’ve settled on the next novel. It will be SF, The Stirchians, the long-awaited (ha) sequel to The 13-Month Turn (description here).
I offer the description because you can get The 13-Month Turn free in .mobi, .epub, or .pdf for a limited time by emailing me at harveystanbrough@outlook.com (note the new email address) or at my regular email address (for now) harveystanbrough@gmail.com. If you’re a fan of science fiction, detailed lunar colonies, and human foibles, I think you’ll like it.
If the title of this new one seems familiar to you, I’d started The Stirchians before, a good while back, but I allowed it to stall. I think I just wasn’t interested in writing it at the time.
Now I’m extremely interested. In fact, I can hardly wait to see what happens to Rose Perkins, and what Will will do, if anything, to help her, and whether and how the Stirchians hold on to their latest acquisition, the earth.
Back when I started this novel before, I wrote only 5700 words, so I decided to toss those out completely and start fresh. I will do that today.
I was going to start writing it yesterday, and I sat down five different times to do that, but each time I was distracted. I wound up helping my neighbor clean up a pile of junk. Around 3:30 I finally gave up on trying to write and went up to the house. Shrug. Things happen. (That’s exactly why daily word count goals reset to zero every morning.)
By the way, I hope to finish this one on or before October 21—that will keep me “on schedule”—but I hasten to add that’s only a secondary concern. The priority is that the story is as long as it needs to be. Cheers!
But enough about me. What are you writing? If you aren’t writing, and if you’re a writer, I suggest you get on with it. (grin) Writers write.
Someone at Google Sucks
Well, I might have to change my email address soon. This morning in my email I received a note that read, in part, “Soon after October 13, 2-Step Verification will be turned on automatically.”
WHAT? (scowl) WHY?
Yeah, I know. Repeat after me, class. “2-step verification is ‘more secure’.”
Well, so is 3-step or 7-step or—why not–53-step verification. But they won’t push us that far, will they? Because too many of us will leave. And that’s where I am with 2-step verification.
Offering it is fine. Even wonderful. But forcing it on us is not. Not that it’s any of Google’s business, but I haven’t turned on 2-step verification because I seldom carry my phone with me, and apparently that is a requirement.
You can’t even set 2-step verification to send a code to something other than your phone, like your alternate email address (which they also require). I suspect that’s because if they did send the verification code to your alternate email address, too many people would realize, Hmm, why not just use the alternate email address and skip Google’s stupid games altogether?
Go ahead. Say I’m being ridiculous. That’s exactly how I feel about Google when I enter my complicated password and they prompt me to “prove” it’s me.
I’d love to respond with, “Um, how about this: if it wasn’t me, I wouldn’t have entered the bgfr&z9%gy#$ing password that GOOGLE required in the first place. If I must use 2-factor authentication, I might as well set my password to “password.”
But I’m not even allowed to respond to Google and argue my point or, even ask why they can’t keep their paws off my account. I can’t respond at all. Because whatever policy-making control-freak coward decided to force 2-, 3-, 7-, or 53-step authentication on me is hiding behind anonymity somewhere.
Tell you what, I’d go through as many steps as necessary to get my hands on him. Offer up that individual as a prize and I’ll jump through all the hoops you want.
I don’t like control freaks, but chances are, I’ll never be able to escape them. Well, unless I stop using email completely. Because in our lemming-like nation, what one major email provider does, most other major email providers will do as well because OhMyGod if they did anything unique and different they’d probably die of a panic attack.
Stay in lockstep, Little Johnny. Do it exactly like everyone else is doing it. Vee must all arrife togezzer!
If you couldn’t tell, this whole thing makes me want to chew wheels and spit nails. I need to escape for awhile.
Guess I’ll go write fiction, where actual reasonable people do reasonable things in a reasonable world and control freaks get their bothersome little fingers snipped off one at a time with lopping shears.
Because if they weren’t able to type up their annoying, intrusive little rules and then impose them on everyone else via an electronic suppository, now THAT would make the world a happier, more secure place.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “Publishing Non-Fiction the Strategic Way Without Delays” at https://www.amarketingexpert.com/2022/10/04/publishing-non-fiction-the-strategic-way-without-delays/. Seems to me these matter for fiction too.
See “Inside one of the world’s first human composting facilities” at https://www.theverge.com/c/23307867/human-composting-process-return-home. Story ideas, anyone?
See “New In-Person Workshops Location” at https://deanwesleysmith.com/new-in-person-workshops-location/.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 910 words
Writing of The Stirchians (novel, tentative title)
Day 1…… XXXX words. Total words to date…… XXXXX
Total fiction words for October……… 8202
Total fiction words for the year………… 128584
Total nonfiction words for October… 4970
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 158190
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 286774
Calendar Year 2022 Novels to Date…………………… 2
Calendar Year 2022 Novellas to Date……………… 0
Calendar Year 2022 Short Stories to Date… 0
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 68
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31
Disclaimer: In this Journal, in addition to getting a little grouchy occasionally, I discuss various aspects of the writing craft. I advocate trusting the characters to tell the story that they, not the writer, are living. This is by far the easiest, most liberating, and most fun way to tell a story.