Cleaning out the files

[rolanni]

So, since I'm working on several projects simultaneously, I need one of those desk files for the various project folders.  As it happens, I actually had one of these, but it was (1) filled with files, and (2) had All Sorts of Crap piled on top of it.

Careful excavation produced a nice metal-mesh file holder, which will do nicely.  I pulled out the dusty resident files, thinking I'd be throwing most, if not all of what was in there.

Ah, no.

What I have here are bits and pieces of scenes, story ideas, word lists -- all for the Liaden Universe® and many of which have to still be considered "live" files.  There, I'm in a little bit of trouble, because some of the scenes were printed out on a nine-pin printer -- which is what the dinosaurs used to print out their APA submissions -- and the ink has already faded to the point that the words won't scan.  These pages will have to be retyped, in my abundant spare time.

So, a combination of Argh! and Oh, hey! there.

Also, I find handwritten notes, also fading -- apparently green ballpoint ink doesn't have much of a shelf-life -- which I will reproduce below.  As with similar incidents/finds in the past, no, I don't have the least clue at this remove what these have to do with the story bits they were found with.

The following are possibly from the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs.  Either that, or I noted the title of the book in the margin because I wanted to remember to look for it at the library.

Ahem.

Better an old man's derlyng than a young man's werlyng.

Better be out of the world than out of fashion.

If you're born to be hanged, you'll never drown.

Care killed the cat.

A cat in gloves catches no mice.

A guilty conscience needs no accuser.

So that.

Next up is a single sheet off of one of those pink While You Were Out message pads.  The front -- where you would write the message -- is not filled in.  The notes are on the back of the page. This ink perhaps started off in life as peacock blue.

At the top of the page, closed off in a parallelogram, it must have wanted to be, is:

ref desk
5600

...which happens to have been the extension number of the UMBC Library's Reference Desk, often manned by a cheerful and knowledgeable woman named, if memory serves, Sierra.

Below that, carefully printed, is:

Ho bios brachus, he de techne, makre (gr)

Life is short, art is long.
Hippocrates

I also have here story notes, some of which have been written, others of which I suspect will never be written, but if there's one thing that you learn as a writer is that you never say never.  Also here are the outlines/synopses for the three Jen Pierce books, the lyrics to Shambalya by Three Dog Night, with werewolf story? scrawled in the margin, lists of weird and/or archaic words. . .

Sigh.  I love my process.  It's so idiosyncratic that three-quarters of the time I don't know what to make of my notes.

Oh, wait!  What's this?

. . .

A list of the Houses of Fortune, including Luck, Hazard, Chance, Risk...Oh.  I remember.  That's a short story...or possibly a series of short stories.

Well.  I'm glad I got motivated to excavate the file holder, but I'm not certain but what most of this needs to go right back where it had been.  Which still leaves me with a need for another file holder.

Isn't cleaning grand?

Comments

Say what?

[ednaemode.livejournal.com]

....THREE Jen Pierce books? Barnburner, Gunshy, and ???

Re: Say what?

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

White Sheep.

Explanation:
Way back, I decided to write three mystery stories set in Maine, and I "outlined" three books, titled at that point: Barnburner, Gunshy, White Sheep. I wrote the first two -- Barnburner and Gunshy, because I had time to write spec projects (that means I didn't get any upfront money; I was writing the books because I wanted to, in the hope that someone would buy them when they were done.)

White Sheep, the third mystery, never got written because paying work comes first -- and right now I have paying work, namely five Liaden novels, and I used up my "squeeze a sidebook out in the spaces between Liaden books" dispensation with the two remaining Carousel books -- which were also pay copy.

I hope to write White Sheep someday, but it's not looking that that will happen soon.

Re: Say what?

[ednaemode.livejournal.com]

Ah, now that I know the name, I see you have posted on it a few years ago. I understand about the paying work (kinda nice problem to have, imho) but miss Harry (the quintessential Mainer), Jen and Fox. Ah well, i can probably find someone like Harry around town somewhere!

9-pin

[mothadventures.livejournal.com]

All may not be lost: I have successfully photocopied faded dot-matrix printout (tweaking the settings on the copier to "darker" until the noise level got unacceptable).

This yielded a darker copy that would scan and OCR without issues. Much faster than retyping the whole thing.

Re: 9-pin

[yodachan67.livejournal.com]

Another method, if you have access to a copy of Photoshop, is to scan it in to Photoshop and then play with the contrast and other settings until it is dark enough that it will OCR. There are filters on more recent versions that can also sharpen the image if it is not quite clear enough to OCR. I have successfully done this with the final copy in a six-deep stack of carbon paper copies printed on an old word processor.

[pedanther]

Better an old man's derlyng than a young man's werlyng.

Now, there's a thing. I've never heard that proverb before, but I'd be prepared to bet Dorothy Hewett had when she wrote the play I was in earlier this year.

The male lead and his girlfriend, see, are both teenagers in the first act, and he spends a lot of time sniping at the relative age of the steady, respectable chap her parents favour as her husband-to-be. At one point, when he's trying to talk her into rejecting a gift the other fellow has given her, he asks her if she wants to be "an old man's darling"; her response, more power to her, is "I'm not an old man's anything. I'm not a young man's anything, either."

(I was the "old man". I seem to be getting typecast as the guy who doesn't get the girl - or else the guy who did get the girl and now wishes he hadn't.)