Notes from the notebooks
Jul. 8th, 2012 12:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
julesjonesSo this morning I decided that the best way to start playing with the sound recorder in Audio Commander was to dig out one of my old story notebooks and read from that. This means I've got a written version to refer back to, in order to check the dictation without having to listen to my own voice, which is something I always find very offputting. It's also doing something useful, because I've got some notes and scraps of stories I might still want to work on some day which I've never got around to typing up.
First problem: find the notebooks. They weren't where I first looked, which is in the small filing cabinet next to my desk, which tends to get used as a dumping ground for Stuff. nor were they in the box of stationery bits and pieces on the bookcase behind me. I thought at first that I must have tidied them away before a parental visit (because who wants their parents reading their porn notes), and then I remembered that for once in my life I had been Organised, and put them away in the archive filing cabinet.
And that's where they were. Five notebooks, one of which was blank and one which has only a couple of paragraphs of a fanfic story the rest of which has completely disappeared from my memory. I suspect it's fallen down the memory hole which was the reason why I started carrying the A6 size notebook around in my handbag in the first place -- there were a couple of years where I had no short-term memory whatsoever, courtesy of medication side effects, and if I didn't write stuff down as soon as I thought of it, it would be gone for good.
Another book is largely notes to do with when I was an editor on the Hermit website, or fannish travel arrangements. There's a couple of pages of dialogue for a fanfic story I'll never write now But it also includes the genesis of Ghost Train, the short story which is currently on submission with Penumbra. That dates it to early 2001. Amusingly, the following page has what appears to be notes about the minimum spec I needed when buying a new computer on moving to California. One of the notes is that it must have a high-quality sound card to use with Dragon. :-) And the list starts with the requirement that it be at least a 700 MHz CPU, with 128 MB of RAM, probably the minimum specs for running version 4 of Dragon. It also must have a CD-RW drive, and should have a Zip drive available, with possibly a tape streamer for backup of the full hard drive. Yes, children, only a decade ago you had to pay extra to be able to write data to CD, it didn't come as standard.
And as mentioned in yesterday's post about Dragon, I was thinking about buying a digital recorder.
The next book has something I probably need to digitise and drop in the folder for the relevant story--initial notes for the Knights Templar story. Then yet more fragments of fanfic that have fallen down the memory hole.
The first 500 words of my take on the Elves and the Shoemaker. Again, this was during the Swiss cheese memory period--if I recall correctly, I wrote this in airport loungeson my way to Eclecticon 2001. (ETA: on second thoughts, it may have been on the way to/from Writers Weekend 2005, or to/from Worldcon 2004--I have a vague association with being stoned on codeine for dental problems, and with flying North from SF - checking my manuscript database shows that it must have been started between MIndscan and Pulling Strings, which means it was when I was flying to Oregon to meet up with SarahT prior to the Worldcon road trip.) I have no idea what was going to happen next, but there's enough of it there that I can probably continue it anyway. Good one for testing the sound recorder, I think.
The last book is the one actually marked Story Ideas on the cover. Notes for several fanfic stories. Then a couple of notes for Ghost Train, including a line which I wish I'd put in the story. I must've worked from the notes on the other notebook only. There's a note about the Ballad of John Axon, which made no sense until I looked it up and realised that it must have been a song Watervole told me about when I told her the plot of the story.
Ooh--brief notes for a vampire story. I can't remember where this was going, but I think in this case it may be because I didn't know at the time. I think I just got a sudden plot bunny and scribbled it down. I think I want to write this if I can come up with some more plot for it.
First five pages of a futuristic using virtual reality. It's fairly scrappy, but for once I do actually have some idea of where it was going next. I think this might be one of experimenting with dictating new material into an audio file. There's certainly enough there to practice using the sound recorder.
"Calculator in bag of sex toys" -- what on earth was that about?
Notes from a research panel at an SF con -- slightly outdated now but still relevant, and I should probably write it up
Another couple of pages of the VR story.
Some one line plot bunnies -- one of them turned into "A Sparrow Flies Through", currently in submission; I should try to write the stories for the other two.
Proof that I am a geek -- the calculations to get the right cock lengths for men of known heights, in a very literal dick-size war where they end up arguing about as a proportion of height as well as raw numbers. :-) (I really enjoyed writing that one...)
More one line plot bunnies.
First problem: find the notebooks. They weren't where I first looked, which is in the small filing cabinet next to my desk, which tends to get used as a dumping ground for Stuff. nor were they in the box of stationery bits and pieces on the bookcase behind me. I thought at first that I must have tidied them away before a parental visit (because who wants their parents reading their porn notes), and then I remembered that for once in my life I had been Organised, and put them away in the archive filing cabinet.
And that's where they were. Five notebooks, one of which was blank and one which has only a couple of paragraphs of a fanfic story the rest of which has completely disappeared from my memory. I suspect it's fallen down the memory hole which was the reason why I started carrying the A6 size notebook around in my handbag in the first place -- there were a couple of years where I had no short-term memory whatsoever, courtesy of medication side effects, and if I didn't write stuff down as soon as I thought of it, it would be gone for good.
Another book is largely notes to do with when I was an editor on the Hermit website, or fannish travel arrangements. There's a couple of pages of dialogue for a fanfic story I'll never write now But it also includes the genesis of Ghost Train, the short story which is currently on submission with Penumbra. That dates it to early 2001. Amusingly, the following page has what appears to be notes about the minimum spec I needed when buying a new computer on moving to California. One of the notes is that it must have a high-quality sound card to use with Dragon. :-) And the list starts with the requirement that it be at least a 700 MHz CPU, with 128 MB of RAM, probably the minimum specs for running version 4 of Dragon. It also must have a CD-RW drive, and should have a Zip drive available, with possibly a tape streamer for backup of the full hard drive. Yes, children, only a decade ago you had to pay extra to be able to write data to CD, it didn't come as standard.
And as mentioned in yesterday's post about Dragon, I was thinking about buying a digital recorder.
The next book has something I probably need to digitise and drop in the folder for the relevant story--initial notes for the Knights Templar story. Then yet more fragments of fanfic that have fallen down the memory hole.
The first 500 words of my take on the Elves and the Shoemaker. Again, this was during the Swiss cheese memory period--if I recall correctly, I wrote this in airport lounges
The last book is the one actually marked Story Ideas on the cover. Notes for several fanfic stories. Then a couple of notes for Ghost Train, including a line which I wish I'd put in the story. I must've worked from the notes on the other notebook only. There's a note about the Ballad of John Axon, which made no sense until I looked it up and realised that it must have been a song Watervole told me about when I told her the plot of the story.
Ooh--brief notes for a vampire story. I can't remember where this was going, but I think in this case it may be because I didn't know at the time. I think I just got a sudden plot bunny and scribbled it down. I think I want to write this if I can come up with some more plot for it.
First five pages of a futuristic using virtual reality. It's fairly scrappy, but for once I do actually have some idea of where it was going next. I think this might be one of experimenting with dictating new material into an audio file. There's certainly enough there to practice using the sound recorder.
"Calculator in bag of sex toys" -- what on earth was that about?
Notes from a research panel at an SF con -- slightly outdated now but still relevant, and I should probably write it up
Another couple of pages of the VR story.
Some one line plot bunnies -- one of them turned into "A Sparrow Flies Through", currently in submission; I should try to write the stories for the other two.
Proof that I am a geek -- the calculations to get the right cock lengths for men of known heights, in a very literal dick-size war where they end up arguing about as a proportion of height as well as raw numbers. :-) (I really enjoyed writing that one...)
More one line plot bunnies.