Lizards are letting me down

Friday Finding

The lizards over here at Casa Lagarto are not holding up their end of the bargain.

See, we have a lot of lizards here at the Casa. Chameleons and geckos and skinks…and a truly shivery nekkid-looking thing that bears more of a resemblance to a snake than one would think would be quite safe for a lizard. Other than the nekkid-looking thing, I am quite happy for the lizards to hang out here. (As long as they stay outside. That’s part of the deal.)

Lizards are good for eating bugs. And bugs…well, you know.

Oh, sure. There’s that cycle of life thing and the food chain and all that. But bugs, to me, are kind of like the garbage dump. We all know we have to have them, “but not in my backyard.” (And the garbage dump doesn’t generally display the vampire tendencies of the mosquitoes. So there’s that.)

But lately, we’ve had an awful lot of grasshoppers. And not just any grasshoppers, mind you, but the Eastern Lubber Grasshoppers–otherwise known as the Georgia Thumper. These things are huge.

You want to see a picture? Click here for a shot taken by Scattergun UK and posted on Flickr.

That shot doesn’t provide any reference point as to size, but take it from me. They are HUGE. Like, I’m not sure a fight between Godzilla and a Grasshopper in a Japanese horror movie would end with Godzilla taking home the title.

(Okay, okay. They are not that huge. But they are bugs! It adds a certain ick factor.)

And they are decimating the plants. The leaves on my canna lilies are all raggedy-looking. I think they’ve started in on the hydrangea, and I knocked one out of the camphor tree yesterday.

There doesn’t seem to be anything you can spray to control them. You’ve got to take them out one at a time. My husband is on grasshopper patrol. But, you know, you can’t spend all day lying in wait for insects.

And I would have thought that the lizards would have done more to prevent this problem.

I’m disappointed in them.

More stuff that’s going well

Thankful Thursdays – # 2

Thursdays are devoted to stuff that’s going well-because there’s a lot more of it than we usually think, and because there’s a theory that putting your attention on the good stuff attracts more of it to you.

Some–okay, most–of you have probably heard of The Secret, the 2006 bestseller purporting to let you in on the secret to getting anything you want. Some people leap wholeheartedly into that kind of thing, and some people start thinking ‘snake-oil salesman’ when they hear about it.

I tend to fall into the middle camp. I haven’t managed to manifest a million dollars yet, but some experiments have yielded interesting results. And one thing that certainly can’t hurt is to pay attention to the good things in your life. If it doesn’t bring more of them to you, it reminds you of the joy of the ones you have.

Ergo.

Thursdays in this blog are devoted to thankfulness.

This Thursday, I am thankful for tech support that works. Specifically, I want to send a shout out to MailChimp. MailChimp is the service I selected to handle my email list for my News Flashes as well as the blog posts. If you received this post via email, it’s thanks to MailChimp.

There were some good reasons I picked them in the beginning. Their base service is free, and the volume limit they offer for that very attractive price is high enough that you can give them a serious test before you have to pay anything. They give you a lot of control over the look of your emails, so you can do that “branding” thing pretty well.

And their support is awesome.

Aside from having extremely clear online instructions and documentation, they’ve got a LiveChat thingy* that actually works. Reps comes on really quickly. They generally grasp the problem right away and have solutions to offer. They are friendly and funny and fast. They never try to pass the buck. You don’t hear “Yeah, see, that’s probably a problem with your website host. We can’t troubleshoot that for you.” (At least, I haven’t yet. I suppose it’s possible that I might run into something that is genuinely outside the scope of their service, but so far, they’ve really tried to solve every problem I’ve had.)

In addition, and this is more of a benefit than you might think, the chat chimes when the rep responds. Unlike many other company’s live chat, you don’t have to sit there watching the window while the rep handles some untold number of other clients. You can do something else in the rare instances that you need to wait for a response, because the chat will chime and let you know the Chimp has chatted. (No offense to the MailChimp tech support staff who are more human than most.) I really love the chiming. It’s a serious selling point for me.

And if you’ve got a question and it’s outside chat hours, they respond to emails within hours.

Their instructions are clear and concise and they fix the problem.

And that chimp is slightly hilarious!

So, today, I am thankful for the menagerie–the MailChimp and the FatCow** are doing me proud.

* ‘ thingy’—a technical term for that which I cannot immediately think of the word
** my website host

Honest Numbers

Happy Independence Day!

I was digging around for something to write about today, when I discovered a little known fact. (Note: When I say something is a ‘little known fact,’ there’s a good chance that just means I didn’t know it until now.)

My digging began in the vicinity of the Fourth of July—which is, of course, today’s date. At first, I had the entirely unoriginal idea of presenting you with a list of fun facts about the Fourth of July. But it’s so easy to turn up pages and pages of fun facts about the Fourth of July in any search engine that it quickly became clear I would simply be listing things you could find out some other way.

No added value. And we can’t have that.

I did, however, find out something that is slightly harder, although by no means impossible, to suss out.

Four is an honest number.

It may, in fact, be the only honest number. (I haven’t done all the research, but it seems likely on my initial examination—i.e., two or three minutes of thought.)

What does that mean?

Well, it doesn’t mean that the number four—notwithstanding its ability to bring you Sesame Street on occasion—is capable of chopping down a cherry tree and then refusing to lie about it (George Washington [not]) or of walking miles and miles in the snow to return some change (Abraham Lincoln [probably]).

It means that four is the only number that has the same number of letters in its name as the number for which it stands. F O U R, 1 2 3 4

It probably won’t take you too long to realize that this is not actually a mathematical concept. It’s more like a linguistic one. Because it only works in English. Well, it might work in some other language. I don’t speak them all, so I can’t really say. But it is safe to say that it doesn’t work in every language. And math, really, kind of has to work whether you speak Patagonian or Serbo-Croatian.

So, it’s kind of a useless idea, it seems to me.

Except to open the door to something else I want to say.

In this election year, we are going to be—already are being—inundated with statistics. This plan will lead to x number of people without health care. That plan means that y children are z times more likely to…whatever.

Here’s the thing about statistics.

I spent a lot of years compiling them for various clients, and I’m here to tell you that a) the margin of error is probably greater than they are disclosing—because data analysis is hard and people make mistakes, b) sometimes the analysis is set up in such a way that it leads to a skewed result—because data analysis is hard and people make mistakes, and c) every now and then, if the results aren’t what those who commissioned the analysis really want, they might just change them—because giving up a pet theory is hard and people make mistakes.

So, by all means, pay attention to the statistics. It’s good to have as much information as you can. But, in the spirit of Independence Day, remember to preserve some independent thought, and question those statistics.

Four is an honest number. All others are to be treated with suspicion.

(Note: Here’s another little known fact. Four is also a Smith number, which piece of information I bring to you because, ha! my last name is Smith. What I don’t bring to you is an explanation of what a Smith number is. That’s ‘cause I don’t really understand it. Shhh!)

Treasure Hunt

The holy grail of disk space

Way back when I bought this PC–which has provided remarkably trusty service over the years–it seemed like it had unlimited disk space. 140 Gb. How could anyone possibly use all that?

One lives and learns.

Programs get bigger. I want more of them. There is music to store. There are graphics and videos to edit. There is data to crunch. And there is odd and esoteric research to hang onto because, who knows, I may write a book or a play about that someday.

And the next thing I know, my PC has only about 5 Gb left and has slowed down to something that would insult the speed of a baby if you called it a crawl.

I do have external drives, but there is a lot of data I like to keep on the local drive. That’s the one Carbonite backs up under their basic plan, and while I love Carbonite, I am not quite ready to increase my backup budget just yet.

I am also not quite ready to install a new larger hard drive. We won’t discuss whether this is out of the same frugal–i.e., penny-pinching–impulse or out of long and dismal experience of what happens when you start taking your computer apart . (I will say that it will be a lot easier to get to it the way my office is set up in my new house than it was in the past–when there was a lot of crawling involved–and, once, a hacksaw–but that is definitely another story!)

So, I have reached a point where I have to evaluate what’s on this drive and make some decisions. Some files can be moved to an external drive, of course. Some files can be archived.

And, let’s face it, there are probably a lot of files that can simply be deleted.

To keep or not to keep.
That is the question

And that brings me to a couple of nifty little programs.

(Before I tell you about them, let me give you one other very important Tuesday Tech Tip. Don’t just take my word for it. Read other reviews before you use anything recommended to you in a blog. ALWAYS have a current back-up before you start deleting files. Use common sense. Proceed at your own risk. Remember–your results may vary. I’m telling you what I’ve done. I’m not guaranteeing it will work for you.)

About a week ago, I got a lot of disk space back using Easy Duplicate File Finder. It’s a free program for both PC and Mac users that will compare files in selected directories and provide a list of those it has identified as duplicates. You can view them, move them, rename them or delete them.

Almost 10 Gb had been swallowed up by dupes.

Today, however, another 5 Gb has disappeared. More drastic action is needed.

So, I just found: Directory List & Print. It’s freeware–although there is a paid version that has a few more features–and it’s really simple. It does exactly what the name suggests. What I like about it, is that unlike Windows Search, I can easily copy the directory listing to Excel or Word for storing, sorting, editing, printing –and, unlike redirecting the output of a DOS dir command to a file, I can choose which pieces of information to include in my list.

I can then go prospecting for disk space.

It should be easy to find the major candidates for deletion: the temp files and backup files that are outdated. I’ll be able to scan the list for other possibilities as well as use it for the plodding, methodical check-list-y approach I just know is coming.

Amazingly, I’ve already gotten rid of over 8,000 files one program has generated in unsubmitted crash reports. That’s half a gig recovered! (That may not sound like much, but I’m pretty sure this is going to be a tedious process of knocking off little minnows of files nibbling away at my disk space and not identifying any Great Blue Whales swallowing Jonah-sized sectors on the hard drive.)

Those crash reports were just sitting out there taking up space for no reason. I’m not sure I’d have noticed them if I hadn’t run this program and generated this list.

Every time I do something like this, I swear I’m going to be more diligent and disciplined with data storage as I go along. This is what is known as a pipe dream. Not having access to a personality transplant, I’m glad I’ve found these two programs.

I’ll let you know how the Great Disk Space Recovery Project is getting along.

Daunting Deadlines

Daring to dream

I’ve been thinking about deadlines a lot lately. Not surprising, really. After all, I’ve just started a blog. People can talk all they want about “blog” being short for “weblog.” It’s really short for “OMG! I haven’t written today’s post yet!”

The really ironic thing about this plunge into blogging is I hate deadlines. I don’t join writers’ groups because I have such a horror of them. The idea of 10 pages a week freaks me out. I can’t imagine being a journalist with a story due every day.

And yet…here I am.

I didn’t think about the deadline part of the blog when I began. I thought about the social media aspects, the marketing possibilities (eek!), the opportunity for self-expression. And, yes, I thought about giving myself a reason to write regularly.

This never translated in my mind into having to write regularly.

You know.

A deadline.

The odd thing is that when I have a deadline, I am more than capable of meeting it. I have pulled all-nighters to write papers and computer programs, to get a website up, to learn software and/or 17^th Century French history (L’etat c’est moi – and that’s about the extent of my French¹), to learn lines, and to drive to Charleston.²

So, why does a writing deadline seem such a burden to me?

I honestly am not sure.

But I guess I’m going to get over it, or crash and burn here. And I guess it’s also true that you always invite into your life that which you need to learn.

So, today’s Monday Miracle is that I made this deadline. And I haven’t run screaming into the night at the thought of all the other deadlines to which I’ve committed. (We used to call them “drop dead dates” at one place I worked. It doesn’t make it sound any better.)

I’m giving myself this opportunity to get past my dread of deadlines. It wasn’t what I thought would come out of this blogging adventure, but it should be useful. After all, as Napoleon Hill once said, “A goal is a dream with a deadline.”

Deadlines are good.

Only, let’s think of another word, okay?

(Comments open for suggestions.)

¹ Except for that tour I did of The Little Prince and those few scenes I learned phonetically.
² Charleston. Also The Little Prince tour. Van broke down, transmission had to be rebuilt overnight, 8 am curtain at a school – long story.

“We don’t always KNOW how it ENDS!”

Ain’t no crystal ball

Ok. So the headline of this post is a quote from one of my favorite TV shows ever. The West Wing. Specifically, it is from the episode ‘NSF Thurmont’ from Season 6 which I happened to watch again just the other day.

In it, there is a whole lot of political stuff going on (no kidding, right?), and the amazing John Spencer (as Leo) is talking to the equally amazing Martin Sheen (as the President). Actually, he is yelling at the President.

I didn’t know people could do that, did you?

But that’s beside the point.

The point is Leo wants the President to bomb some people, and the President doesn’t want to do it–because nobody can tell him what happens next. “He doesn’t like chaos,” Leo says.

And I realize that some of my procrastinating about submitting my script is because I don’t know what happens next. I mean, often not much happens. Except a rejection letter. And I know how to deal with that. But there’s always the possibility it could be accepted. And that leads to an awful lot of questions and decisions and problems.

Chaos.

What if it’s the wrong place? What if the production turns about badly, when there was something around the corner that would have been the right place if only I had waited? What if… well, actually, all the other ‘what ifs’ stem from that one, so there’s no real need to go into the fears about casting, about contracts, about directors, etc.

But here’s the thing.

If I don’t submit, it ends right there.

It’s important to be able to live with the uncertainty that comes with the possibility of something better, instead of clinging to the security of knowing all about the nothing that’s going to happen if you don’t put your work out there.

We don’t always know how it ends.

A lot could go wrong.

A lot could go right, too.

And, by the way…the President in The West Wing? He didn’t bomb anybody, and he managed to pull off a major peace accord.

The lesson, I guess, is you step into the unknown and do the best you can.

There could be bombs. There could be peace in our time.

Mowing your script

Landscaping and writing a play—something in common?

So, I was mowing the lawn yesterday. And it occurred to me that writing a play is a little bit like creating and maintaining a beautiful yard. (Full disclosure: I don’t have a beautiful yard. Yet. But I’m working on it.)

Your first draft is the planting stage. The grass seed goes in, the sod gets laid.

Second and third, maybe even fourth and fifth, are the cultivation stage. This is where you do the watering and fertilizing—and the cross-pollination of submitting the script to theatres and producers.

Once it grows to the point where you are having readings, however, you’ve got to get out the weed-whacker and start trimming. Clear out the underbrush, cut down the weeds. Put things in order.

If the audience can’t navigate around that lovely flower bed of a plot complication you planted in scene two, you’ve either got to lay some paving stones and make a path, or you’ve got to dig it up and throw it out.

If the sub-plot has turned into an invasive plant, sprouting seedlings all over the place and distracting people from the point you were trying to make, you might want to get a machete and chop it down.

Even if the landscape is looking pretty good, there are going to be a few weeds sprouting up here and there. Some judicious trimming never hurts.

I don’t know. Possibly it’s a pretty obvious metaphor. Maybe I’m in danger of pushing it too far.

But there’s something in it. It seems to me that I might have an easier time cutting some of my favorite lines, if I think of it this way.

I want the grass to grow well. And lavishly.

But I still have to mow.

Why aren’t you writing?

The obstacle course

You say you want to write. You start a project. And then you stop.

Why?

It’s pretty fashionable these days to attribute all lack of forward motion to fear. Fear of failure, fear of success, fear that your mother will be mad that you used her in your novel (she won’t—she won’t even recognize herself), fear that you won’t have anything to say (you will), fear that your writing will reveal something about you that you don’t want people to know (yes, but probably not the way you think).

Some of those fears can and will stand in the way.

But sometimes it’s other stuff.

You’re lazy.
You’re busy.
You’re tired.
You’re bored.
You’re on Facebook.

Set a timer for ten minutes if you’re lazy. You only have to write for ten minutes.

Are you busy with what you really want to be doing? Don’t let the urgent crowd out the important.

Resolve to get more sleep. Write first thing in the morning. Before you have time to get tired.

You’re bored? Best cure for that…tell yourself a story. And write it down.

You’re on Facebook? There’s no getting around that one. You’ve gotta get off Facebook. Just for a while. (You can always set up a blog and link it to Facebook. Two birds. One stone. It could work. When I’ve figured that part out, I’ll let you know. Except I won’t have to announce it. If you’ve already friended me on Facebook, you’ll see it happen.)

The point is there are always obstacles. Are you going to let them stop you? Or are you going to get past them?

Over, around, under, through.

Whatever it takes.

Finding Your Voice – pt 2

What are you about?

A while back–something like 10 days or so–before I went to Maine–I posted about “Finding Your Voice” and how, if there’s really only one plot, the originality in your writing lies in the way you string your words together, and the tone you use.

But how do you choose? How do you find that voice?

Well, first, finding the right voice for your piece has a lot to do with what it’s about.

There’s a larger question, though.

What are you about?

One of the things writing how-to gurus say is you have to know what you want to write about before you start.

This is one of those lies the world tells you.

You don’t have to know before you start. You just have to know before you finish.

(We’re talking fiction, now. If you’re writing non-fiction, it’s pretty clear that you’ve got to know you’re writing about jelly fish before the first word goes down on paper or up on the screen. Otherwise, you could end up with an article on grizzly bears, and your editor is not going to be happy.)

Don’t get me wrong. It would be really helpful to know your entire plot, to say nothing of every bit of your characters’ back story, and the themes and symbols you’ll include. And I am sure that there are some writers who are fortunate enough to have all that worked out in their heads before they begin.

I’m not one of them.

For a long time, I thought that meant I wasn’t a writer. But, guess what? It doesn’t. A writer writes.

Almost everything I’ve ever written has been worked out in the writing.

It’s only after I’m in the middle of it that I begin to have some idea of what it’s about.

And, guess what?

I’ve written enough now to begin to have some idea of what I’m about.

You will, too. Just get started.

Play Readings

Two ways to go

When you get a reading of your play, and it’s close enough for you to attend, there is an inherent dilemma for a playwright. Do you go to the rehearsals? Or stay away?

The first thing to know, of course, is that the writer has the absolute right to attend rehearsals. If you want to go, you go. But should you?

The benefits to going are pretty clear.

You can answer any questions and head off any misinterpretations.
You can see for yourself where actors’ tongues trip over your finely crafted phrases.
You’ll be prepared. If things aren’t going so well, it won’t be such a shock during the reading itself.
You get to hear the play multiple times–during rehearsal as well as during the reading—and that can help you enormously with an understanding of pace and plot and Thespis knows what..

On the other hand, you can make the cast and the director nervous. When I was wearing my acting hat, there was always a little extra anxiety when the playwright showed up. Often, for readings, the writer hasn’t been involved in the casting process and may have been assigned a director, as well. So, they can, and probably will, be wondering if the playwright is happy with the choices. They’ve probably got enough to handle without that.

Even if the actors are comfortable with you and eager for the writer’s input, you might be taking time that the director could more profitably spend on something else.

And, if you aren’t used to readings and the process, you can panic. OMG, will the leading man ever get that laugh line right? Why does the leading lady insist on whispering during the fight scene? Chances are the director sees and hears all these problems and is biding her time to deal with them. Good directors have an internal priority list. Often they know the actors and know what will right itself and what needs their intervention. It doesn’t help for you to be sitting there chewing your fingernails and tapping your foot until you get a chance to speak up.

Staying away allows you to avoid those pitfalls and offers you one invaluable upside.

You’ll hear the play fresh—or as fresh as is ever possible when you’ve written and rewritten and read and reread. You’ll be less inclined to think the reading is going well when all that’s really happening is that it is going better than it did in rehearsal. Your objectivity will not be compromised by familiarity with the participants.

In the end, you’ve got to make up your own mind in every situation. I’ve done it both ways. Early in my adventures with my play, it seemed so important to be there for every minute. And I’m glad I chose to attend rehearsals for the early readings.

I’m also glad I chose not to go to the rehearsals for the latest readings at the Penobscot Theatre.

I think I was less distracted by my internal actor and my internal director, and I was better able to focus on the writing.

I think.

The thing about choices is that you have to choose. Once you’ve chosen, you can’t have the other choices. And you’ll never really know what would have happened if you had.

Elaine Smith Writes

Anything She Wants