aqua fortis

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Hey, Where'd I Go?

I've been busy. Here is a list of some crap I've been doing (instead of blogging):

  • Draining large amounts of fluid out of my nasal passages. (I had a cold.)
  • Catching up on my freelance research job. They still want to keep paying me despite my slacker-ness. I'm not going to object.
  • Reloading every bit of software onto our laptop, which had to get its hard drive replaced (yay for warranties).
  • Loading copious amounts of Adobe software (Creative Suite 2) onto our desktop computer. Goodbye and good riddance to Publisher. Now I gotta learn how to use it all. This is mainly for desktop publishing purposes and some of the other minor art/design work I do. I already know how to use Photoshop, mostly. Kinda. Enough for what I need to do. But Illustrator escapes me, and I'm sure InDesign has a learning curve, so I plan to watch the training video they kindly included with the software. (Yay for discount Educational versions!)
  • Watching lots of television and taking lots of cold medicine. Did I mention I had a cold?
  • Moving this blog to the new Blogger and trying to get my template to vaguely resemble the one I had before. I still haven't gotten around to fixing the header quote or the list of blogs. Or the style sheet. ARGH!

I also realized that if I want to get a manuscript critique at this conference I plan to go to, it needs to be postmarked by the 20th. My main reason for going and for getting the critique is that the conference will be attended by A) an editor from a major publishing house who contacted me a few months ago to send me a review copy of a book for our reviews blog, and B) an agent from an agency that I was planning to send a query to. If my manuscript (read: first ten pages plus summary) gets picked to be part of the special 10 or whatever, it will get looked at by the editors and agents present. So it's basically this monetary gamble (paying for the conference and the extra fee for the manuscript critique) in the hopes that my proposal arrives under the nose of one or both of these individuals. You have to admit that would be quite fortuitous. And even if it doesn't, I suppose there will be a schmoozing opportunity. Though I hate schmoozing. I really do.

Wish me luck. Now I have to edit my first 10 pages (which are still in a very rough post-NaNoWriMo state) and write a synopsis (which is still in a nonexistent state) so I can send them tomorrow. Here I go.

4 comments:

David T. Macknet said...

Heckling now. You have to have at least one heckler. What would you do without one?

The real question is: if you drive past our house and don't stop to say hello, how long will it take us to track you down and inflict some penalty for it? The second question is whether it is possible to get from your house to the conference without passing by our house.

Heckle.

Sarah Stevenson said...

Oh!! OH!!! I see how it is.

I believe it actually is possible, if I take the 5, to get to the conference without passing by your house. However, I could certainly make a point of passing by your house, say, on the way back...

David T. Macknet said...

The 5. Yes, I see. You'd rather go through Dixon or Rio Vista than to spend time with us. I see where we stand.

Sniff.

Oh, wait. That's your line.

;)

Junk food is calling, and about 30 library books which WE got to choose, without anybody else saying we had to read them. Let the festivities begin.

Sarah Stevenson said...

I want to add a note to this post that the Adobe CS training video should be clearly labeled "NOT FOR N00BS." It was quite helpful at pointing out the new features of the updated programs, but not at teaching me to actually use things in the first place. SIGH. Back to my usual method of working with new software--fumble until I figure something out.