Spreadsheet Fun!

Had a moment this morning. Been playing with a...uh...a spreadsheet.

Touted as a writer's useful plotting tool...the spreadsheet, as found in the average computer. Can't recall just now where I heard this. Could see the possibilities, tho.

Neat and conveniently illuminated cells, row upon row, down the screen. Virtual paper that never inconveniently ends. The idea is that we type a chapter idea, or character interaction: short, to the point, and one per line. We jot down a list of possibilities. Then we assemble those possibilities over the spreadsheet. And in the order that best tells the story.

The theory's the same as in Holly Lisle's NoteCarding, and...so many other writing craft sources I've taken sips from about Plotting How-To. Paper slips and recipe cards work for some folks. Sheet of paper and pen do just fine for others.

And I had my moment this morning, before hurrying away to work, yes, with a Microsoft Works spreadsheet, when scene after scene and their characters began to string together like pearls!

Wondering...does a CGA feels such a thrill as he works a ledger?

Earth Hour...March 28 '09...Vancouver, Canada

I've rewritten this three times already and three times is enough. My cynicism refusing to behave behind the smiley face mask and on the venomous side. Not to belittle the Do Good spirit behind Earth Hour, which from an educational looking-at should make a good start, but frankly I have been around long enough. Also, I've been doing my part long enough. I've earned the right to be cynical. And to sneer at what really should be sneered at.

At the very least to shake my head about. To wonder What on earth were they thinking?

CBC ran this story tonight. Vancouver's Four Seasons Hotel doing its part in reducing unnecessary electricity consumption. Restaurant lights off between 5pm and 10. Instead, guests dining by candlelight. 1500 candles, apparently.

Fifteen-hundred, burning, smoking, CO2-dumping, climate-changing candles!

That measurably better, is it? Better than drawing pennies-per-kilowatthour off one of our hydro-electric dams, then lighting-up...say...just half the lights they usually would?

Can't wait for Earth Day.

A Light's Come On

A light's come on.

Just wrote that...stopped...started thinking Could I say that a prettier, even cleverer way?
Precisely the kind of stopping, and overdoing the thing, in this instance, that I'm trying to stop myself doing.

See, a light has come on. The emails and business correspondence I do in my workaday day are lessons by example I might apply to writing that isn't stuff I have to do for my job.

Simple lessons I should prob'ly plaster over my walls.

Got lots to do and no time to waste.

Say what has to be said: Get to the point.

Get it down first: Pretty it up, if it really needs it.

Get it done.
Get it done.
Get it done.

Work...March 11th's 4-Letter Word

Not reeeally worked up, naaah, not seriously. March 11 of The 2009 Protagonists' Diary was open, no takers yet, and not thru most of the afternoon. I had an experiment running in my background and decided, sudden'like, I'd try and go for it. Of course, tho, trying this from that 4-letter place I knew from the get'go might in the very next work-related tick'tock simply be impossible.

It was.

Day's end before I could visit Protag again. March 11 done, by then. A glimpse inside ElshaHawk's day. A teacher's-eye view of a little of moving day tumult at school. The kinda patient seeming teacher any of us might call ourselves lucky to have holding our hand in our formative years.

My day's experiment ready. Only must figure out some very date-specific...stuff. Written about March 11 for March 11, it is a diary entry, after all.

Really, today's outcome is one of the reasons why I return to Protag, again and again. For the writing, well, yeah. Doing mine and reading others'. And for that sense o'community in the cold old wold. Again — well, yeah! Today, the reminder also for the lessons in craft sure to pop up. Those mind-stretching exercises I do like.

Naturally occurring neuro-chemical buzzz...mmm.

First Week March...Nutshell

Only stuff fitting...it.

THOSE...RINGS
Turns out those...2010 Things last Tuesday night were flashing in dress rehearsal for official'ness later that week...last week.
Wednesday night: giggled, like a party pooper, like one not invited, for I beheld but four of five things illuminated there.
Windstormy Thursday put me quite happily in my Chevy pick-up. Thursday, and official'ness day. Provincial Premier (who I'll be voting against come the election in May) and official'ness flipped their party-light switch, early eve, during working peoples' homeward commute. Official'ness closing one of the two lanes passing that homewardbound me wanted, fast as I could in the constricted traffic mess resulting.

FRIDAY - TEMPLETON COPPER PRESENCE
Ever notice when a police car sits by a road that passing traffic passes reeeally slowly? I mean below the posted speed limit. Like they're scared, or guilty of something. Scariest of all to a cyclist, that maybe they haven't a clue what the posted speed limit is.
First ever occurence of police camped at the four-way stop on Templeton...that I've seen, okay. First ever instance of airport-bound taxis slowwwly approaching the stop, then actually stopping.

MONDAY MARCH 9 SNOW
Snow was forecasted. I was ready. The municipalities weren't. And not the Vancouver Airport Authority. By the morning rush, snow still swirling down, more than a couple slippery inches slicking the roads, and the roads not sanded nor salted. Speeders spun out. Buses, as usual, stuck. I've biked in snow previous winters. I won't any longer. I've lost my nerve, fine. Pointless being fit...right up to the end. Drove my truck. Had fun. At work, cast out handfuls of salt across our steps. All snow melted off those steps in about an hour. Snow still falling lightly. Road still a snowy churned mess. Plainly obvious, I'd say. At least those irresponsible saved a few dollars on salt and fuel for the trucks and labour.
Ohhh, right — the punchline — as if we're not ever tired of being punched — it warmed enuf by noon that the road cleared, by itself — BY ITSELF — and then the YVR snowplow and salt trucks appeared. With a purpose, they promenaded along the airport ways.
I really should carry a camera.

Anything Other than 2010 Olympics Rings

No'no'no'no, and no. Not a photo snapped of anything 2010 Olympics related. Not here. Never.

YVR...or whoever...don't know...don't care who...they've planted those trademarked linked rings, enormous and gaudy, on a rise of artificial landscaping. A Welcome for world travelers headed from the airport toward Vancouver and Richmond. An assembly looking like a kid's erector set and standing stable as a dream in the stiff sea breeze.

I'd passed that construction obstruction for a couple weeks. Ignored it. I took it for yet more tree planting and landscaping about Vancouver Airport. Yet more of the Airport Improvement Fees travelers pay headed that way...rather than for, say, doing anything that should encourage the commuting cyclist into believing all the feel'good media releases.

Work done tonight, I pedaled my bike west along Miller Road, dismounted, crossed Grant McConachie Way as a pedestrian...because a cyclist can't activate a green light for crossing...and remounted the bike on the North Service Road...another designated bike route. Oh'yes — amazed me no little — I was passed by nine yellow YVR service vehicles, more or less a convoy, all nine zipping past in the intersection I had to walk, pick-up trucks and vans, only the driver in each. And then I saw those...rings. Laughed, if anyone should call puffing laughter, remembering a bike path, cut dirt lying four months before finally being paved, and this...assembly bolted up and garish illumination working in two weeks!

One...not good, just satisfactory thing: north and east of the worst of the airport's traffic, at the four-way stop on Templeton, two of four airport-bound taxis in fact stopped. The other two probably would've stopped if I'd completely lost my cyclist nerve and instead were driving my forty-five hundred pounds of Chevrolet pick-up truck.

Yes, quite probably.

So. Sooo. Seabirds, yesss. Cormorants waiting on the falling tide. Summer days like balm.