(no subject)

[zanzjan]

Fixing my sequencing problem has created a pacing problem which is arguably a fair bit worse. I am loathe to revert to my pre-tinkering draft and so reintroduce the sequencing problem since, y'know, I fixed it, but it means the flesh-eating bacteria story is back to spending time in the backbrain. I could go back to the unnamed fantasy thing, but instead I think I'll use the free time on my brain for stuff like doing my taxes and taking one last look at the zombie thing (which my Rosleyian fellows have not yet gotten back to me on -- pokepokefriendlypoke) to try to make an objective assessment if, 1) it can be made any shorter/better, 2) if there's any actual markets out there for sexually-explicit zombie stories, and 3) if I'm in any willing to ever let the story actually see the light of day in the first place, and if so, under my own name or not.

However, at the moment I am at work and my lunchtime is now over, so instead I turn my head back to Perl and LDAP for the next many hours, which has its own challenges but has some real advantages over fiction.

Like, don't you wish you could start writing a story and just type "use strict" at the start, and then when you have a paragraph like:
Bob sat down on the couch, brushing aside crumpled popcorn bags and soda cups in a desperate attempt to find the remote.
...your story would suddenly say:

ERR: Function Bob terminated in paragraph 6. Either call new function or use resurrect()

Comments

[p-j-cleary.livejournal.com]

1. The zombie story is not as explicit as you think.
2. The zombie story is not as squicky as you think.
3. The zombie story is more marketable than you think.
4. The zombie story is more awesome than you think.
5. The zombie story needs to be published, is what I think.

[zanzjan.livejournal.com]

well, I did take out an awful lot of verbs on my second pass through it.

[stale-hermit.livejournal.com]

Eeeek! I do believe I have been poked!

Um, yeah. Definitely a poke. Well-deserved, too.

4/3. For sure.

[dajt.livejournal.com]

I miss being able to read your stories.

And yes, automatic error checking as you write for stories would be really cool, especially if it could tell you about dangling plot threads, use-before-set errors, and even using the wrong names for characters. Hmmm. Maybe with enough AI we could make it happen. I wonder how big the market is for such software. . .

[zanzjan.livejournal.com]

there might be a story itself in that idea.

[dajt.livejournal.com]

There's probably a bunch of stories in that idea: one humorous in the vein of the VarleyYarns(TM) story, one serious character-driven drama, one techno-thriller. . .

Sometimes I wish I still had time to write, but I can't afford to quit my day job, and that's the only way I'd get that much time these days.

[ceo]

Based on my experiences with software development environments that do that sort of thing, I could see that being really annoying.

[dajt.livejournal.com]

That'd depend on whether it interrupted you in the middle of what you were doing, ala Clippy, Microsoft Bob et all, or if it only commented in response to a request for feedback. Or if it were AI enough, it could only comment at the "right" times, where right is dependent on how critical it is to keep things on track. Now I'm imagining the robot from Lost in Space saying Danger! Danger! Digression ahead! Hmmm.

[zanzjan.livejournal.com]

I'm reasonably certain that any robot programmed to regard digression as any sort of danger would, in a very short amount of time, decide it's just plain easier and safer to break both my arms off and then throttle me to death and be done with it.

[dajt.livejournal.com]

Nah, the AI will just have to learn whether digression makes for a better story on not. After all, some digressions are a good thing. It's only the digressions into the swamp of minutia about the complicated dating history of people who are utterly irrelevant to the story (oh wait, that's the other window, sorry) that needs to be avoided.

And besides, breaking your arms would make it for your to write at all, which is worse in terms of output than merely letting you digress for a bit before pulling you back on track with a a gentle "focus, dear" whispered in your ear.