Sunday, January 22, 2012

My Writing Week: Issue 4, Year 5.


Hi all,

Communication problems was my theme last week.

Byline Missing From Divine Article

I had a new article posted on Divine last week. The article was about hiding my ulcerative colitis from the world. I failed to notice the article lacked a by-line. Some readers might have thought that I wanted to remain anonymous and still hid my disease. I was notified of the problem the next day and the article is now attributed to me.

I have received a number of comments on the article on the Divine site and on facebook. As a result, if I wrote the article again I would include another reason for not telling the world I had ulcerative colitis: people offering dietary and medical advice. Over the years I have come across lots of natural therapies and dietary changes that supposedly cure ulcerative colitis, none of them have worked.

A big problem with ulcerative colitis is that it comes and goes. So say it is active and I decide to try one of the various “cures”. I choose a cure of standing on one leg while singing I’m too Sexy for my Shirt. After a couple of months of no sign of the disease, I might become convinced my cure has worked. But the disease returns a couple of months later leaving me feeling slightly gullible.   

Typos in The Dervish House

In my last blog post I pointed out three typos I had seen in Ian McDonald’s novel The Dervish House. I then added a comment about a further two typos. I did not point these typos out as a complaint, just an observation. The typos have not influenced my enjoyment of the novel. I finished reading it last night and hope to post a review sometime this week.

Problems with Technology

Karl Marx was convinced chemicals were added to bread to make it go stale faster. Maybe they are. I am convinced that electronic manufacturers start sending bugs over the web to computers and printers two years after the machines are first used. These bugs eventually cause so many problems that a consumer gives up and buys a new machine.

The first two IBM second-hand computers I bought lasted five and seven years respectively. The current Compaq began acting up about a month after its two year warranty ended. I doubled its Ram memory and the computer behaved for about seven months. But now it keeps having start-up problems.

The first printer I bought lasted over seven years. The last two, including the one I destroyed in a fit of rage last week, lasted about two years each before they started acting up.

So Hewlett Packard and Cannon, I am aware of what you are doing.  

My Novel Writing

My printer and discussions about my article and blog post, took up a lot of writing time last week. As a result, I added the least weekly amount of words to my novel since I started writing it at the beginning of November: a paltry 1300 words.

This week has not started any better. My computer decided to have start-up problems this morning. A blue screen said something about a corrupt file. As requested, I did yet another restore, the third in two weeks.

And the cricket starts tomorrow. And it’s My Birthday on Wednesday. And then Australia Day on Thursday. And I have to spray the fruit with malathion on Saturday…

2 comments:

Anthony J. Langford said...

happy Birthday for Wednesday Graham.
Sorry about your computer problems.
I had write first drafts.

I assume you have a back up hard drive.

I'm totally with you on the computer situation. It's happening all across the board, cars too. Nothing lasts anymore. It's a f***ng joke. It should be illegal. It's just wrong.

Graham Clements said...

Thanks Anthony.

I just wish my computer would be consistent in its error messages. It's like there are termites slowly eating files which need to be replaced. Happened last time too. The error messages gave no clue to the problem that the computer had used up all its RAM. Memory tests, like the one I just did, found nothing.