Next Noble Pen Meeting

October 19th, 2017 at 7 pm

Scott’s Family Restaurant

1906 Blairs Ferry Rd NE, Cedar Rapids

News

The world gets ever more sensitive to hurtful stereotypes.  Now a Dr. Seuss illustration has been found offensive.

Victories

Ciuin has Petty Theft in limited-edition print books, the culmination of ten years of work and worry.  She has the perfect cover picture.

Dylan finished 2nd pass edits on a commission and is writing the master plot for all of his Fedran world.  The plan encompasses 23 works, which includes five novels and a novella.

Eric finished the first chapter of his sequel, with the adventures of Jim’s son.

Uriah wrote a seven-page school paper.

Deanna did revisions.

Education

Some people advise all cliché phrases are to be “avoided like the plague.”  See Wikipedia discussion.  Writer’s Digest offers a short list of overused phrases.  Here’s a much longer list.

I’m not so sensitive to them as to ban all 681 on their list, and feel an occasional one can serve a purpose.  I see nothing wrong with “benefit of the doubt,” for instance, and wouldn’t object to occasional use of “ace in the hole”, “all in a day’s work”, or “crash course.”  I am, however, tired of “drives me up the wall ,” and “flat as a pancake.”

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Backups are vital.   Someday you will need one when you are least prepared. What is the state of your backups if you had a crash RIGHT NOW?

Some people consider it necessary to have at least three copies of any important work, such as on the working computer, on a flash drive, and on a cloud storage service. If you burn CDs or DVDs that can be another option.  You could substitute more flash drives for the cloud service.  A good scheme is to have two or more and rotate which one you update in case you overwrite a version you wanted.

I find it useful to make a copy of the project file now and then with the date inserted into the file name, as  MyBook2017_10_12.doc so that I can go back and look at prior versions (the cloud may only keep old versions for a limited time).

If you know how to use batch files or command lines, this line is handy, with appropriate drive letter and folder name in place of those shown:
xcopy c:\MyBook e:\MyBook\ /D /S /R /I /Y
It will copy any newer-dated or additional files and only those files, from that folder and its subfolders to the other drive.  If the folder has blanks in its name, you must enclose the name in double quotes.  Windows should have made it easy to do this kind of copy, but didn’t.

Upcoming Schedule

October 19
Dakota
Uriah
Ciuin

October 26
Stacie S.
Stacy H.
Aime
November 2
Nick
Deanna
Aime

November 9
Laura
Ciuin
Uriah

November 16
Open slots

Keep Writing,
Bill