Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! First off: happy Hogmanay! Best wishes to you all in 2025. I wrote a long blog about conflict and co-operation as a follow up to my discussion of complexity and coherence, and rather disappeared up my own fundament in the process, lots of dubious anthropology and theories …
Continue reading The Writing Life: The Treasure in Trash, a Convert’s Tale.
This is going to be brief, because I have little time. Every year my wife and I put up the same tree. It has the same ornaments (with an extra one or two to commemorate any travels we may have been on), the same lights, the same insane amount of tinsel garlands that I insist …
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Third version of cover has been seen. Close, so close. I have proofed the formatting in the book version of the manuscript. Twenty seven changes later it is complete. Should have been fewer, I know. There were a few hiccups I think I could go back to… but …
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! The end of a long day. He says at 7.51pm. I need more days like this. LCCN applied for, ISBN for 3 versions of The Gardener and The Goddess assigned, synopsis written, blurb rewritten and finalized. Cleaned up my office: I’m no longer in danger of being overcome …
Continue reading Long Day’s Rambling into Night (Gratitude and Random Thoughts)
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! The dog days of summer are again ended. I wrote about that last year, and what a sweet summer child I was, thinking I would be done with rewrites in 4-6 weeks with grammar checks and proofing to follow. Well, a mere year later, those stages are done. …
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Final proofing progress now 63%. Getting there. This meant sadly that my self-directed learning has slowed considerably, but hey ho, progress on the book comes first. I did find time to flesh out some more ideas for the next book, writing down what has been percolating in my …
Continue reading The Distraction of Ideas and the Need for Careful Construction
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I have recently experienced an epiphany. I’ve always written fantasy. Soon # 3 will be out, (my proof of a printed version is complete, and many benefits to the text have been obtained by that tactile appraisal of the text) and again, like the first two I have …
Continue reading Finding Voice in a Language Neglected: the Long Road Towards Mastery of Scots
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! I did not remain in editing hell, my friends, though I am grateful I visited, because I fixed two small issues that came out on the multiple repeated passes I made as I chased some words and phrases through the text. In short controlled bursts. One would have …
Continue reading Escape Velocity Achieved, New World Sighted.
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Very late today, because I worked Monday and Tuesday, which is most unusual. I am a dreamer, I dream vividly. This week, before both of the aforementioned workdays, I played in multiple dreamscapes, some more obviously linked than others. The dreams I awoke from on Monday were so …
Hello, my friends and the occasional relative! Okay, so the copy edit is complete. One more hill climbed, another mountain ahead. I have started the read aloud proofing pass, and am 5.5 to 7% of the way through that, depending on criteria chosen. No graphical representation employed. So far I have added and removed equal …
Continue reading Reading aloud to the Demon of Perfectionism
Roderick T. Macdonald 