Paksworld

Writing is not like a box of chocolates.   Writing is a hike through a wood that seems familiar (especially Paksworld) interspersed with time spent in the present tense, and the interaction of these two universes in ways that (after this many books and stories) might be expected to be familiar though I know it won’t be.  Paksworld waits for me to enter it.  This world shoves itself in my face when I’m trying to follow a faint trail in Paksworld…forced me out of it, and into this, usually with something unpleasant, but sometimes with sounds or sights or people that are sheer delight.

Before I forget to mention a useful one from today: I had gone down for a brief rest in the afternoon, suddenly felt “It’s time to get up NOW” and got up, put on more warm stuff, and went out to feed horses.  Richard came with me to make sure the water got done.   I put out their feed, opened the gate, let them into the barn where they went peacefully (no pinned ears, no hoisted hind hoofs) into their respective stalls and started eating.  Richard had brought in several more buckets of decomposed granite.  I felt energized by the rest enough to bring in four more.  Dark clouds had shown to the south, obviously headed this way.  Got the fourth bucket in and poured, stamped it down, put the shovel and bucket away.  Tigger indicated he’d like a cookie or several.  I gave him several, petting him between them,which he tolerated.  Rags looked on with envy but kept eating his hay.  We left the barn; the rain started, very lightly.

OK, so problem.  4843 word chapter in Horngard II that–temporally speaking–belonged in Horngard I but did not fit it well.  For one thing its setting is in southern Fintha…MC is Arvid, others are his mentee, Jakard, whom none of you have met yet, Arvid’s son Arvi,  and (very briefly) the yeoman marshal of Arvid’s grange.  So it’s a long way from the main line of action; the only overlap is Gwenno Marrakai when she (mumble-mumble-mumble not to spoiler the book.)   Gwenno encounters Arvid & Jakard once, briefly.   She’s on the main line of the plot; they aren’t.  Clearly, that puzzle piece of 4843 words did not belong in Horngard I.  Horngard II?  It was originally the second chapter of H-2. It got pushed sideways along the tracks, with more of the immediate outcome of H-1 shoving in quite reasonably.  H-2 continued to grow, skipping over Arvid and Jakard.   I should have pulled it out right then, but it was a compelling chapter, with some really powerful bits in it.  Meanwhile its story got more and more out of both place and time with H-2…it’s written contemporaneous to about 2/3–3/4 of the way through H-1, still in late summer, and now, in H-2, it’s winter.   And it’s still not main plotline for H-2.  So I was going to pull it out right after Thanksgiving.  Yesterday, Friday, having forgotten about an earlier problem I had with the new Word and Copy/Paste, I marked it off carefully from the rest and attempted the Copy/Paste.

WORD HAS ENCOUNTERED A PROBLEM   No hint of what the problem was (other than long, and THEN I remembered I’ve had problems with this new word not wanting to do a simple copy/paste even within a file at times.  Sometimes I can copy/paste an image into Word and sometimes I can’t. )   It was late by then because I had goofed off watching videos of saber exercises from several sources on You Tube, so I put it away to argue with today.  Today it still would not copy paste that chapter.   WORD HAS ENCOUNTERED A PROBLEM.  Checked all the steps, tried again.  WORD HAS ENCOUNTERED A PROBLEM.   Infuriating.  No information about WHAT problem.  Or WHAT to do about it.  Or link to more information.

Word used to copy paste smoothly…any length.  Now it doesn’t.   Why would they change something that useful?  Why had they changed the equally useful Cut/Paste?  I imagined trying to copy/paste maybe 10 words at a time…how long that would take, what a waste of my time.    So I posted a query on Facebook–this is my problem, is there any easy fix?  One person suggested one.  I went back to Word to see if it would work…and the selected words, all 4843 of them…disappeared.   I didn’t have time to follow the instructions I’d been given.  What did I do?  I have no idea.  Moreover, I knew (because most of the chapter had been written several months ago) that I could no longer expect to rewrite it easily, even though I read it yesterday as I was selecting the text.  I know the story (who did what to whom and what a different who thinks about that) but the details, the small things that made the passage come vividly alive…are gone.

As this had begun to turn on me, as some stories do, I will probably take this opportunity to grab it by its collar, shake firmly, and say “Nobody wants a grimdarkdepressing story in the midst of the grimdarkdepressing crap we’re all living through so…let’s see what horribles will fall out of your pockets and turn this into a serious *but bearable* story.   A story in which Jakard just may survive.

And now for Sword Talk.   Here are a few of the websites I’ve been looking into. 1)  Schola Gladiatoria, Matt Easton owner I’ve mentioned before.  Deals in antique weapons, is involved in historical re-enactment events in UK, runs a HEMA club in London, teaches a variety of historical weapons, enjoys sparring with light sabers as well as synthetic and steel swords of various kinds.  Background in history, archaeology, and more.   Big site, plenty to learn.  Frequently co-sponsors a video with Tod’s Workshop (Tod makes replica weapons and also does research on how they function.  2) The Winged Sabre Historical Fencing Channel, Russ Mitchell, owner.  Discovered this week while looking for more beginner saber exercises.   His background includes human anatomy in relation to movement and conditioning.  I’m very impressed with his “clean practice” approach and his approach to “the anxious fencer.”   (Clean practice means doing every movement precisely correct, so that in an emergency you do it much closer to right than you would if you practiced “slapdash” moves.  You don’t practice until you can to it right…you practice until you can’t do it wrong (or hardly ever.  Those of you were hoping to snicker about “dirty practice” in another direction…go stand in a corner.)  His Hungarian Hussar Saber warmups will be my next set of things to work on.  I already have a lifetime of injuries of various kinds, so, as mentioned before, taking this slow.   More later…long after midnight due to othr stuff.