{"id":1814,"date":"2013-04-11T09:21:11","date_gmt":"2013-04-11T15:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1814"},"modified":"2013-04-11T09:21:48","modified_gmt":"2013-04-11T15:21:48","slug":"headdesk-moments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/?p=1814","title":{"rendered":"Headdesk Moments"},"content":{"rendered":"

A:\u00a0 When you get another<\/em> email offering you a fantastic idea for a novel because the idea person admits to not being able to\/wanting to\/having time to write it, but is sure you could do it and then the two of you could split the no-doubt-substantial money.<\/p>\n

It doesn’t work that way.\u00a0\u00a0 But some people still think it does…or could.\u00a0 And there’s no polite way to explain (I’ve tried, with those who’ve caught me in person.)<\/p>\n

B)\u00a0 When you discover, toward the end of a novel, that you’ve given two characters three different names each.\u00a0 Not POV characters, where you’d catch it quickly, but minor characters who are important to other characters and are talked about.<\/em> And no, the first names you gave them did not get into the supposedly complete “Names” file.\u00a0\u00a0 Since, as my husband puts it, more than one is an infinite number…if you gave them three different names, is a fourth lurking unsuspected in another chapter?\u00a0\u00a0 Or more?\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Can you pass off the alternate names as nicknames?\u00a0 (No.\u00a0 Especially since one of them has, as one name, the name of the other one.)\u00a0\u00a0 Um…middle name?\u00a0 (No.)\u00a0\u00a0 What about any not-yet-found-and-changed-back-to-the-real-name names?\u00a0\u00a0 (No.)\u00a0 Deep heartfelt sigh.<\/p>\n

C)\u00a0 So in a very fraught week and a bit, you think you’re caught up on everything and have contacted everyone you should, with the information they requested, and are wondering why X didn’t ever email back.\u00a0 You’re composing a friendly but firm email to ask to ask X to respond when (by the grace of the small gods of email) you decide to re-read your answer to X first.\u00a0 In which you said (a week ago) that you would provide more information in a day or two.\u00a0 Only….you didn’t.\u00a0 Eeep!!<\/p>\n

D)\u00a0 In a situation ongoing for several months, trying to cancel an out-of-date and no-longer-used dial-up internet service, you realize that you’ve well and truly landed in a Klein bottle of commercial logic when your name, your address, your (former) credit card number (the one you paid with for years) and your official government ID number–NONE of them–can be found on internet service’s database…only the account number will (maybe) return a result so they can cancel the service.\u00a0\u00a0 Without the account number, you can’t get anywhere.\u00a0\u00a0 (The last use of this service was ten years ago, working through a laptop that no longer functions at all and is presently sitting on the floor under the desk, mired in dust.\u00a0\u00a0 That laptop might–if it could be booted–have the username and password that would let you access the account and thus retrieve the account number. \u00a0 But…you don’t recall either, and you were the good little person who never wrote passwords down, in those days…those days when you had many fewer passwords to remember and a really good memory for things like that.\u00a0 Both of which circumstances have changed.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A:\u00a0 When you get another email offering you a fantastic idea for a novel because the idea person admits to not being able to\/wanting to\/having time to write it, but is sure you could do it and then the two of you could split the no-doubt-substantial money. It doesn’t work that way.\u00a0\u00a0 But some people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,5],"tags":[62,112,107],"class_list":["post-1814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","category-the-writing-life","tag-craft-of-writing","tag-life-beyond-writing","tag-the-writing-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1814"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1814"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1817,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1814\/revisions\/1817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paksworld.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}