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@oldmanauthor
A Lawnmower Adventure: Part Two
Every disaster story deserves a sequel. This one highlighted the creativity of the universe and its ability to keep me guessing. Picture this: it’s August 27th of 2025, and I’m consistently using my zero-turn lawnmower for the unapproved purpose of brush clearance when, suddenly, the noise abruptly changes. The blades are no longer spinning. Well, I’ve been through this before: I’ve replaced…
A Lawnmower Adventure.
Let’s keep this short and just run over the timeline. No need to beat about the bush, even if that’s the sort of thing that I’ve been doing. May 20th, 2025. Having found a tree stump using our Craftsman Z5200 ‘zero’ turn lawnmower, the blade began impacting the inside of the deck. We’d had a similar situation before, when the dear wife had found a 16lb tamper in long grass and bent the…
Renga Renga Roses.
While I’m still hip deep in trying to finalize the first SFD of The Secret Life of Raymond Ellison, still some twenty-five scenes or so from that lofty goal of lower-level-crap, I’m still making it to the twice-monthly writers’ group meetings. One thing that I’m still getting to grips with is how many different roles fit into the notion of ‘being a writer.’ Leaving aside novel genres, like…
Just something I came up with during a writing exercise. Have a great day.
Raymond.
I’ve been so busy over the last year that I’ve been neglecting this blog, but I’m in the middle of a project that, now it’s raining outside and I can’t get any more work done, I can talk about that for a bit before I have lunch and get back to writing, a much more comfortable, indoor job. The Inspiration and My Writing Style. It’s surprising, when I think about it, how many of my best ideas…
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GIMP and a Christmas Tree Ornament.
I’m a bit of a GIMPtard and I keep forgetting how to do this, so I’ve thrown together these simple instructions for a worked example on how to scale and size a photograph for one of those customizable Christmas ornaments. Like this one. The first thing to do is to have a picture that you want in the frame. Then you’ll need to remove the back of the frame and take the measurements. As you can…
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A Quick Update... #2
An update on 2023 so far: a cruise, Fiverr, and progress on The Watching.
Where have I been? I have been pretty busy all year, so far. I haven’t gotten as far with The Watching as I’d hoped, but I’ve been making progress on all fronts. So what have I been up to? First the fun stuff. Cruisin’ for a Boozin’. I don’t get many vacations, so when the dear wife suggested a break to mark my passing an age milestone, I thought that sounded great. A few days at sea going to…
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CPAP Update.
It hasn’t been the best, or the worst week ever, for me at least. I didn’t progress in getting work progressed as far as I’d hoped this week, and there were the Wednesday and Thursday migraines – the first of the year and still absent the mind-buggering pain that other sufferers get – my heart goes out to you. That is more than adequately balanced by getting my CPAP machine! Before… Thanks to…
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2023 - How About We Try This Again?
A New Year and new excuses? Or an opportunity to reset and get it right in 2023? Only time will tell.
This blog is primarily about accountability: an attempt to keep myself on track to achieve my writing goals, or, at this point, my writing goal. 2022 was not my most successful year ever. In fact, measured against the only three goals I set at the beginning, the word ‘fail’ gets to be repetitive. I’ll quickly review those goals, give a concise reason why success was elusive, and then briefly go…
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A Good Night's Sleep.
A sleep study and new CPAP machine.
Back in 2007, between getting back from Iraq and being posted to what was to become Joint Base Lewis-McChord, I had a sleep study performed at the Georgetown Sleep Center in Texas. I had a good suspicion that I suffered from sleep apnea and wanted to know for sure. Turns out I did. They gave me a CPAP machine. An Unwanted Gift. I absolutely hated it. The last thing I wanted was to sleep with…
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A Bigger, Brighter, Newer Year.
Getting back to work in 2022 after a busy year doing other things.
After a year of silence here, I’m finally back to confirm that I’m still alive and excited to be saying goodbye to 2021. An Improvement Over 2020. In defense of what has been, to my mind, a really crap year, I must confess that it was an improvement over the previous year. I had no broken feet, my immediate family are all on the same side of the daisies, and it’s been quite a productive year on…
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Going Fourth!
The fourth revision of my debut novel is complete! Now, in the runup to Thanksgiving and the Holiday season, it's time to begin the Beta Reader process.
The fourth – and final pre-Beta – edit of The Watching is complete! I’m still not satisfied with the Prologue – it serves a purpose, but I’m not sure how well. It might be better to let the reader put the world together as they read the novel, but at least for now I think a primer might be worth the effort.
The Watching, 4th edit project statistics.
I’ve come in at a little under 90,000…
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Falling for the Season
Falling for the Season
Well, it’s been a long time and anyone keeping up with this ‘Accountability Blog’ would be forgiven for thinking that I’d perhaps given up on everything. That hasn’t happened, though, so let me bring you up to date with everything that has been going on at Castle Wellington since the last post.
To start with, although I haven’t gotten the final ‘all clear’ from the foot-engineers at the local…
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Making it Through 2020.
I'm still here and haven't given up on my novel. Here are my latest excuses, along with a couple of notes on Scrivener.
There’s quite a disconnect between my attitude at the beginning of this year and today, at the ass end of August. I started out with the goals of improving everything, being more productive, being healthier and happier. I’m not sure how my 2020 compares with everybody else’s, but in March all of that went out of the window and it’s been a challenge just to keep everything together on a normal,…
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How to Take Effective Research Notes.
After I don't know how long I've been making a mess of my research notes. I've finally found a way that I can get them into useful order using three simple rules.
Over the time I’ve been working on my research for Lock Out Tag Out, I’ve been banging my head against my wall of ineptitude when it comes to making and taking effective notes that are meaningful and easily collated. To that end, here are three simple rules that I’ve developed up to my latest reading. I’m in the process of going back over every book that I’ve read through and combing through all…
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A Working Break.
Touching base with three weeks worth of being housebound with a broken foot, just to demonstrate I'm not dead yet.
Well, my foot’s still broken and it’s a bugger getting about the place on crutches, but I haven’t been completely lazy. I’ve been engaged on a number of projects. For instance, the eagle eyed would have noticed the progress panel at the top left of every page now indicates work has progressed with The Watching. I’m now on the last scene of Chapter 10.
The Lawnmower Man.
Since I’ve been…
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The Interlude.
It's been an eventful few weeks, hasn't it? Here's what's been happening to keep me from getting any work done. It's at least different than my usual crap excuses.
Hopefully this is going to be the only post of its kind. At any rate, I’m determined not to write another like this no matter what happens, but since this is an accountability blog, and since it’s been four weeks since I posted anything, I thought I’d at least touch base with what life has been like in the interim.
Annus Horribilis.
That’s Latin for ‘horrible year.’ It looks, on the face of…
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