an entry chockablock with some fellow spies journalers.
Or I should become a doctor or a lawyer, but only for a short amount of time, so that I have the credentials to write schlocky books about lawyers or doctors, like John Grisham or Robin Cook.
Today: 4.1 miles.
Yesterday: nothing.
The winner of "Makes Diane Laugh Hard More Than Once Today" award goes today to Patrick of inside. First, he wrote me about my assertion the other day that the best thing about being a writer is that you get to live in two places:
Diane,
Not only do authors get to "divide their time" between fabulous homes, but they also do things completely unrelated to the writing they're churning out.
"Penelope Spears has written fourteen novels, six collections of poetry, was nominated for an Obie award for her commercial for Storr's Canned Peas, and, in her spare time, runs a small inn in Vermont."
That's why I'd like to become an author. Evidently, it's so non-taxing that you can do things like run bed & breakfasts, join bands, or run multimillion dollar companies.
Or I should become a doctor or a lawyer, but only for a short amount of time, so that I have the credentials to write schlocky books about lawyers or doctors, like John Grisham or Robin Cook.
But really, my dustjacket autobiography isn't going to be of either of the above camps. I'm going to be one of those fascinating authors who make it seem a virtue that I could never hold a job.
"Before writing his first best-selling novel, Patrick Cleary was an administrative assistant, loan collector, veteranary assistant, telephone sex operator, waiter, retail store manager, and a ghoul at Disney's Haunted Mansion. He divides his time between Boston and London, where he runs a small used-clothing store."
Patrick
(I loved the inclusion of the bit about authors and novelists having outside occupations, as though writing isn't full-time enough. And I have to say I'm more intrigued by the "ghoul at Disney's Haunted Mansion" bit than the "telephone sex operator," because I've known telephone sex operators and they're just normal people. Disney ghouls, however...)
Then, in yesterday's entry, he talked about how great NPR is for things to listen to:
So now I keep the dial tuned to NPR. There are a number of great programs to listen to, including Fresh Air, where Terry Gross interviews almost-dead jazz musicians, The Connection, where Christopher Lydon tries to make world events more interesting by having a lesbian poetess from Kosovo discuss orgasms with callers from Indiana, and BBC News, which mostly reports on the same news as its American counterparts, but calls athletic events "Sport." (Dropping that 's' at the end sounds terribly terribly classy, even if they're talking about cricket and soccer, which are attended by people prone to riot at any given moment.)
Not only is he so right about the "almost-dead jazz musicians" (I love Terry Gross, but c'mon), but he zeroed in on the one aspect of the BBC World News that cracks Darin and me up. Whenever we hear the intro bells of the BBC News Hour, we turn to one another and say, "And now Hugh Pricer-Jones, with Sport." Saying this with as close to Received Pronunciation as we can muster never fails to make us giggle, nearly uncontrollably. The image that comes to mind for Hugh Pricer-Jones is either Michael Palin or Eric Idle in a suit looking dweebish.
I'm glad the Sport segment of the BBC cracks someone else up as well.
I had a disaster happen recently, which was followed by a minor miracle that was actually a mini-disaster in and of itself. (No animals were harmed in the making of this sentence.)
I noticed something funky in my Claris E-mailer program yesterday: the InBox icon told me that I had new mail, but there was no new mail in the box. On a whim I sorted by Subject instead of by Date (my usual sort method), and lo and behold: I had about 500 "Toner Supplies Sale" messages in my InBox that were not visible under Date view. Bad sign.
Then I tried sorting by From/To and got the modal dialog box that read "Couldn't complete the last command because a read was attempted beyond the end of a file" and then had an OK button. Okay! And then all the messages from the InBox disappeared.
I discovered the From/To sort didn't work in any other folder as well. And I couldn't delete any message (such as "Toner Supplies Sale" numbers 1-502--every 5 minutes I was evidently getting another 3 of them) without getting that damn dialog box.
Because Darin wasn't here--does he ever think about my needs?--I sent mail to Greg saying, "Waaaah! Waaaah! Help!" I know what you're thinking: "Diane, your mail program isn't working. Why did you send Greg mail?" Because I'm a twit, that's why.
Greg called and said, For one thing, turn off mail collection. And for another thing, you've backed up recently, right?
Eh, no.
It sounded to him like the mail file had gotten corrupted somehow. I suspected it probably from getting all those stupid messages I get from the diary-l list; why don't I just unsubscribe and save myself 200 e-mails a day? Greg did not take a stand on what caused the corruption. He asked if there was some way to rebuild the database, which evidently some mail programs included. I checked the Emailer help file and there was, in fact, a rebuild command.
Greg told me: Step One, make backup copies of your mail file and mail index and hide them somewhere. Step Two, do the rebuild. Step Three, forget we ever talked and don't blame him if this doesn't work.
The rebuild took a half hour. (Yes, I have a lot of mail in my mail database, about half of which are deleted diary-l messages.) We chatted on the phone about what was going on, until Darin came home, at which point he took over the chatting-with-Greg duties.
At the end of the rebuild, I happily reported that I could sort by Subject, From/To, or Date as I saw fit. And I could delete any message I wanted to.
On the downside, I now had 900+ messages in my Mail Box, whereas before I had had but 15.
Some were messages that had been filed away into other folders. Some were messages that had already been deleted.
After about an hour of resorting all the obvious ones, I said, "Screw it" and filed the rest in my "nobody knows anything" folder. Most of them were about the journal anyhow, and the ones that aren't--or that I had already trashed--will instead be preserved for a)posterity, b)a biographer working on The Collected E-mails of Diane Patterson, or c)a fit of spring cleaning you and I both know will never happen.
I attended Writing Group and Wine Tasting Society last night. It was just me, Linda, and Aaron--where Gonzo had gotten to, none of us knew. We discussed the latest draft of Aaron's, which has an ending this time, my notes on my next script, and Linda's changes to the idea for her script. Surprisingly, Aaron and I had the same objections to Linda's changes. I say surprisingly because Aaron and I usually have different takes on things--usually both helpful, just very different. Aaron and Linda both gave me good feedback on my story ideas. And Aaron, as always, took criticisms and plaudits with about the same amount of restrained enthusiasm. (Anybody who writes as much as he does both needs lots of feedback and has learned to accept it well.)
Then we got into a very long conversation about drugs (don't ask...and, come to think of it, I won't tell anyhow) and about our fellow classmates in a kind of "Where are they now?" discussion. We've been talking about putting together a little reunion at the end of the month since Gonzo is returning to Portugal. We're just not sure anyone would come. We weren't a cohesive group when we graduated last year, and we sure haven't gotten any more cohesive in the meantime.
I sure do want to know what our fellow graduates are up to now. How many are still writing, for instance? Very few, methinks. I know that work can get in the way and that will slow down productivity, but there's a different between extremely slow output and not doing anything at all, which is where a lot of people go with their writing.
Of course today Terry Gross is interviewing FW DeKlerk.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com