Hello Eric,

Welcome to The Newb Files, Issue XIV, archived.

I'm using a new template from ConvertKit, on my new MAC mini. Hopefully that will be an end to software related newsletter issues. ...

Zombies, a Novel is making excellent progress, 11043 words. ... here we go.

Note that, although I have a little more confidence in Scrivener on a MAC, it is purely coincidental that I started making progress on Zombies, a Novel about the same time I switched computers for my writing.

I wish I knew why. ...

While I am not a complete newb when using a MAC is concerned, I'm close enough. ... I used a MAC a couple decades ago in a graphics design night class at NSCAD (Nova Scotia College of Art and Design). I became familiar enough with MAC's to realize that while they both (PC's and MAC's) have good points, they are also both computers. So, annoying as fuck at times.

The best thing about the MAC is that installing (and uninstalling) software is a snap. Second best, changing the resolution of the monitor is done in the blink of an eye, with no dire warnings of upcoming droughts, famines or pestilence.

It is far from perfect however. In the month I've had the MAC it has exhibited several windows like behaviours. Such as: freezing of the Dock, freezing of programs, refusing to wake from sleep, and one update to the OS.

"Finder" ("explorer" in windows) I find to be terrible, yet, I am unable to articulate exactly why. ... not good for someone calling themselves an author. I am, at least, getting used to it.

On the other hand, while the use of a PC and MAC joined at the hip so to speak with a KVM switch has gone well, on a recent Friday morning both started having problems with the mouse/user interface. Not being able to click some things, menus flickering in and out of existence, errors beeping at random and in strings like a key was held down etc.

This was eventually fixed by uninstalling the software for the new PC/MAC compatible mouse from the PC. The software was never installed on the MAC.

Said mouse is now directly connected to the MAC, and my old AOpen PS/2 mouse is directly connected to the PC.

All is well at the moment, mouse-wise at least.

It will take time to see if it was worth the effort (and money) to have Scrivener on a MAC. However, there are slight differences, and so far I prefer the MAC version (with only a couple exceptions) of Scrivener. So, that's good.

OK, it took a couple weeks and a Scrivener facebook page, to find out how to change the text colour in the main editor of Scrivener on a MAC, but that's minor. ... if amazingly annoying.

People are obsessed with words and their meaning. Thank goodness, or where would we authors—I mean writers—I mean authors be?

Obsessed all too often to the point of what I call semantic BS (Bull Shit).

While we can see this all too often in writing, and life in general, nowhere is it more obvious than with swear words.

When I was a kid, one of the odd things about me was I did not, would not, swear. As I got older that changed to where, by high school, I would swear occasionally.

One day, walking home from (high) school, another student, someone I did not know that well, was walking home as well. He came up to me, and repeatedly said, say fuck, just say fuck, and I'll know you're OK. I shook my head no and remained silent all the way up the hill. I swore sometimes, but what kind of fucking test was that to decide if someone was “OK”? Silly.

In North America (read the western world) we have long had a higher number of prudes than recommended. This has resulted in the censoring of movies and books. Women not being allowed to go topless, or even, at times, to breastfeed their baby in public for Christ's sake. And many other kinds of nonsense.

Including stupid shit regarding swearing.

If you think the days of censorship and misogynist rules are over, you're wrong. Just recently, in a local election, someone had to drop out because of her boudoir photos on her Instagram account.

A couple of years ago, at a US Open tennis match, they gave a female tennis player a “code violation” for taking her shirt off, to put it back on right-way round. She was completely covered underneath. ...

In the early years of Hollywood, a movie became known for the “excessive” (realistic) swearing in a courtroom scene near the end of the movie. After its theatrical release, the father of the female lead paid for a billboard, entreating people not to go see the movie because of the swearing. (Were it not for misplaced link(s) no amount of searching seems to be able to track down (again), this would have specific citations.)

Stay with me here. The same differing opinions, education, and time-line that decides what grammar and punctuation rules are to be applied, also apply to what words are “swear words”. And, what level of being offended is to apply to each word. I know someone that is horrified, and deeply offended at the word “bollocks”. A word rarely used in Canada.

Jesus, Fucking, Christ.

So, while it only occasionally makes its way into my newsletters, my writing has carefully crafted (unlike the previous paragraph) swearing in it. Carefully crafted, because it is very easy to overdo it, although the swearing in my rough drafts is truly epic.

Swearing needs to sound realistic; needs to match the character's voice. It needs to. ... make sense. Not everyone swears after all.

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Below are links to a few short stories I wrote. The first three are the results from an exercise in 'voice' for the diymfa.com writing course I took in the spring of 2020. The fourth is the second short story I ever wrote, which I wrote as an entry for the 2020 CBC Short Story Prize.

Clicking a button will take you to my author website.

Weborbit, Mouse Attack and an Itreyan Feast

The Rope

Q: RE. your novel; is it time to just write shit, and fix it later (paraphrased)?

A: No. Refer to The Newb Files, Newsletter VII, Opinion, First Drafts. ... where I explain why I don't work that way.

Future newsletters may have Frequently Asked Questions. Send your question(s) to: Eric.

That's all for this month!

Thanks,

Eric C Bailey, September 14, 2021

The Newb Files, Science Fiction and Fantasy

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