From: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org (stillpt-digest) To: stillpt-digest@smoe.org Subject: stillpt-digest V2 #137 Reply-To: stillpt@smoe.org Sender: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-stillpt-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk stillpt-digest Thursday, June 15 2000 Volume 02 : Number 137 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: page count & things ["Jennifer Stevenson" ] b/seth green is sci-fi [meredith ] Re: m/modernism. very, very modernism. [meredith ] Re: m/modernism. very, very modernism. [GHighPine@aol.com] b/Cheese Man ["David S. Bratman" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 09:03:51 -0500 From: "Jennifer Stevenson" Subject: Re: page count & things Donald, I can NOT believe you wrote this: >It comes to about 40K; anybody have a handy algorithm to convert > that to wordcount? My print-previewer says it's about 15 pages (single > spaced), which is about right; and there's certainly stuff that can be > pared away (an entire detachable coda, in fact). Jesus Christ! You were an EDITOR, man! Okay, here's what you do, and I never expected to have to tell you this: Put the entire MS in a Courier 10 non-proportional font. Set the margins at 1-1/2 top, sides 1", bottom 1". Set spacing at double space. This should give you a page 25 to 27 lines long. Count 'em to be sure. Now look at how many pages you have. Multiply the total page count by 250. DO NOT count off because the first and last pages might be half-pages, or because there's a lot of dialogue or some other malarky. That's your page count. Sheesh! > I just worry that I > need =all= of the preceding sections I outlined last night in order to get > to the =starting= point of the focused essay I (basically) already have. > > Am I worrying needlessly? Yes. >Would a page or so of introduction asserting > what it would take many pages to establish do the job? An introduction is a good place to put airy and even (you may fear) unfounded empirical assumptions. It is also a good place to say, "I assume my reader has a working knowledge of some basic Jungian critical terms." But my answer is still basically, Yes. Startlingly, again I find I agree with my confrere Prof. Bratman; who says, > 3) Or, you could follow the fiction writer's dictum, "If you get stuck > near the beginning of a story, you're beginning it in the wrong place, > and almost certainly too soon," and cut it down yourself. Except I would skip the intro, frankly. Cut to the meat and arrange it. If your convention presentations have a flaw, it is that they are unstructured, unrehearsed, and (usually) presented only from notes, not written out. This may seem like a trivial fix to you but, you will find, in an academic press setting, it ain't. I want to see it looking tight and structured! Outline it. Three-by-five cards are not a bad idea. Do not digress. Don't explain who Dumezil is. Footnote the references only. If they don't know how important he is, they'll shut up and learn. If you want to sing his praises, do it in the intro--after you've written the rest of the article! - -Jennifer ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 22:13:57 -0400 From: meredith Subject: b/seth green is sci-fi Hi! Just saw an amusing little promo on the Sci-Fi Channel: they have a series of "I Am Sci-Fi" promos, featuring various personae ranging from Moby to ... Seth Green. Green goes into a burger shop and asks for a burger, hold the mayo. The drone at the counter goes into this whole thing about "you have to have the mayo, the burger comes with mayo, sir" and won't budge. Green gets progressively more agitated by this, and ends up morphing into a CGI monster (not a werewolf, but the same idea ;) that finally devours the counter drone. It's all quite cute. +==========================================================================+ | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | +==========================================================================+ | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 22:16:40 -0400 From: meredith Subject: Re: m/modernism. very, very modernism. Hi, Gayle responded: >> Wow. You two really go out of your way, don't you? > > Huh? (Must be my day for not getting jokes.) I meant, you and David go out of your way to annoy one another. I've been doing my best to ignore it and hope it will go away, but since things seem to be progressing to the point where the attacks are coming unprovoked, I'm afraid I'm going to have to put my Listowner Hat on and request that if you have any personal attacks to sling at one another in future, you please do so off-list. Thanks. +==========================================================================+ | Meredith Tarr meth@smoe.org | | New Haven, CT USA http://www.smoe.org/~meth | +==========================================================================+ | "things are more beautiful when they're obscure" -- veda hille | | *** TRAJECTORY, the Veda Hille mailing list: *** | | *** http://www.smoe.org/meth/trajectory.html *** | +==========================================================================+ ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 14 Jun 2000 23:44:26 EDT From: GHighPine@aol.com Subject: Re: m/modernism. very, very modernism. In a message dated 6/14/00 7:24:02 PM Pacific Daylight Time, meth@smoe.org writes: << I meant, you and David go out of your way to annoy one another. I've been doing my best to ignore it and hope it will go away, but since things seem to be progressing to the point where the attacks are coming unprovoked, I'm afraid I'm going to have to put my Listowner Hat on and request that if you have any personal attacks to sling at one another in future, you please do so off-list. >> I had no idea that the exchange could be construed as "attacks." It was not intended to be annoying, by me and I doubt by David. Your interpretation of the exchange astonishes and puzzles me. I don't see anything that is "progressing," either. =How= could the exchange possibly be interpreted as an attack, personal or otherwise? All I did was to explain why I didn't get his joke originally. (I hadn't even realized it was a joke.) His clarification of the joke did not annoy me, and I would be surprised to learn that my response annoyed him. ???????? Gayle ------------------------------ Date: Thu, 15 Jun 2000 02:31:27 -0400 (EDT) From: "David S. Bratman" Subject: b/Cheese Man I don't know what planet is retrograde this week (to borrow an old Genie line), but here's something from yet another oddball planet I must have been visiting lately: I've been re-reading the early issues of Neil Gaiman's _Sandman_, and in the very first issue I found something that made me think of "Restless". Dream/Morpheus, having been imprisoned by a magus for 70 years, finds when he escapes that his first need is to assuage hunger. So he invades a walk-on character's dream which happens to have food in it: "In Mort Notkin's recurring dream, he goes to this swell party, but he's dressed as a clown ... he thought it was a costume party. He didn't know. Everyone laughs at him: Marilyn, Elvis, even the Duke ... "Weird! That's the first time a naked man has ever turned up to raid the buffet. Dreams. Go figure them. Then Ron and Nancy turn up, and Mort's back on familiar ground." What's interesting here is the way, from Mort's point of view, a complete nonsequitur has invaded his dream, and then goes away leaving no significant effect. Yet the nonsequitur is actually more "real" than the dream is. Now the First Slayer is of course an invasion, but she does not appear blatantly and clearly at first, and she is most emphatically not a nonsequitur. And I thought of the Cheese Man, and not just because he bears food. He is a complete nonsequitur, yet he probably has his own reasons for being there; we just don't know what they are (and may never find out). It's just one of those little things. Anyway, here in _Sandman_ we're seeing something similar, but more from the Cheese Man's point of view. [There's a well-known fan, old friend of mine, and sometime Tor Books editor, a Genie member in the early days, named Debbie Notkin: Mort's surname, a rare one, might be a Tuckerism, a deliberate homage, but I don't know.] ------------------------------ End of stillpt-digest V2 #137 *****************************