If knitting books had a plot

... as a tech writer, one time someone in QA suggested to me that I write a manual with a plot, where the user has various problems putting the product together and getting to work (it was a hardware manual). I got out of doing the revision by saying that it would probably increase the word count.

I could have quoted Tina the Tech Writer, and said that "unfortunately it was not to be, because User A was not attracted to User B, because he was a bald engineer." Alas, I did not. The person who suggested this to me used to accost people on Friday afternoons and draw pictures on his whiteboard that involved the cliff-shaped kingdom of man, and the opposing cliff-shaped kingdom of God, and the cross-shaped thing that joined them. HR had warned him about doing that, but unfortunately he was a good QA guy. We all learned to stay out of the lab on Friday afternoons.

Today I got to the end of the mark-ups on Draft 2. Now I have a whole bunch of scenes to write, and I can print it out again. I had a panic while working on it, when I was trying to move Chapter 48.5 to after Chapter 48 and I couldn't find Chapter 48, which I had moved to after Chapter 6. Thank God for search-and-replace.

Best TW feedback ever

Over at the dayjob, SMEs are feverishly trying to get documents back to me all marked up, in preparation for the release that's supposed to happen the week I'm back from VP. Today's best comment: Unfortunately not true. SMEs, they're so cute.

In progress: August 2024

Wind/Water/Salt Chapters 39-51: Still n eed to take up comments and revise. Persephone (probably not its real name): Continued to think thoughts. Short Stories: After posting that short story from last month onto the workshop, I picked one of those short stories I'd started and forced a plot onto it. Critted 5 Got back 4 Submissions 0 Out there 0 Rejects 0 Knitting Cathar (self). Started month with two inches done above the armholes. Listening to audiobooks, I finished the fair isle portion, cut the steeks, and set up and knit the neckline. Just the endless finishing now. Blushing Cloud (Knitty S/S24). Started the month with (still) three inches of back done. Socks take priority. Elbrus socks (Knitty first fall 2024). Finished. Elbrus socks II . Started the first. Pole shorts (Joan McGowan-Michael). I knitted these several years ago, but the...

Moraine

So a couple of days I thought I was done with this short story, and I wrote the last line of the story. I even dated it (that's how I can tell it's over). It was a little long, at 6600 words (I was aiming for 5000). But then I was walking to work, and I thought, "My, that was a lame ending. My endings are all crap." So yesterday morning, I scribbled out the date and wrote a bit more. And this morning I wrote a bit more again, and I dated it and called it done. And still, that ending seemed lame. So a few minutes later, in the last paragraph, I scratched out "the Oak Ridges Moraine" and wrote in "that stupid moraine". Much better. Now I can move on. But in the meantime, I was doing a little research about the Moraine, and I discovered that EGTourGuide lives on it. Only by one or two hundred feet, but I thought it was funny. Good for you, EGTourGuide, with all those excellent plants growing on that substandard soil, where in the olden days (you kno...

Robynettely

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