Derry, Northern Ireland

Derry, Northern Ireland
A book I'm working on is set in this town.

Sunday, March 13, 2016

Damn you, DST...

We do not like Daylight Savings Time. Never have. I think it stems mainly from me being a night person...someone whose perfect day starts at 10 or 11 am and goes till 2am. DST means later nights and earlier days and throws me off.

When I worked at Book Soup, in West Hollywood, and did night shifts till midnight, as I walked home half the time I would stop at Norm's on La Cienega and have breakfast. Loved it. Loved how peaceful LA was at that time of the morning. And if it was raining, even better.

My first job in LA required me to be there at 8am. Hated it. My brain did not like to function for the first hour, but it had to; I was the only one in the office except for the owner. At least she paid well. Between that and support from a couple of friends, I was able to get back on my feet after a rough exit from Houston.

My favorite time to write is beginning at 2pm and going till I can't...which is usually 7 or 8. There have been occasions where I'll write until midnight, but then I have a hell of a time shutting my brain down and can't get to sleep till about 4. It's all very scattershot, and I whine a lot about my own inconsistency...but it works, for the most part.

Today, rather than fight with DST, I reformatted Bobby Carapisi. Mainly as an exercise. The formatting I published it in isn't right, so I shifted it to how other books look -- justified paragraphs and fewer white pages and slightly wider margins with the page numbers at the top corners instead of the bottom center. I'll be doing The Vanishing of Owen Taylor in the same way, and I found there were aspects of Word I didn't know how to do. So I went looking for information on how to do them.

Like controlling the page numbering better, using section breaks. I didn't know you have to unlink them, which is why I couldn't control the numbering. Now I know how...and I'm thinking of making a hardcover edition of BC just to see how it turns out.

I'm also thinking of doing a crowd-funder to see if I can get me enough money to stay in Northern Ireland for 2 months and get Place of Safety going, again. But I need to find out how much I'd require, first...like enough to pay my bills in the US and living expenses in Derry and Belfast.

That part I can do...so maybe I will, just to see...

No comments: