Space: A Love Affair

Post by Doris McCraw

It is in our genes. The desire to explore to know what’s there.  From ‘Star Trek‘ , ‘Star Wars‘ and Arthur C. Clarkes “2001, A Space Odyssey“, space is a part and parcel of our dreams and thoughts.  Who hasn’t spent time looking at the stars and wondering what was up there?  As a child my love of space was to stand outside, look up and pick the stars I wanted to visit. I even used to plan my trip, as long as it didn’t involve flying.  I can hear you laughing. I know, space ‘flight’ is part of the package. You are probably wondering where all this is leading.  The Space Symposium!

What is the ‘Space Symposium’? It is the premier gathering of the global space community, which is how they describe it. This one was the 29th year.  Even though NASA didn’t make it this year it was still a great event. To wander the displays, the booths and talking with the people is heaven for anyone who has the slightest interest in space. For me, one of the greatest parts of the event: the young people who attended. They showed interest, asked intelligent questions and overall gave a person a good feeling about where these young ones will take us in the future. If you would like to see an overview of the week you can visit http://www.astronaut.com. and then the link to the 29th Space Symposium.

This image was selected as a picture of the week on the Farsi Wikipedia for the 8th week, 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I also realized that this event could be seen as the story and characters of a book. You have the main characters, that would be the larger companies that attended, and then the secondary characters, the smaller companies.  Each has a part to play, but not all are in every story, just like not all the companies are a part of each others final product. However, everyone needs to be seen and their specialties evaluated, just like we do when composing our stories. Who knows when the contact you make at a symposium will be a part of the final product.  Sometimes we just meet characters that will not leave our consciousness until we find a place for them, even if that is in a future story.

Maybe some day I will write a story about this amazing event, but I would have to make it a space story or a mystery about satellites, space travel or…  That is for another time. In the meantime, look up, enjoy the stars, the Milky Way and the sky.  Follow your dreams or as Smashmouth sang at the opening ceremonies “You might as well be walking on the sun.”

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Dependent on Technology

Alethea Williams

This post

by Alethea Williams

When I first started writing, my desk was my kitchen table and my tools were one of my kids’ leftover lined notebooks that were four for a dollar at the back-to-school sale, and a Bic pen that  couldn’t have cost more than that.  I wrote longhand for many years.

Old and New

My first word processor cost $200,at that time a lot of money to me.  It had no hard drive and stored everything on big floppy discs.

It soon developed an electrical short and ate up all my work.I had   a Commodore computer for a while.  I think these  computers had 256k of memory.  Commodores had  a sort of cult following, with users writing programs that were published  in a magazine for others to copy.  It  seemed like a toy to  me.  It was a gift from my dad, and when I got  rid of it, it   still looked brand-new because I  never used it.

Commodore

I went to a DOS-based computer, expensive in those days, and again started saving my work to disc.  I had a manual of DOS commands – that still comes in handy sometimes, although I have the feeling Microsoft would rather its casual users didn’t know too much about messing  around with a computer’s operating system.  I don’t remember how much memory this computer had but it wasn’t much.  And I had a dot-matrix printer which I heard a lot of moaning about from editors at conferences who  had to struggle to read those submissions.  Ah, the good  old days, when editors actually accepted unsolicited submissions!

Computers kept getting faster and cheaper, with more memory.  I got my first laser printer, which turned out beautiful manuscripts on 20-lb. bond paper.  Still, the rejections came in.  I couldn’t understand it.  Wasn’t I doing everything right?  I was certainly spending a lot of money on tools for writing.

My latest computer is an all-in-one with cordless  keyboard and mouse.  Goodbye tangles of wires, hello inability to  stay connected to the downstairs modem, so yesterday I had to go buy a range extender.  I compose directly to the computer nowadays, and I save my work to a thumb drive. No more yearly purchase of a thick guide to editors and agents, all that information is available online.

Submissions are sent as an e-mail attachment, so no  more paper, printer, or postage expense.   Publishing is a self-serve option now, with Lulu and Book Baby and CreateSpace.  Some of the bigger publishers offering do it yourself book services.  And promotion is almost entirely online although I’ve seen some authors lately having postcards printed to be sent out announcing their book signings.  The novelty of using slow, old-time advertising is getting them noticed.

The “business” of writing has changed so much.  There might still be pen-and-paper writers out there, but I don’t personally know of any.  How about you?  How dependent are you on your computer for your writing?  Do you think technology has made you a better writer?

I did get published, thanks!  You can get a copy of my award winning novel Willow Vale from:  Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or the publisher.  Follow me on Facebook, and Twitter at @actuallyalethea.  Read my personal blog at Actually Alethea.