February 18, 2010 by Chrystalline
Current Mood:
Happy
I know, I know, I haven’t said anything, but that’s at least partly because I didn’t have a lot of lead time between when I found out about it and when I had to fly. It was only about two weeks ago I found out about CPAC – my mom sent the link, and I almost disregarded it, but I glanced at the posted agenda and saw “How to Get Started in Hollywood” on the schedule for Thursday morning, and I had to come.
So I’m in DC. This is awesome.
The flight was almost an hour delayed, and I was exhausted before we even started because I don’t pack well in advance, and the idiot chicken-cat scratched his ear open Tuesday night, so I had to deal with a) catching him and holding him still long enough to get it to stop bleeding, and b) scrubbing off blood spatters, because the moron tosses his head when his ear is bleeding, which makes it look like someone went around flinging blood off a tiny baton or something. Work is still slow, so Manager had no problem with me leaving a little earlier than I’d planned, which meant I was ready almost exactly when mom & dad & brother arrived to pick me up.
DC isn’t as cold as I’d thought it would be; it’s about how Huntsville’s been the last few days. The snow piles are kind of impressive – the taxi took us past rows of cars parked on the sides of the road with snow piled up to their windows. Clearly, they’re not going anywhere.
The hotel is jaw-droppingly huge. It was kind of strange to get in the elevator, select our floor, and have the elevator start down. The lobby (which we entered from the front driveway!) is on the eighth floor here.
What really gets me, though, is how awesome it is to be in a crowd of people who mostly agree with me on so much. The Hollywood panel was great; conservative & artsy people like me – I did as much info exchange as I could. Again at the blogger free-for-all, too. I like this group. I hadn’t realized how much I’ve silenced myself because I’m so often around people whose views are incompatible with mine and I’m too timid to rock the boat. Getting cursed out by my grandpa at Christmas (because he disagrees with my political views) has shifted something in me, though, too – I think I want to start speaking out more. It’s my blog. It’s my life. I think I want it back.
Tags: convention, film, life, politics, travel, video, Writing
Categories: Film/Video, Religious/Political/Philosophical, Update, Writing •
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April 14, 2008 by Chrystalline
Well, if you haven’t heard yet, Amazon has offended the writers’ and POD publishers’ communities with strongarm tactics.
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Tags: Amazon, author, bad PR, book, Booksurge, POD, print on demand, publisher, publishing, sales, selling, stupid, writer, Writing
Categories: Writing •
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January 13, 2008 by Chrystalline
One day in Film Directing class, Dr. Stenholm was lecturing as usual when she began, “If something is worth doing…”
With a mental eyeroll and a nod, I finished it in my head: “…it’s worth doing right.”
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Tags: art, bad, good, motivation, perfection, Writing
Categories: Writing •
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December 13, 2007 by Chrystalline
As you may be aware, I follow a few writing websites and newsletters, and I generally take a look at the freelance job postings, because 1) I am very good at writing, and 2) making money in my spare time is an appealing thought. Anyway, today I came across a job posting that sounded mildly interesting, if only because they’re looking for multiple writers for projects they didn’t bother to describe in detail. Out of curiosity, I checked their webpage.
Holy Wall-O-Text, Batman!
I debated sending them an email advising changes in their web design, but I’ve found that most people don’t want to hear it. Their web designer is quite possibly related to the publishing company, based on the fact that the web designer’s page includes an affiliate link to a web business book on the publisher’s site. They are (still) attempting to make horribly-out-of-style reciprocal linking work for them, they have cute-but-tacky images everywhere, and for some reason they insist on linking every possible category at the top AND left of the page. Worse, the top links are rainbow file tabs, with the remaining links that wouldn’t fit in tabs lined up under them in a row that won’t fit neatly in my 1024×768 screen. Last I saw, the majority of web surfers were still sticking with 800×600, though 1024×768 is gaining in popularity with the growth of higher resolution video cards. My current card won’t go lower than 1024×768, and I don’t want to go higher, because I’m already nearsighted enough.
I don’t know what they’re using for a cart system, but it’s…well, ugly. I’m much happier with what I’ve managed to do with OSCommerce for CDLauryl.com (not that you can see it yet; I’m still working on it – maybe after New Year’s I’ll be ready to bring it live). I think they’d be better off using OSCommerce, too, if they’re able to handle CSS at all.
Anyway, I decided I didn’t want to apply. If I wanted to write How To Get a Job guides (and comparably mundane non-fiction), I could publish them myself and skip the middleman.
Tags: cart, design, open source, page, shop, shopping, site, web, Writing
Categories: Writing •
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November 28, 2007 by Chrystalline
(I miss the LJ mood-kitty. I need to see if I can find a WP plugin to do moodthemes.)
These people have chutzpah. By the time someone is published twice by major publishers and has significant publishing industry contacts, I suspect they don’t go through Craigslist looking for unidentified companies to hire them. I have to wonder how successful they are if they’re looking to exploit hire authors with existing contacts.
Tags: ad, exploitation, job, Writing
Categories: Writing •
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