It’s a strange thing, but I need to have music playing while I write. Right now it’s Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. In fact I have always needed music to work well at writing or anything else. (When in a shared workspace I use headphones.) If there’s no music I am easily distracted and completely lose my […]
At one time ‘writing tools’ meant pen and paper. Then, for a while, it meant a typewriter. But now it means computer software. The problem for me is that I like tinkering with software. With a really good piece of writer’s software I get immersed in setting it up, playing with its features, thinking what […]
I’ve just had a minor triumph: I’ve persuaded MS-Word to do what I want it to do. For weeks I struggled with the layout of pages with pictures on. I need a lot of pictures in my book Of Infinite Beauty, so this was a big aggravation. I would place a picture at the […]
Mortal am I, the creature of a day – and yet I trace the secret pathways of the stars, No longer tread the earth, but there with Zeus Break bread and share the food Of everlasting life. Claudius Ptolemy, writing in about AD150.
“Chondritics” is a word from astrophysics. Meteorites – rocks which fall to earth from outer space – come in several types. One type are called “chondrites”. The chondritic meteorites are made of grainy stone. Other meteorites are metallic (made mostly of iron and nickel) or achondritic (stony, but with a smooth texture, not grainy). When […]