A.J. Walker

writerer

PulpIdol

Not a Song Video

A couple of weeks ago I submitted my first chapter of TWO to Pulp Idol, which is part of Liverpool's 'Writing on the Wall' festival. Unfortunately due to a glitch my invite to read at one of the Pulp Idol Heats never materialised. The first I heard about the heats was from a judge on Twitter saying how good the writers had been that night. When the guys and gals at WOW realised, they were on to me and we're very apologetic. I rang them a little bit annoyed at it, but by the end of the two telephone conversations I felt so sorry for them - they sounded genuinely more gutted than me. Apparently at least one other invitee never got their email too.

After the consideration of a fight to the death between me and the other unfortunate was discounted, it was decided that, if I wanted and could do it, I should do a video of a 3-minute reading of the first chapter and the answers to a couple of questions so the judges could see it this weekend. This would be too big to email so needed to go on to YouTube. I did that on Thursday; apologies to anyone following my YouTube channel who got pinged to be told I'd uploaded a new vid and found it was not me and guitar, it was me and my Kindle.

I'm not actually sure of how the Pulp Idol thing really works. They have the whole chapter to read and then hear 3 minutes, which is a tiny proportion of it. I guess they read the chapters and listen to the answers on where the book is up to etc rather than judging on the performance. Anyway, alls I can do now is wait.

In other writing news I had submitted a story for a horror anthology, 'Don't Open the Door,' several weeks ago, and have now received my edits/questions from the editor. A wee bit of work to finish it, which involves tightening up the start (as usual) and will probably end up cutting 500-1000 words!? We'll see. Gotta get on this. Now if I can just get my damn printer to work…

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Some Computing and a Bit of WoW!

My MacBook Pro is still periodically having its panics, but not too often to scare me completely. In any case it meant I took a little time to look at some of the stuff I have on it. Included finding apps that no longer work or that I don't use any more. These included: Logic Express, MacJournal and Montage. Decided it made sense to delete them, which of course it does. The fewer apps on the device the less potential for issues; perhaps.

I've never used Montage which is an app for formatting for screenwriting. Looked quite neat. I even wondered about getting it upgraded before I came to my senses and thought a) I've enough other writing on my plate at the moment to warrant not getting involved with another learning curve and b) I've got Scrivener which will do the job along with all the other things it can do. So if and when I want to write a screen or radio play I can go straight to Scrivener. Huzzah!

EXIT STAGE LEFT

trashed apps
Apps: Trashed

It frees up some memory too but in the grand scheme of things only about 1GB. Now thats nice to have in reserve, when I see how much memory my photos takes up it pales into insignificance (173GB). I really need to spend more time deleting photos.

storage
55GB free (173GB used up by photos)

It doesn't help that I am now using iMovie and recording things now I've rekindled my love for the guitar. That really does eat up some memory. Will need to keep on top of photos and movies now. Ho hum.

In other news I managed another 1300 words today for TWO* which keeps me on track for finishing the first draft by the end of March. I really don't know what is going to happen next to the guys. Seat of the pants writing. I am considering working on the first chapter and submitting it for Pulp Idol. Now that would be a first for me. I haven't really done much for Writing on the Wall since Dragon's Pen; which was the scariest thing I've ever done. They've had the odd flash fiction competition but they haven't taken it that seriously in recent years as WoW itself has got bigger, but Pulp Idol has gone from strength to strength. If I've got the thing written then I should at least fling it their way. It can't do any harm.


* The Wobbly Odyssey (aka Project Jaipur)
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