Recovering Order

I may be the last person to notice this, but it makes me as excited as can be.

Way back when, about ten years ago, I began seeing (and laughing at) TV ads that contained the web pages of the advertisers. I even started at one time a list of companies that had a web presence, although I seriously doubt that term was in vogue. I'd been on the Internet for awhile by then, but the Web was the new thing and getting all the ink.

Back then the entire Web address was frequently given, including the http://prefix. Nowadays, they usually mention no more than whatever.com.

That was okay. What started bugging me was that, along with the explosion of interest in the Internet, there grew legions of AOL users, and AOL decided it owned the Internet. For awhile there, it may have. The TV ads soon not only had to list the URL for their site, but -- horrors! -- their AOL "keyword." I guess they had some sort of jump thing, but I was never an AOL subscriber.

Later on, of course, the Netscape browser picked up this shortcut stuff and all you had to do was type in the relevant part of the address and it would add the http:// and the .com at the end, and I think that's pretty much all the AOL keyword address, too.

I hated AOL, but not with a passion. The good news now, and a testament to their declining popularity, is that hardly anyone gives you the AOL keyword any more.


If I thought I could get away with it, I'd call writing slow work.

I'm re-writing Sid's blimp adventure now, and it's still fun. I've been trying to incorporate those suggestion I've received, the ones I agree with, and the novel is coming along. I *do* find it easier to do a second draft, because I rarely know during the first draft what I'm going to say. I sometimes have an idea of where the story's going, but never how it will get there.

That's why I like the NaNo idea. It allows me to test things out, to get it written if not right, and to feel my way through the countless elements that can be used to tell a story. Later on, like now, I can go back and spiff up the word usage, insert the layers and focus on what worked and what didn't. I get to expand the things that didn't make it onto the page, either because I didn't realize them until later or because they were too well known to me.

It's the best part of writing, for me, this "second draft." It's the one where I can write the story that came out in the first draft, the one I didn't always know existed.