My feet will forgive me, in time

Walking down the hall this morning my legs cut through the cushy haze of lingering sleep to remind me how much I've abused them over the weekend.
I took my wife to Disneyland Saturday and because I booked a hotel room for Saturday night we could stay at the park until closing and be fresh as daises for the drive home the following morning. Or, that was the plan.

We had a great time, all 15 hours of it. My legs and feet may have a different opinion but I'm not letting them near the keyboard, so we'll be sticking with my version.

Adventures in Publishing

I finished reviewing my editors marks over the weekend and had come to the moment where I yell 'Geronimo!" and send my fledgling book off into the big world. Yeah. That didn't happen.

My writing software of choice is Scrivener. It can be as simple or as powerful as you want it to be when writing. The same is true when it comes to 'compiling' your written word into an ebook... mostly.

When it comes to filling in a form I'm the kind of person that will take three. Two to mess up because I didn't read the instructions and one to get right... again, mostly.

I feel like Harold Camping

Last week I prophesied that on the coming Saturday, 12-3-11, I'd be published.
You'll never guess what happened. Maybe you did.

If you've been a reader of this blog it'll come as no surprise that, once again, I didn't publish. Holy flying @#$@$% Batman! This makes the third, no fourth time I had a date set to publish and missed it.

I have to cut myself a little slack, I suppose. After all it's the first time I've gone through this process and the time I estimate for things to be done are nothing more than WAGs.

Alright, so admitting my inability to judge how long this writing stuff takes and before I'm labeled the Harold Camping of the writing world, I will refrain from any further predictions of when this will be wrapped up and published.

... the 10th. Definitely the 10th.

Do Not Pass Go

I used to work with a very interesting guy. He was a computer program and very clever. We were working on a project and had hit some major set backs which kept pushing back the delivery for the finished program. 

I remember our manager coming into our office and asking, for the millionth time when the project would be done. Our manager wasn't a computer person. He had no concept of what was involved in programming, or just about anything computer related. Because of this he'd ask questions that no self respecting 'computer' manager should ask the end result was he didn't get much regard among his department. 

So, he comes in and asks about the delay of the project, and it was clear he'd rehearsed this because he was very specific about programming terms all of us knew he didn't understand. 

The programmer admitted the manager was right except he hadn't taken into account the Constant Date Retreating Factor. 

The CDRF states that the distance to the project goal date will increase in direct relation to the amount of effort you expend on reaching that goal by a factor of 1.5 to 1. The manager wasn't sure if the programmer was serious or not, but to not lose face he went along with it. I thought it was one of the funniest things I'd ever seen until I discovered that it really exists. 

Working on this book has confirmed the Constant Date Retreating Factor it real. As of the date of this post there has been three times when I was certain I was just days of publishing my book. Certain! 

This time I know the book will be published and it's just days from happening. Not weeks, mind you. Days. 

For those of you aspiring writers beware of the CDRF. For those published writers you know what I'm talking about. If not, then thank your lucky stars and throw a dash of salt over your shoulder that it doesn't happen to you.