April 27th, 2008
by
Brett Bumeter
This week I traveled to Nevada to cover some events at the Laughlin River Run. This is a biker rally and I was here to cover concerts and the overall event itself.
This trip unlike many of my other trips, I was finally prepared for the internet with an Air Card. That was a good thing as the hotel wireless (like so many) was crap.
To be more specific it was crap on our floor. After the fact, we were able to get a refund on the wireless access fee (other bloggers bought in not myself). It was at this point that the IT guy told us that our floor didn’t have wireless coverage.
That would have been useful information before we checked in!
So going forward, whenever I’m not packing a air card or have a large amount of data to push and need to use the condo hotel or even rv park system, which happens when uploading large videos. I’m going to call the hotel and ask to speak with the IT people first before I check in and then request the optimum floors of coverage from the front desk when I get there.
Now as these battles with hotels go, I suspect that they will try and find some other way to defeat my efforts to get work done, but its one more tool to add to my bag of tricks.
September 18th, 2007
by
Brett Bumeter
Lost Cheerio of theharpoonist.com wrote an excellent article on how she broke through some writing barriers. She was working on a novel and to put it nicely seemed to be experiencing some neurotic writing behavior.
Then she took herself out of her comfort zone and entered a script writing contest. The contest and some software called CeltX (I’m checking that out as soon as I write this article myself) helped her to develop her abilities to write dialogue and it broker her of some of her acquired neuroticism (at least as it related to obsessive compulsive behaviors around her writing).
Her article and description of the process reminded me a great deal of Janet Evanovich’s efforts to learn to write dialogue. She took some acting classes where she had to engage in impromptu speaking sessions with other actors. That helped her to think in the moment and eventually write some great and very funny dialogue. I’ve heard of authors doing a wide variety of things from hanging out with police officers or lawyers to attending drug rehabilitation just to get a better feel for the flow of words and thoughts.
Online Writing Contests
- Nanowrimo - Write a novel in a month (I’ve tried this myself and it is a lot of fun)
- Script Frenzy - Write a script in a month
