Meanjin responds to my response to their article. Took ‘em a while – that was pretty much my last gasp at being remotely passionate about comics.

I’ve long since played this card but I expect I’ll respond in some way soon.

3. (nautical) A person who knows well the depths and currents of a harbor or coastal area, who is hired by a vessel to help navigate the harbor or coast.

wiki

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I’ve climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, — and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of — wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov’ring there,
I’ve chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air. . . .

Up, up the long, delirious burning blue
I’ve topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or ever eagle flew —
And, while with silent, lifting mind I’ve trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

— John Gillespie Magee, Jr

… and robot boats.

Probably too many things at once.

My new solution to tracking all my various things: Shortcuts and coloured labels on my desktop. There’s a lot of files because some of these are just idea dumps.

One the problems I have as a writer is that I have too many ideas. In order to get them out of my head and stop distracting me from the writing at hand I need somewhere to put them where they are easy to find and manage.

Gaiman, Jones et al. “Calliope” in Sandman no. 17.

Scrivener posits itself as not only a writing program, but a project management application. While it has many, many fine aspects as a writing tool it is quite weak on the project management side. I think it might be down to differing views on what project management actually is. Scrivener is very good at managing all the various bits of research, drafts and so forth relating to a single project but contains no interface for managing the various projects one creates with the program. Even when you click “open an existing project”, all that does is take you to the standard file opening dialog in Finder.

It might be my background in archival control and information management, but I really really want something that keeps track all the stories, scripts and novels I’m either currently writing, thinking about writing, editing or archiving after completion. I guess I’m talking metadata here. I’ve being trying to find some kind of adjunct to Scrivener to cover what I see as the missing elements, but nothing really seems to suit either in functionality or budget. I might have to buy Bento and start making a database… For now: a Google Docs spreadsheet.

Or a card catalog.