I didn’t get as much time to work on editing this morning as usual as I had a day-job project that required the use of my home PC. We’ve recently started taping video testimonials from our customers for the corporate web site. I bought a digital camcorder for this but haven’t yet gotten a firewire card for simple transfer of the data to my work PC. (digital video transfer rates are too fast for USB2). At home I have a gizmo that plugs into USB for a standard camcorder, so I’m grabbing the files that way. We don’t require high-quality video for something that’s going to be squashed down to a 200 x 200 wmv file. But the first half hour or so of my writing time was taken up with capturing the video and transferring it to a CD.
I got to within two pages of the end of the story I’m editing (Adrift, for those of you playing along at home). I’m meeting the editor 2/3 of the way. I’m taking many of his cuts as is, but I’m revising some other areas to maintain what I think are important sentences or paragraphs. Once I get through this pass, I have a couple of story elements he wants me to expand upon, so I’ll have at least one more thorough pass to make.
The deadline was announced today for a very nice anthology that I intend to submit to, and it’s in a little under three weeks. We knew something was brewing, but the exact specifics had to wait until the ink dried on the contracts. Fortunately, I have a story that I think would be perfect for this, perhaps with some tweaking.
There was a dead zone in The Dead Zone this week. About halfway through, after a commercial break, the show jumped back to the previous commercial break and reaired the same segment I’d just seen. Then, after the next commercial, it jumped ahead, leaving a story gap. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that happen before on a televised program. And, no, it wasn’t a TIVO glitch or anything like that—I recorded it on good old trusty VHS video.
The season finale of The Closer was pretty good. The previews made it seem like it would be a less sure thing as to whether Brenda was on the right track, but I like those moments where she grins and you realize she’s figured out something really important and is about to nail someone’s ass to the wall. A satisfying conclusion to this two-parter, and her personal storyline ended well, too.
