{"id":9835,"date":"2020-09-16T17:39:43","date_gmt":"2020-09-17T00:39:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=9835"},"modified":"2020-10-18T11:36:17","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T18:36:17","slug":"how-these-projects-are-proceeding-status-word-counts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2020\/09\/16\/how-these-projects-are-proceeding-status-word-counts\/","title":{"rendered":"How These Projects Are Proceeding; Status; Word Counts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Projects<\/a>. I\u2019ve just edited this to change two targets end-dates from 2019 to 2020.<\/p>\n

It would be fair to imagine that I\u2019ve gotten more done this year on my various projects than I otherwise would due to the pandemic and the shut-in orders, but that\u2019s not exactly true. I\u2019m retired and stay at home all week anyway. What\u2019s changed is that my partner is working from home four days a week, and so he\u2019s here in the house most of the time. That hasn\u2019t affected me very much; when he\u2019s \u201cworking\u201d he does in fact sit on the sofa with his laptop logged into his worksite remotely, often with headphones on to take phone calls or participate in teleconferences. So his presence doesn\u2019t much affect my daily activity. At the same time, given that we\u2019re supposed to stay at home as much as possible, both of us are home most of the time even on weekends, times when a year ago we might have gone shopping, to the gym, to a movie, on a hike, or occasional special trips to museums and whatnot. (We still do hikes when the weather permits.) Which means I get some of my work done even on weekends, that previously with small exceptions had been given over to spending time with him.<\/p>\n

(Fortunately, even on weekends, my partner mostly finds things to do on his laptop; he doesn\u2019t turn on the TV and watch it all day. That would drive me crazy.)<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the pandemic and its threat to my personal health \u2013 I am now 65 and do in fact have a mild heart condition (occasional atrial fibrillation) \u2013 has perhaps sharpened my focus and my determination to finish some of these projects that I\u2019ve been working on for years. So here\u2019s where we are.<\/p>\n

Sfadb.com expansions:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Aside from routine updates of awards data, the goal of sfadb.com is to post a set of ranked lists of novels and short fiction, and a timeline displaying the top ranking works. I had drafts of all these done a full year ago, but then I decided I needed more anthology data. And that interim project grew and grew. I thought I was nearly done earlier this year, until I realized that what I\u2019d done thus far was essentially a history of sf\/f\/h anthologies, or even of the fields through anthologies, with one big exception. That was I had ignored original anthologies, since my motive for compiling anthology data was to compile reprint data for classic stories. So I decided to compile original anthologies, especially series and those by major editors, and that took several more months, but the result now is that the Anthologies section of sfadb.com is a semi-independent section of the site in its own right. (Also, as the months went on, I spent several hundred dollars buying physical copies, via Abebooks, of key books I didn\u2019t have, for the sake of the photos on each group page. And then when all was compiled, I did an audit over several weeks to resolve errors in author names and story titles, combine multiple records for the same titles that had crept into place, and so on. For the sake of accurate reprint counts for the stories, and also to avoid obvious duplicate entries on the sfadb.com Name pages.)<\/p>\n

So the expanded Anthologies section of sfadb.com, which isn\u2019t \u201ccomplete\u201d in any way, just cut off for now, took a full year to finish. I\u2019m now taking a break from the sfadb project to work other things. But a key metric is this: on the 118 pages to various groups of anthologies, the descriptions on those pages total right about 30,000 words<\/strong>. (This would be, oh, some 50 pages in a typical book.)<\/p>\n

Initial reactions to the expanded Anthologies section included emails and Facebook posts pointing out individual anthologies I’d missed. I updated the Intro to that sections to explain: I missed thousands and thousands! I only compiled about 1400 anthologies, out of over 20,000 indicated at isfdb.com.<\/p>\n

Given that I finished drafts of the rankings and timeline a year ago, I\u2019d like to think I can incorporate this new anthology data and finalize all those pages in relatively short order. It would be nice to finish them this year, since it would be 20 years since I first conceived this project. But these things always take longer than I expect.<\/p>\n

My Trek Season 1 Essays<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

After I commented on a Facebook post about one early Trek episode a couple days ago, with links to my posts about them (that got several Likes!), I wondered, how many words did I write in all those episode reviews of Trek\u2019s 1st<\/sup> season, back in 2017? (https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/bibliographies-and-reviews\/trek\/<\/a>). I did a random sample and extrapolated: a couple thousand words each for 29 episodes, plus some sidebar essays; some 60,000 words<\/strong>. I still plan to get around to seasons 2 and 3.<\/p>\n

Memoirs, i.e. Family Pics and Personal Narrative<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Before this year, I\u2019d written some 17,600 words of family history: posts about family genealogy, recalling the two Apple Valley houses, and so on. The pandemic this year provided a new sense or urgency to get this done. And by now, it is, mostly; what remains is linking the various posts and pages into a coherent structure, and scanning and posting a bunch more pics. Looking back at the work done this year, not all yet posted, I\u2019ve written 57,000 words of memoirs. The total, some 75,000 words<\/strong>, would comprise a book of some 200-250 pages depending on layout and font size. (Not that I think they will ever be published as a book.)<\/p>\n

Black Gate Summary-Reviews<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019m gratified that this year I\u2019ve found a gig to write for a wide audience (my blog doesn\u2019t reach much of an audience). Black Gate editor John O\u2019Neill and I have different takes on what I\u2019m doing; that\u2019s OK. John likes my columns as nostalgia pieces for his older audience about early SF books they read as teenagers. My motivation is to reexamine these early SF novels in light of later works and especially the current understanding of science as captured in my Provisional Conclusions and ongoing posts. In a sense, every one of these columns is a thematic draft for my \u201cBook,\u201d about which I\u2019ve done several blog posts of notes but otherwise have no substantial start of. Anyway, the Black Gate columns range from 2000-5000 words, and there have been 18 so far. So, around some 50,000 words<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Thus<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So I\u2019m being fairly productive in my retirement, over the last almost 8 years. And I plan to keep chugging along.<\/p>\n

This post is just over 1000 words. Written in about an hour. I always revisit posts the next day to correct and polish. (17sep20: done.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Projects. I\u2019ve just edited this to change two targets end-dates from 2019 to 2020. It would be fair to imagine that I\u2019ve gotten more done this year on my various projects than I otherwise would due to the pandemic and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personal-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9835"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9835\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9846,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9835\/revisions\/9846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}