Road to Odyssey update

Things are moving along fairly well in terms of my preparations to attend the Odyssey writing workshop. Jeanne sent out a couple of updates over the weekend, including one introducing me to the guy I’ll be sharing a residence apartment with–except that I already know him a little from his blog: JW from Author Alden! How cool is that? I know I’ve surfed over to his place for Insecure Writer’s Support Group and the My Favorite Martian blog hop.  He’s a Nano writer too, which is definitely something good to have in common.

Jeanne’s updates also included some more information about what will be expected of us when we get to the workshops, (classes most days from 9am-1pm, then working on our writing most of the rest of the day,) and suggestions for what we’ll probably want to bring. So I’ve got plenty more ideas for packing, even though the final list of what I want to take probably won’t be settled for three weeks plus. I’m hoping to be able to take the laser printer, and some pots and dishes to cook with in the apartment. The toughest part there is that we’re unlikely to be able to use a microwave, because the wiring in the dorms can’t take it. 😦

I went down to the mall this morning, to get a US money order made out for the residence fees and mail it off. That’s the last of the money I owe Odyssey. My to-do list is starting to shape up, and four weeks from now I’ll be looking back on my first day of classes and writing in New Hampshire.

Yay! 😉

Laser printer toner.

I got my laser printer a little over a year ago – there were electronics gift cards that came my way on Christmas day, and so I went to the boxing day sales and carried home a little Brother printer. It’s been a great unit, and I’ve put it to good use – printing out several copies of every short story or excerpt that I take to Hamilton Writers or the now-defunct ‘New Writing Workshop‘, and every story that I put into my Kansas binders.

Just before I left for San Francisco this November, the printer’s ‘toner warning’ light started blinking. I over-reacted a little and didn’t even turn the printer on again until I’d found a seller on Ebay who would ship me a toner drum without charging a full arm for it, and then once I’d brought the new drum home – the printer seemed to be fine with the old toner drum.

This has continued on for a few months – the toner light would start blinking intermittently, and then clear up, as if it can’t make up its mind. “Toner? Yeah, I could do with some new toner.” “Toner? Nah, I’m fine, I don’t need more toner.”

Tomorrow is the first Hamilton Writers meeting of the new year, and I had some idea of forcing the issue, of continuing to print out copies of “Project Fast Track” until the printer knuckled under and asked for toner. Turned out I didn’t really need to try very hard. The toner light came on steady after the third copy, which means that it’s not a warranty, but a ‘toner end of life’ error condition. Somewhat whimsically, I turned it off for about an hour, came back – and got another one and a half copies, (twelve pages,) before ‘toner end of life’ hit again.

That time, turning it off and waiting didn’t clear the problem, so I finally opened up the front of the printer, took out the drum assembly, bagged up the old toner drum, inserted the new one, and cleaned off the ‘primary corona wire’, whatever that is, by sliding a stiff green switch back and forth several times. The manual says that I should wipe out the insides of the printer when I change the toner, but it’s too late for me to bother tonight, so I need to remember to do that soon.

It’s a good little printer, and I’m sure it gave me thousands of pages from that first starter drum. Here’s to the next five thousand pages printed!

The (first!) Kansas stories binder.

Well, it’s less than 36 hours before I leave to go to Kansas, now.

As I may have mentioned, all of the participants have sent out their 3 stories to be workshopped now, and the workshop leader, Chris M, suggested that we should have printed them all out and bring the printouts with us. Earlier this week, I started to think about such little practical questions as ‘Do I have enough printer paper? What will I take all these printouts to Kansas in?’ So I stopped at Walmart when doing an after-work practice driving session with my brother on Wednesday, and picked up:

1. a 500 pack of laser and copier paper.
2. a 1 inch 3-ring binder.
3. a new 3-hole puncher.
4. some binder dividers.

I got most of the stories printed out Wednesday evening and Thursday morning, but I didn’t begin to punch the holes or put them into the binder until tonight, and I quickly realized that the one binder wasn’t going to be enough. I’ve punched out and inserted 245 pages by my count, but the binder’s nearly full, and the 24 stories in all total 475 pages.

I do want to get everything into two binders if I can, especially since the schedule given is that half of us will get their stories critiqued on any given afternoon, in the same split, so I can have one binder for the on-days and one for the off-days. It actually looks like my best strategy will be to get a larger binder, (an inch and a half?) for the group that I’ve started on, since that one has some longer-winded scribes, and keep the one-inch binder for the other side.

It’s starting to settle in on me just how much writing we’re going to be going through, and it’s something very different than I’m used to organizing at one time. I’ve grown accustomed to the idea of running off half a dozen or more copies of my own story to take to one of the critique groups here in town, but Kansas CSSF is obviously a very different kind of thing.

So, I’d better get myself to the store early tomorrow.