On Saturday’s Plans

Last night, after work, we held a wake.

Layoffs had come to the company on Thursday, and my department lost two — a writer and a graphics artist.

Usually, when there’s a departure, the department goes to lunch on the last day at a local restaurant. That, sadly, wasn’t an option this time, so the decision was made — an Irish wake at an Irish pub.

Good times were had. Much Guinness was consumed. And Killians. And Smithwick’s. (Though I only stuck with the Guinness; Smithwick’s is fine, but Killians is merely faux-Irish and, thus, not acceptible.) Shots were had, such as the Dirty Girl Scout and some others whose names I didn’t catch.

On tap for this weekend…

1) Laundry. Done, save for the folding of socks and t-shirts.

2) Create Word template. This week’s layoffs brought a realization to the fore — there’s no documentation at work on how to do what I do, except for a really old manual that was cobbled together. And what I do is rather vital to the company, and there’s no one else that does what I do. Thus, over the next month or two, I’m going to put together documentation — a Page One Rewrite of that old manual, basically — for what I do and how I do it.

This required a special Word template. When I worked for EB Games, the training materials had a really nifty page layout, and I wanted to recreate that for this project. So I dug out the old EB training manuals (we were supposed to throw those out when the GameStop merger happened, and being a good manager I did; I threw them out into the trunk of my car), and created a decent fascimile of that old EB layout.

3) Transcribe interview. A colleague interviewed a major writer a few weeks ago, and she needed some back-up on getting the interview transcribed. I’d said I’d handle that. I’d planned to do that on Tuesday of this week, but a rush project dropped in my lap which killed Tuesday deader than Marley’s ghost. I need to have it cleaned up and turned in at work on Monday.

Done. It took three hours to transcribe (and it’s only an hour long), as the tape quality wasn’t the best and the interviewee has a Northern accent, though not a greatly thick one. (Northern, in the UK sense, that is.) So there were only a few spots where I was abjectly baffled at what he said. Then there was an hour of turning this stream of consciousness into something that fit a paragraphical structure; run-on sentences do not lend themselves toward comprehension.

4) Article. I have a 4k word article due in two weeks, roughly, and the outline’s pretty much nailed down. Now it’s a question of putting words on paper.

I’m sure I’m forgetting something.

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

2 thoughts on “On Saturday’s Plans

  1. Sounds like a rough weekend. I have to close Burger King (uck) and read/write a short paper on Titus Andronicus by Tuesday.

    Good luck getting your article done — having a deadline always slows me down significantly.

  2. Really, your weekend sounds rougher than mine.

    The worst that will happen to me is the contact high I’ll get from the interview; the writer in question is a little, umm, odd.

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