Terra Incognita


Wherein Our Heroine Reviews Her Place on the Map.
Setting yourself to a daily task is like starting a long journey: you know where your initial steps are going to take you, but in fairly short order, your map reads, "Beyond Here Be Dragons," and you are on your own. In my case, I knew I wanted to write: I have always said I wanted to write, so looking for work gave me a good opportunity to put my laptop where my mouth is.

The mapped, known part of my journey probably only lasted for about three days. Faithful readers have probably already figured that out, because on the fourth day of writing I started to write about nothing. And later on, when I was completely stuck for a subject, I got self-referential on the subject of nothing.

It has turned out that the writing itself is only one element of the journey. Because of technology, suddenly my map has three dimensions instead of two. Deciding to make the leap from the safe, shrink-wrapped world of an off-the-shelf solution to my publishing desires and go to a self-hosted one has changed things. The dragons are not flat, decorative line drawings on a bit of tattered parchment. Rather, they're looming, 3-D critters who rumble and snap. They may even be learning to breathe fire (I could swear I heard one say, "Just wait: if she thinks she's going to get her logo up and running on every page, she's going to end up crispier than a briquette!")

I have a brave knight or two who can help me with some of my problems - but I am a Modern Heroine and I do try and help myself as much as I can. I eschewed long, flowing skirts for sturdy jeans on this journey. My friend Mark gave me a fencing lesson with Netscape Composer and my husband lent me a few wicked-looking HTML books to shield me from cranky dragons. With some help, I am standing on my own two feet, ready for battle.

Now, if I only had a trusty steed....
Posted: Wednesday - February 18, 2004 at 07:33 AM         | |

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