U. F. FLO.

Just wanted to say a big Happy Holidays to everyone celebrating :). And also add that being an adult in this season is so nice-- I can spend the entire day playing SWTOR or sweating through some more of an evil story edit or whatever I like, and the only person I have to please is myself. Mr. Flo is similarly engaged, and though we're doing a family thing on the 24th as well, we're probably just going to chill on the 25th.

Someday I will write a giant post about how weird it is adjusting from post-and-forget, fanfic wip-style editing to a "let's look at the whole story. AGAIN" style. I'm really used to the former, and have never done the latter successfully with any story longer than a couple thousand words, so what I'm working on right now has been a challenge.

I think I'm finally at the turning point, though-- I just figured out a key problem that's been preventing me from moving past the first half, so I'll be belting up and working on that soon. Hope everyone's having fun and chilling out as much as they can :)

Shit I have been wanting to respond to in some way for a goddamn week:

• Dude? I know that this guy's article on iA Writer sounds good, but don't. Don't buy it. If you write long-form ANYTHING on an iPad, you probably already know that landscape is the only way to go if you're not attaching an external keyboard, and iA Writer's landscape SUCKS. The big, beautiful text means that you only get to see two or three paragraphs at a time (or, if you're like me, one or two very long paragraphs), and the extra row on top of their modified version of the built-in keyboard means that even more writing is obscured. Focus mode is kind of a joke-- in long-form writing, you generally need to refer back and forth to check spellings or whatever, and polishing a sentence is not something you need to grey out other text to do. Yeah, I know you bought it already. I am sorry in advance.

• Apparently, the US Postal Service may be taking it's last dive. Really solid article at BusinessWeek, eye-opening and sad. Kind of explains why the junk mail really just keeps coming these days in the US. (via rmateu @ tumblr)

• Unbound, a book-focused Kickstarter clone, is one of the most headscratching new publishing things I have seen, sporting only a 'book' focus and higher project fees as additions to the original formula. From the established author's pov (which is who they're targeting for supply for their initial push), the service doesn't really make much sense. If you have a new idea you want to write, you could very, very easily reach your current readers through Kickstarter or really any old website, set your own prices for each contribution level and promise more deliverable things than lunches in London (not so convenient if you live nowhere near there) and so forth. Best of all, you wouldn't have to pay a new, unproven publishing company 50% of the funding you get for your project, instead of the 10% that Amazon and Kickstarter would take.

• Michael Mace's reaction to Windows 8, or basically the only article you need to read about Microsoft's recently announced, tablet-friendly incarnation of Windows.