Betsy Horvath

Author: Betsy Horvath

  • Favicons

    There are those of you who think that I should not speak of things technical, as I am a technology amateur. And yet, my friends, I have seen much of the world whilst going through what I like to think of as “Blog Hell”. And what kind of a person would I be if I didn’t share my knowledge with all of you? I would be no kind of a person at all!  And so, critics be damned, I’m going to talk technical.

    Okay, so next to the website URL there is a wee little picture. In many cases, this is the standard blue “e” of Internet Explorer.  But you may have noticed many websites and blogs (including, I hope, this blog) have a different picture there.

    I would have been quite content with the blue “e” when I set up this blog, however the template I used changed it to a big black “G”. I could even have lived with the “G” if there’d been a “G” anywhere in my name. But there isn’t, so I made it my life’s goal to change the “G” to something else.

    The first step was finding out what in the heck that wee little picture was called. I googled “what is the picture next to the URL?” and found out it was called a “favicon”.  You can find anything on Google.

    It turns out that you can make any picture a favicon. You need to pick a .gif, .jpg, or .bmp and run them through a “favicon generator” website. I recommend a free site.  Here’s the one I used, but there are tons of them out there.  Once you run a picture through the site, you’ll get a file called “favicon.ico”. If you use the site I linked to above, you’ll get a zip file. You need to extract the file, and pull out the favicon.ico file into a directory where you can find it later. I put it on my desktop.

    As an aside, when you create a favicon, remember that it’s going to be VERY small. So you probably don’t want to use a complicated picture. It took me a couple of tries to find one that seemed to work.

    Once the favicon is generated, you need to add it to your blog. I can only tell you what I did in WordPress – you’ll have to check out your own software.

    When I look at the FTP site for this blog on my host, I have a folder called “wp-content”. In that folder is a subfolder called “images”. There might already be a favicon there, as there was in my case with that big black “G”.  If there is, delete it. Then copy in the new favicon file you’ve just generated.

    Favicons do not automatically update in your browser. You need to force the browser to refresh to see the new favicon. To do this, hold down the “shift” key and hit “refresh” at the URL. If that doesn’t work, then delete all temporary internet files and you should see the new favicon next to your URL. There also might be a problem if you are using an older browser.

    Sounds simple, doesn’t it?  And yeah, I guess it basically was. But every time I messed up something and had to reload the theme, I had to change the favicon back as well. And it didn’t seem to change every time I changed it. So I guess what I’m saying is, as with all things computer, it might take a try or two to get things to look right. Just remember to breathe deeply.

    And that is everything I know, or want to know, about favicons. May we use this knowledge only for good.

  • Time to Think

    It seems to me that the rarest commodity in the world today is not oil or gold or silver.  The rarest commodity of all is Time. And the rarest of all Time is time to think.  Time to think is rarer than the rarest of gemstones, my friends. But if you are going to be a writer, then you are going to need to cultivate it.

    It’s hard to push away the demands of life to clear out some thinking time. It’s especially hard if you have a full-time job, or a full-time family, or both. But it must be done if you want to be a writer.  It’s been my observation that writing is 75% thinking and 25% actually putting the words on paper in the right order. It’s probably more like a 90/10 ratio.  Plus, whether you want to be a writer or not, thinking time just plain makes you a better person.

    Here are a few suggestions I’m trying to put into practice in my own life to “clear away the thickets in the deadwood of my mind,” as Elizabeth Peters’s character Amelia Peabody puts it.

    1. Turn off the television and radio.  In my opinion, this is one of the most important things you can do to create some thinking time.  Thinking is listening inside yourself. You can’t do that if somebody else’s words and images are constantly filling your mind. You need the silence to hear what you are thinking, and to think about what you are thinking about. Plus, if you’re like me, when the television is on you’re just sitting staring at it with a dumb look on your face. And how many ads can they have in a half-hour anyway?

    Just a side note on this one – sometimes I find myself with thought patterns that are not healthy. When this happens, I do play music to pull my thoughts into a different place. For me, I find that Baroque music works wonderfully well.  One of my teachers many years ago told me that because Baroque is very symmetrical  and almost mathematical in style, it helps your brain calm down. I find that this is true in my case, so I just thought I’d throw it out there. You guys might calm down to Def Leopard, and that’s fine (although I do question your taste).

    2.  Step away from the internet and video games.  Surfing the net, staring at social media sites, and/or playing addictive video games pulls you outside yourself.  But thinking time is all about being internal, not external. Plus, these are just distractions and they waste the time you’ve gone to so much trouble to set aside.

    3.  Meditation in motion.  There’s no way I can say “Okay I’m going to think now” and just sit and thiiiiiinnnnnkkkkk.  I’d fall asleep. On the occaisions when I’ve tried to do it, I just end up thinking about everything I have to do that day.

    For me, most of my thinking time happens while I’m doing other things. I’ve done some primetime quality thinking when I’m doing household chores, or yard-work, or when I take a walk.  I try to have pads of paper and pens stashed strategically around the house in case I get an inspiration in the middle of, say, folding laundry. And I’ve been known to leave the lawn mower and rush in to type up something I thought about while sweating over my yard.

    Your mind is a marvel and your only resource as a writer. Give it some time to breathe. Take a break and stop trying to shove things into it. Give it some time to tell you what it’s been up to all day. Who knows what wonderful things are crammed up in there just waiting to spew out?

  • Missing Photographs

    Last Sunday, I returned the art fact sheet for my book to the publisher. This is the information Carina Press will use to come up with a cover, among other things.  (Yes, digital books DO have covers, smartypants. In fact, Carina Press covers are beautiful, and I suggest that you go look at them sometime.)

    Anyway, when I was working on HOLD ME, I had photographs I thought pretty much nailed the looks or attitude of some of the characters, including the lead characters – Luc and Katie. They weren’t exact, but they were close. And so when I thought about celebrating the return of the art fact sheet, I thought it would be fitting to share these photographs with you.

    Then I went into my computer and realized I had deleted them.

    All of them.

    I spent a lot of time trying to find them again. I was not successful.

    At first, this upset me. It would be nice to have photographs showing different aspects of the characters I’ve come to know and love. On the other hand, the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was a good thing too.

    A photograph, after all, is static. Everyone looking at a photograph will see basically the same thing. But if I tell you that Luc is tough and built and has dark hair and brown eyes, all of you will see something different in your mind’s eye. Some of you will see Antonio Bandaras. Some of you will see Al Pacino. Some of you will see the accountant down the hall. Or your brother. Or no one you even know. But all of you will see someone who is tough and built and has dark hair and brown eyes.

    And I think that’s the beauty of reading, don’t you? We all can see things basically the same way, and yet totally differently. In the end, it doesn’t matter exactly who I saw when I wrote Luc and Katie. What matters is who you see when you read about them. That you see Luc’s brown eyes and Katie’s wild red hair, yes, but that you see them in your mind. That you know them. That you can identify them.

    With all of that magic happening, why would I try to tie either of us down by making us stick with a photograph?

  • An Ode to Coffee

    Today I would like to present an Ode to Coffee. This is an expanded version of original works appearing on my Facebook page. Feel free to borrow and/or set to music.

    uh..hmm…

    An Ode to Coffee

    By Betsy Horvath

     

    O Coffee, O Coffee
    My fav-or-ite drink.
    You help me to wake,
    You help me to think.

    You help keep me sane.
    Of cups, I have seven,
    ‘Cause one sip of you,
    And I am in heaven.

    O Coffee, O Coffee,
    My fav-or-ite brew,
    I know that I’ll never
    Be quit of YEW!

    Thank you.

  • “A Rose for Emily” with Spoilers

    If you want to be an English major, you are going to have to read a lot of things you really can’t stand and then write papers about them.  And discuss them.  And sometimes you’ll have to pretend you like them. And that may scar your psyche.

    One work of literature that scarred me for life is “A Rose for Emily”, a story by William Faulkner.  Here is a short summary, with spoilers.  Feel free to take notes.

    Okay, so there’s this old broad in the South named Emily. She died. Before she died, she looked bloated and her house smelled bad. Before she looked bloated and her house smelled bad, she hooked up with a Yankee named Homer. THAT caused some scandal, let me tell you.

    At some point Emily buys arsenic. Homer disappears. Emily refuses to pay her taxes and shuts herself up in her house.  Then her house smells. Then she looks bloated. Then her hair grows grayer and grayer. Then she dies.

    When the townspeople go into her house after she dies, they find a rotting corpse. It has a gray hair on it, so homegirl has been getting her groove on with the remains of Homer. Ick.  The End.

    If you have to write a paper about “A Rose for Emily”, I feel sorry for you. But here are some quick tips.

    First, throw in something about “circular narration”. In other words, you can’t follow what the heck Faulkner is talking about because he goes round and round in circles so you don’t know what happened when. But English professors like it.

    Second, the gray symbolizes the Old South, and somehow Miss Emily sleeping with the corpse symbolizes the Old South sleeping with death.  Honestly, I never did get that part because Homer was a Yankee.  But it has something to do with the death of dreams and blah blah blah.  Just remember – Gray = old south. Bloating. Death. Dreams. Refusal.

    After reviewing the story for this post, I have to say that I still don’t get it. And I’m actually okay with that.

  • A Working Writer

    I work. I write. I work at working. I work at writing. Sometimes I try to work on both of them in the same day.

    I’ve worked at working a long time. I’ve worked at writing even longer. And even though I’m not a best-selling author (yet), I have a few thoughts about trying to fit the two of them together. Not that I actually DO these things all the time, mind you. But at least I’m starting to recognize the important issues, at least for my own life.

    1.  You have to be committed.
    Writing is hard, and writing while you hold down a full-time job is even harder. If you’re not committed to making it happen, all you’re going to do is walk around saying that you’re an writer. And never actually writing anything. Trust me.

    2.  You have to be disciplined.
    You don’t have as much time to write as a full-time writer, so you have to use the time you do have effectively. If you don’t get in the habit of using the 15 minutes you have now, you’ll fritter away a whole day if one becomes available. Trust me on this one too.

    3.  You have to make time to read.
    Reading is a writer’s joy and life blood. You learn the most about writing by reading what other people have written-the good and the bad stuff. The more you read, the more you understand how writing works. Plus, we love it, right? Why else would we want to be writers?

    4.  You have to make time to write.
    Duh. Writer’s write. They don’t just talk about writing. Writers write consistently, hopefully every day. This is another one I’m still having trouble with. I write, but not consistently. I let life get in the way.

    5.  You have to write new stuff, not just revise.
    Take it from me, when you only have a short time you can devote to writing, it’s very easy to get stuck on revisions. Revising something already written is easier than writing something new. But you have to write new things, even if it’s just a new sentence, because otherwise you get stuck in what was and never move on to the new.

    6.  You have to have a support network.
    Whether you’re single, like me, or married to a devoted spouse, you need people who will cheer you on – and won’t let you stop when that’s what you think you want to do. Remember – writing is hard. Writing while you work a full time (or even part time) job is harder. Writing with kids is probably the hardest of all. You need people who care that you’re doing it.

    And last but not least, you have to remember that, no matter what other demands you have on your time, you can do it if you want it badly enough. You can finish. You can write.