I am still struggling with the default font reset that WordPress has offered me for the last few weeks. In order to have the font I prefer I have taken to writing a bit of nonsense at the end of each paragraph. Then I set my cursor at the beginning of the trash, hit return, and get a new paragraph set up the way I want it. I did google setting the font on WordPress and got some extremely useless advice. Useless, because it shows a page that doesn’t look like mine and then says, click here, and hit save. Sure.

Obviously, what I really need to do is work on this problem when I have extra time. But, today we picked eight pounds of blueberries, and then I washed and sorted them and froze five 4-cup packs for pie later. There are still some in the fridge for eating. I also have to do the same for some sour cherries I bought, and I am once again experimenting with pickle making. The worst aspect of the pickle making is that the cucumbers themselves are different from different people, and last year I got some cukes with TOUGH skins. Very annoying. So I have made great strides in choosing which spices I want in my pickle (no bay leaf please) but it isn’t enough yet to produce uniformity. I have a very specific pickle taste in my head that is complex to acquire.

In view of the need for extra time, I could mention that I got a couple of comments rejected, on someone else’s blog. That made me seriously consider whether I should spend time there and, no, probably not. That blog in general has/had interesting things to say about independent writing and publishing. However, the break point came when the blogger published a comment from the Science Fiction author, Neil Gaiman, about truth and facts.

Google provides the quote. I guess it’s a fairly famous quote of his. But …

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.

Neil Gaiman, from something called The Sandman — which I haven’t read as far as I know. I only read one book of his but can’t remember the title..

The reason I reacted so strongly against this quote is because, in the only book I read parts of, the protagonist surfaces after a lot of adventures in some peculiar underground, where as far as I remember, there’s a lot of death and back-stabbing, but he survives it all without quite understanding why. When he finally returns to London, out of this other world, he thinks about staying in the “real” world, and moving to a suburb and getting married and having (NO PLEASE), children! So he turns and flees back to the underworld. Okay, I didn’t like that ending, and this is probably a savagely biased characterization of the story. Fantasy is not my favorite kind of writing and, after all, the quote above could sound quite a bit like Chesterton, except …

“I am concerned with a certain way of looking at life, which was created in me by the fairy tales, but has since been meekly ratified by the mere facts.” 

G. K. Chesterton, from Orthodoxy which I probably should reread but I just Googled this as well.

I think there’s a real difference in these two quotes. Someone on the other blog tried to explain what Gaiman meant by “mere facts” but I decided that I wasn’t able to accept his view of Gaiman and didn’t really want to read the blog anymore. At least for a while.

It isn’t because I never read blogs from people with different taste. A very popular and prolific author writes amazing stuff about the business of being an independent author. It’s clear and useful. Her books, on the other hand, span a huge range, some of which is really, really not my taste. Some is. Some was, and then it felt like the direction of a series changed. And her politics is not mine. That’s okay. Her business advice is still amazing.

Time… I did use it to write twenty-five words about Jessamyn today.

I’m learning a new handcraft as well. It’s a toss-up as to whether that will be good for my writing or not!