Tuesday, February 8, 2011

The End of Procrastination I

Back in late 2009 I finished a book called Servant of the Dragon, by David Drake. It is the third book in a series, The Lord of the Isles, that eventually capped out at nine books. When I finally got around to reading the second book, Queen of Demons, it had been so long since I'd read the first book that I couldn't remember what was going on (though I slowly picked it back up as I went along). So that wouldn't happen again, I created a page at Wikipedia for Queen of Demons.[1] Thus when I started Servant of the Dragon it only took me a few minutes to remember where everyone was and what was going on. When I finished Servant of the Dragon (back in 2009), I started writing a Wikipedia article for it. I finally finished that article yesterday.[2]

I made it through about half of the plot summary back in August 2009 before I let other things occupy my attention.[3] My copy of Servant of the Dragon sat in the living room for over a year. Every so often Leann asked if I was ever going to move it. I finally took it to campus with me so it wouldn't bother her anymore. Over Christmas break, while Leann was in Texas, I made a list of things I could do with my time. I didn't actually get around to working on the article for Servant of the Dragon, but I kept the list. Over the last week I finally knuckled down and finished the summary.[4] I guess now I can gear up for the fourth book, Mistress of the Catacombs—at least, whenever I get around to buying it.


Notes:

[1] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_of_Demons.

[2] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Servant_of_the_Dragon. You can guess by how long it takes me to read the next book in the series that it's not terribly engaging. All the books have had the same plot, so far: the four villagers get split up at the beginning of the book and by the end they're all back together, just in time to defeat the villain. Nonetheless, the connection to Robert William Chambers' and H. P. Lovecraft's writing keeps me curious enough to keep reading.

[3] I also made a scan of the cover for the article. But because of copyright laws and fair-use laws, I couldn't upload it to Wikipedia until I actually had an article written that I could insert it into. So it just languished on my jump drive for two years.

[4] Part of the reason it takes me so long is that I write a very detailed plot summary. But that ends up being too long for Wikipedia standards. So then I pare it back down. When I want to read the summary, though, I can just go back and look at my older edits.

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