Better -- Also, The WGA Strike

      After spending nearly 36 hours in bed with occasional recourse to a heating pad, I'm feeling much better.  Not a hundred percent, but I can draw a deep breath, sneeze and even turn my upper body without a spike in pain from my lower back.  The dull ache has faded -- not gone but much, much less.  Considering that at one point Monday evening I went to lean over and reach out from a seated position and ended up crashing over on my knees, this is a considerable improvement.

      I'm going to spend some time lightening my purse and briefcase.  There's a lot of odds and ends in each -- useful, most of it, but not all of it needs to be lugged around every day.

      One source of weight: I carry two small laptops -- an old Surface Pro (much heavier than you'd expect) and a MacBook Air (which is indeed lightweight) -- and the only reason for the Surface these days is that my employer has never managed to come up with an old laptop or desktop on a cart to do the control interface for a number of devices we run at the North Campus that don't have control panels and only occasionally need to be got at.  They have their reasons: proper security requires official company computers must have current, updateable operating systems and protections and if they can't, they are discarded.  But it's inconvenient.  It appears that a Raspberry Pi will do what I need and satisfy the security gurus, so I may be able to retire my personal Surface and ensure anyone filling in for me will be able to get at the virtual meters, knobs and buttons.

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      On Twitter and elsewhere, many writers have proclaimed their support of the Writer's Guild of America strike.  WGA are the boys and girls and etc. who write scripts for TV and film; their last agreement with the people who make such entertainment predates the Golden Age of Streaming by over a decade and as a result, they aren't seeing much of the gold.  The issues are complex, the sides are far apart and I hope you're got some older programs in your to-be-watched queue, because it looks like they'll be a while sorting things out.

      As for me, I can proudly proclaim that I have not been writing screenplays for more than 60 years and I expect this trend to continue.

      "Writing is writing," I suppose, but screenplays diverge considerably from other forms of fiction -- and are sold differently, too.  If you write a novel or short story and a publisher "buys" it, you effectively lease it to them, retaining copyright for later sales. A screenwriter doesn't get to do that; turning a screenplay into a film or series takes a whole lot more creative work from other people once the writer is (mostly) done, so the screenwriter receives a paycheck and (maybe) a piece of any "residuals," rerun money (and that's a big part of what they're striking over), but does not hold copyright.  No few talented writers of printed fiction have gone off to Hollywood (and related locations) and burned right out.

      "Scabbing" at screenwriting might not burn a writer out, but it'll burn a bridge: the WGA bars membership to any former scabs.  Harsh?  Yes.  And that's Hollywood.