Robynettely

So a couple of days I thought I was done with this short story, and I wrote the last line of the story. I even dated it (that's how I can tell it's over). It was a little long, at 6600 words (I was aiming for 5000). But then I was walking to work, and I thought, "My, that was a lame ending. My endings are all crap." So yesterday morning, I scribbled out the date and wrote a bit more. And this morning I wrote a bit more again, and I dated it and called it done. And still, that ending seemed lame. So a few minutes later, in the last paragraph, I scratched out "the Oak Ridges Moraine" and wrote in "that stupid moraine". Much better. Now I can move on. But in the meantime, I was doing a little research about the Moraine, and I discovered that EGTourGuide lives on it. Only by one or two hundred feet, but I thought it was funny. Good for you, EGTourGuide, with all those excellent plants growing on that substandard soil, where in the olden days (you kno...

I'm on the social committee at work. Because I'm a writer, they often ask me to whip something up for some pitch somewhere. We're starting our annual corporate charity donation campaign with a raffle for sports tickets for a game tomorrow night. So I wrote: "Tired of spending Halloween cowering at home with the lights off so people won't knock on your door and demand candy? * Tired of the yearly ritual of walking your kids around the neighbourhood, because they wear all-black costumes and masks they can't see out of? Here's something better you could do on Halloween Night! * Note: the draw will be held October 29th, so if you don't win, there are still a couple of days to pick up some candy to give out, if you're so inclined. " And that became: "Looking for an alternate way to spend Halloween?" Apparently they were afraid I was going to offend somebody. This made me very sad.

It's the new meme I'm trying to spread around the office, along with "I want to be a high contributor". That's a performance management rating, by the way. Let's ignore for the moment that I'm writing this at work. Please, it's a short post.

Why I read it: Part of the "blogger's books" project. I've been reading her blog for maybe a year. As a published-writer wannabe, her blog is maybe the best one I read. That's because she goes on at great length about the life of a writer, how the money comes in, how the words go out, how her hormonal cycle affects her climbing, her writing, her motivation. I was really happy that I liked this book. Tastes like chicken: Covers a lot the same ground as GGK "The Summer Tree" - a lot the same supporting characters out of mythology -- wild hunt, Arthur, etc. But this book seemed like it added something, wasn't just the standard rehashed blend of northwestern euro myth. Bookmark: Library receipt. What I liked: To start with, I agreed with the theme that better for humanity in general to have some risk (fairies) than for humanity to become sheep... in order for us to stay human (i.e., intelligent), we need an element of danger. While there were probabl...

We just had curriculum night at the boy's school. When talking to his English teacher, she mentioned that they will be reading "The Chrysalids" by John Wyndham this year (the context was that "the boy reads too much, and don't worry, we will read a book this year, but I can't give you a grade on reading unassigned novels in class. It's great that you love to read, but...") Anyway. The Crysalids is a fabulous book. What I remember is: There's a boy and his younger sister, and their mother is very stressed out about pregancies, because no one wants to be producing mutant babies. And apparently that's pretty common in the post-apocalyptic future in which they live. Their father is some kind of religious nut. The boy has a friend with six toes. Many of the children are psychic. In order to avert whatever crisis of being found out is going to befall them, the children, led by the boy's younger sister, use their psi powers to cry for help (the...

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/10/20/081020fa_fact_gladwell?currentPage=all

Why I read it: The last GGK I read was such a disappointment, I wanted to see if he was really as good as I remembered. I've read this before, but it was at least 15 years ago. Bookmark: Hard cover flap Tastes like chicken: What I most strongly remember about this series from before is that it is definitely derivative. It feels like the sort of thing some well-educated person would write who wanted to write a best-selling fantasy novel (full disclosure: I have a draft around the house that is titled "Best-Selling Fantasy Novel", BSFN for short) would write. There are dwarves, elves (lios alfar), orcs or dark elves(svart alfar), an unkillable evil, interventions from gods, an old king with two sons who have quite the rivalry, a neighbouring king with a stunningly beautiful daughter (people are never plain in a BSFN, are they?), wizards but not too many, various competing systems of magic... I remember it getting even more derivative as the series progressed. I'm su...

It's another truck I see driving around town, and once again, I betcha your East Gwillimbury Tourguide would have taken a picture. But here's my beef. If you're going to spell Shop "shoppe", I really think you should go all the way, and use Ye and Olde. And then, you can't just spell Butcher the usual way. How about Butchyr? Like vampyr, only worse. "Ye Olde Butchyr Shoppe", doesn't that sound much more like a place where the staff could be dismembering people? Oh. That's not what they're going for?

I finished the story about the lobsters. It sucks. I started another short story. This one seems better. It's about the Oak Ridges Moraine. I'm sure I will offend everyone.

Why I read it: I gave it to Ed for his birthday last year. Nadine read it recently (I think she's doing a GGK festival, because she borrowed "The Summer Tree" from me a couple of weeks ago and gave it back last week). She's asked me two or three times since if I've read Ysabel yet, I guess so we can discuss it. Still no "Darkmans". It's still "in transit." I don't think that word means what TPL thinks it means. Tastes like chicken: Tim Wynne-Jones, maybe crossed with "Da Vinci Code" but without the lame-assed puzzles. I'm wondering if he was intending to write a YA book here. I saw this book on a display for the library at the boy's school, but I don't feel like it was marketed to teens. Maybe that's because GGK doesn't have a teen audience really (though I think the Fionavar Tapestry would be great for teens). Somehow I missed that Kim and Dave were from the Fionavar Tapestry until Nadine pointed it out,...