Robynettely

I might as well post this now, because I'm not likely to finish another book tomorrow. I mean, it's a good book I'm reading, but I started it in August, so there's no rush. "Ghost Story" by Peter Straub. This was recommended on the VP list, I think, or maybe OWW, as a most awesome example of horror. It was fabulous. It has an excellent example of a prologue that is a prologue, and is totally necessary to the story (this has been a very hot topic on both afore-mentioned lists lately -- apparently lots of people don't read prologues). The ending would make little sense without the prologue, and it set up a bunch of characters nicely. There were numerous points-of-view, and I loved the way they all conflicted with each other. People misread other people, misinterpreted them. Stella saw everything. I wish there was more Stella. "The Pyrates" by George MacDonald Frasier. It was mentioned on some blog I don't frequent, but I have a colleague who o...

While editing away on Unicorn yesterday, I had one of those stunning realizations that stems from VP. It starts with a comment that Bear wrote on my manuscript, during a long restaurant scene: "This is not interesting". Um, yeah. Anyway, my VP roommate Marion read Unicorn, and she commented during the food scene that she was unclear what the story was about. I chewed on that for about a month, and finally realized that the scene was not actually progressing plot or theme, and its relationship to character development was tenuous. I immediately cut large portions of it, even though it made me sad, because those were pretty words. So this is a Robyn's Rule : Seriously rethink any scene that involves food. And when I went to AbsoluteWrite, my phone was in the ad. I love my new phone.

Finished going through Dolphin VP story for the third pass. Now it's down to 5156 words. I removed around a thousand! This may be close to its natural length. I think the story shape is there, and right now, I'm to down to smoothing.

Last night commenced for me the holiday party season. We were discussing last year's 24-hour snowpocalypse (or was it snowmageddon?) drive, and whether one can have Snowpocalypse 2009, Snowpocalypse 2010... The concensus was there can only be one snowpocalypse. If you're still alive after it, snowpocalypse it was not. Which led to the title above. You know, there's no good way to insert the word "snow" into Ragnarokr. Those crazy vikings!

Actually, now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I did. Maybe I finished a seocnd draft. Certainly, it does seem like I finished changing the POV. Last night I rewrote the ending again. It's less tragic now, and doesn't end with my POV character drowning. In fact, it ends on a spot of hope. I'd love to get it on OWW by next weekend.

I have a cleaning-related injury that prevented me from wearing the nanoboots today. I stepped on an unpopped popcorn kernel whilst sweeping the dining room on Saturday, oh the irony. See? Cleaning is dangerous. I shouldn't do it. Short stories and markets are much in the blogosphere right now, and it's a topic I think about a lot. Must finish Unicorn, and get rid of it. Anyway, I've also been reading Learn to Write with Uncle Jim on Absolute Write (I'm on about page 18 or so, with a long way to go). Uncle Jim says that there's no point revising a short story. As I write, revise, rewrite Unicorn and now Dolphin, I think the stories get better. I got Ed to read Unicorn a few weeks ago, and he thought it was better. Maybe I should make a tag for LtWwUJ, because there are lots of places where I have a comment, but I can't exactly post it because that's all, you know, seven years ago. There are some people there who make me crazy, anyway. This frigging Dolphin t...

Every conversation can be turned into "Did you call me fat?" though more often lately it ends with "that's what she said." Friday I sent a draft of a manual to the team, and today the engineer who makes all the changes and doesn't tell me (or anyone else) about them sent me comments. "I've been looking at your manual. It's wonderful!" I had no idea how to respond. My best guess is he noticed that I'd noticed all the things he'd done to the interface. That was, naturally, followed by four pages of corrections of everything I'd got wrong. I should send this to the rest of my team at work. They misinterpret each other's writing all the time! We're tech writers, of course, so that's a problem. Today it snowed about a millimeter, but I was wearing the wrong shoes and I skidded home. But B has snowtires, so the trip to yoga was safe. Now, I guess I should get to the end of this story's second pass. I want it under 5000...

But now the floor under the dining room computer is really clean! And I did a few pages of edits to Dolphin. This weekend, I will finish the activity of changing the POV, add in the bit about the nightmares, and rewrite the ending. And then, I will have written the second draft.

Yeah, it's true, I'm back to working on the VP dolphin story. It's messy. I have so much stuff to work on. I'd like to get this one up on OWW before Christmas, and also get Unicorn in circulation, and write Mary Alice, and finish the first draft of Bezoar... I should also work on Water Leopard. And type St. Praxis. Maybe in January.