Robynettely

Last night I made Rachael Ray's Steak Nicoise for dinner. As the boy was sitting down, he asked if this was "the one he likes", which would either be Brutus Salad or Italian Cobb Salad. I said no, this one was a cross between those two. And if he likes those, then he'll like this, also. The boy said "Not necessarily, mom. I mean, you like ponies, and you like monkeys, right?" And I replied " Maybe you used too many monkeys." Yep, that was an odd moment of Jonathan Coulton bonding.

When I'm editing a story, I have this horrible tendency to move things around rather than fix them. Maybe I write a paragraph on scrap paper during a meeting at work, or I decide some piece of text belongs at the beginning of the story to explain the world (I often move all the boring exposition to the start of the story, for example, in a second or third draft, making the intro nigh unto unreadable). I drop this text into a spot as I move through the document to the end, and then I make another draft, rinse and repeat. And as I progress, each draft doesn't get better. Well, maybe the ending does, but the beginning gets heavier and heavier and that's what people read first so I'm kind of screwing myself. I'm not sure; I have this thing in my head that generally each story starts out not that bad after the first draft, and then through subsequent edits got worse and worse. But that's wishful thinking and the first draft was probably crap and all subsequent drafts...

This was my first con ever. On Friday I went and Ed came with me, and that might not have been a good idea, because what he wants out of something like this and what I want are completely different. I went back on Saturday morning and attended two panels: "Editing your own work". Concluded here that I might be doing too many drafts. When I make a second draft, I don't think I'm working with the expectation that the next draft should be better and more readable than the first, and this is why subsequent drafts get worse and worse until the story is completely unreadable. Starting today, I am revising my process with Bezoar and Dolphin, which I would like to have "done to me" (send to OWW or somewhere) by the end of the month. Then I can move on to Zombie, which I would really like to not ruin. "Young adult novels". Heard the concept "new adult novel" to refer to books about 18-21s, the black hole of fiction. This was the most packed room...

Every time I write first, and then knit, the writing goes better. And the knitting always goes fine, regardless. Why do I repeatedly forget this lesson? Today I reached the end of "The Bezoar" again. This one may be progressing past the "too embarrassing to share" stage, which is nice.

Yeah, that's two words. And I just made it up. But the boy had four days off in a row (Good Friday, the weekend, and then Easter Monday), which has disrupted his schoolcadian rhythm, his ability to get into gear to go to school on time.

Last hour, I was watching "Cities of the Underworld", which is awesome. Now I see this . Oh, Toronto. Stop being so safe.

Back last year sometime I developed a weird, freakish affection for a pair of parks in my neighbourhood. One is Charles Sauriol, which consisted at the time of a boarded-up house, some nasty gardens, and a narrow trail that travels along the east side of the East Don river. Once we followed it (the trail disappeared in places, but we persevered) all the way from Lawrence, where the park starts, to Eglinton Ave. The other park is Moccasin Trail. It's on the west side of the Don Valley Parkway, and has a graffiti-laden tunnel under the highway, and then an archway (the DVP rainbow) under a railway line. The two parks look at one another from the two sides of the Don river, but there's no way to cross except over a rail bridge, of which there are two options, if you walk south and kind of out of Moccasin Trail park. Except last year for a while there was a construction bridge -- footings and a metal slab that they apparently drove a backhoe over. I thought it was a great place for...

"Unicorn" - Out to market #3. Still.

Manners. First draft novel. 90% complete. When this is done, I think I will do some short stories as my daily words. I am sick, sick, sick of this pointless crap. "Dolphin". Short Story. Editing. I decided that it was trying too hard, and took out any sentence that seemed overworked. This got rid of 300+ words. Then I sent it to the TPL writer-in-residence. I also let Ed read it, and he said he didn't understand what was going on with the experiment with the dolphin, and what George's goal was with the surgery on Honorine, so I guess I took out too much. Oh well, back to the drawingboard. "Bezoar". Short Story. Third draft. Returned to this, made it a bit less disgusting. "In a Nutshell". Short Story. 233 words of start. "Mary Alice Goes to Hell". I had about 1500 words from January, and I finished the draft, which came to around 5000 words.

"The Man from St. Petersburg" Ken Follett. Oh. My. God. I read it because we had two copies lying around. Ick. This book made me feel dirty. I made some negative comment about this book to my sister, who repled "I've read every book he's ever written." I think she's mad at me now. This book was all tell, no show. There was no tension. The sex was funny. It reminded me of my dad's novel. It seemed well-researched, from what I can tell. When my friend said that of my karate-zombie novel, I took it as damning with faint praise, so there you go. There was no female character with whom I could identify. Or male character, for that matter. I don't need a woman to be a role model. I really strongly disliked this book. "Wanderlust" Rebecca Solnit. I'd come across her name in a discussion of the aftermath of the Haitian earthquake, and came across this when I was looking for her other book on the TPL website. As walking is an integral part o...