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.

When I decided to do NaNoWriMo, I suspected it would cut into my reading time. "The King of Elfland's Daughter" by Lord Dunsany Various people talked about this book at VP, so I put it on my list. It was published in 1923 or so, but I didn't find it stylistically difficult to read. Lots of exposition. Seemed really archetypal. Elfland was more fully alien than in a lot of books, the king and his daughter sort of like the Sithi in Dragonbone Chair. The feel itself was more of a cross between "Stardust" (not a surprise, as Neil Gaiman wrote the intro to the edition I read) and Catherynne M. Valente. Yeah, that's it. Next month will be better, I'm sure, but partly because I have two library books our right now, and another in transit. I also knit three hats.

Yeah, that's a wrap. It's been a good experience. I bet this first draft isn't any worse than most of the other ones I've produced. And it's done. Now, I think a reward. Perhaps a nice, hot bath. Oh, and to read a book again. Haven't done that in a while. Tomorrow, maybe I'll edit a short story.

Every Saturday morning I go out for what I refer to as my weekly run. It's about 5k, less than 40 minutes. I take various routes through the neighbourhood. This morning I left the house at about 11:15 and ran south through the wooded park there. I was on the west side of the creek that runs through the park, and there was someone crashing through the undergrowth on the east side of the creek. There's a trail over there, but it's not paved like the one I was on, and the last time I was on it, a couple of trees were down, which disrupted my gait. I took little notice, except to think it was a little cold (7 degrees C) to be running in shorts, but whatever. And then he turned his course towards me. I ran along, and he ran along, and then he stopped when he got to the river, and he stood there. Full frontal. With his pants in his right hand, and his genitalia in his left. Yeah. Having watched Criminal Minds last night, I decided not to laugh. I picked up the pace, maybe, and st...

Got to the end of Chapter 17. Maybe tomorrow I'll get 18 and 19 done. That would be sweet. The outline has 23 chapters, but I may be able to do away with two or three of them. Then I could finish by Monday.

Yeah, yesterday I crossed an important milestone, but I'm keeping going at the same alarming clip until next monday, when I expect to type "The End" and be happy. Maybe I'll buy some books then or something, as a reward. I have a list...

Today I had an epic fail. (I started telling the boy this story at dinner, and he told me I couldn't use that phrase, so Ed said it was a catastrophic mistake. Later the boy agreed it was epic. And a fail.) So at my day job, we've been sued for trademark infringement by an Even Bigger Company (TM). My task for the last few days has been to remove the offending "similar" name from all product documentation (not as easy as it seems -- we have until the end of 2010, and there are lots of places where the word still appears in software, etc.). I'd promised a draft "early in the week" and so today I was putting the finishing touches on it, slapping a cover on, renumbering the pages, and sent it out at the last minute just before leaving. Maybe 30 seconds went by and I was putting on my coat, when I got an email reply. "You might want to take the old name off the cover."

More than I planned to write, but I got to the end of the scene I wanted to write, and the story is progressing. I think I may need to combine a couple of chapters tomorrow, or the action is going to slow down too much. Congratulations to Sean Craven, by the way, for his first pro sale. I read that story at VP. I remember trying to figure out why an ex-military guy was having such a hard time with PTSD, and it turned out I'd misread Amy for Army. That's what happens when I don't get enough sleep.

As I just tweeted, I'm pretty sure I'll hit 50K, but I won't feel like a winner unless I type "the end". I have eight chapters blocked and unwritten. Maybe I'll get my certificate, but I won't print it until I'm done. I may run to 70K. I would hate to lose the drive that I've had to finish this, and if I stop at the end of November, I'll have 60K.

Moving in towards a win, if not a "the end". Today's massive word count was two chapters, which is good because I'm moving along. I'm on Chapter 16 now of the 25 in my outline, though I might be able to take out some of those later chapters, near the end, because I'm not sure I need them all. Maybe I'll do a quick clean-up of the rest of the outline, and then some yoga and bed.

That went better than I expected. This morning I wrote 2148 words in an hour, then I went to karate and had dinner, and did shift two (the subsequent almost 2900, don't ask me to do math right now) in two hours. I am quite pleased with myself. Things took an interesting turn while I was trying to justify previous odd behaviors. Not so confident in tomorrow, but maybe I'll just start a new chapter.

Tomorrow could be rough. I don't have much enthusiasm right now.