…working on outline, which is not your A, B, C sort of outline, but a ragtag set of ‘this scene’, coupled with ‘things that need to be explained’ and ‘things that need to happen’ and ‘people in the scene’ so I can move them about. I used to do this on strips of paper. Now computers cut and paste.
Writing in series is kind of an assembly of a garment from a scrap barrel. You need notes. You have ideas. But you need organization.
And I want to have most of my flapping, squawking ducks in a row before I settle down to write that first sentence. If you write the wrong first sentence you can be two weeks trying to fit it in before getting sane and junking it.
So I try to be right the first time.
We’ve had some cooling rain. Weather is settling back to blue skies. Clean blue skies, which is a great thing. That means the fires are out.
The knee is doing pretty well—not so’s I want to hike and carry stuff, but doing ok.
Two milestones: we got two shelves of craft stuff safely labeled, a big box of papers disposed of, and the ro/di filter cylinders changed for the marine tank, which was a major undertaking!
Massive Costco run this morning, including a stop at the recycling center and Home Depot for bits and bobs (rebar — don’t ask). Laundry. Getting some hurricane clips tacked in place on the rafters, for future secure attachment. Firing up my sewing machine and after an hour of sewing, having it pitch a fit and start eating the top thread (that’s enough now.) Replying to work-related e-mails, including finding a spare janitor because ours is out with a bad back. More cat-herding. Living ain’t for the weak. 😀
“We’re fine here, we’re all fine. How are you?”
I’m on vacation this week – real vacation from both my day job and teaching. Aside from a few day trips and maybe visiting family on Labor Day weekend, I’m mostly spending my vacation in early 16th C. Scotland, working under the trees out back on my new novel. Bees are buzzing in the goldenrod next to me and my stream babbling down into the sunny water garden.
I quite agree about getting the scenes and ideas lined up. I started on this novel early winter, having dreamed up the perfect opening line that cleverly echoed the title (The Rough Wooing) and hinted at romance between my two characters when really referring to something quite different – the concept of an alchemical wedding between male and female principles. And it didn’t work. I couldn’t figure out how to lead those clever sentences into the actual scene or opening events of the novel as I had conceived it. I loved the cleverness of the llines so much, I spent – yes – multiple weeks trying to force words to fit after it. Reluctantly I’ve scrapped that lead sentence for an image and set of lines that aren’t quite as arresting but flow better. It took a long, long while (and teaching four courses in two semesters as well as the end of formal Massachusetts legislative session with bills I was advocating for and against) to get the flow of the novel going again. Only having one focus is definitely the way to go when writing!
Yep. I thought I could teach, while writing in the cracks. I sustained that for about ten years. But at a certain point—it wasn’t working. And I never could get short-fused with the young folk I was teaching. Wouldn’t let myself get there. Thank goodness I got help from my publisher to make the jump—salary for a 10 year teacher with a Masters was 10,000 a year, so it was not an Olympic leap.
I’m still hampered by the no-carrying-weight thing: but slow improvement, still. Jane’s helped me: got the fish tank today and then discovered the lights I’d bought months ago to make this replacement did NOT include a metal halide bulb that should have been with that order. So much for leaving things in the package.
Hedy Lamarr might be a name some of us might remember hearing. (Hedy Lamarr if that Wikipedia link gets filtered). OPB, perhaps all of PBS (check local stations for schedules), will soon broadcast a program about why most of us might not be able to do what we often do, were it not for her.
Grrrr! >:-[ Hedy Lamarr might be a name some of us might remember hearing. OPB, perhaps all of PBS (check local stations for schedules), will soon broadcast a program about why most of us might not be able to do what we often do, were it not for her.
yes, well, the patent officer was obviously unimpressed with her idea, mainly because it came from a woman, not from a man….had he had his head (how’s that for alliteration?) elsewhere than in a most inconvenient orifice of his own, he might have seen a practical use for it…..I hope that wherever he is, they have the old bang-and-click switches (no touch tone for you, bubba), an old steel or heavy Bakelite body phone, and it’s on a party line that’s always busy…….
Sorry folks, won’t be around for a while. Bad things certainly do come in groups.
Wiishing you strength for whatever’s going wrong, Chondrite, and hoping things will get better in a while.