What does a 1,125 page manuscript need more than anything?
Apparently 92 more scenes. *facepalm*
It’s daunting, but when I’m done, I’ll be able to love the first part of the story as much as the ending.
Even if it doesn’t have nearly as many fires.
At age 35, it would be nice if I finally understood how time works. Instead, this is what it looks like when I try to take a late afternoon hike:
90 minutes before sunset: Intend to go hiking.
50 minutes before sunset: Actually leave to go hiking.
40 minutes before sunset: Arrive at destination and proceed to walk original intended distance, due to inflexibility.
10 minutes before sunset: Run to cover more ground until darkness makes this an unwise course of action.
Sometime after sunset on the line between dusk and night: Arrive back at car with no dire consequences having befallen me, thus reinforcing that I can get away with this, whether or not I actually like it.
Anything can be a double-edged sword. I now know that a three-year-old’s enjoyment of Christmas presents does not exist on a five-point scale of “Strongly Dislike” to “Strongly Like,” but that there is a like-related category of “my single-minded enthusiasm for this item requires it to be within one foot of my body at all times, and things like bedtime, mealtime, and leaving the house for any reason are no longer viable life choices.”
Anyway, we had a decent Christmas despite 2020 being what it is, and I now have my small sliver of parenting information to file away for later use.
I decided that my pie comes from a culture in which it is indecent to show one’s crust, and whipped-creamed it accordingly.
WORLDBUILDING.
A conversation I had tonight with my partner at the culmination of a week of bean-type soups and chilis:
Me: Dinner tomorrow?
Partner: Three-Bean Soup.
Me: Me: *swears at partner*
Partner: Three-Bean Soup, but instead of the broth–
Me: There’s a fourth bean?
Partner: I call at Three-Bean Surprise. The surprise is the fourth bean.
I finally hemmed a pair of pants that I’ve worn pinned up with safety pins for eight or nine years now.
I did an absolutely awful job, but at least I won’t have to feel the click-click of safety pins against my shoes next time I wear them. That will only happen with the other pairs of pants that have also been safety-pinned for five-plus years.
I carried Touching from a Distance around in my backpack for most of my senior year of high school, and even I don’t think this needs to exist.
I’ve seen a lot of rainbows this summer.
It’s been especially fun when they show up because we’re watching a lot of 80s cartoons lately, and the biggest lesson we’ve learned is that rainbows are the gold standard in fighting evil, fascism, dark magic, people who hate fun, and people who live in castles that are very dark and pointy.
“What do you despise? By this are you truly known.”
When I first read that quotation in Dune twenty years ago, it struck me as something true and profound. It’s been incorporated into my worldview so long and so thoroughly that I don’t always notice the words themselves, even if they’re there at the back of my mind.
It’s one metric by which I judge others and myself, and it’s something that’s been in my head a lot lately not only because I am re-reading Dune and realizing what a formative book it was for me, but also because of everything going on in the world right now.
We live in an age of militant, polarized opinions. Some people share their opinions online; others go out to protest. Either way, this is always the question I ask.
It’s been two or three years since I last did the Index-Card-a-Day challenge, but since I’ve been meaning to do more watercolor sketching, I decided to try it this year with time limits on how long I spend per card.
I’m not a car person, so I can only describe what passed by me on my walk in my rural New England town as a retro-future, cyberpunk Indy 500 car with strips of neon green lights blinking along its edges.
It was blasting not the synthy industrial action music that is its birthright by genre, but one of the more emotional Goo Goo Dolls songs.
There’s a saying about dressing for the job you want, not the job you have. It sounds suspiciously like the kind of thing a high-end suit manufacturer might have come up with.
Anyway, I’ve accumulated quite a few outfits that make me look like a sci-fi character, so I’ve been following that dubious piece of advice either way.