105 posts tagged “fsotd”
A couple of hours in a coffee shop this afternoon got my mojo going on these polishes to my current novel manuscript (especially by having no free wireless internet accessible -- boy, does that help my productivity). Here's my first FSotD I had this afternoon:
Jane being crushed low was like the felling of a great redwood.
Then there's one that's an in-joke. I have a pitcher character (as I commented to cranky this week), and my agent wants me to put more physical descriptions of characters in the book (something I'm remiss on), so here's a line about him:
Stash was too busy checking his ego in a mirror, along with the progress of his most current misguided facial hair configuration—a straight stripe of goatee down the middle of his chin.
Yes, cranks, I decided in my mind's eye that this character, even though he's a pitcher, looks like Jayson Werth. I was inspired after reading today that Werth has recently changed his walk-up to at-bat song from "Heavy Metal" by Sammy Hagar to "Sex on Fire" by Kings of Leon. Very much aware of our pull with the ladeez, aren't we Jayson? I couldn't resist, because I agree he's hot -- all except the facial hair. All the Phillies except Chan Ho Park have very bad beardage and should shave them off now.
By the way, when I was checking the available networks on my laptop (a girl can hope), there was one labelled CrankyPants. But it was secured, so I couldn't snoop and see who in downtown Toronto has stolen our cranky's handle.
Okay, back to it. Gotta get more done before game time. Go Phillies!
From the critiquing sessions at my writers retreat (this is a great group for critiquing, very smart and incisive and constructivie), these were the "we need that on a t-shirt" lines.
Rob, yesterday, on Madeline's partial novel: "It seems odd that there's no repercussions to being eaten."
Me, yesterday, also on Madeline's plot points: "This character doesn't just break Asimov's First Law of Robotics, she Michael Bays it out of existence."
Madeline, today, on the main character in my missing kid novel: "Outside of suspecting everyone of child molestation and avarice, this character doesn't seem to have a hobby."
The funnest sentence I wrote today:
A widescreen picture of the little boy’s vitals wasn’t much to munch popcorn to, though they were as white-knuckle as any movie climax.
Other creativity in the halls of the Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts:
That's a scale model of the ferry that usually takes us to this end of the Island (when there's no strike on), and a painting in which the main subject bears an uncanny resemblance to one of the Centre staff.
Here's the "library" in the Centre, full of arts publications and copies of books written by people who worked on them here:
And thanks to the author copy I brought and inscribed for the Centre, Godblog now joins the ranks of those works.
I've just finished (I think) an under-2000-word short story, done over two weekends. Here's an FSotD from it:
When your “tattooing” is done with a gunshot, the untidiness of the art is really the least of your problems.
Now I can go off to the barbecue, guilt-free!
This weekend I'm trying to write, since I won't be writing the next two weekends. I also did cat trapping last night (see post below) and am trying to pick off chore after household chore on my to-do list. There is a Perfect (and I do mean Perfect) Storm of a social whirl on my calendar coming up, to wit:
- my major author appearance on Wednesday, reading from Godblog, for which I still haven't settled on the scene(s) I'm going to read and my peeps have been generally uninspired to suggest any, even for a prize
- weekend at the Chicago Squee-Up, where Cappy and I will rendezvous, of course, along with the other peeps
- Cappy coming back from Chicago with me to spend a week here, leaving on the 28th. (We actually get to fly together for the first time.)
So while I'm prepping to travel, and cleaning up to have company, and keep up with other cat and personal commitments, I'm still trying to keep momentum on my immediate missing kid novel project, which I want to have a largish contiguous chunk of for my mid-July writer's retreat.
I did 800 words yesterday, and am very proud of the fact that the last hundred came after midnight. Yes, I went back to it after the cat trapping high, and a bunch of futzing around online, not concentrating through the latter part of the evening. Good for me.
I'd like to do 1,000 words today before 3 p.m., when I'm meeting Patricia at a coffee shop. I have about 900 to go. Gah.
Here's an FSotD from yesterday, and one from today already (jumping the gun a little, I know).
In the current social climate, the latte had now replaced the bottle of scotch in the desk drawer, and even better, could be openly flaunted.
“Winsome’s never wrong,” Margaret said, proving again that everyone our office assistant met gave her the kind of loyalty one usually only commanded with a hard drive full of blackmail photos.
Have a great Sunday!
It was for once warm enough, and not too windy to write up on the penthouse patio at my building today. And bonus, I had it all to myself. I spent several hours up there, with no internet connection, and felt productive. So here's my FSotD:
My worry these days was that I’d find only one of Madison’s legs and would still have to keep looking for the other.
Tonight I think I'll go see Up at the movies as a reward.
Don't forget to weigh in on my Godblog contest!
Today is another one of those days where somehow I got 1,000 words written, but I have no idea how, because it felt like I was going at a snail's pace.
I have to admit that 200 of my words today were in outline form, working up a plot twist on who took the missing kid in the book (I haven't actually solved that mystery for myself yet). After I'd done a bunch of working through motive and method and complications and stuff, I realized that making a cop the perp had been done by Dennis Lehane in the book (and movie) Gone, Baby, Gone. There's that theory shot to hell. I don't want to be a copycat.
Anyway, here's an FSotD.
I was pitching my tent in Camp Empathy now and I still wanted to knock Lorenzo Magnifico's head in.
And here's another that I didn't think was good enough to post on its own, but I still like it.
The Internet didn’t need proof, only content.
That's it for now, my stomach is growling and I've gotta make dinner.
I'm 625 words into the thousand I want to get done by 7 p.m. today. (So I can then watch National Geographic doing "megafish" of the Amazon.)
So here's my FSotD so I can get back to it.
"You just said it—this case is going to be cracked by a dog rolling in what his owner thinks is garbage.”
Now I must close my browser, because if I stay hooked in, I'll never get the other 375 words.
Today it was nice enough to go to the penthouse patio and write. Till the storm system started moving in. Here's my FSotD:
“Show me your skeleton!” Rosie says and on the video Lahaina smiles, a big, toothy grin.
Somehow, I appear to have gotten 1,500 words written today without feeling the strain. I hope that happens more often. Like, tomorrow.
In the new novel I'm working on, there is a child who was kidnapped, named Victoria. There is a character with the last name Stoppard. There is a Victim Services representative named Barbie.
In real life, in Ontario this past week a little girl named Victoria Stafford was abducted. On my day off next week (to make up for working tomorrow), for background research, I'll be interviewing a Victim Services staffer named Bobbie.
Thank goodness for "find and replace" functions.
And here's an FSotD (not from today - today's writing has some fun ideas, but none of them encapsulate themselves into invidual sentences so well):
But more than that, in a society that stops a teacher from hugging a crying child in class, parents still let some stranger with no more visible accreditation than a craft show tent, a new age name and a tackle box full of smeary colored sticks get intimate with their child’s face.
Sunny for now, the the same weather system that's going to hit Lauri and her menagerie with a dump of snow, is heading this way, too, with snow and rain.
She turned and answered his dad with her yelling face still on, but in a voice low enough that Henry couldn’t hear it.
I'm only halfway to my 1000-word goal for the day right now. No excuse, really, for the slow progress, it just happens sometimes that I'm very distractable. I should be more focused, because I won't be writing next weekend. Cap'n Crook will be here for Easter instead.
