Hilary Booth... of course!

The temperature is brutally cold here. It actually feels like February for a change.

I'm quite confused. I have somehow been converted into a curling fan. Our local CVS member has been looking forward to the Torino coverage for some time, so he's been encouraging us to watch and explaining the intricacies. Yesterday watching the US men and Germany, I realized I finally understood the basic scoring. I still don't get all the lingo straight, much less understand all the strategy involved. The US ladies were leading Switzerland for much of their match, only to get knocked out by a phenomenal final shot by the Swiss captain.

I attended short story marathon hosted by one of our CVS members. I did some thinking about the one story idea I had but as much as I adored the opening, I couldn't quite get into the story. We did notecards on our personal traits and then swapped the cards around, so it was interesting to see what people used and how. There were traits I didn't put because I didn't realize I did! I apparently hum while I'm working, whether for focus or what I'm not certain. But until someone pointed out that I did that, I was "Huh? What?" *blushes beet red of embarrassment*

We also played a very strange game of word association called "Apples to Apples" where you're given an adjective and you're supposed to come up with the best noun in your hand that describes it. Each person around the group gets to judge, so to a degree, you're playing to the judge's penchant. I was actually quite good at this game, sometimes to my surprise. I did occasionally throw down the wackiest wrongest association that came to mind and won! I still lost the whole game by one card, but it's still a very cool game. Apparently the game even includes blanks so you can add your own nouns. Some cards are impossible to play without a cringe factor.

I finished the first draft of my alternate history story for my latest CVS submission. It needs a little polishing and changes before it's sent forward, but it'll be ready. I'm actually rather pleased with how it turned out... even more so that I actually sat down and wrote this idea.

Robot spots Ancient greek shipwreck: Described as a "buried UPS truck", it was laden with wine and olive oil when it went down in the Aegean over 2000 years ago. Also the Woods Hole site survey website.

After a long dry bout here, the rains have arrived with a vengeance. It was positively pouring outside at lunch. We definitely need it, although I hope there will be a short intermission so I can do groceries tomorrow. Otherwise I might have a nice quiet Columbus Day weekend.

Because of the Meetup announcement, we had a huge turnout for the Thursday meeting of CVS. I counted 12 people at final count! I haven't seen that many people in awhile and we haven't even hit our usual Nano growth and shrinkage period yet.

GIP! Leave it to my parents' favorite series Hitchhikers' to provide the new CVS icon. We had our usual Thursday meeting tonight with one new person. The bookstore was in countdown mode itself for the Harry Potter midnight party, rearranging parts of the upstairs area for their displays. One table was for their register and the other appeared to be "Bertie Botts" for all the snacks and goodies. (Shouldn't that be Honeydukes? Sorry, random HP moment there...) One of them was asked about the crowd to expect. The last time apparently they had around 600 people. Eep. I hope I heard that wrong, but probably not. It's hard to picture that many people in that bookstore at once. Somehow waiting for the nice postal person doesn't so bad after all.

Oh god my head hurts. Advil Migraine had better make the pain go away. Heads aren't supposed to feel this way.

sventhelost, I could have sworn there was a Doctor Who style community like houseepisodes where you didn't have to use Bittorrent. I can give you several good torrent sites otherwise. I'll keep looking though.

CVS meeting tonight was critiquing stories. With sound mind and shaking all over, I signed up for another go on June 16th. Everyone is muttering "second chapter please" for "Going Under" and I make noises under my breath. We'll see what I submit. It could be something completely different.

Work is just... argh. Right hand, please meet left hand and have a chat sometime soon?

I steeled myself for the critique session for the revised chapter of "Going Under". It mostly went over well. I need to add some details about the two characters' relationship and set up the mystery a little better. Mostly I just want to take what they said and work on the next chapters/scenes.

I don't know. I'm feeling very blah lately. I know some of the reasons why, but I can't tell if they're the entire cause of my rollercoaster state or whether something else is at work. Part of me is tempted to consider a break from the group, just to rethink things. The other part of me feels like this is a copout. And there's the terrified part of me. "What if I can't write anymore?"

After much running around today, I managed to get the CBU application into the real estate office with ten minutes to spare. Thankfully I'm on flextime on my assignment so I can make up any time lost on this errand tomorrow. Hopefully everything will work out with the application. I worry every year and it goes through swimmingly. It'll probably be the one year I don't worry something will hit me between the eyes.

Quiet final meeting of the month at CVS. We discussed the dialogue book somewhat, including some of the problems I experienced last week writing a longish fanfic piece where the character is blind. He won't see people coming up to him. He can hear and smell them, yes, but it was frustrating figuring out how to do the audio cues without getting too stilted. I'm supposed to submit something next week, so I will be busy over the week. I'm thinking of doing some Cinderella research at the library. It'll be a useful test of the new children's/YA section.

CVS was enjoyable. It was our first real meeting after two back-to-back events. I officially made the rewrite of that "Going Under" chapter a writing goal, which will either mean it will get done or I'll flake. I'm hopeful for the former. I also suggested the monthly challenge topic, inspired by "Ides of March" and ominous omens and stuff. I usually don't get much out of the workshops, but I enjoyed them this time. For whatever reason, my brain does a massive freeze whenever we do these.

ariadnesthread did a fun one on POV from the Writing the Wave book by Elizabeth Ayers. We picked someone we didn't know that well and tried three different POVs. One was a third person bare bones description, the infamous laundry list of "6'4" with dark hair and blue eyes", occasionally mixed with personality insights. Then we wrote from their perspective. "Everyone fears me because I'm so tall, but they don't realize how clumsy I am." Then you step really outside the box and write from the perspective of a relative who has passed on to the grave. Are they disappointed in them? "I always knew he would take after his father's side. None of them are under six feet. But they move with grace. He broke my favorite china vase when he was fourteen." Then you also spent some time analysing why you liked writing one POV versus another and what each revealed about their characters. I usually don't like first person for more than short bursts, but I was surprised how easily it came out. The last one was an alien mentality, beyond tut-tutting grandmother into "No good ever came from learning and books". Certain friends will also be proud how mentioned the reliability of each POV and how the right POV can make even the most annoying twit somewhat palatable. Or not, if you really wanted him seen that way.

vadreamer did a second one on dialogue and perspective, a variant on the "He said, she said" type story where you had the same bits of details but both saw it completely different ways. One of our other members had us draw out pictures from a bag and write scenes based on them. They were taken from news magazines so they made for some interesting juxapositions. I wound up with a Islamic man sitting in contemplation and a hospital scene. Not something I would have tried to write on my own, which was part of the point of these exercises. Get outside your creative box and try something.

aireon posted some interesting thoughts on writing by the seat of your pants, rather than hemmed in by an outline. I struggle mightily sometimes to explain how I work to my CVS friends. As I mentioned in my comments, I always feel like I'm doing something wrong, because I don't get it.

Mostly for my own memory (or lack thereof sometimes):

( Writing Goals )

Today was a quiet one. I worked on my writing notebook project. Revisiting some of those old exercises was interesting and not nearly as embarrassing as I'd expect. There are some useful bits in them I can mine for later. I could definitely track my progress with the different projects.

Metro was great for people watching tonight. Half of the cars going downtown carried people in various states of black tie and evening dress, all headed to some inaugural ball or party. I did cringe at the one lady chatting on her cell phone. It must be 20 degrees outside and she had on a sleeveless dress and a satiny wrap. I realize checking your coat is a pain, but it's better than calling in sick later with pneumonia. Alas I could only stay on for one stop, so I couldn't stay and look. I was reminded of the night whytcrow, ariadnesthread and I were coming home on the Metro from World Fantasy Con. It was Halloween and everyone was dressed up, some more unfortunately than others. The bondage Britneys only made you blink. Although there was a couple in WWII era uniform and evening gown.

Okay, I'm annoyed. I thought Katsucon was the last weekend in February but its actually President's Day weekend. Writing retreat or Range Murata? Decisions, decisions...