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A day for me!
Jun. 20th, 2007 07:55 amI love that grandbaby, but boy he's a lot of work. I feel guilty that I don't have him every day, but I'm happy I don't have him everyday. I suppose I feel more guilt over the happy feeling than anything. But the other, 2-day-a-week, babysitter is having an operation the week after next, so I'll be having him more often for a while. Except I can't watch him on the 1st or 2nd Wed., because those are my Master Gardener meeting days, and I can't watch him on the Fridays that we go to the coast. D-i-L is going to have to find someone to fill in.
So today being Wed., I have the day off. YAY! Time to answer emails, post and read on LJ, get my hair cut, have lunch with friends, run errands and do some shopping. OOPS! And visit my mother-in-law in the hospital (they admitted her last night with severe back pain) -- can't forget that. Oh and tonight my youngest son's girlfriend graduates from the LVN nursing program. WHEW! Well, so much for a day for me, since it looks as though I'll be busy all day.
Writing news: I did sub a story yesterday. Even gave it a new title. Today I'm subbing one to WotF, which reminds me I need to go print it out. Yesterday I said I thought I had 2 stories out yet -- I was wrong. I have 3. Two at the same market, and one other. Actually I thought I had 4, but I see that I'd forgotten about one rejection.
Last night I read a story I wrote some time back that I really liked. Critters thought it needed more conflict. I never got around to going back to revising it, which was probably a very good thing. Because last night when I read it through, I realized that the beginning stinks. Full of purple prose and duplicating impressions, and it just felt rather juvenile. Funny thing is that I *loved* the beginning originally, and the image in the beginning is the one that drove the story for me. Now I think the new beginning will be the old ending. It will make for a much shorter story, but that's probably a good thing in this day and age when most of my editor comments lately seem to be that there's not sufficient tension and the middles drag. Maybe the middles drag because there's not enough tension. I'm probably needing to focus more on how to get more tension into my stories and not worry about the length, eh? If a reader is interested in the story and the characters, the length doesn't really matter. Right?
Maintain tension. Sounds simple. Now how to do it? Yeah, I know the characters need an inner tension/complication/problem, and the story needs one, too. But how to do it?
O
So today being Wed., I have the day off. YAY! Time to answer emails, post and read on LJ, get my hair cut, have lunch with friends, run errands and do some shopping. OOPS! And visit my mother-in-law in the hospital (they admitted her last night with severe back pain) -- can't forget that. Oh and tonight my youngest son's girlfriend graduates from the LVN nursing program. WHEW! Well, so much for a day for me, since it looks as though I'll be busy all day.
Writing news: I did sub a story yesterday. Even gave it a new title. Today I'm subbing one to WotF, which reminds me I need to go print it out. Yesterday I said I thought I had 2 stories out yet -- I was wrong. I have 3. Two at the same market, and one other. Actually I thought I had 4, but I see that I'd forgotten about one rejection.
Last night I read a story I wrote some time back that I really liked. Critters thought it needed more conflict. I never got around to going back to revising it, which was probably a very good thing. Because last night when I read it through, I realized that the beginning stinks. Full of purple prose and duplicating impressions, and it just felt rather juvenile. Funny thing is that I *loved* the beginning originally, and the image in the beginning is the one that drove the story for me. Now I think the new beginning will be the old ending. It will make for a much shorter story, but that's probably a good thing in this day and age when most of my editor comments lately seem to be that there's not sufficient tension and the middles drag. Maybe the middles drag because there's not enough tension. I'm probably needing to focus more on how to get more tension into my stories and not worry about the length, eh? If a reader is interested in the story and the characters, the length doesn't really matter. Right?
Maintain tension. Sounds simple. Now how to do it? Yeah, I know the characters need an inner tension/complication/problem, and the story needs one, too. But how to do it?
O
