rather than rooting for muck, as is so often the case.
Coming soon to a theater near you: A bumbling spy invents a tuxedo that helps him fight.
Nothing today.
Dorothy wants an update on the Anne Perry situation, and the verdict is: I shan't be buying any more Perry novels. Maybe she's gotten better over time, but from what new correspondents are telling me, she hasn't.
Ms. Perry did go down the path she appeared to be headed when I last reported in: the case Inspector Monk was working on and his amnesia were linked, and once again she wrapped the whole thing up in the last few pages. I began to wonder when one character was merely mentioned a few times and yet never walked on-stage--until the end. I mean, you know: please.
Life is too short for coincidental fiction. And I have a Michael Connelly novel waiting for me in my pile.
Short, shameful confession: I have been reading even more Regency romance novels--or, at least, romance novels set during the Regency period; let's just say neither Georgette Heyer nor Lucy would approve of the hijinks going on in these novels, but I've been enjoying them altogether muchly.
Tonight I had writing group--we've been experimenting and settled on Monday night. It was just the three of us again (me, Aaron, Linda), which annoys the heck outta me: it's just rude not to show up.
And everything that goes with that is pretty darn rude as well: not putting in the effort to read and comment other group members's scripts, to think about the stories, to treat this like a business--which reportedly is what we're all doing here. If you're not going to put in the effort, do the adult thing and say, "I'm not going to put in the commitment," and then bow out. Before someone does it for you.
We discussed Aaron's script in detail--despite doing a complete new rewrite, he still has some work to do on it--and then talked about the story for Linda's script. Linda's been tweaking the same damn 20 pages over and over again, but what she needed to talk about was the story, so we did that. Whenever she started veering dangerously near nitpicky details--"I can have him wear a green sweater instead of a red one"--I kept reminding her to stick to the broad strokes of the story: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back from white slavers. That kind of thing. Her assignment is to come up with the simplest possible telling of her story for next week.
And we have to find some people who are actually going to put in the effort, not only of critiquing our stuff, but putting their own stuff up for comment.
My period arrived with a vengeance today, a few days late, accompanied by a larger-than-average portion of pain, nausea, and a general feeling of disgust at being in this body. Today was a day for the gym; wasn't going to happen, even though exercise is supposed to help.
I've done nothing of consequence today or this past weekend. I told Beth I hope her Garden Report will inspire me to go out there and root about in the muck; working with my hands somewhere other than on a keyboard would probably do me a world of good. So far, however, I am merely enjoying vicarious dirt.
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Copyright 1999 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com