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ritaxis: (Default)
Friday, August 10th, 2007 11:50 am
Day seven: I've lost another pound -- maybe: it's hard to know for sure because the accuracy of my scale is probably plus or minus a pound (I can get a two-pound variation in a series of weighings at the same time).

I've gotten to page 70 or so in revision, mostly making small changes with profound impact (I think). Note to self: Parris has established a habit of making up odd sayings like "enough frustration hormones pouring off you to power a small radio station" (or was it block?). This has potential and ought to be enhanced.

Do Skip's stress migraines and Dwayne's smoked food-induced nightmares constitute a parallel? Only in Gabe/Dwayne and Marcus/Skip constitute a parallel. Hmmm.
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Thursday, August 9th, 2007 11:04 am
I'm doing the second draft. I know the substance of the last scene, but it just won't write, and I do know what I want to do in the second draft, so foo.

On another front, Day 6! After today, only 8 more days until I can eat fruit and grains again. But I don't pine for them. Or potatoes, either. So if I get to Day 14 and I still don't want to, I won't. But it will be an option.

Once, in a rasf* usenet group, I said: "In this great and creatorless universe, where so much beautiful has come to be out of the chance interactions of the basic properties of matter, it seems so important that we love one another"

It's all over hell and gone now, mostly on the sidebars of science blogs. It would make me proud except that when I said it, it was an illustration of how the atheist world view doesn't make for easy snippets you can force into every conversation the way that certain religious people do with God stuff. Because the sentence, if you look at it, doesn't follow or make sense. But there it is. It's not as widespread or prominent as James Nicoll's observation on the English Language, but it's apparently the mark I'm making in the world.
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Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 10:59 pm
It's never going to end. Never. I'm going to keep re-writing the last chapter until I die.

I did figure out the other guy's actual motivation, though. And it only means re-writing tiny pieces of half the scenes he's in. (turns out it's not that he's been reticent and too careful: he's picked up on a lot of high-maintenance, delicate, nutjobs in the past. This so works because it makes a lot more sense for him to be ambivalent about an apparent fragile nutjob, drawn to the person even as he recognizes what a morass he may be heading into)

Since I have so much I already know about the second draft, maybe I could just go do that and finish the last chapter when I get there again? Does that ever work?

On another front: as of today, I have lost 7% of my starting weight -- 25% of the total weight I intend to lose. At which point I will still be at least forty pounds over what they tell you one ought to weigh at my height, which is actually more of a lowth.

On still another front, today I witnessed a six-month-old baby lying on his back on the floor, inchworm his way backwards across the room -- swiftly -- I don't know if I can give a proper description. He would arch his belly till he was supporting himself on his shoulders and toes, scrunch up, and flop down again, having pushed himself a few inches headwards. All the time guffawing. Occasionally flapping his arms. This baby guffaws a lot. I guess you can see why.
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Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 11:59 am
I'm just a couple of days behind, and the reason I am is that I can't figure out how to end this damned thing. I emended what was supposed to be the last chapter, and ended up with a shorter-than-average chapter that came to a CLANK and what could I possibly write after that -- in the same chapter, anyway -- that wouldn't just dilute it all to nothing? Presuming that the chapter is something in the first place.

So.

I think, aha! leave the chapter at its shorter than average length and start up a new chapter to really finish everything off. But what goes in that chapter?

So this is what I have in the chapter file, so far:


a suitable lover
chapter 16

what the fuck goes in this chapter?


I am so pissed. The momentum just somehow fizzled, and the climax is not a climax, revelations happen at the wrong time, guns on the mantelpiece don't fire, stuff happens without precedent . . .

whatever made me think I could write at all?

on another front, this is Day Four of Fourteen Days Of No Carbohydrates At All. This is not faddism, this is a stage in a regime to combat diabetes.