Monday milestones and such

that was my weekend. Slightly on the long side. Even 2 days off is still kind of long. Yesterday I got up late about 1:30pm. That’s pretty late for me for a Sunday. Not a heck of a lot going on yesterday.

Weather wise we got up to +19C, which is unheard of for this time of year. According to weather archives last time we got this warm for this time of year was 1945! Temps this week are supposed to get up to around +14-16C and then on the weekend drop to around +8C, which is normal for this time of year.

Sunday however, was not a day that was unproductive. I managed to complete the 2nd rewrite of 4 scenes yesterday afternoon while Anne was out and about. I’m now at scene #45, which is at the 60% mark of the story. I’m really impressed with it and so far no snags in the action. If you have never got passed the rewrite stage of a novel size project let me tell you, it’s hard work. Writing the rough draft is the easy part. Once I get going I can knock off a novel in 8-10 weeks. It’s everything else that’s hard. Writing a novel is not easy money. Nor is writing a short story. The rough draft of a 5,000 word story before a couple of hours sleep is tough but I can do it in one session. But at the end of that session I’m dammed exhausted. Then after that it’s the many hours of rewriting. For my “ZOS” story (See “About me” for a link) I rewrote that sucker about a dozen times. It took me 2 months of rewriting to fine tune that story to where I needed it to be. It was damn hard but fun doing at the same time. I don’t believe in jumping into a story and finding out where it takes me. I like to know where I’m going from point A-B. I like to know what motivates the characters, what touches them, spiritually and emotionally. I like to paint pictures and explore questions even if three isn’t always an answer immediately to be found.

Anne is off today and I should have taken Monday off instead of Saturday because I want to go out and vote and watch the election results. It’s going to be interesting to see if the current Mayor can keep his seat.

Over the last couple f weeks I added a half dozen new links to my link list. These are sites I go to on a regular bases. Amazon Canada of course, along with; Coast to Coast, Audrey’s books (a great resource to go to for who’s coming to town SF author wise.), Telus World of Science (formally the Space Sciences Center) New Scientist (just this morning) Pure Speculation.(Better believe I’m going next year. Maybe I’ll be able to have my teeth fixed and my own book published. I’ll be adding more links as I go. Another nifty thing about having a Blog is the ability to keep all your links in one place. Speaking of which I've reached a milestone of sorts passing Blog story-400! Wow.

And of course I hope to get a few more scenes done today but if we’re going to go out and vote, this might not happen for Monday. I might get one scene in for today. And of course there’s Monday night Raw. I get to watch the later show because I’m at work tonight. Anyway, I’m going to blog this and get back to the story. I’ll pop back in after wrestling.

Anyway, that’s all for now.

e. Jim