Great Day Overall

It’s late now, 11:30 PM where I am. I wound up getting through a few chapters of my manuscript, but it’s slow going. I have a hard time not getting caught up in the story and remembering to edit. There is one thing I need to go back and improve before bedtime.

Critique group was great. I submitted a section where I wanted to slow the pace a bit. Lots of things happened to Patty, my MC, and readers need to catch their breath. My group suggested ways to improve the writing and make it smoother. I think they’re spot on, and will tackle that tomorrow. Then it’s right back into the crucible for Patty.

One of my group members suggested a cover artist for The Cock of the South. He showed me a cover the fellow did, and I like it. He was supposed to be in Boise tomorrow, but something came up. That’s okay, email works just fine for me.

My daughter was available tonight, so the three of us went to Carino’s for dinner. Why isn’t it Johnny Carino’s any longer? Doesn’t matter. It was nice spending the evening with her.

I took a chance on writing some micro fiction. I’d like to learn some of these skills, and there’s no better way than jumping right in. I showed it to a writing friend, she liked it and suggested some improvements. That’s a project for tomorrow. My daughter read it at dinner, making her the only member of my household to ever read anything I’ve written. That meant a lot to me.

I stayed up to watch Gravity on HBO. Great movie, with lots of elements I’ve studied. Isolation plus danger is a great way to hold viewer’s attention. It holds readers too. The untrained woman makes a much better heroine than the experienced veteran astronaut. The odds are stacked against her. Great use of ticking clocks too. (Running out of oxygen, timing the return of the debris field, even waiting for the space station to pressurize.)

It’s time to go back to my editing project and change the one thing that occurred to me after I stopped. We’ll see if I can stop myself after that. Have a nice evening everyone.