How I spent my time off of writing.

I have been gone from writing for two whole weeks. That is probably the longest time I have gone without writing in two and a half years. I feel refreshed and ready to tackle line editing. I believe I left off on chapter twelve, but I will start from chapter eight, because I am now looking at it with a fresh eye.

My daughter, the teacher, has the first seven chapters to edit for grammar/punctuation/etc, so I don’t want to mess with that. I actually spent an evening/night, some Bailey’s Irish Crème and a lot of giggles with her the night of the wedding. We do not get to spend enough time together and she rented a motel room for us and mom. Mom was deep in sleep within minutes. I forced myself not to ask my daughter, the question, “How much do you hate it?” (meaning my book, and not her grandmother or her husband). I did not want to ruin the giggles.

I spent twelve hours behind the camera that day and, while I wanted to die by about 10:00 pm, I think I have discovered that, if I can spend twelve hours photographing a wedding, I can push exercise harder. My doctor will be so happy. Of course, it has taken me a few days to catch up.

I have also learned that twelve hours behind a camera equates to days and days and days of editing pictures; crop, color adjust, remove red eye, delete the pictures of the naughty Jr. bridesmaid who insisted on throwing her bouquet and making faces, etc. And, do a major adjust of the pictures in the Haunted Chapel. See here for explanation.
The Case of the Haunted Church « Savanvleck’s Weblog

I am sending off one full disc to the bride today because we took some pictures especially for her thank you cards and she is moving on the eleventh, and now I will take it a little easier with the other 2,143 mb of photos left. Let’s see, I sent 700 mb off—at two days of altering—that means I have like six days left. (That sound you hear is me groaning). But, they are not six full days.

Jump to page 123 and read

I was reading some older posts on writermorphosis today and she reminded me of an exercise to do. Grab the nearest book, jump to page 123, count down five sentences and post the next three. It is a neat exercise to see what others are reading and also one to take out a bite of your own book and see if those three lines stack up.

Gaffer boy, our son who is studying to be a Gaffer, has given me Terry Pratchett's The Color of Magic to read. I would prefer to start a series with book one and I generally do not care for books with a ton of made up words. I have just started it, but he is quite a visual writer and I just love this line: "Through sea-sized eyes that are crusted with rheum and astroid dust."

p. 123, "Codice of Chimeria killed the last one two hundred years ago. I don't know what we're seeing, but they aren't dragons."
"But they carried us up in the air!"

Susan Choi, "A Person of Interest" is a mystery I have not started yet, but it sits here waiting.

p. 123, "And to his surprise, rather than feeling bereft, he fairly hummed with contentment. For the first time in recent memory, perhaps for the first time since meeting Aileen, he had purpose, and peace. He had always loved a university campus in summer, the mysterious abandonment of the medieval city, with just a skeleton crew of damned souls left to meet his few needs: a single heavy-eyed stamper of books, a single sleepwalking ladler of gruel in the one cafeteria."

That last sentence means I will be starting it tomorrow. What a great visual. "skeleton crew of damned souls...single sleepwalking ladler of gruel..."

And, then there is Three Brothers in a Yellowwood Tree, by S. A. VanVleck
p. 123 of my manuscript:

"The crescent moon created a host of shadows as he watched a deer forage. White tail up in alarm, the deer ran deeper into the woods. Alex squinted to see what had frightened the animal when another creature moved into his view."

I am going to have to think on that. Is it enough of a word picture?