August Sweeps - Day 197

 

Another day, another zero words.

I don't know how a real writer does it, facing the reset word counter (ie, the blank screen) day in and day out.  Except of course, a real writer has the promise of owning their own home waiting on the horizon.  

Big Anklevich finished another novel yesterday ("The Gauntlet"), which makes his second for the year.  I don't know if I would feel better about all this if I had finished two novels this year (instead of just one*), but I have to pretend that it's not a competition between us, but I'm only competing against myself.  And I've easily doubled the amount of words written in a year already, and it's only mid-August.  Still, if I never publish any of it, it's not as much of an achievement, is it?  Kind of like when they say "Pics or it didn't happen" on the internet.

I guess I'll just publish "Three-Time Visitor" with a temporary cover again, and maybe Gino will help me with a better one down the line.  I need to just do that with everything: publish it with an imperfect--or even crappy--cover, and upgrade when I can (or want to).  Then I'll go on to the next project.  Perhaps then I'll feel a modicum of solace.

Yeah, I nearly said "quantum of solace," but you know, that phrase makes just as little sense today as it did ten years ago.

I had to reboot my desktop computer the other day (I should've thrown it against the wall years ago, but I use it too much), and when MS Word restarted, it hadn't saved the work-in-progress I had on there, even though it always does, even garbage I thought I'd deleted months ago.  It's stuff like that that mires down the creative process even more than it usually is, boys and girls.

I told Big that I could probably finish "Hatchling" today if I wanted to, and we'd both have a book done (although mine is about 32,000 words, instead of the requisite 40,000 to be considered a novel by the Hugos).  But I'm much less focused on length than most people (and I'd have to be).

Which reminds me, I'm getting closer to done with Patrick Rothfuss's "Wise Man's Fear," and I keep noticing long meandering parts that feel like they should've been trimmed but weren't.  I guess there are people who underwrite then fill in (like me, though I need to learn to do it better) and those who overwrite then cut down (which I guess is preferred).  I am well aware that I'll never write a hundred thousand word novel (Big's is at 120,485, to be exact), but like Fred Savage said, "I don't mind so much."

I'm now at the park--the same park where I saw my first post-pandemic wedding months ago.  And to my surprise, there's one going on right across the way right now.  The bride is in white, getting her picture taken, the groom is standing by the duck pond, looking bored, and there are two photographers milling about.  You know, I think this is just the wedding photos, not the wedding itself, but it amuses me that it's being done beside what my nephews and I refer to as "the dirty pond."  It's a filthy brown pond filled with ducks, duck poop, feathers, and various trash fish.  

In my idea this week for a Natalie-centric "Dead & Breakfast" story, she goes off to do a photoshoot for some bridal magazine, and gets made up, her hair done, holds thousand dollar flower arrangements, and a dress that costs more, and is swept up in the magic of it all.  It's probably a pretty dumb idea for a story, but I'm reminded of two things: 1) it was Cary Grant who said, "If I don't at least fall in love a little bit with my co-star, then I'm not doing my job," and 2) I worked on a pilot that never went anywhere, where a pretty blonde girl sat next to me for three hours, and even though I didn't even get her name, it was one of the most enjoyable days doing extra work that I experienced.

My priority, as soon as I finish "Hatchling" (which honestly, could've been today, if I'd let the damn kids stay a little longer), should be to finish the long D&B story, but I am tempted to write this shorter one, just to see what Natalie's heartache would feel like.  We'll see.

My cousin came over to see JURASSIC PARK with me tonight.  The local theater (which was going to open in mid-July and show MAD MAX: FURY ROAD) finally opened yesterday.  And they're doing that half-price thing, which will encourage me to go see more movies.  

It was cool to see JP on the big screen again (it had been about twenty years, and I never got to see it when it was new), and you tend to notice things when you're in the theater that you don't notice on video (for example, the scene where Sam Neill sits down on the grass after seeing his first dinosaur was obviously not the first take, as he had grass stains on the seat of his pants already, something I'd never spied before).  I enjoyed trying to figure out which shots used the animatronic dinosaurs and which shots were CG, since most of them are done so well it's hard to tell.  It made me want to see the other Jurassic films as well, even the bad one.

This was the first time I'd seen JP since reading the book last year, and I was surprised that they left in the scene where Hammond and Arnold talk about "the lysine contingency," because it goes absolutely nowhere in the film.  Its a holdover from the book, I guess, but it's a few lines that really could've been trimmed, unless there's some logical reason--a sequel setup?--Spielberg left it in.  If you remember that bit from the movie, you might enjoy this photograph I just took:

I got in my sit-ups and did my run after the movie, and I gotta say, if it weren't for the music I listen to while running, I think I might have stopped long ago.  I have the mix on Random, and sometimes something like King's Love & Pride will start playing, and I'll actually say, "Oh, that's a good one" aloud, then start running just a little harder.  

If only there was a song mix for writing.

Anyway, Sit-ups Today: 150
Sit-ups In August: 2809

I was happy to not have to write after going out, so I did a little bit of recording.  That gained me an extra 170 words, so I'll not complain.

Words Today: 1158
Words In August: 14,826

Oh heck, I might still complain.

*Although, now that I mention it, I'm not sure what novel I would've finished in 2020.  As far as I know, "Only Have Eyes For You" is my only novel-length achievement this year . . . and I never finished it.