Monday, July 24, 2006

Weeding and Words

"He that uses many words for the explaining of any subject doth, like the cuttlefish, hide himself for the most part in his own ink." ~ John Ray

We actually had a decent day, weatherwise, yesterday. I took the time to discover that everything outside grew two or three feet because of the heat and the rain. Unfortunately, along with my tomato plants, the weeds grew as well.

I've decided on my epitaph:

Here lies Marianne.
Don't bother weeding her grave, she'll do it herself.


Honestly, I'll bet if you watched me sleep last night, my hands were still weeding. And I barely even made a dent.

I did manage a bit of writing. Well, editing, actually. I'd forgotten how much I enjoy the characters in Camilla's story (TPOF) and it was a kick working with them again. I got quite a bit done, though I still have a long way to go.

While I was weeding yesterday, I got to wondering about my WW submission. It's been forever (okay, four months) and I'm now wondering if they even got the thing or if it got lost in the mail. Everyone says "no news is good news" and that the longer they have my story, the better my odds are, but the waiting is killing me.

I've been working on another short story. I love the premise, adore the heroine and have no clue how it's going to end. That's a first for me. Usually, the ending it the one thing I know in everything I write. I can see it. Sometimes I even write the ending first. So this is frustrating for me. Oh well, writing my poor, dysfunctional heroine is a lot of fun, so I'll keep moving forward until someone clues me in as to how the H/H are going to end up together. It may end up being a novel instead, LOL.

So, am I the only person not going to National? Seriously, though... Atlanta in the summer. Whose bright idea was that? Minnesota in the summer, Montana in the summer, even here in the summer -- that I get. But the south? It's freakin' hot there. I know. I had the bright idea of doing Disney World for my honeymoon. My tenth anniversary is in three weeks. HOT.

All of you folks going to Atlanta, have a wonderful time and make notes to share.

I'll just be here.

Weeding.

5 comments:

Ceri Hebert said...

You're not the only one not going to Nationals or anywhere else for that matter. When they have these things in Manchester or Nashua then maybe I'll make the trip.

So I'm not the only person who tends to write the end of a book before the middle. I like doing that, knowing where the story is going. Sometimes I veer off the chosen course, but not too often. I didn't get any writing done yesterday. There's a shock. I was doing laundry and lunch and trips to Keene and my puters were being defragged. Actually I was trying to plot out book 2 & 3 of my trilogy. Book 1 is currently a novella that I'm trying to expand upon. Maybe I'll just combine all three books into one. Know anything about black market adoptions and domestic abuse laws in Minnesota? LOL

Anyhue, hope that you hear something soon from WW. I went through the same thing with them, wondering if they even got the story. It was somewhere around 5 months before I heard back. So sit tight and don't worry. :)

rwkqkn-ripe watermelons keep quite keenly now

Judy said...

I'm not going to National either and I live in Georgia... how sad is that????? Actually, we stay so busy I don't go anywhere (well, maybe to the coast occasionally for some well deserved R&R, but for now it's too hot even for that.)

I normally don't know how a story ends until I get there... even short stories. That's one reason that plotting out Fiona is such a change for me. In Lizzie, of course, I know how it ends (kinda hard not to when it's based on real-life, huh?), but I am normally a true "fly by the seat of the pants" kinda girl.

Right now, though, we have to go exchange a pump we rented over the weekend that busted. We're having to drain the pool to have a new liner put in. I think, when it's done, I'm going to check into waterproof laptops and see how well I can write on a float ;-)

Charity Tahmaseb said...

Well, I’m not going to National. I did Airborne School at Fort Benning, Georgia, during July, and that was enough of Georgia in July for me. And it’s a stretch to figure out which might be the more stressful scenario. +2,000 romance/women’s fiction writers, agents, editors, all in one place, OR up at 4 a.m. for physical training, scaling obstacles, being constantly demeaned and yelled at, PLUS! Jumping out of airplanes.

In all honesty, I think I’d do Airborne school again.

Anonymous said...

I'm not going to National either. And I'm like you, why do they always choose the hottest places on earth to have it? Geez.

Marianne Arkins said...

Glad to see I'm not the only one slumming it at home this week!

Hey, guess what I did today? Weeded!

nicxytyb - nice ice cream, Xerxes yelled to yellow bodies