I had started rewriting chapter 5 yesterday, but after half a page it wasn’t going anywhere; and this morning it wasn’t going anywhere, and I was futzing around the house, and dithering, and avoiding; and eventually (with an audible Aha!) I realized that I was trying to write the chapter from the wrong point-of-view character, and once I fixed that, it all click-click-click fell into place, and I wrote five pages.
And then I went for a swim and realized that I’d gotten an important thing wrong in those five pages; so I came home and fixed that, and wrote a page and a half more, and then it was time for a glass of wine, and to go play in the yard a while.
You have to listen to them–the characters. They’ll tell you. It’s when I’m so busy imposing my Story all over them that they get fussy, and recalcitrant, and things don’t go well.
Mark is always telling me this, and I am always telling him this, and every now and then, we hear each other. 🙂
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Some while back, Shelly Rae sent me some calendula seeds. I planted them. And lo:
We has blooming!
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Thursday, the curly willow tree in the back yard will come down. This is going to be WEIRD. Here’s a “before” picture, though I could not get far enough away to capture the whole tree:
It’s going to be very different back there, when it’s gone.
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Mom sent some photos from their visit. I don’t remember if I’ve posted either of these before (since I grabbed some off their camera while they were here), but here they are again, even so, because I decided you want to see them. 🙂
Mt. St. Helens and wildflowers
Mark and me, enjoying the few moments of sunshine that whole weekend
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One final thought. I am thrilled to be living in a place where you can wear shorts in the summertime. I know there’s been a lot of griping about this cold, late summer (I’m guilty of it myself, mere moments ago) (but couldn’t we have had good weather for visiting California relatives?? in July???), but on balance, really, it’s spectacular here. Compared to San Francisco, where I lived for many years, and never wore shorts. NEVER. Here, it’s warm and pleasant all day, all evening–no fog rolls in, no whipping frosty wind smites you every afternoon. Okay, there’s that rain nonsense every now and then, maybe, but truly: this is awesome.
::appreciate appreciate::
Life is good.