Thursday Notes: #20
Blustery Weather and Large Birds and Pet Peeves
It’s very windy out here on our little island! So far (fingers tightly crossed) the power has stayed on today, though it’s flickered a lot. Monday we had an outage, just as we were about to make dinner, so we ran off to Rosario Resort instead. They have a generator for short-term outages–and their own power plant for when that runs dry.
(I think I know where we’re going when the apocalypse happens…)
I tried to get a photo of the white caps on our pond, but this doesn’t really show it. But those dead cattails? They usually stand straight up.
It’s windy.
Speaking of the pond, we’ve had a visitor this week, or maybe it lives here now. A Great Blue Heron has been hanging out–sometimes disappearing for hours or even a few days, but it’s back today, just when we hadn’t seen it for a few days. (Amazon delivery-dude probably startled it, coming in the front gate as he does; we usually use the back gate.)
We hope the heron won’t eat ALL the fish, but we also have to admit, a large, spectacular bird is a bit more interesting than shy, invisible black fish. So. Nature!
In other matters…I’ve been thinking lately about literary pet peeves, those things I notice when I’m copy editing, or even just reading for fun, that I wish I could erase from every writer’s habits forever:
“She thought to herself…” Oh really? Who else might she have thought to? Unless your book contains telepathic communication, every character is going to be thinking to an audience of precisely one.
Or, a character who is so upset about something that she jumps into the shower and turns it on as hot as it will go and feels the hot water scalding her skin and stays in there until the hot water runs out… Hmm, okay. I don’t know about your water heater, but if I did that here, I’d be in the hospital with at least second degree burns.
Or, and this one is personal (being a Page as I am): characters all being on the same page. Ouch! Get off me, all of you! 🙂
So those are some of my literary pet peeves. What are yours?
And that’s it for this week’s deep thoughts and nature commentary. What? You wanted to know how my writing is going? Um…great! Just great! Totally great! 🙂
In all seriousness, I made good progress on the Nightcraft 2 reread/note-making extravaganza–I did get those 46,000 words read, and many of them are salvageable. Then I got pulled away for some freelance work; and now it’s time to recommence baking Christmas cookies, so…I’m looking forward to really delving into this project right after the new year.
Happy holidays, everyone!