Search options (Page 38 of 76)

Hawks, Kajo, serial killer wannabees, cars, and coyotes haven't even made a dent in the population. Feel free to give nice reviews Janet. Kitten killer K (call him KKK for short) can just go stuff himself.

We'll see if I can convince her to come over to the dark side. Right now, she's stuck on the basic site and doesn't realize the benefit of hanging out with the fun crowd.

"Watch out where the huskies go and don't you eat the yellow snow." (Frank Zappa)

My brother-in-law was raised down South. He came up to Ohio for Xmas and we had some snow while he was here. He got this goofy grin on his face and informed everyone that this was a real blizzard!  I informed him that you could see the house on the other side of the street, so that wasn't possible. 

Amy's rules for sledding:

1) You can't have fun if you are cold. Wear multiple layers (including pants). Everyone skips wearing multiple layers of lower protection, and only wears jeans. This isn't enough if you want to stay outside for long.

2) Pick a bunny hill for sledding if you want to stay out more than half an hour. Big descents are fun if it's a big hill, but the walk back up SUCKS. However, your kids willl be exhausted and sleep like rocks. Pick you poison.  Note that some sledding hills have a motorized circuit to hold onto and help you get to the top quicker.

3) Sledding at night is twice the cold. Have something over their faces/ears to prevent frostbite.

4) Toboggan runs are a hoot. Put 4 people on one toboggan who aren't 5 years old, and the momentum maks you fly. There are established runs somewhere near you. With the snow falling, they will start to open.

5) Nothing beats hot cocoa after freezing. Hot enough to burn your mouth is about the right temperature.

6) Look up yak trax.  yaktrax.com   They are worth picking up to turn regular shoes into something that won't let you fall on snow and ice. I have a couple extra pairs. Do you need another care package?

Have fun!

Interesting. Didn't know the evolved meaning though

I was seeing clumps of rocks at bad placement that he has to squirm around to get through. Because there are crystalline formations, there are limited places for him to grab, hold, or turn against without getting cut again. Those formations can be sharp.

And use awesome sauce in a sentence. Don't forget that.

A confusing thing to me is that NJC says, "I don't do well with Jenna's voice. That's your skill." Yet K says, "I slashed away words with ruthless efficiency...I was able to do it by trampling the character's oblique thinking pattern with my own linear pattern."  So K didn't edit to clarify Jenna's voice. He made Jenna conform to his needs as the author. In other words, he wiped her voice. All over a potato, no less.

NJC, you said, "That's not changing from oblique thinking to linear.  That's wiping the thinking out and writing in its outcome".  I disagree. You advise that I try a writing exercise that has me follow rules, lay out words like wooden blocks, and construct a sentence/paragraph/ chapter from a pre-conceived outline where I already know the outcome. This is so opposed to the way that I write that it can only be described as linear. It implies a plan. Organization. The words may not be scribed in a line, but the plan makes it like the construction of a jigsaw puzzle.

Back to writing for utter efficiency, parity of word choice and targeted value per word count... The way I see this happening is for me to write as I normally do and then go back to summarize, writing an outline of the action only. Then I could insert adjectives and description, tightening it down to words that HAD to be there. Then I would go back and add in the flow, smoothing out the prose. I would probably leave the conversation since that is how I drive the story forward.

I know this sounds back-assed. Even to me. However, it also sounds like a great editing tool.

When I went to the convention in Chicago, an author gave a talk on editing. She initially self-published, but her book was picked up by a publishing house. However, to get her book to a wider audience, this woman had to go from 130K words to 50K words.  No joke. She had to slash her novel in half.

She did so, going through the work and thinning everything for clarity and value. Every word had to mean something.

Then her publisher decided they could market a book of 80K words. She had to go back again and add material. (She said she couldn't just use her old manuscript because by then, it was an entirely different book). By the time she had her draft done, the book was unrecognizable. It had been stripped, cleaned up, and then remodeled.

For me to do what she did, I need to have the first draft done. (Writing first for concept so that I'll have the outline in my head). Doing this with new writing makes my head spin. However, that doesn't keep me from trying this out on a previous chapter somewhere in the dungeon. I'm willing to try. I'll make this one of my goals. Just as an exercise. We'll see what happens.

I can go through a chapter and thin it to the bones by paying attention to a word count. That would initiate a similar thinning. However, for a first draft, I think my head would explode to refine my work that heavily.

Still thinking on this, though

You just wrote that she was grilling bacon and eggs on her neck. Look at the tags:-)

Natural. She kept the rule about not touching another person's focus (reinforced by a sacrificial example or two). However, it was a sham. Alina's wand/staff won't explode until the last linked student dies. Then there is going to be a wasteland the size of a couple nukes. Not Alina's problem. Katerin has to figure this out and find a way to continue recruiting. Otherwise kaboom.

Oh, Alina's wand didn't explode. Katerin's wand was sacrificed when Anver overloaded it and forced the charge onto Alina. That was how Anver beat her in the duel.

OK, the next chapter is going up. The mystery will be solved. Don't be worried, Janet. I'm getting to the goodie parts in the next one.

It's like the impossible math problem Aa x Bb(C-a) + Cc  (and then a miracle happens) = Life the Universe and Everything