Revisionary

I like revising. Especially if I have a plan in mind. Borrowing from my friend Amber, who says she can't remember life before her daughter, I find with each subsequent revision that I can't remember the story before the changes.

I'm not an outliner (well, not really), I'm not one of those people with a massive color-coded index card system, I hate to do research (I prefer to make things up), I don't do profiles on my characters, and I drink way too much Kool-Aid. But I am the queen of revisions. I love them. I love revising and pulling things out and putting things in and finding threads to weave through the story. I like setting out to change a scene 10% and then rewriting the whole scene. Bonus points if you can do that without changing the scene on either side.

My point is, I am having a great time revising The Girl Least Likely. Perhaps more great a time than is warranted. But I also find that I like my main characters; I'm rooting for them. I want them to win, and every day I spend mired in revision is another day I get to spend watching the outcome on the horizon.

Five Other Things I Like:

1. The Next Door Tapas Lounge
2. Winston!!
3. Quilting
4. Kool-Aid (duh)
5. Reaching that time of the evening where your contacts try to form a glue to keep your eyelids closed, and only needing to make the coffee before you can get ready and get in bed.

That would be now, in fact. *yawn*

Bulwer-Lytton 2006

The results of the 2006 Bulwer-Lytton "bad first line of a novel" contest are up:

http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/

A couple of favorites:

"It was a day, like any other day, in that Linus got up, faced the sunrise, used his inhaler, applied that special cream between his toes, wrote a quick note and put it in a bottle, and wished he'd been stranded on the island with something other than 40 cases each of inhalers, decorative bottles, and special toe cream."
Chris Harget
Campbell, CA

"Gripping his six-shot Colt Python with 8-inch barrel and Royal Blue finish, and tightening the straps on his Paratec Speed 2000 parachute, Jake leaped from the left aft hatchway of the tumbling, green-and-silver, twin-engined Embraer Lineage 1000, which had seating for nineteen passengers."
Johnathan Munroe
Halifax, NS

"When Debbie decided that Salt 'n' Pepper Beard was the most attractive pirate on the ship, she realized that choosing him was due to the advice of Sylvia, her new Life Coach, to be realistic about her own age and to open herself up to romance where it lay, unlike the troublesome past where she would have wished that only the younger pirates take advantage of her."
Jim Guigli
Carmichael, CA

"Lisa moved like a cat, not the kind of cat that moves with a slinky grace but more like the kind that always falls off the book shelf when he's washing himself and then gets all mad at you like it's your fault (which it wasn't although it probably was kind of mean to laugh at him like that), although on the bright side, she hardly ever attacked Ricky's toes in his sleep."
Debra Allen
Wichita Falls, TX

"Despite the vast differences it their ages, ethnicity, and religious upbringing, the sexual chemistry between Roberto and Heather was the most amazing he had ever experienced; and for the entirety of the Labor Day weekend they had sex like monkeys on espresso, not those monkeys in the zoo that fling their feces at you, but more like the monkeys in the wild that have those giant red butts, and access to an espresso machine."
Dennis Barry
Dothan, AL

That's all I'm going to post here. I highly encourage the reading of the whole list. Also, last year's winners:

http://www2.sjsu.edu/depts/english/2005.htm

With my personal favorite:

"Captain Burton stood at the bow of his massive sailing ship, his weathered face resembling improperly cured leather that wouldn't even be used to make a coat or something."
Bryan Semrow
Oshkosh, WI

And that's all for now.

The beeyotch is back.

Seriously. I suck at blogging. But I do not suck at putting a blog on my website, all by myself! Actually, I kind of do. It took me three separate-and-also-enormous efforts and approximately 8 woman-hours. But it's done now, and I am oddly proud.

What else... Winston update: he is 14 months old, and every day he seems to get sweeter. He has some anxiety issues (OH, GOD, A CAR! A LEAF! SOMETHING SHINY!), but overall, he is just a joy and a dear and I love, love, love to snuggle with him. He even jumps off the bed if he has to barf. Which happens a lot. He'll eat anything.

I'm back at work after my June hiatus. Dogs! Vending machines! Seriously, I need to start being healthier. I ate a huge sugar bagel for breakfast this morning. I didn't even know they made sugar bagels. And I'd love to pretend I don't know that a sugar bagel is the anti-South Beach food, but I do. And I ate it anyway. Because I am bad.

I think this might be all I have to say right now.