A Mostly Writerly Day

Most of what I did today was writerly. I started off seeing if I could get my monthly newsletter posted on MailerLite so I could send it out. Usually KM does it for me, and she tried her hardest yesterday, but MailerLite demanded a code for her to log in. They were supposed to send me the code to share with her. Three times. Never got it. So I thought I'd try to follow the steps to upload it and post it. I got so far and then got lost. Happily KM tried one more time, I got the code, shared it, and she sent it. Hooray!

I spent most of the rest of the day adding bits and pieces, little scenes and big scenes to The Summer of Blue-Black Nights, following the recommendations of the manuscript analysis. Slowly but surely I'm working my way through the suggestions. All in all, in the last two days I've added 10 pages of story to the manuscript. I think I'm making it better. Gosh, I hope I am. This is a lot of wasted work if I'm making it worse.

 

The other day I found an article online about writing an elevator pitch, which is a short, one or two sentence synopsis of a novel that you can deliver in the space of an elevator ride. It needs to be punchy and succinct and nearly irresistible. I wrote one for Horizon which I've always thought should sell better than it does. So I've been trying to memorize it over the last couple days. I am not having much luck with that but I'll keep trying, no, not trying, working on it. 

 

This Sparrow was taking a little bath and just as I got the camera up and ready it hopped onto the rim of the birdbath and just as I pressed the shutter, it started to fly away. I was sure I'd have a blur but was lucky enough to catch the little thing before it flew. Whew.

 

Today's drawing prompt was Balls. You can guess what my first impulse was but I reined it in and drew sports balls instead. Much more appropriate.

 

Tonight after Writer's Guild I pulled out the Iron Pyrite sock and finished the cuff and knitted the first two rounds of the leg. It's over twice as long as it was last time I posted it. Which isn't saying much but going from four rounds to ten rounds is a pretty good thing. I'm a slow knitter but I never give up.

 

I read the first few pages of Christmas at The Seaview tonight at Writer's Guild and got some good feedback. One thing I need to do is have a few more things go wrong or at least hint at them to liven it up. The education tonight was to write poetry. Oh my, it's been a very long time since I've written poetry. I tried my hand at a haiku and limerick. Neither one is worth repeating but it was an interesting exercise.

--Barbara