Too Much

I was foolish yesterday and I helped Don scrub the oil off the garage floor. That made my surgery site hurt like the devil and made it a bit hard to draw a deep breath so I spent the rest of the day lolling on the couch trying not to worry I'd done something terrible to myself. The good thing about laproscopic surgery is that you feel better sooner and get to go home and back to work quickly. The bad thing about it is you apparently feel better sooner and think you get to go home and back to work quickly because you are better, but it's a lie, your innards are tender and bruised and pi$$ed off, turning on you in a heartbeat if you presume to do anything more strenuous than stroll up the block to the neighbor's driveway and back. Bah. I see the doc tomorrow so I'll take my lecture and resolve to take it more slowly.

As for writing, on Sat. I researched writing a query letter online and found a blog entry by an actual literary agent that included links to some successful query letters. Yesterday I got to work writing the Hook and Mini-Synopsis. I'm pretty happy with what I've got so far and should be ready to ship packets off to all 3 agents foolish, or brave, enough to want to see 3 chapters of Horizon next week. Happily, I don't have many publishing credentials so I can use up that space for the synopsis part and for flattery of the agent. I'll save groveling for later.

4 May--Raphael, Portrait of a Young Girl. "Put your hand here," he told her, pressing her right hand over her left breast, "just so." She blushed but let him move her into the pose. His rough fingers grasped her chin and turned it toward his easel. He stepped away from her and she relaxed her shoulders, let her eyes wander without turning her head. He rapped on the easel with his brush handle, a sharp rat-a-tat-tat that made her eyes widen and snap to him. "Now," he said, "don't move." She froze in place, in that ridiculous pose, in some other girl's dress that he had pulled from a heap in the corner. When she had arrived an hour ago to the old painter's studio he had made her strip naked, stand in a shaft of sunlight, and turn so that he saw every bit of her. Then he gathered up her hair and coiled it at the back of her head with pins, then he wound a tasselled scarf over it and fixed the scarf with a gold and pearl earring. That was when he gave her the dress; he laced her into it himself and posed her in front of a piece of moldy green carpet. She was warm in the sunlight. She felt drops of sweat trickle down her sides but she did not move. He would make her eternal, Geneve said, even if she did have to get naked first. He paid six ducats for it; that was rent.

I like this painting today.
--Barbara