Chapter 1 Rewrite -- Check

I did it.  I rounded up my iPod with good earbuds, found the New Age-y rainforest & music album on the pod, and dug out a fresh, clean jump drive to put the rewrite on.  Then I nabbed the timer, told Durwood I was closed for an hour, shut the door, turned on the desk lamp, peeled off Chapter 1, and attacked it with a red pen.  It wasn't too bloody when I finished reading it but it had been taught who is boss.  Then I retyped it, what my writing mentor Judy Bridges calls rekeying, because it's another way of rewriting the story, letting your mind work through your fingers to make the story better faster.  Once I had my way with the pages I dug around in the bookshelf and found Lala's thorough critique and a bunch of scenes I had already written for the places the story thins out.  AND I pulled out of hiding behind a pile of boxes of pens the list of three questions Rachel Herron put on her knitting blog talking about how she writes her very successful and popular Cypress Hollow novels.  Turns out she and I have the same problem -- we're too nice to our characters.  She has overcome that to become a published author, I haven't.  I'll be working to change that.  And I have all this material to help me.  (I don't mean this to brag but I'm hoping that telling you all about my progress [or the not-progress I'm sure is lurking in my future] will keep me at the page and restart the "fiction writer" part of my brain)

Birdies came yesterday, lots of 'em, and I got pictures of some.  The one I wanted a picture of but never managed it was an Oriole, either Baltimore or Orchard, first year we think, that came to the birdbath and oriole feeder a few times but was very skittish.  Any other bird nearby chased it away.  I saw hummingbirds a few times too but they're just too fast.  I did have lots of time to snap pictures of this Downy Woodpecker enjoying hanging on the suet feeder, and the Chickadee had a lovely time sorting and flinging seed in the platform feeder.  Cardinals and Goldfinches stopped by too.  It's was a birdy day.

That white Stargazer lily is going gangbusters.  This morning there are eleven flowers open.  Eleven.  You can't even imagine how that smells.  I brought one bloom in yesterday and when I opened the bedroom door this morning I could smell it, it's perfuming the whole house.  Those flowers advertise like it's Super Bowl Sunday and they're Budweiser.

I finished Car Knitting Warshrag #7 yesterday afternoon and the Garter Shield Bib after Friday Night Knitting.  I'd have finished it at knitting but I didn't have an H crochet hook to make the ties and bind it off.  I think next time I'll do a little decreasing in the top third of the rows just to pull in the neck a bit.  I also cast on Car Knitting Warshrag #8 using the same colors of yarn only reversed so that's back in the car door and ready to go.  (Oh, I have to print off another copy of the pattern since I gave mine to MW, good thing I remembered.)

July 26--Possibly Syria, Ivory Pyx with the Triumph of Dionysos in India.  It was a little ivory box, the lid long gone, with a chain of men fighting and fallen carved around the side.  Eula used to tiptoe to look at it sitting on Grandpapa's dresser.  She liked to look at the carved figures seeking reassurance that the fight men be made to stop and the fallen men be made better with a Band-Aid and a kiss.  If she had been especially good Grandpapa would boost her up to sit on the shaving marble of his dresser so she could play with his cuff links in the little ivory box.

See?  Too nice.  I need to get past that.  For now, Durwood just got up and we planned to go to the Farmer's Market today.  I hope he still wants to, I could use some crab rangoons for breakfast.  Saturday the hell out of today, won't you?
--Barbara