Monday, July 23, 2007
The Final Stretch Plus The Worst Starbuck's Experience Ever
Over the weekend, I totally ran into a problem that resulted in me making some changes to chapter 9 and significant changes to that pesky chapter 10. Today I got some good feedback that resulted in me re-doing chapter 3 from my hero's Point of View (POV) which I did after MORE significant changes to chapter 10 while I was waiting for the darling child's soccer practice to be over (and hey, see below about the Worst Starbuck's Experience Ever!) I got home from the WSEE, transferred my changes to chapter 10 to the computer, though I ended up dropping a big chunk of the changes, but I knew that about 20 minutes after I wrote them (long hand - I was in the car at the soccer field on account of the WSEE.) Right. So blah blah. Then I rewrote chapter 3 and reprinted the 1st 100 pages since I already transferred my weekend changes to the computer. Now it's 10:41 and I'm going to try to read some.
So, my
Worst Starbuck's Experience Ever: After I dropped off the DC at soccer practice I drove back to the new Starbucks that used to be my favorite local coffee shop (sniff). So, I'm willing to admit that I was saddened by the demise of the old place and struck by the irony of a Starbucks opening in the exact location, since Starbucks is part of why the old place went under. My son could walk from practice to the Starbucks though. Very close. I asked for a
Mint Iced Tea. Please say this to yourself, perhaps out loud,
Mint Iced Tea Mint Iced Tea Mint Iced Tea and then imagine that you are an earnest young Barista who is perhaps deaf or partially deaf and also distracted by something going on behind her involving someone rushing out from the back with a large pair of rubber handled pliers. And imagine that I repeat this several times. My
Mint Iced Tea cost me $2.50 and I think to myself that if they're charging that much just for the ice I'm never getting an iced tea from them again.
Behind the counter, everyone's bending around the guy with the pliers including all the people who should be making a
Mint Iced Tea. But as I'm looking around for a place to sit with me and my big green binder containing Magellan's Witch, I see 1) everyone huddling around another barista and looking at me, waiting for my
Mint Iced Tea. They go back to watching the guy with the pliers. 2) I also see there are 6 small tables each with two chairs with people in them. And one empty table with no chairs. Plus 4 ugly chairs that look like torture devices in the sun. Two of which are occupied. And over in the corner are these scary looking high chair things with poles in front of them. The poles have a metal surface about the size of a cup of coffee and no bigger. There's no way my big green binder is going to fit on the poles. So, there is an empty table, but no chairs because obviously they didn't buy enough chairs for the number of tables in the store.
There is no sign of my
Mint Iced Tea. I go back and ask if they can make it to go, since they have no place for me to sit and work (and buy food or more tea later either.) Only they start trying to hand me this tall cup of iced black gunk and I look at it and say, "That's a
Mint Iced Tea?" And the earnest barista says, "No, that's an Iced Venti." Right. She totally missed a syllable. Several times. So they make me my
Mint Iced Tea only it's hot, the boiling water having melted all the ice. I pointed out I'd been overcharged for my hot
Mint Iced Tea. They gave me a card for a free beverage, not so useful for me, instead of my money back. I tossed my
NOT Mint Iced Tea on the way out and returned to the practice field and worked in the car.
Some days it's hard to be a writer.
Labels: editing., Magellan's Witch
(0) comments
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Cover your Eyes! Oops. Too late.
Today was the 2nd day of soccer tryouts. I had my purse, unlike last time, so off I went to Starbucks to continue going through the paper copy of Magellan's Witch. Here's a picture of one of the pages. The arrow means there's more on the back of the page. But, see? This is why printing my MS on 3-hole punch paper is so handy... I took the pic with my phone, so it's not the greatest quality, and yet you can see well enough what I was doing.
Am I blue about all that red ink? No way. That means good progress made. I'm thrilled I got all the way to chapter 14 before things fell apart enough that I had to stop. I'm a little freaked that I deleted two chapters, but hey, they weren't doing much for me anyway. I need a rock solid opening before it's worth my time to mess with later chapters. The only issue is, um, now what?
Tomorrow. Me. Notebook. Gym.
Labels: editing., Magellan's Witch
(0) comments
