Saturday, August 26, 2017

a day outside of time

It's been a long difficult week for a lot of people close to me. They said the eclipse was going to rock boats. No shit.

Friday is my one day off from the paying job with no outside obligations. I spent most of at a much-needed writers day with part of my crit group. The bitch-kitty scene that's been defying me for a month (as I putz about around it) fell in flames and rose from the ashes reborn in glory even as T. and I solved the problems of the world. From the writing blog a month ago:

Revision
Is like shaving off prison tattoos a square inch at a time.

So far it works like this. I'll read the last scene that WORKED and then the new victim,
the next one and the one that follows it. If it fails on enough fronts - and I've had more than
half do just that, I brood over the truth of it. The five 'whys'.

Then I start the autopsy. Print and then redact - just like in the movies- with the broad,
 black marker anything that's crap. Anything that's not a jewel.

Then I brood on it some more and find a different way to set some, not all of those jewels.
A setting that not only makes the scene worthwhile but nods to the one before it
sets up the next. Dominos dipped in nitro.

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