Dialogue

Worked my ass off (yes, I really worked it right off... it's really gone... I've nothing to sit on, now... the horror... the horror...) on reworking a dialogue scene yestereve.

Dialogue, man, it just never comes easy for me. Pound and pound and pound away, and maybe the fifth time I've torn the whole damned thing up and rewritten it, it comes out believable enough I buy it well enough I think (with a bit more tweaking) that maybe this time it's gonna fly.

That's the bad news. The good news is, last night, it was the fifth time and the charm for this particular bit, and I finally like what I'm looking at.

(Goes off to put ice on bruised fingertips.)

Powell's amuses me

... from Powell's books news, this week:

In a blind taste test, seven out of ten readers preferred the flavor of Malcolm Gladwell's Blink to his bestseller The Tipping Point. We tried a triangle test, wherein we used two copies of one book and one of the other — all three wrapped in identical, unmarked white paper — and found that almost none of the respondents could tell which two were unlike the other. But everyone agreed they generally don't like eating books.

— Powell's books news, February 9, 2005.

Yes, I am now quoting marketing newsletters. Nothin' but highbrow, that's my motto.

Well, that's a relief

So my doctor tells me the odd pains I was getting in my chest climbing stairs and the like during the last few months are actually just a bit of damage to my lungs, up at the top where they meet the rib cage; seems I must have torn things a bit during a bad chest cold a few months back, and it's still a bit inflamed. Nothing much to worry about, and should probably settle down in another month or so, apparently.

In a word, phew. Yes, I'm pretty young for heart trouble, and I know this, and didn't really consider it all likely--but it does run in my family, on both sides. Had an uncle that had a heart attack at 50. And as often as you tell yourself: oh come now, a mere whelp like you is about as likely to be hit by lightning as to have an MI, it's still an unsettling feeling for a mostly healthy guy, when nasty stabbing pains arise in the general area even after moderate exertion.

So hey, a little lung damage, that's an awfully welcome diagnosis, pretty much. I'm calling this a win.

AWOL blogger and critical missteps

Has it really been a week since I posted?

Damn. I'm a bad blogger.

Guess I've just been bereft of my usual rich tapestry of terrifyingly deep thoughts the past week or so. Besides being pretty busy at work. And chipping away at another book (writing one, not reading one, though, I guess, technically, I'm chipping away at reading a few too, as is usual).

Other news: like the idiot I am, I joined a critical circle (which will not be named, for reasons that will shortly become obvious)--one of those groups in which you critique other folks' writing, and, eventually, earn the right to get some of your own looked at.

Bad idea, I'm now thinking. Fact is, a lot of the stuff you're called upon to look at is, well...

Okay. This makes me snooty, I know. But I think most of it's bad. Really bad. And the remainder which (in fairness) isn't so much bad just isn't particularly to my taste even when it does what it's trying to do adequately well.

It's bad enough, that it doesn't look like I'm going to be able to do this. I mean, most of this stuff, I don't even know where to start.

What was I thinking? I know this about myself. I've never got along particularly well with other writers and/or wannabe writers, except on the most casual and social of levels. Those annoying 'reading circles' and the like, I just don't do, and almost never have. Fact is, I just don't like most other people's writing much... And I've never been particularly good at hiding it. I was functional as an editor of other reporters only because it's a relatively constrained form of writing (versus, say fiction), and thus tends only to suck so badly. I mean, a bad reporter might insult your sense of grammar. A bad fiction writer can make you think: I just wasted two minutes of my quite finite life on this drooling silliness. I so don't care if your heroine dies of a hideous wasting disease. As she's fictional and a poorly sketched cliche, I actually rather hope she does... Dammit, man, you named her Petunia! Petunia!! What the hell is wrong with you!!?...

Ummm... where was I?

Oh yeah.

Anyway. Live and learn, I guess.

(Update: oh, okay. I'm gonna make myself try this for a week or two anyway... Mebbe I just picked up a few bad pages; there is a lotta stuff there; has to be a few I can handle without their inducing violent illness. Cross yer fingers for me.)

(Update the second: found something, after all. Not bad. Off we go.)