07/12/00 -- Chocolate soda beer

Welcome, yet again, to the Weird, Comma, Zone.

So the morning... same as it ever was, right?  Critique.  Lunch.  "Lecture".

Maureen's lecture was really cool.  She talked about evocation of detail.  Started from a Robert Bly poem that was four lines long and made us think about it hard to show us how it evokes setting (a somewhat specific setting), character, and POV all in four lines.  It was pretty cool.  No, we can't be that evocative throughout in prose, but we still want to evoke powerful details.

She went on to tell us about the 2-color rule which boils down to "two sensory details per paragraph/at a time".  So they'll be fresh and crisp to the reader.

A very cool lecture.

So then lunch (lemme just do this out of order, eh?).  We talked about stories a bit.  And stories started mingling together in people's heads.  A suggestion was made that we take lines 4-10 of every story written and string them together.  The idea was quickly discarded.  Especially when I decided that the rejection letter from Gordon at F&SF if we submitted the story would be along the lines of, "I'm afraid your continued existence just doesn't work for me.  Alas."  O:)

After lunch, after lecture, I tried to coordinate the remainder of t-shirt stuff.

Jennifer and I went to Office Max and then Meijer (I really needed eye drops), got back in time for me to get artwork.  Then my saga becomes annoying.

I leave Jim here at MSU and go do Kinko's stuff.  Jim's getting directions to the t-shirt place we're using and stuff while I'm heading off...

I drove to the Kinko's I knew about... down on the way to Meijer... so I could scan the artwork, get the text in, and finish the front image.  The computer with the scanner had to have it's entire system reinstalled.  Feh.  So they call the Kinko's closer to campus (like I knew it was there!) ... their scanner is fine.  No one's using it.  I haul my butt over there and use it.

So, image scanned, I hauled my butt back to campus.  Jim's gone, there are directions under my door and the t-shirt place is past where I was when I was at Kinko's.  I dumped a copy of the front image to my hard drive (which took *forever* because it was an eps) then grabbed Mark.

Mark was my sanity while I raced toward the t-shirt place.  15 minutes to get there, right?  Great.  If we don't get there, I'm probably going to have fits.  I'm going to be very unhappy, at the very least.  But we just make it.  Put the order in.  I put the deposit on my bankcard.  Great.  I don't have to do anything other than collect money, now.  Thank god.

Dinner.  Oh, yeah!  Mark and Jennifer and Trey and I walked over to El Azteco on Grand River and had dinner there.  On the way back, we stopped and got candy from the place that sells candy apples.  Jennifer really wanted a caramel apple.  I wound up getting a turtle krispie (I'll let you know what exactly that means when I eat it *grin*), and a snapadamia -- which is like a turtle only instead of cashews or whatever turtles are made of, this one is made of macadamia nuts.  Yum!

Then back to campus in time to put chocolate treats into friges and go over to Maureen's apartment for chocolate, soda, beer and/or wine.  I had Mike's Hard Lemonade for the first time while I was over there.  I'm not a big lemonade fan so I'd kinda been steering clear of it, but I tried one since I wasn't in the mood for soda and didn't want beer or wine.  Wow.  They're really tasty!  Like drinking lemonhead candies.  *schlurp*

There was much talk and much laughter and much speculation over whose copy of Vanity Fair it was in the apartment.  It had a cool Absolute Vodka photo spread in it.  Though some were weird.  I liked the picture that had the Absolute Kurrant ad in it.  Yummy. Purple satin corset.  *swoon*  *grin*

A chunk of folks left, the rest of us were going to play Mafia, but, alas, we were too few.  So we talked about a whole slew of things including nick names, turns of phrase certain to make people stop (i.e., women saying 'suck my dick'), and whatever else came out of our mouths.  It was a whole lot of fun. :)

David and I walked up to 7-11 after that.  He was looking for cigarettes.  I was looking for inspiration/ideas.  He found what he wanted.  I didn't.

Went back up to my room and read/critiqued.  Whee!  What a day.

 

 

Okay, so other folks are talking about their productivity here.  I decided I may as well, too. This list (and my productivity) is subject to change without notice. :)
Title	Word Count	Finished	Critiqued?
"Where the Blood Roses Grow" Week one, first story.  Wahoo.  And I was worried that something wouldn't come.	5000	6/13	6/15
"Uprooting the Tree" Will probably change the title at some point.	3400	6/16	6/19
"Mockingbird Girl" I think I'm happiest with this story, so far.	2800	6/19	6/26
"Poor as Paupers, Rich as Royalty" My challenge story from Sean's week.  I hated writing it.  It gave me a toothache.	2000	6/22
That fucking first person narrative (not yet complete) - May never be completed.  Don't I feel like an idiot...	(400)
"Switched to Overload"  (That other fucking first person narrative) Actually, I like this one better than the one above it ...  Even if it did wind up being two first person narratives in one story.  o.O	4900	6/27	7/3
"Sweeter Than Honey, Stronger Than Wine"  (My Tananrive Due challenge story.  Write a story in the style of an author whose work you admire.  Aieee!  It was sort of supposed to be in the style of Tanith Lee.  I'm not sure I hit that.  But it's definitely got a Christina Rossetti influence.)	9200	7/2	7/10
"Hypothetical Beaches" I really hope it turns out to be not quite as stupid as I feel like it is.  Finished it just before Maureen and Greg's 24-hour moratorium on writing.  (In case you're wondering, it started from a free-write.)	2800	7/10