Saturday, 02 February 2002

For some reason I couldn't stop thinking about the yurt story last night. I ended up getting up around 2:00 or 3:00 AM and then writing for an hour or two. Then I went back to bed and slept until 8:00.

I was elsewise productive today, too. I did about two-thirds of the taxes. (There's one form that hasn't come in, and I haven't even started the state taxes, but the bulk of Federal return is done, and I've verified that I don't unexpectedly owe some huge amount of money.) I got to the post office and sent off the ms I'd packaged up last night. That makes six stories out to markets.

I have three stories that have been critiqued and need rewrites, but I'm working on the yurt story instead. Plus there's another one, the non-lethal story. The germ of that one dates back more than a year, but I've finally figured out how it starts. I haven't started it though.

Tomorrow morning is the local writing group. I really ought to write the yurt story fast and see if I can get a draft done in a week, which would mean I could get it critiqued the following week. Our group is just a little small, so we don't have new stories coming in quite quickly enough to keep us all busy.

Jackie and I did watch "Buckaroo Banzai" a couple days ago, as planned. What a great movie! I read once that the movie was originally written (and filmed) as a comedy, but that the people making it didn't like how it turned out. They salvaged it by editing out the punchlines, turning it into a action-adventure that is full of setups for jokes. That's a plausible scenario. It's a good action-adventure, and most of the jokes are probably much funnier this way. The DVD is supposed to have a version with deleted scenes. I haven't watched it yet, but I'm looking forward to seeing it. I suspect I'll like the theatrical release better, but the other version will be interesting as an historical artifact.

Aside from that, just usual weekend stuff: a walk around Kaufman lake, a game of StarCraft with Steven and Charlie, two episodes of Buffy.

Now I need to read the stories to be critiqued tomorrow.