Saturday, 28 September 2002

I didn't write on Thursday. That would have been okay, if I'd just decided not to write and then done something I wanted to do. But I felt like I ought to write and spent most of the day thinking that I ought to be writing and feeling bad that I wasn't. What a waste of time and energy.

I did get some writing done on Friday, and then quite a bit done today.

Everything about this story is still in flux. Today I decided that I probably don't want to have a second viewpoint character. The second character will still be in it, but I think I'll stay in the head of the main character the whole time. Based on that, I took the material that I'd written for chapter 3 and tacked it on to the end of chapter 1. Then I wrote several more pages of what comes next. Pretty much all of what I wrote for chapter 2 will need to be cut, although it will survive as backstory. Part of it will be rewritten as from the POV of the main character.

I don't know if that's the final form it will take, but my current thinking is that this is how it will work best.

Jackie and I went for the walk of the two lakes. I saw a couple of herons that I should have recognized but didn't. They weren't great blues, they were about half as tall and darker colored. My field guides don't come immediately to hand or I'd look them up. I also saw a kingfisher.

In the second lake there was a guy in a tiny kayak practicing his righting maneuvers. He paddled out to the middle of the lake, put on a helmet, and then proceeded to tip himself over repeatedly. He was mostly to be tipping himself over forward, which seemed like an odd direction, but maybe that's a common direction to tip in rough water or something.

My nephew's been worrying about getting run over by the Zamboni when he goes ice skating. He's about four, I think. When he's a bit older, I can tell him my Zamboni story. But you don't have to wait. I'll tell you right now.

I knew a woman who drove a Zamboni. And not just any Zamboni. One day a guy in a suit came to the ice rink where she worked and asked to see their Zamboni. Then he explained that he was from the Zamboni company, and that the Zamboni that they had there was the oldest known Zamboni, and the Zamboni company wanted it. He offered them a brand new, top-of-the-line Zamboni in trade for theirs. Their Zamboni reportedly ended up in some Zamboni museum. So, my friend has driven both the oldest and the newest Zamboni.