Wednesday, 14 July 2004

I finished the robot story and emailed it to Toby so he could print copies for himself and David.

I haven't had a chance to let it sit and give it a read and see how I like it yet. I'm pretty happy with the beginning and the ending, but I'm not at all sure that the middle works. I don't spell much out. I think it ought to be clear what's happening, but I may be completely wrong. With luck, I'll find out tomorrow.

I also got a critique back on my rewrite of the providence story. That was pretty good. I've clearly fixed a couple of the problems. One of the original problems is still there, but they gave me some useful suggestions on how to fix it, including one really good way to address the biggest problem. (Not a solution to the problem, but a different way to think about it that I think will help me fix it. The other critiques had said, "We don't understand why the hero likes this girl. What does he see in her?" I couldn't find my way clear to make her a more likable person, as it just wouldn't work in the story. The different way to think about it was the suggestion to "Show more depth in their relationship, so we can see why he likes her," which is exactly the same thing, but phrased in a way that may help me figure out how to do it.)

I also got a run in, doing a bit over 3 miles at an easy pace.

We didn't do it today, but the previous two days we had thrown a frisbee around for a while. That's much better exercise than I'd realized, and it's good whole-body exercise--running, jumping, twisting, throwing. Despite being in the best shape of my adult life, it still made me all achy. I'll have to see if I can get Jackie out to throw a frisbee.

In the evening we went over to Toby's house and his wife cooked us a yummy dinner.

Tomorrow the plan is to critique my story and hopefully one of Toby's as well (although it wasn't quite done this evening, so we won't have the ms to read until tomorrow). It's time to start on a new story. I've got an idea that I've been kicking around in my head for a few days. It doesn't have a real plot connected yet, but it's a cool idea.