For Your Viewing Pleasure (Warning: Contains Disturbing Image of Fish)

I was thinking of putting a picture on the blog. A picture of me, to be precise. Seeing as how I haven't been to Glamor Shots in awhile (not since I lost my cowboy hat and feather boa), I don't have much to choose from. How come your whole life is documented, minute by minute, up until age three, and then it's like you don't exist anymore?

There have been a couple of decent recent ones. The one from the Twins game in April (shout out to Target Field!) is pretty good, but fuzzy when trimmed (I know, usually trimming fixes that!). The one from the bar after the Twins game is better, except that my head looks about seven times too large for my body, which it isn't. The one from the wedding earlier this month is okay, but I'm wearing pink and I never (minus one) wear pink. Plus it would clash with my classy orange background.

So, instead of adding a picture of myself, I'll just share with you how totally freaky whole cooked snapper looks, fresh and bubbling from the oven.

I'm not posting it because it looks like me, or anything like that. I would just like to share with you how very goddamn sharp its teeth are and admit that, when I leaned over the pan to season the far side, I did suck in so that it wouldn't bite my soft underbelly. So, there you go. I guess I'll invest in another feather boa, but this time I've wearing a bowler.

Trends - Week Ending 8/27

I don't have much to say for myself today, so I'll toss out some things that I've noticed this week. Are they important? No. Were they notable? To me, apparently.

THING ONE
Others' use of the word "puny", as in:
  - I'm sitting here feeling rather puny.
  - I'm stuck with the puny one.
 - It's not that puny.

Also, if you say "puny" a lot, it starts to sound fake, and a little bit dirty.

THING TWO
My misspelling of the word "stockholders". So far we have "storkholders" (a gentle folk) and "sockholders" (you know, those eight foot tall crystalline structures that grow only in the deepest, darkest part of the ocean, smell faintly of mothballs and ginger and have a perfectly sock-shaped arm at the very top). Also, "stockette" came up once. I just wasn't paying attention that time.

THING THE THIRD
People ringing me while I'm at Ye Olde Day Job, asking if I have a minute and, when I say "no", they launch into twenty minutes monologues barked in my general direction, but for which my participation is not actually required. To those people, I say: I set the phone down for most of that "conversation", so if you had any information that I actually need to know about, send me an email. Or, better yet, a singing telegram. Those never get old.

It's Alive!

I'm putting my plot back together, and yes it is requiring bolts and stitches and, possibly, an arc welder (but it's more this than that). And it's going, which is a vast improvement over the paralysis of the last two weeks.

While paralyzed, I spent a lot of time watching scenes in my head of my characters going about their daily lives, water cooler interactions, puttering about the house on a lazy Sunday, standing in line at the grocery store, eating the warm carcasses of their fresh kills. You know, those little incidental things that, added up, turn days into weeks and so on.

So, I came through my paralysis with a much better understanding of what makes my MC tick, what lights her fuse, and what kinds of things are beneath her notice. I also now understand the people around her better, have seen them in their own contexts, which will likely never make it into a manuscript, but which are important. I've dropped a couple of peripheral characters, combined two, and enhanced two.

Secondary characters are necessary for most kinds of fiction. Some secondary characters work as props, bland, faceless dialog and bed partners. Others stride, roaring, onto the stage and jerk the reader straight out of the forward momentum of the plot. I'm not striving for a happy medium, just making sure that I have the right people at the right place for legit reasons, that they make sense and have some unique characteristics, that they don't all sound alike, and that sometimes they do unexpected things. And a couple of them have to be funny, at least to me. I can't abide a book full of serious characters, just as I can't abide a room full of serious people in real life.

I've still got both legs to attach and some internal organs to rearrange. *snaps on latex gloves* So, off I go.