A Sunday

I remember the day. I was at work. The first reports came in. First one plane. Then the second. Then the news from the Pentagon. A field in Pennsylvania. You couldn't get to the online newspapers for the increased traffic. Someone dug out a radio and we listened. Then someone else found an old b/w tv, and we watched.

My cubemate spent some time trying to reach his brother, who he thought was at the WTC that day. IIRC, the brother had decided to take the morning off.

This defines my feelings pretty well. Odd, maybe, that as a writer I'm using the words of another to express my feelings on the subject, but I feel that if you find the right words, you leave them be. Even if they belong to someone else.

Planes going in and out of OHare from the north often fly along the lake. In addition, one of the approaches for the local field passes over my house. I can see the jets, big and small, higher than high or coming in for a landing, from my yard. I will always remember those days afterward, when all I saw were the birds, and empty sky.

A Sunday

I remember the day. I was at work. The first reports came in. First one plane. Then the second. Then the news from the Pentagon. A field in Pennsylvania. You couldn't get to the online newspapers for the increased traffic. Someone dug out a radio and we listened. Then someone else found an old b/w tv, and we watched.

My cubemate spent some time trying to reach his brother, who he thought was at the WTC that day. IIRC, the brother had decided to take the morning off.

This defines my feelings pretty well. Odd, maybe, that as a writer I'm using the words of another to express my feelings on the subject, but I feel that if you find the right words, you leave them be. Even if they belong to someone else.

Planes going in and out of OHare from the north often fly along the lake. In addition, one of the approaches for the local field passes over my house. I can see the jets, big and small, higher than high or coming in for a landing, from my yard. I will always remember those days afterward, when all I saw were the birds, and empty sky.

Know this

A dog that emerges from the bathroom with a strip of toilet paper stuck to one paw is a dog that's been up to no good.

Know this

A dog that emerges from the bathroom with a strip of toilet paper stuck to one paw is a dog that's been up to no good.

The mess in the middle

You'd think that after spending a large chunk of the day working over the book that I'd have at least finished one damned scene. But it's a Jani-John scene and things need to be stated just so. I've rewritten some of this dialogue 4-5 times over the past week. Fingers crossed that I finally have it, at least to the point that I can move on to the Jani-Lucien scene that follows, the wonder of which will be that Lucien agrees with something John said.

Allergies still giving me hell. What a pain.

UPDATE: and I have finally finished the frappin' scene. A shade over 14 pages long, with about 4 added today...give or take all the stuff I cut/trimmed/erased/trashed. Not completely happy with it, but it will serve for now.

I feel uncomfortable about the length of this scene--it's almost an entire chapter in and of itself.

Survey question for writers--about how long would you say your average scene is? # of words or pages--either is fine.

Another question--how many pages do your chapters usually run?

Way back when I was first working on CODE, back when it was still GLASS GREEN, a first reader commented that my scenes were too long. At the time, they were running into double-digits, pagewise, and I worked to shorten them. Now I start to feel edgy if I have scenes that run more than 10 pages. Unfortunately, this book is making me edgier than hell.

FYI, I consider a scene any stretch of writing where the same characters start and end in the same general space. This current scene begins and ends in the library, with no new characters showing up over the course of the thing to break up matters.

It bothers me.

The mess in the middle

You'd think that after spending a large chunk of the day working over the book that I'd have at least finished one damned scene. But it's a Jani-John scene and things need to be stated just so. I've rewritten some of this dialogue 4-5 times over the past week. Fingers crossed that I finally have it, at least to the point that I can move on to the Jani-Lucien scene that follows, the wonder of which will be that Lucien agrees with something John said.

Allergies still giving me hell. What a pain.

UPDATE: and I have finally finished the frappin' scene. A shade over 14 pages long, with about 4 added today...give or take all the stuff I cut/trimmed/erased/trashed. Not completely happy with it, but it will serve for now.

I feel uncomfortable about the length of this scene--it's almost an entire chapter in and of itself.

Survey question for writers--about how long would you say your average scene is? # of words or pages--either is fine.

Another question--how many pages do your chapters usually run?

Way back when I was first working on CODE, back when it was still GLASS GREEN, a first reader commented that my scenes were too long. At the time, they were running into double-digits, pagewise, and I worked to shorten them. Now I start to feel edgy if I have scenes that run more than 10 pages. Unfortunately, this book is making me edgier than hell.

FYI, I consider a scene any stretch of writing where the same characters start and end in the same general space. This current scene begins and ends in the library, with no new characters showing up over the course of the thing to break up matters.

It bothers me.