Short on time today…packing, you know. So I thought I’d just post the little generic letter I’m handing out to the workshop writers. Thot it m/b intrustin’.

Dear Writers:

Interesting group. Interesting ideas, all. Problem is, as they say, ideas are a dime a dozen, it’s execution that counts. These are some general notes I took while reading and are things you should all think about and practice.

Cover Letter: always mean to mention this, always forget in the fun of talking story. I’m not a publisher. I’m not an agent. I’m not someone you’re trying to tell the story to. I’m someone who’s trying to help you tell that story better. I want to know four things.

Your age.

Your writing experience.

Your target market.

Whether this is an excerpt from a novel (and if so, where in the novel does it come?) Or a short story.

I don’t want to know what the story is about…that’s the job of your prose.

I don’t want to read “special” or “different.” Every writer should be striving for that.

Oh…and one more thing I’ve never ever seen in a cover letter and would really like to: special concerns. I’d love to be able to target my input, if there’s something particularly troublesome to the writer. A good writer is always their own worst critic. If it’s bugging you and you’ve tried to solve it and failed on your own, maybe I can help.

Remember, a Workshop is just that: an interim step, not the final process.

Grammar. Learn it. You can always break the “rules” but never without a reason you can’t defend in court to an ogre-editor. And for heaven’s sake, for the most part, just write clean English. You break the rules for special effect; you don’t want the whole story enveloped in fireworks.
Verbs: If you can’t be bothered to take the time to learn the difference between tenses, I can’t be bothered to take the time to try and figure out what you meant. In English, tenses determine sequence and sequence determines who knows what when and that’s where most of your tension comes from. If that gets fuzzy, the whole impact of your story goes soft.
Agreement: logic within a sentence. Agreement of tenses. Agreement of subject and verb. Inter-support of the parts. Vital to logic flow, and to keep your readers from laughing at you behind your back (very important to the generally paranoid author!)
Fragments: If you use a fragment, know it, and know why you’ve used it.
Apostrophes! In fact, all basic punctuation! Screw those things up and no self-respecting editor will get past your first page. They’ve got better things to do with their time than to copy edit.

Grammar is your most basic tool. Everything else you do in writing is built on it. So take a little time and learn it!

View Point: the second most basic tool. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, look it up. Yesterday.

First second or third, if your viewpoint is done well, you rarely need phrases like “he noticed” or “she looked up” or “I realized.” These are useless words that get between the reader and the story because it separates the reader from the VP character’s mind. Besides, it’s implicit in viewpointing. If the VP character describes something, that means he’s looking at it. If the VP says “the clouds hid the sun” that means the VP character is looking up. On the left, on the right, underfoot…all those things are pointers to indicate which direction the VP character is looking.

If it’s not something the VP character wouldn’t notice, don’t mention it. That’s useless description, fit only for an English class exercise.

If it’s something the reader needs to know about, like that red herring sitting on the mantle, make an excuse for the VP character to notice it. Have him/her/it stalk over to the mantle, slam their fist in anger and slip on the slime…or something.

Paragraphing: the third most basic tool, and one to be taken very seriously. It’s where you get a lot of you impact. It’s a way to highlight an idea.

When in doubt, paragraph.

There are a few basic rules that are part of that grammar thing up above. Learn those rules; break them only for a specific effect and make sure it’s worth it.

A way to practice is to write a scene just as it comes out of your head. Check the individual sentences for logic flow. Then start grouping the sentences, not the paragraphs, (and sometimes only parts of sentences)by topic. Note the undoubted redundancy and get rid of as much redundancy as possible (This is common. Logic flow sometimes loops within a scene rather than moving straight ahead. Few arguments or thought processes are straight line.) As much as possible, order these sentence-groups into the logic flow necessary for the scene. Now…Start dividing these groups into smaller, increasingly specific subtopics and putting them into a logical order. When you’ve got nothing but single sentences, you’ve gone a step or two too far and need to start regrouping with thoughts of “topic sentences” and “supporting ideas” in mind.

OTOH, single sentence paragraphs are both legit and interesting.

Vary the length. Paragraphs help a reader stay oriented on the page. Too many full lines in a row, and they’re liable to skip that key element you slipped into the middle.

So, chop up the paragraph and give that gem a a line all of it’s own.

This is also good for humor and punchlines in general, or to punch up the end of a scene. Beyond that, paragraphing can help with action pacing. Short sentences in broken paragraphs give a scene staccato-like quickness. Long, luscious sentences woven together into long paragraphs makes the reader linger and savor the moment.

Relatively straight forward information should come in clear sentences and well integrated paragraphs.

Note how your favorite author/authors paragraph. Think about what that paragraphing does to the flow of information. Think about how you feel when all of a sudden, the prose just—

Stops.

Logic flow within a sentence, paragraph or scene. Cause and effect. Every one of you had a problem with this to greater and lesser degrees, and it’s a vital part to keeping a story interesting.

For instance: the word “as” means simultaneously. You can’t be running down the stairs and driving off in a car at the same instant. Or a “bald head crowned with silver hair.”

Within a scene, one concept or realization must lead to the next. (This is part of the paragraphing exercise above.

Info flow: This comes in two parts, both controlled by that magnificent tool viewpoint: what the character(s) learn when and what the reader learns when. It controls suspense…in which case that VP thing above comes into play by making sure key plot elements remain a mystery until revealed at a specific time; and anticipation, in which the reader knows something (via one VP character’s information) that another character has yet to learn and you keep the reader wondering when they’re going to learn it.

Anyway…this’ll get us started. Thank you, all, and good writing!

J

When I get back, I’ll expand on this a bit, but for now, gotta scoot!

Ask, and ye shall receive.

It’s actually kind of an interesting time to, er, return to the subject for which this blog was originally intended.

We’re going to be at MisCon this weekend, and as often happens, we’ve been asked to do a writer’s workshop, and it’s got some…intrustin’ problems.

In general, I enjoy doing WWs. It’s fun passing on to people what I’ve learned over the years, but it’s also a great way to solidify what you think you know. And you invariably learn something new about writing trying to figure out what’s bothering you and how improve something you’d never have thought of writing in the first place.

Best of all, it’s a way to do it without getting seriously involved, which is a real danger when you take a ms on one on one, which I have done in the past and while it’s been a universally wonderful experience, it’s extremely time consuming and emotionally draining.

WWs, OTOH have the problem that you don’t get to pick and choose who you’re going to work with or what ms you’re going to work on. You also have people of all different levels all in the same group. There might be one that gets you really excited and enthused side by side with “Sally goes to the well and feeds the unicorn while bonding with her extra-specially special dragon egg”, and you’ve got to find some way to be both positive and constructive about each without showing (too much) your bias.

We’ve got a weird group this time. There’s really no way we can focus on each book individually and talk about one or two aspects, because they all pretty much need to go back to the basics. We’re essentially going to have to give a basic writing course in a couple of hours.  There are a couple that are somewhat more advanced, but I’d like to just single those two out before hand, give them a couple of pointers then tell them go ye forth and enjoy the con.

And practice. A lot. Because, in all honesty, they really need to think about those same basics.

Things like grammar, punctuation, viewpoint, LOGIC FLOW (OMG) within a sentence, within a paragraph, within a scene, and within the story, these are the basic tools of writing and before anyone submits a ms for a free evaluation by professional writers who have a whole lot better things to do with their time, the least they can do is…not master but at least have a certain degree of competency with these basic skills.

Probably the best written story, for instance, is constructed quite well with an interesting enough premise, but everything, everything that a short story uses to create suspense is undermined by the viewpoint. I know every “surprise” it has in store before I’ve read two pages. Not because the story is that predictable, but by what the author is avoiding telling me by not so fancy side-stepping and roundaboutation on the part of the viewpoint character, who just knows too damned much!

Never, ever, ever try to create suspense using a viewpoint character who knows everything you want withheld from the reader. Either the reader ends up feeling manipulated when they find out (which is the best case scenario), or you create a story where the punchline appears out of nowhere, or, as in the case of this story, the reader knows, from the little “hints” given by the viewpoint character’s veiled concerns, or by a thought never quite finished but with clear implications, exactly what’s coming up.

Logic flow within viewpointed prose goes hand in hand with this viewpoint choice. Usually, if a character knows something the author doesn’t  want to reveal to the reader, the sequencing of information within the connective viewpointed prose will take odd jumps as the author tries to avoid telling the reader the “secret”. Making a story flow smoothly around a well-informed character like, say, Carolyn’s Bren Cameron, takes an author really talented at finding ways to keep the character in the dark.

Most authors really should take the easier route of choosing a character who just doesn’t know that which the author wants to keep secret. A character who doesn’t know will just say “what the hell is going on”, or make a handful of speculations, giving the reader a variety of options while also (maybe) expanding the reader’s ability to critically analyze information. (Characters who actually think about possibilities and consequences are one of the things I most love about SF/F. Without ever realizing it, I learned a lot about thinking by reading good SF.)

Note who actually “told” the Sherlock Holmes stories.  Watson is a brilliant creation, absolutely as key to the success of those stories as Sherlock himself.

I realized tonight that this “playing coy with information our VP character should know” is one of the things that, well, it doesn’t drive me crazy, but I don’t like it, in the Science shows, even like the brilliant “How the Earth was Made.”  The “entertainment” part of the show dictates that certain information should only come out, say, after the next commercial, so come poor scientist will be waxing enthusiastic on a topic, get to the point where any one in the field would make the logical conclusion, and suddenly their terminology goes soft along with the logic flow within their sentences, and the light dies in their eyes as they try to create a sense of “mystery” with some sort of silly cliffhanger thought.

It’s one thing in a science show where the experts have their credentials flashing at the bottom of the screen and where the viewer is invested in the information, it’s another in a story where the idea is to get the reader invested in the characters. A VP character’s “credentials” are only as good as their credibility. And if they withhold information, if their minds take weird logic jumps, that’s undermining that credibility rather than strengthening it.

Whew…time for bed.

Ja ne!

I thought it was about time to address an issue which you all have very politely avoided throughout this Spring Gardening Splurge: the promised release of Rings of Change: Alizant.

I am working steadily on the edit, I promise. Will likely finish today or tomorrow and have an idea or two for the cover. It should be available in a week or two.

I get up and am at work on it every morning before 6:30. Sometimes as early as 5:00. I work for at least three hours, sometimes, like yesterday, as much as six (taking small breaks for things like breakfast and showering, and warming up and stretching my back) before getting dressed and heading for the garden. In general, I will work outside until Carolyn hauls me in for dinner. After dinner, I try to keep up the energy to do the online stuff, like blogs and Face book and email, tho sometimes, like today, I work on the blog during my morning “writing time”.

Why, you might well ask, do I wait so long to get dressed? Because if I didn’t, the temptation would be too great. I’d head straight out for the garden—just to pull a weed or two, don’t you know?—and because there’s just so much to do before the Shejidani parties in late June, and because those plants we keep adding to the collection have got to get in, I wouldn’t come back inside until Carolyn hauled my ass in for dinner.

It’s a … deadline, if you will. A deadline that in the scheme of things, just seems a little more pressing than the release of Change, et al. And, in a way, it is. My books have been on hold for years now and if all that money we’ve spent on plants and the (rotten) stripping job in front isn’t to go to waste, we’ve got to get those plants in and the sprinkler hose we’ve nicked with the tiller replaced (yes, we had another incident the other day: a weak spot that burst as we began using the sprinklers regularly.) and at least the majority of the grass roots out.

But the fact is, my job, now, is Closed Circle publications. So why the heck don’t I spend at least 40 hours a week doing CC stuff?

Well, in a way, I do. In a way, I spend a lot more than 40 hours a week on it. What we’re creating here is a stimulating work environment. We arrived to baked suburban lawn, and a lot of it, front and back, with a handful of plants we liked being choked out by a lot we didn’t want. And there was a very large garage outside our work windows. And traffic noise.  And a neighbor who, while a very nice guy, seemed bent on singlehandedly repopulating the world of weeds.

Now, when we need a break from writing, or a place to refocus our thoughts or work through a problem, there’s a place to go and find those answers. Even now, just sitting here working on this piece, the rhythm of the waterfall, the sounds of birds, the sheer Life outside my window keeps me going.

And it’s an oasis that will be here for us, day and and day out for the rest of our careers. It’s the same as a business building a beautiful office building with spaces built in for their employees to go to “recharge.”

Only difference is, for us, it’s not tax deductible. Darn it.

So, in a way, the gardening is all part of the job. Certainly all the web presence is. But that’s kind of bucking the real issue. The true lesson for the day is, we have to live with the consequences of our decisions, in life as well as in our career choices.

In hindsight, it was probably a mistake to strip the lawn this spring.Had we just let it go another year we’d not have been thinking beyond a few new plants for the back when we hit the plant sales. The shrub special at Lowes would have held no temptation for us, the side nursery wouldn’t have been necessary and all the work we’ve done in the front (not to mention the sprinkler problem which did in my back and had me dumber than dirt on muscle relaxants for a couple of days) wouldn’t have been necessary.

It seemed like a really good idea at the time. We looked at the truly ugly lawn, at the money that was going down the drain for something we really detested and thought, let’s just do it, thinking of course, that the sod would come up clean and it would just be a matter of importing some new dirt, laying weedcloth, and hauling bark and rocks. We had no idea the amount of work the hired crew were going to saddle us with, and as of this time, weed cloth, bark and rocks for the front are still many months in the future.

But we made the decision, and all the rest has been “fall out” from that decision. And frankly, despite the back pain, despite the frustrating delay in getting Change, et. al. up and available, I’m glad we’ve done/are doing it this way. I’m getting no younger. Who knows how long I’ll be able to do the stuff I’m doing? and what we’re creating here is an oasis that brings us pleasure every time we look out a window or lie in bed and listen to the water, or go out for a pond-side meal. Words cannot express the thrill of seeing a project this enormous coming together. Neither of us really knew what we were up against and each day presents new puzzles to be studied, researched, and solved, and a new spot of color, or life emerging from the ground.

It is, if you will, an absolute, unqualified, feel good success, and we can all use a few of those in our lives.

Personal choices are also the key to the direction my career has taken. As frustrated as I became with DAW over the procrastination of making a decision on my books,  mine was the decision to take a break after Ring of Destiny and pursue the revival of the ‘NetWalkers series.

I did it for several reasons that seemed really good at the time. I’ve delineated those reasons in several places. It boils down to a need for real editorial feedback, a test to see what new editors thought of my writing, and a serious, serious desire to salvage the story that was the core of my future history.

I couldn’t have foreseen the toll that several major moves, deaths in the family, and a bout with real chemical depression would take on that book, not in quality, ‘NetWalkers is still, I think, the best book I’ve ever written, but in the time it took to produce it. I finally got my input, first from my agent, then from the editors to whom he sent the book (which amounted to “we love it, but there’s something wrong that we can’t figure out) and finally from Pat Lobrutto, to whom my agent, bless his heart, headed me. A fifteen minute phone conversation, most of which dealt with Pat’s understanding of the book so that he was sure he was heading me in the right direction, changed the way I looked at, well, several aspects of writing.

Was it was the kind of feedback I should have gotten years before from the people who had taken on the responsibility of publishing my books? Absolutely. It required nothing compared to the amount of time I’ve heard other writers and editors talk about spending with each other. Nothing except insight. And a willingness to appreciate and work with the book I wrote rather than the book the editors want to put out to conform to some current best seller model.

Actually, that’s not quite fair. Most writers I hear talking about editorial input talk about things like continuity, logic flow, even grammar. Those were not the problems I had. Not by any stretch. It was a far more subtle, one might even say insidious, trend in a viewpoint character’s word choice. It’s the kind of thing only the author can truly fix, but in order to fix it, you’ve got to see it first.

But…I digress. Pat’s feed back came, literally, just before my mother passed away, very unexpectedly. I talked to him in late August of 2002 and my mom passed away September 12. The rewrite of ‘NetWalkers kept me sane throughout that following year, especially when, only a few months later, my father passed away as well.

And when the rewrite was done, I agreed with my agent’s idea to send the book to DAW rather than back to the editors who had liked, but rejected it before. I don’t know why he made that decision, but I went along with it, and as a result of that decision, all my production of the first decade of the 21st C ended up in a logjam on Betsy’s RoundTuit pile.

In the midst of all these rewrites, and then in the years of waiting to hear from DAW, I put Ring of Change together, rewrote the entire GroundTies series to reflect what I’d learned in ‘NetWalkers—not only about the characters and the story but about writing—so that they could be issued as brand new books, and the vampire book.

Oh…and we moved two more times.

Doing the edits on my backlist was hard enough. All the “might have beens” became raw wounds all over again. Destiny was a nightmare in the personal history editing it dug up, and trying to “fix” some of the overwriting (a result of the personal problems I was having at the time and which DAW should damnwell have addressed—the writing, not the personal problems.) This new stuff is proving very difficult to edit as well. Not only is there this crazy rollercoaster history connected to it, it’s never really been seen by anyone but myself and Carolyn. Good or bad, it’s all on my shoulders, and that, my dear friends, is real pressure. The amount of time I can truly keep my focus is limited, so if I weren’t gardening, I’d be doing something else…like the long overdue sorting of the Boxes in the Basement or (heaven forefend) housework.

So, my dear patient friends, don’t blame the garden. In fact, don’t blame anyone. Decisions are made. Actions taken.

And we, in the words of the Wise Woman of the Rhomandi Household: “make do.”

Ja ne!

Whether you’re a techno geek or planning a trip, this is one potentially useful resource!

http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html

Thanks to old friend Sarah Steever for putting me onto it.

Doin’ pretty good. Got a little skating in today, but the backward stoke and lift worked the whole lower back area a bit much. Must still be pretty swollen because it started to tingle and go a bit numb all around the joint, so I got off, glum, but smart.

Earlier this week, I finally decided ice directly applied wasn’t going to be enough and went down to Pullman for a Dr Shane and Cougar burger fix. He had some interesting new strength tests that help point to problem areas. Turns out my legs are strong as an ox in most directions, but the lower inward rotation was ridiculously weak. He adjusted a couple of things and voila! Strength. So it’s a nerve issue, not a muscle issue. But it helps explain why I have such problems holding some of my edges in skating.

Trying to behave myself, but some housework yesterday kinda got to me. Carolyn used the thumper on my back, which helped, but somewhere in the process, I twisted something again. Took several minutes just to get spasm eased enough to get up. Then, on a hunch that the problem was more in mid back than lower back, I went and used my handy-dandy little back arch, which is nothing more than a padded arch about 18″ long and 5″ wide that you put on the floor and lie down on, trying to get your back to relax. I lay on that thing about ten minutes and voila! the spasm went away.

So…now I’m onto a fix. I shall endeavor to be good, but we’ve got to get this place cleaned up and ready for company! Plus, we’ve picked up some more plants (I know, I keep swearing off…) but prices are just really good this year and some are hard to pass up. Still have a luscious Rhody, a climbing hydrangea (gorgeous), another clematis, another couple of shrubs that I’m going to put into the nursery…but I’ll give the back a couple more days’ rest. I promise.

but there’s this Hinoki Cypress calling my name…

Dancing with the Stars has been great this year, but Evan L. has been a bit of a disappointment. I kept waiting for the kind of breakthrough that Krisy M made a couple of years ago…Trusting his technique and just DANCE. And by golly, last night he did it. A darling Foxtrot where he just sparkled and a Vampire Paso that set off fire alarms around the city.

Best of all, when he talked, the monotone that has always characterized him was gone. There was a delightful rise and fall to his voice and, a positive lilt at times.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwaFOMFK1Vo

The Paso was the “reprise” tonight and it was even better with the competition pressure off of him.

What’s cool is how Anna finally got it through his head…asking him what made him happy. One of the things was watching video of his nephew. Sounds simple, but it made a huge difference.  Last week, I’d've said the result of this year was a shoo-in, but he’s just made it a serious horserace. Go EVAN!

Herself and I watched the movie Julie and Julia last night. It is, in a word, a delight. Meryl Streep was absolutely phenomenal. We thoroughly enjoyed, it.

There was, however, a discordant note. The following is a spoiler, though I don’t consider the movie so deep that spoilers actually matter much, but there you go: you’ve been warned. Anyway, the movie is based on two true stories. The basic plot is a woman working telephones for the government aid center in post 911 New York seeks purpose in life by working her way through Julia Child’s cookbook in one year and blogging about it online. The movie simultaneously follows the life of Julia Child as she also finds her purpose in life as she learns to cook and writes and then publishes the cookbook.

At one point, near the end, when Julie nears the end of her project and (obviously) becomes famous and gets book and movie deals, the inevitable question arises, has Julia been reading her blog and what does she think of it? She gets a phone call from a reporter who tells her something—we never know exactly what—that makes her believe that Julia “hates her.”

Now, we’ve been following both these women, we know how Julie idolizes Julia. We also know what a drama queen she is. Still… How could the Julia we’ve been watching and coming to love be so mean? Was it a setup by the reporter trying to get a story? had Julia actually read it? What did Julia actually say? We never know and Julie’s hubby makes all better with a bit of nice pop psychology and the movie resolves…mostly satisfactorily.

Naturally, we wanted to know, was this real?

First, I went to the original Julie/Julia blog. It’s really very fun and for a blog written in the early days of blogging, it captures very well the personal intimacy that makes blogging so popular. I can well see why people tuned into it daily. It’s funny. Frank. and personal. But it doesn’t, at least in the few I scanned, convey her utter fascination with Julia Child that is implied, not only in the movie, but in her final tribute to Julia Child on the day Julia passed away. Also, I saw nothing specific about the secretarial job. In the movie, it is clear that she cooked to escape the depression of the mix of sad stories and diatribes she was getting from 911 victims. Whether that’s accurate or not is irrelevant. Speaking from experience, any secretarial job is stifling to the creative personality.

This deficit in the blog becomes significant.

Also curious: certain blog entries are missing. This is obvious from references in some of the remaining posts to posts that don’t exist. One of the most significant was her final successful attempt at murdering a lobster. One wonders, frankly, why they were taken down, and how they might have factored into this particular exchange.

At any rate, the story of Julia Child’s reaction and how she learned of the project is here. http://articles.latimes.com/2009/aug/12/food/fo-calcook12

It’s really a fascinating look at the way communication has changed over the past half century, and just what blogging and “reality as entertainment” in general are doing to our sense of …  propriety, I guess.

Yes, Julia had read the blog, thanks to a friend (the author of the article) at the LA Times, who printed it off and took it to her. Her reaction was not hatred, she simply felt Julie was not very serious and, considering the problems she was having, must not be a very good cook, since she (Julia) had worked very hard to make the recipes clear and millions of people had been successfully learning to cook Frenchily from it for fifty years.

Note, he had to take her a printed copy. She was in her late 80′s at the time. Evidently not on the internet. Certainly not accustomed to the intimate tone, and more to the point, entertaining note dedicated bloggers attempt to instill in their posts. Julie was a writer. And her posts are entertaining, no doubt, but part of why they’re entertaining is the inclusion in each one of all the trials and tribulations Julia’s generation kept under their belts. Every little nuance of confusion is included.

Those nuances are what people respond to.  Those who hesitate to try Julia’s recipes for fear of just such mistakes are encouraged by Julie’s conquering of those problems.

But Julia didn’t understand that. From her point of view, it’s the antithesis of her “suck it up and make do” attitude the movie so beautifully portrayed.

I think that Julia felt Julie wasn’t serious because Julie didn’t include those details of just why she chose to do the project in the first place. I think that if Julia had understood that, her reaction might have been very different. Knowing that, the determined humor, the pratfall gaffs, become a 21st century version of “sucking it up and making do.”

As always in writing, it’s all in the setup.

…to make problems for the rest of us.

The other day, we turned the sprinklers on and whoosh a totally unwanted water feature in the front. I’d somehow clipped the sprinkler pipe with the Tilly, even tho I was sure I hadn’t gone deep enough.

Carolyn cleared the dirt away the offending section, but I didn’t like how close it was to the surface…barely an inch or so under the grass…so this AM I started digging at either end to see if I could bury it a bit deeper. An hour or so later, this is what I found. (You have to understand how hard this mostly rock ground is to dig through and a lot has to be done sitting on the ground with a claw so you don’t damage the pipes.)

It’s harder to see than I thought. There are three pipes involved. One makes a right angle, another parallels that one and heads off across the lawn, both at a proper 6″ or so deep. My problem child comes out from under the walkway plenty deep, then was brought over the top of these other two. It was nuts…and had already been repaired at least once. I removed the old fix, dug deeper, and put in a new section, taking it under the L of the right angled section.

Much better.

Meantime, Carolyn has been moving the grass from the front of the lawn on the west side to a more condensed pile on the east side. Yet more work made by a botched hire-job.

Only a bit more to go:

It’s actually decomposing nicely, so we’re going to condense it, cover it with a tarp and just let it percolate a while, with the help of our new work crew: $.25 a pop, plus food and board for life…and they bring their offspring with them!

I trust they, at least, will do their job properly.

Finally got NewGen working again, tho it still won’t upgrade. Bleh. Anyway, here are overdue pix. If you look with pic lens, they’re pretty grainy cuz it over enlarges. Just click on the first pic and you can click your way through them.  Not much text to go with as we’ve been yacking about the subject matter for a month!

[View with PicLens]

[View with PicLens]

[View with PicLens]

If anyone ever uses those words to me, regarding clothes, makeup, hair or behavior, they’d better be prepared to run.

Have you ever watched “Say Yes to the Dress”? Interesting show anthropologically and psychologically speaking. There was a gal on there the other night who was a cop in her daily life, forty-ish, pretty, and exuding more youth and vitality than most people half her age. She complained that everywhere she went, the store people were handing her “age appropriate sheathe dresses.”

I’d be out the door so fast. Do her credit, when she came to the big fancy place, she said that up front and said no way no how and they paraded out some of the most fanciful stuff in her price range and she looked great and appropriate in each and every one.

I was putting on my makeup this morning and for some reason my mind turned to another mindless reality show, “what Not to Wear,” where they really overuse that AA term. If they were to come to me to give me a makeover, I think I’d hand them their card and their ticket to New York and wave byebye.

I deal with people and channel characters who are everything from rocket scientists to anime freaks. I love them all. I identify with them all. I figure skate with darling kids a fraction of my age.

In a flipping tutu! With tights! And leg warmers! And sparkles.

And no social norms are going to take that joy away from me.