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Spike Day
Actual summer is about a month away. Social summer starts next week.Did anyone tell the weather that? Sunshine and heat. Blech!
Pre-Summer
Nobody ever drowned in his own sweat. ~Ann Landers
Maybe not but it sure feels that way sometimes. I dread the approach of summer, as always.
I have some good news for you. Dorothy has graduated from her cosmetology course at Empire Beauty School.
🎈 Congratulations, 🥳 Dorothy! 🎉
We’re sure she’s going to do a great job and she received a lot of excellent testimonials about her vivacious personality, her perseverance and her mastery of the skills required for professional salon work.
She was crying and waving at her face like Miss Congeniality the whole time. 😭 It was adorable.
Too Damn Hot
Good Morning Vietnam- Its Damn Hot!
Man, I’m with Airman Cronauer. It’s 🔥 daaaamn 🥵 hot 🌶️! I can’t even stand a day or two of this.
I’m not even kind of looking forward to several months of it.
No, y’all. Just no…
Weather Report with Walter Cronkite
Craftsmanship
Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind. ~Johannes Brahms
How many years of that have come and gone? Lots of inspiration. Lots of undulating in the wind. Lots of that.
Would have been good if I had gotten serious about it long before now.
Even so, now is what I’ve got and now is when I have to devote myself to improving.
To that end, I participated in another of GLVWG‘s reading cafes and intend to continue doing so. The feedback has been invaluable.
Tonight’s big takeaway is that I need to get Tim’s voice a bit more distinctive.
They were having some difficulty differentiating between Dave Wisler and his dad except for the abundance of tags. They wanted to see more voice and less tagging. Fair enough. I’ll be reading the second half of Dave’s first chapter next week.
I suspect that when we switch to Meirhe’s chapter on the 9th, certain people’s heads may explode.
Common editing advice is that dialect needs to be vaguely hinted at. Meirhe has a very strong idiolect.
I will preface the reading with a clear statement that:
It’s Canon!
It will probably rub them the wrong way but Mary’s dialogue is already in print. 🚫 Retconning her idiolect is non-negotiable. 🚫
I’ve spent a fair amount of effort to ensure that her dialog remains consistent with what’s already in print and with what’s going on in the current novel. I wish I had an editing tool that would help me maintain that. If you know of any, please let me know.
I’ve been to the library for the first time in ages so that I could pick up some investigative texts.
I got a novel from the Dresden Files series to study Jim Butcher’s style. I also got a novel by James Baldwin and a book of Black American Poetry to get a feel for the tones I need for Captain Freedom, Lucky and Phillipe. The fourth book I checked out is on the topic of Developmental Editing.
I’ve heard about the value of developmental editors but I’m still pretty broke. If I absolutely cannot wrap my head around it, I’ll need to save up for one. I have other things that need funding before I get to that. ISBNs don’t come cheap.
I was hoping to find a book on running a publishing business but I got to the library only moments before it was set to close. Hopefully, when I return the 4 I’ve got now, I’ll have more time to browse around. I’ll have to see if I can search online and have the next batch aside.
That’s it for this blistering, almost-summer day. I’ve got to unwind a bit and start in on those library books. I hope your week is going well.