Snow and Writing

Made a snow fort.

Made a snow-sculpture that looked a little like a bust of a helmeted Greek warrior (I was worried that it might look a little phallic), but it fell apart.

Didn't drive anywhere; Mark's bus slid around on the street a little.

Listened to the drip of melting snow and the crunching of snow and filed the details away for when I need to write a snow scene.

Worked on a draft of a short story -- tried printing it out and re-ordering some of the scenes to see if the story really wanted to start on page five. My secret vice is dream sequences; the story used to open (and close) with one. I listened to readers and agreed that the story stands fine without the dream sequence frame. After shuffling the scenes a little in an attempt to pull off a trick like Ursula K Le Guin did in "The Dispossessed," I'm pretty sure that I like the order I originally wrote the story in and I need to write a new opening and ending.

Happy Snow Day!

Just in time for my dad's birthday, we got a about four inches of snow. They're predicting a foot. In the Willamette Valley, if a snowflake appears in the sky, the drivers start doing loop-de-loops. It started snowing this morning around 4 AM. By 8 AM (and two inches) there had already been several highway closures and several spin-outs in downtown Eugene.

Tomorrow should be more entertaining, as it is above freezing (and still snowing) right now, and they're calling for freezing temperatures tonight.

Writing and Other News

Got a rejection from Clockwork Phoenix. I'm hopeful that a story I just got back from the Wordos critique group will strike their fancy; I have to polish it up.

The cough hasn't gone completely away yet. Every now and then I have gook in the back of my throat.

It's been below freezing here for the last few nights, and as a result we've seen the sun. It's nice to not have to turn the lights on in the house at 11 AM because it's too dark to see anything.

I've been fiddling with Google gadgets and adding them to the blog on the right. I figure in terms of keeping track of what's in the mail and what's not it's easier to keep updated (and it will be a good motivator for me to keep things in the mail).

Photos

This week has been very low energy. I've had a cold that just won't go away... at least not the coughing part. It's kind of a pain but at least I'm sort of catching up on sleep. And I've managed to get manuscripts to Polyphony and to Clockwork Phoenix.

It also makes me think in pictures more easily than in words. So here's a slide show:

First Cold of 2008

Managed to catch a cold. It makes me sound like I have TB. I dressed up for the part in a white turtleneck and bathrobe ensemble, clutching at a glass goblet of orange juice Mark had made me. ("Cough, cough. 'Tis nothing, just a bout of consumption.")

Anyway, when I wasn't stumbling around I was asleep. I slept so much that after a while my dreams were like waking thoughts, only more random. I did get some good story ideas, though.