Becoming Re-enchanted

 Here's some more photos from the Rainbow Falls Overlook.  The area was actually pretty rocky once you dug down a little.  The tenacity of the plants struck me.  Once some moss or lichen got established on a big basalt boulder, there would be a place for the roots of other plants to grow.

This particular succulent caught my eye.  I think it's related to something called "Hens and Chicks."  We've something similar growing around our house, but I hadn't noticed the five-fold symmetry before.

The last few days I've been tired.  Some of it is a result of inconsistent sleep schedules, which I'll have to fix.  I think some of it may be pollen:  it's that time of year when I wake up with eye boogers.

Writing:  I got a quick rejection on the latest manuscript.  Sigh.  This seems like a good point to survey the various projects and manuscripts needing a little bit of polish before I send things out.  Thinking about the last few manuscripts, I'm wondering if I might be spending too much time on setting detail at the expense of plot and character development -- then again, on the other hand, a frequent critique I get is that readers don't understand how the world works.

Working Out:  Monday was a workout day.  I took it slowly.  Monday I was exhausted; Mark opined it was from climbing sand dunes Sunday, but I'm not so sure. My hands and feet just ached, and I'm blaming the barometric pressure.

Writing:  Tuesday morning I looked over some manuscripts that are (ahem) between markets.  Not all of them are dreadful, and I need to work through them.  A few just need some minor tweaking and then I should send them back to the markets; I've been terrible at sending stories into the mail.   A few could easily turn into longer pieces, and I should focus on longer pieces anyway because it's part of a Writer's Career Path.  

There's one story that's actually not bad, and I let a critiquer hold it back simply because she didn't like  the way I'd very purposefully written one of the characters.  

Working Out:  Wednesday I went to the gym in the evening.  I had a 20 minute elliptical session, followed by all of my regular exercises.  My calves are feeling the burn this morning -- I woke up with a huge cramp in my calves that I had to fix by manually flexing my feet.

Writing:  I picked up the fairy-tale manuscript I'd been working on before the Sword and Sorceress manuscript:  it's not so over-wrought as I thought.  I need to put finishing touches on it and turn it in to the Wordos next week.