Voice time again soon? Because finally, I've finished those mind-sucking chapter edits.

Hey. How are you all?

1. I haven’t posted anything in so long it feels like maybe this is Rod’s blog now, and I’m butting in!

Those of you who weren’t around for the Rod days of old might enjoy checking out his first entrance on Sparky’s blog. It was a day that will live in infamy (at least for me it will). If you have the time, check it out:

It was July 21, 2007, Bad Analogies, Part 3, and mine read as follows:

Going on a vacation he couldn't afford was a pleasure and pain thing, like a roofer up there roofing away on your house and getting a good long hard-on kinda look at the naked sunbather chicks sunbathing around the pool in the next yard and falling off the roof and breaking his leg in your yard ‘cause you didn’t have a pool to fall into. Like that. --Robin S. (By the way, I’m using this analogy, fully intact, in my second novel. So thanks once again for your writing exercises, Sparky.)

Anyway, it was in the comments section that I fell in love with Rod’s poning abilities, and got too-shayed (not necessarily in that order).

2. And, here’s the second anyway: I AM FINALLY FINISHED with what I hope is the final draft of my edits with Chapters 10, 11, 12 and 13. Good Lord, that took a while.

3. So today, before the final pieces of Chapter 12 fell into place, or were shoved kicking and screaming like little bitches, really, I went to the grocery, and I was really getting pissed off. These two little brain-free chicks were manning the cash register and bagging duties, respectively, and they were suckingly slow. I’m talking, slowwwwww…..Yeah.

At first I was not amused, and then - I was.

I started smiling and I didn’t stop, when I realized these little dingbats were talking about sex to the whitebread customers filing down the checkout line, and it was fucking hilarious, watching everyone trying to be politically correctly cool with that, and unoffended.

And damn, that was the most fun conversation I’ve had all week, because when it was my turn at bat, i.e., at the register, I started asking all kinds of questions, and getting some mindbending answers, and if you don’t think I wrote some of this shit down for my next novel, you’re certifiable, baby. Damn, that was fun. Made me happy all day, and helped me stay in the zone long enough to finish some weird, wild edits.

Soooooo….I realize this post is all over the map.

But, even so, here are two more thingies:

4. Today is my birthday.

5. AND…how about we do another voice deal in the next 10 days or so, doing what Sparky suggested, and reading a scene from one of our favorite novels?

That is all. …I swear it is. At least for now. I’ve been pent up, people. Pent, I say.

Mind if I Come In?

This feels mighty strange. It’s kind of like I’ve walked into someone’s house when they’re not home. It’s too quiet, the carpet feels strange underfoot and all the smells are different. I don’t want to make a noise, case someone hears it and tells me I ain’t supposed to be here.

When the young lady asked me if I’d stop by and say a few words, well ‘course I said “yes”, but sayin’ yes is the easy part. Thing is, what will I talk about? There’s only one thing I know about, and that’s the thing I been doin’ all my life -- workin’ on roofs. I don’t know a thing about writin’ and I’m not much of a one for talkin’. But you know, a promise is a promise, and here I am.

Someone asked me one time, what’s the best thing about workin’ on roofs. I told her, I don’t know that there’s just any one thing; there’s a whole host of things to like about it, and I don’t rightly know where to begin. I’m no writer, like I said, but excuse me, and I’ll try my best.

Most of what I do is small stuff. I Fix people’s roofs; patch a few holes, freshen the paint, make sure the insides stay nice and dry. But I guess what I like best is buildin’ a new roof, startin’ from scratch. It starts from nothin’ but an idea of what it might look like; then we put up the frame, the skeleton, and it’s rough, but it’s already got the shape of a roof. Once the frame’s up, we put on the felting, covering over the gaps and keeping everything dry inside, and once the felt’s all battened down it’s really startin’ to look like a roof. The battens are also what we nail the tiles or shingles onto; and once the tiles are on and the ridge is finished off, you can know, just by lookin’ at it, that you got a good roof there. And if it ain’t just right, you can rework it a bit, change it here and there ‘til it’s just how you want it and you’re all done. Buildin’ somethin’ from nothin’ -- I like that.

Now, I just got off a job buildin' a barn. A big old red shingle roof. Took me and a couple of my boys near two weeks to get the job done, and I didn’t get paid ‘cause I was doin’ it for a friend of mine. But when we were done, when I’d hammered in the last nail, I could stand up on the top of the roof, one foot either side of the ridge, feelin' the wind on my face, and I could see for miles. And if I closed my eyes, I could see even further. Guess that’s the best thing about roofin’: just how far you can see.

Rod the Roofer

When I finish 13...

I'll be back with a new post.

Right now I'm reading through Chapters 10, 11, 12 and 13. 13 is close to a done deal. I wrote it almost intact in the winter/early spring of 2007. I wrote a few others in the same way. When it works that way, it's wonderful. Hope you guys have felt that - it's amazing when it happens. Wish it happened more. Chapter 3, I wrote in one ecstatic afternoon in the fall of 2007. What a head rush. I don't think I changed but a few words here and there. It was that clear coming out, almost like automatic writing.

I thought I was finished with 10 - and then I saw plot holes, and had to fix them. (And I think it may really be two chapters, which will take the even 20 I have to an un-even 21.)

11 and 12 are almost there. Still, as I'm guessing you all already know, that last polishing and checking means everything, and consumes time.

15 is absolutely finished - doesn't need a thing, to my mind anyway, as are several others. 16 needs a tighter ending to it. 17, 18 and 19 may become two chapters, because some may come back out - not sure just yet.

A dear friend (who has a good eye and a good ear for reading, and isn't afraid to tell me when she doesn't like something) has read the last chapter, and loved it. That feels good, knowing home base was worth working to reach.

The plan is - read through the sections of the remaining-to-be-edited chapters, which are distinctive in important ways (to me at least), and edit transitions, etc. as I go.

During the long weekend we have in mid-Octover (11th through the 13th), I'm sequestering myself to read the entire novel aloud, for flow, for rhythm and sound and meaning.

Then, I'll finally be finished.

I'm telling you all this to help myself stick to the schedule. How about you all?
Where are you on your internal schedules?


P.S. I'm really, really hoping my friend will be blogging here soon.

Sparky is being roasted today

...at BookRoast. The link is here.

Please visit and give him some extra good grief.

Thanks!

Happy Friday…and Saturday…. and Sunday…

…here in Storytelling Land.

Thanks, Whirl, for this great idea of yours. It worked out so very well!

I loved listening to all of you.

Listening again to Pete read my words, I thought about what ril wrote in a comment on McK’s blog, about how arresting it was, in the good way that being taken by surprise can sometimes be, how surprising it was, hearing one’s written words spoken by someone else, as though the words had been separated from your self.

And others mentioned that maybe reading other’s work was different because a certain self-consciousness is blissfully missing. (Sparky, as usual, is exempt from such mundane worries, as he remains very enjoyably supra human.)

Hope you were able to visit everyone and hear them reading. To that end, here’s our list, one more time:

Kiersten and Natalie traded

Freddie and paca traded

McK and ril traded

Julie and BT traded

Sylvia and Whirl traded

I traded with Pete, and Sparky already had something ready that he used.

And now I’m thinking that in the next month or so, or whenever you want to, we’d try an idea of EE’s, and each read a scene or a section from one of our favorite novels. I don’t know about you all, but I don’t have one favorite novel. My favorite reading is mood-dependent, so I’m thinking we can do this one more than once, just as we can trade off more than once.

How about it? Game for this to be the next voice plan?

Here's to you and yours having a wonderful weekend.

ril, reading McK...

Enjoy!

Okay. Ready to go?

Hi you all,

Are the Euros and Aussies (and transplants that happen to already be experiencing Thursday...), are you ready to post your stuff? (And by the way, ril, do you wanna do your own post here this time? That would be great! But if not, no worries - just send me the gobble-de-gook stuff to put on here, please.)

As for the rest of us, should we go now, or wait?

Here's the deal - whatever we decide to do - please pop on here and let us all know where to travel around, when you're ready.

OK- I'm about to go to bed (yeah - I'm a wuss), so, here's my reading of a part of one of Pete's excellent published stories...



I can't wait to hear you all!

Love,

Robin

Tonight I was planning on...

...telling you all the bizarre and funny story about my trip back through the Virginia and Maryland state roads this past Saturday.

About the big plastic sheet that got caught on my axle or shaft or whatever the hell it was, and this guy yelling at me from his Jeep to pull the hell over, and me thinking it was another good-times confrontation, but it was really just a nice guy trying to save me from major car issues out in the middle of nowhere. And then with me stretched out under the car a few minutes later, on the side of the road, with the guy, yanking hot and melty plastic sheeting out from under my car. (A side note: under-the-car is a scary place I'd rather not ever visit again, as I really don't want to know what that crap under there is, as it looks a little suspect as a solid enough system to be carrying me along any damn roads.)

And I was gonna tell you about the weird crap my elderly relative said and did that does the opposite of endearing me to said relative, but I'm stuck, so I might as well laugh, and I figured you might wanna help me out there.

And I was gonna tell you about the Reno 911 kinda cop that pulled me over in Surreal-ville at about 11:00 pm in Nowhere, Maryland, and how that all worked out.

But no.

I'm drinking right now. Shit is going on, and I'm drinking. I just received a phone call that went right through me. Whatever.

Anyway, I'm truly looking forward to seeing everyone and hearing everyone. Hope you all are ready to post, because I'm really ready for some good listening. I'll pop a voices post on here tomorrow night.

Bye for now.