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I spent all day yesterday working on a new draft of the story-in-progress. It’s really tough work because I want to get it exactly right. I still haven’t told the tale I want to tell all the way, but I’m getting there. I completely rewrote the first page. I have a habit of starting with a punchy sentence and then backtracking a couple of minutes to fill in what just happened. Then I get all tangled up in tenses, especially since this story involves a lot of reflection. Once I figure out what I’ve done (again), I go back and retell the opening passage in chronological order. I figure if the stuff in the near-instant flashback is interesting and important enough to be kept, put it in where it happened. After I get past that, a lot of other things start to fall into place and I stop banging my head on the keyboard.

The story is about 5000 words long at present. I have a few things to add before I start taking stuff out. I plan to deliver the revised draft to the editor by the end of the coming weekend.

The podcast version of my Storytellers Unplugged essay “Are Critique Groups Worthwhile?” is now online if you have a spare eight minutes and care to hear me reading my own work.

I’ve been working a bit at a time converting old book reviews to my new Onyx web site. These are found in the Older reviews section of the archives. I still have over a hundred left to do, and I’m managing about 10-15 per session before I go brain numb from the repetitive tedium of the task.

I’m watching two programs on USA this summer: The Dead Zone and Burn Notice. (I haven’t seen last nights DZ episode yet). In both programmes, they have taken the main characters to the point where they are either kissing (former) or sleeping together (latter) and then pulling back and playing coy. Come, people—make up your minds already. Of the two, Burn Notice is the better show, in my opinion, and I’m curious to see what happens with the DHS mucky-muck who is now receiving baskets of fruit from international terrorists. Nice touch.

Big Brother 8 was sort of bland last night. I couldn’t even fire up enough enthusiasm to log on and have Eric give his “pookie” or “binkie” or whatever they called it to someone totally inappropriate (Zach, who seems to have no problem admitting to passing fancy with men or women, or Dick, who would probably have eaten the stuffed bear after ripping out its guts). Jen has faded into the background completely. The nominations were 100% predictable, though it’ll be interesting to see whether Jameka’s god can whoop Amber’s god in the PoV competition tomorrow.

We watched a movie called Driving Lessons from On Demand this weekend. Stars Rupert Grint from the Harry Potter movies and Laura Linney as his mother. The trailer completely obscured the very heavy Christian overtones to the movie. I mean completely brushed them under the rug. The movie is a little like Harold and Maude, and fortunately it was only moderately heavy-handed at times, though it looked dire for a while. We made it through to the end and were glad we had, but if we’d known more about the course the movie was going to take we probably would have passed. Which makes the trailer clever, I guess, though misleading.