Tuesday, April 05, 2005

A Better Day

Having a much better day today. For starters, I did another few thousand words on GS last night, finishing up the major inserts for the novel. From here on it's straight line edits (I hope) and one or two small write-ins. It is my hope to be completely done with it by April 15th (Tax Day!) and start the type-in. I'll be sending out my agent queries as I'm doing the type-in so the next few weeks should get pretty busy. Should be fun doing all this with the wife scowling at me the whole time. She still ain't buyin' the concept that I'm a writer. She wanted me to do something the other day & asked my son where I was. He answered that I was in the kitchen, working. When she saw I was working on my GS edits she scolded the boy: "He's not working, he's playing with his papers again!". [sigh] She just don't get it. The boy at least understands (he writes a good bit himself - kid's a hell of a poet!) he came to my defense and tried to tell her how hard I was working but if it don't entail dirt, sweat, or running around like a mad person . . . (sitting on one's ass is only allowable if one is receiving cash for it!)

Did some crit work over on FM today and was very pleased to see that both ladies in my Crit Circle are really making great strides with their writing (Christ, I hope I am too!). Also found out I've been using the wrong nickname for one of them (hey, I'm just an ignorant male, okay?) she prefers to be called: "Lee" rather than "El" as you've seen her named here. (Both short for Eleah) Okay, did gender names change while I wasn't watching? How is it I'm working with two ladies named Mel & Lee? Maybe I should change my name to "Jamie" just to confuse things, eh? Ah well, they're great folks either way . . .

The workout went much better this morning. I am still dreadfully out of shape but at least I didn't feel sick to my stomach and have a migraine after I was done, so that's a plus. (Yea, lack of mind shattering agony is always a good thing!) I'm also trying to watch what I'm eating. I'm avoiding the "diet" thing because as I've said before: been there, done that, got the t-shirt. (Which no longer fits because my chubby ass ballooned up after I went off the damn diet!!!)

Have Boy Scouts tonight, so I don't know if I'll get any writing done. That's alright though, I really enjoy the meetings with the kids. We're planning a campout for this coming weekend for the new guys who just joined the troop (12 in all) to give them some basic Boy Sout training. It should be a lot of fun.

On a side note, I took the "Political Compass Quiz" that Holly L. posted on her site yesterday. I was really surprised by the results it gave me. They placed me in the same political sphere as Ghandi, the Dali Lahma, and Nelson Mandela. Nice company to be in, but definitely not where I'd have placed myself! I'm pro death penalty, and most folks find me a bit conservative so I wonder about the accuracy of the test, but it was fun to take.

Later!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ah yes, secretly I am male, but I am masquerading as a female for some bizarre reason...not. Seriously, I've been called Mel so long, I have to stop and think about who they're talking to if someone calls me Melanie.
Good luck with the queries. Your wife will have to admit that writing is a job, once you get that contract (which I'm sure you will).

J.A. Coppinger said...

LOL!

Melanie, huh? I figgered that was it, but after clipping Eleah down to El incorrectly, I didn't want to assume! Could have been Balzamel or something . . . :)

Thanks for the vote of confidence. We'll both get there!

Anonymous said...

I had to get used to Lee because that seemed to be the only thing people could call me without messing up my name...lol...it doesn't bother me much either way and adding a Jamie probably would make it rather confusing. Do you prefer Jim or James by the way?

I left a message in our crit circle to announce that I am really really sick and taking a bit of a break from critting...I can't even bring myself to write when I have a cold like this... so I wanted to give you the heads up. Hope you enjoy your camping this weekend. Oh, and your blog is so very entertaining...I tune in just to have a few good laughs...not that I don't take you seriously or anything...man, *insert foot in mouth*

Anyhow...rambling again. Oh, and I know what you mean about people not taking the job of writer seriously...half the people I know prolly still think of it as my "little hobby"... we'll show em, eh? *The canadian in me popping out*

~Lee

J.A. Coppinger said...

I have absolute faith that all three of us will show 'em! Jim is fine by me -only my mother calls me James, and only when she's mad at me- and don't worry about the laughter thing. I'm glad to know somebody beside me finds this stuff amusing!! :)