My first clip of 2005 is now live, all bylined and pretty and official-looking: [link]

I've found several winceworthy phrasings that I can't believe I didn't catch on multiple editing passes before I submitted it, but that's just life. I'm sure it'll be 100 times worse when I finally publish a 100K-word novel instead of a 1000-word article.

Susan, that's a nice piece. Of course, I'm biased, since Ringan can see the Tor from the curve at the end of his bit of road, and in the first book, on Jane's first visit to Lumbe's Cottage, she gets stuck circling the Tor in the mud.

Homesick for England. Doesn't happen that often these days.

Today my RWA chapter did a workshop on critiquing and asked for guinea pigs to volunteer to bring in our first seven pages. Being somewhat of a verbal exhibitionist, I was all, "Me! Me! Me!"

Of course when I got there my hands were shaking. What if they ripped it to shreds, politely or otherwise? Sure I go to a critique group every Monday night and have beta readers, intermittent and regular, but I realized once I got there that having your work read aloud to twenty people, some of whom you know well, others NSM, and several of whom are multi-published, is a whole 'nother story.

It worked out fine, though. Got a lot of praise for my scene-setting skills--people saying they could picture it vividly, could taste the road dust, etc. Which made me feel very good, given that it wasn't all that long ago that my critique group would complain week in and week out about not being able to see my scenes. Got conflicting feedback on how I manage backstory--I had to laugh when I looked at the written comments and saw "too much backstory" and "great job working in the backstory" on back-to-back copies! Jack continues to draw near-universal reader love, and I got some good suggestion on how to make Anna more sympathetic and vivid from the start.

Oh, and a couple of the published authors told me I was just so close--a little tweaking here, a little polishing there, and I should have something saleable on my hands. That felt good.

And Deb, I'm really glad you liked the article--makes me feel like I must've managed to capture the atmosphere of the place, and that was my main goal, beyond all the practical "here's what to see" stuff.

Monday? New topic?

Ooof. Let me think about it over lunch.

What is this "lunch" thing of which I have heard you speak?

Oh - right. The meal I keep forgetting to eat, along with breakfast...

Okay. Have lunched.

Challenge #47 (yellow) is now closed.

Challenge #48 is: container(s)/holding (or some variation on "hold").

Go to it!

It's only a silly question if you don't ask, right?

Are "container" and a form of "hold" both supposed to be in the drabble, or does the slash mean either or?

does the slash mean either or?

The slash means that the container(s) and the holding are having non-canon relations.