erika, you know what? I can still name my favourite bit in Simon's original book. It was when the two homicide cops are off duty, and one of them is seriously thinking about quitting, and the other one is trying to talk him out of it. And they're parked on a side street, away from the station, and they realise this kid is casing them, scoping them about, thinking about robbing them and stealing the car. So one of the cops, exasperated, gets out of the car, stalks up to the dumbfounded kid, flashes his badge, and snaps "We're police. Go rob someone else."

I hurt myself suppressing outraged whimpers of joy over that one.

I know! "We're fat old white guys. That's all they see. A mark."

"I'm not old. Speak for yourself."
So FG.

Oh, I had to share this -- for erika's delectation, and others' amusement.

It's the story of whose face is used on the standard NYPD/Homeland Security target, when people practice shooting at gun ranges. (Hint: they call up Ernest Borgnine on page 2.) Registration required.

[link]

There's a drabble topic in there somewhere, but only if everyone can bear to drabble about jowly, puffy men in ugly track suits.

Typical cops...trying to make it look like nobody, it looks like everybody.(Maybe somebody having fun with his supervisor?) Seems I read someplace, not sure where, that if a suspect is the same race as a sketch artist, the sketches look like them, sometimes

Question re: drafts, especially electronic ones. What do you keep? I can see keeping a radically different version of a scene or chapter, just in case you decide that that approach is really the best one, but if you're just futzing with dialogue, word choices, etc., do you just change it and forget it?

Connie, speaking just for me? When I change, I change. It's a question of commiting to what you've decided to say, and a question of trusting your instincts.

The only time I save something is I've done a radical rewrite or taken out an entire scene, which isn't something I do often. I'm a linear writer - start at the beginning, and write in order - but I will save those, especially if I think those originals might be useful in a later book or later scene in the same book.

Connie, I usually define a draft by its sense of completion. If when you're done, you think, "Okay, this is the story as it stands," then save it. And when you start making changes, you call it a new draft, and you can make little changes on that one to your heart's content until you decide, "Okay, this is the story as it stands."

It's funny cause I was looking at my documents and I found some stories I'd started years ago. They're only a few beginning paragraphs, and if I do pick them up, I'd like to save those few beginning paragraphs regardless of whether I change them completely in the very first draft, since I'm so far away from when I initially thought of the story. So that's a case where I would save something that's incomplete.

Connie, with minor tweaks--changes within a scene--I just change them and leave it at that. With major changes--rewriting a scene--I'll usually keep the old version for awhile just so if I want to use any of the information later, I won't have to recreate it from scratch.

Ugh. I'm fighting writer's block, and I think it's because I'm working on scenes from Anna's POV immediately after Sebastian's death, and I'm just stuck on what she would be feeling and how to portray it in a way that's both believable and sympathetic.

Basically, they had a terrible marriage, so I don't think she'd be human if some part of her wasn't relieved to be free. Yet she can't actually rejoice in a death, so she's going to spend some time feeling guilty over that normal human reaction. So far I've got her doing a combination of reflecting upon what went wrong with her marriage, and probably blaming herself more and Sebastian less than she did while he was alive, and focusing resolutely on little physical details--is there a place in the village where they're staying where she can buy what she needs for a basic mourning wardrobe, how soon can she find a way to travel to Lisbon so she can sail for England, etc.?

Does that work? I'm all at sea here because I have so little experience of death, and none at all where my relationship with the deceased was weird and complicated.

She might have some authentic mourning that now there is no chance to fix things, no chance to apologize or be apologized to, etc. Is there a reason she married him other than he was suitable? Some characteristic that she authentically respected? She can mourn the loss of that, as well.