They seem to think the bulk of the weekend and 5.5 hours today was worth rather more than $100. They'll send a cheque and we'll see.

They are very right. I hope you are rewarded for your efforts both monetarily and in their actually understanding what you were trying to tell them.

Wow. 5.5 hours. I'm impressed.

In my writing news, I've realized that I have an adverb problem. As in, too often my people say things comfortably, or angrily, or defensively, or whatever. I realized this while reading Stephen King's review of HP5, a quite positive review that did however rebuke Rowling for doing the same thing. I'm not saying adverbs in dialogue attributions are universally bad; nor, I think, is King. However, I've been overdoing it. In the passage I took to writers' group tonight, I had a "defensively", "coolly", and "reasonably" for lines of dialogue that couldn't really be read any other way. (she said shamefacedly)

sj, I hope so too. I got very, very tired of earnest voices, chiming in unison, "but we researched that part..."

Yes, darlings, but your research is not fiction. Repeat after me. Your research is not fiction. it's a tool to enable you to create composites that resolve into believable characters.

(Sorry - got pulled off that last post early to go watch today's amazing disaster thing from the Tour de France. Whooooeeee...)

I don't object to adverbs at all, but I don't go overboard either; part of that is the way I tend to structure sentences. Rather than, say

"That's not what I meant at all," she said defensively

I'm far more like to write something like

"That's not what I meant at all." She sounded defensive.

It's not watching grammar, it's just the way I perceive interactions in which I'm not involved.

I got very, very tired of earnest voices, chiming in unison, "but we researched that part..."

And you didn't kill them? I am quite impressed.

sj, honestly, they meant well. They weren't being defensive. They took my screaming at them very nicely. They made notes.

But I did have to piledrive several bits, and that was one of them.

I'm using more adverbish attributions in my Lucy-voice than in my regular third person one, because her grammatical structure is a little different than mine. Part of the whole 1810 effect I'm trying for. That being said, I'd still like to cut about half of them out. That "defensively" from tonight, for example. Lucy's boorish cousin Hal has just said something that embarassed her, but is true. She feels her face heat in a blush. She blurts out something we know she'd planned to leave unsaid. If that's not enough to tell readers our girl is on the defensive without an adverb, I'm not doing my job.

Bedtime for me--I've got an early meeting tomorrow, and I slept poorly last night.

Sleep like a lamb, Susan. Diana's on the mend.

Ok, now, some of you may know that sometime back, I posted my intention of creating a disability pornathology. But I've gotten stuck on the how... I have: my one example of vampire porn. And the intention to make it all-inclusive preference-wise, except with at least one disabled character. I can: Ask friends, and run an ad looking for contributors. But is that really what you do first?(See, that's my thing...I always get big ideas and no idea how to make them happen.) I can see myself getting buried in smut and somebody asking "How's it going?" and I'm saying "Um, give me a minute..." Of course that's one way to get stuff to read, but I don't want to be sloppy. I'm just talking out loud here, but feel free to comment.

I'm part of an erotica crit group on Yahoogroups (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/erosworkshop/) where people post calls for submissions. Can't predict what your response rate will be, though. If you get buried in smut, I hope it's good smut.