bwah...too true. And with this appearance? People think butter wouldn't melt in my mouth. But, come on, he said there were more Indians than in 1492.

Susan, I say go for it. If you have scenes envisioned that excite you, go ahead and write them. And maybe it's worth mulling what about the scenes in between are stalling you. I've often found that if a scene is boring me to write (because it's tedious or just not compelling or whatever), it sometimes just is a boring scene.

Books that defied categorization and succeeded:

• The Eyre Affair and subsequent titles by same
• all of Diana Gabaldon's books (except, perhaps the recent mystery)
• Now You See Her, by Whitney Otto (not as successful as American Quilt, maybe, but with a narrator who begins to disappear)

Good points, AmyLiz. The one thing I did with Lucy that I'm not going to do this time around is right anything too near the ending ahead of time--it makes me feel like I'm finished telling the story, and I lose patience with the process.

I think the scenes I'm having trouble with are a mix of boring scenes and places where I just can't nail down the right motivation and bahavior for a key secondary character. I might ask for help with him tomorrow, when I'm not just home from the symphony (LotR with Howard Shore conducting--we got incredible seats for half their value at the church auction) and battling a splitting headache.

it makes me feel like I'm finished telling the story, and I lose patience with the process

I have this problem when I keep going over my favorite scenes to come in my head, until I decide that they're actually crap so why bother writing them down?

If I think a scene is going to be trickier than usual or I'm afraid I'll lose it, I'll write it down, but I try to write completely linearly myself.

I know someone who moves On Becoming Babywise (an IMO ridiculously rigid and authoritarian childrearing guide) into Horror. Me, I'm too lazy to walk halfway across B&N, so I just hide them behind better books.

I always turn over anything by Ann Coulter/Sean Hannity/etc., or put a better book on top of them.

Yeah, I'm a rebel.

When I send places writing samples, what should I send? I mean, physically. Because the copies of the magazine were all I got "paid" for the tattoo piece, which, incidentally, I can pimp anywhere I want now. I don't really need to send a busy editor a whole magazine to get her to look at pages 32-37, do I? Are copies bad form?

erika, I honestly don't know what people send these days, but I know it's not the whole publication. When I got out of college 11 years ago, all my clips that I sent out were photocopies (versus the original newsprint clippings), and that seemed to be fine.

Also, this week's drabble challenge coming up....

I haven't had to send out writing samples before, but Teppy's suggestion makes admirable good sense to me; a photocopy of the piece should work just fine.

Challenge #14 (theme = revenge; using words from a list) is now closed.

This week's challenge is a style challenge rather than a theme challenge, though I'm throwing in one thematic element. (And I swear that I'll drabble this one -- I keep coming up with the challenges and then not drabbling!)

This week's challenge is to write a drabble in present tense. The one thematic element that must be included is shoes. Jimmy Choos, horseshoes, brake shoes -- whatever. And present tense.

Go to it!

Hunt

They're missing. I bought them specifically to go with that leather dress, and the damned things have gone walkabout. How ironic.

It's like some LSD-addled exercise in spatial reality: my closet empties out and the piles of shoeboxes on the bed behind me grows in direct proportion. The Via Spigas, no, too clunky. The Maude Frizons, too sedate. The Pradas, too casual. Those Blahniks - ugh. Temporary insanity. What was I thinking?

Shitshitshit. Sixty-eight boxes. Everything's out.

My husband wanders in, holding a Neiman's Bag. "I found this in the car. Weren't these those red Steigers you bought for the wedding?"