No progress, had to work late.

Got some negative feedback. Why is it that I give negative feedback about ten times the credence I give positive feedback? I suppose that's not all bad in that it makes me really consider it and try to figure out how to address the weakness. However, I don't want to hurt the things that generated positive feedback.

Barb, I have a book of David Simon's that has his autograph in it that I used to touch every time I started writing(maybe I thought the ego would rub off?) I did that every morning for the longest time, until two things happened: a.I became enough my father's daughter to become worried about fucking up the book with my greasy mitts. 2. It was as if I heard a voice that said "You know he would mock the crap out of you if he knew you did that, right?" Because I believe that this is true.

Very little progress, work has been getting in the way. On the positive side after going through the first eight chapters of the 66 total, I'm already down 4,000 words. That leaves about 26,000 words to go to get to comfortable level. I think I can lose that many since there is big cut at about the 2/3s point along with a couple of other smaller ones. All of the cutting I'm doing right now are simply to make things better, I write plenty of sentences that have more words than are strictly necessary to convey the meaning of what I want to say.

Connie, I see nothing wrong with a 50-year-old woman writing fanfic. I write Star Trek and I'm not about to stop just because I'm one of the older ones out there. What surprises me is the age range of the women I've become friendly with through the communities I post in. The youngest are in their mid-teens (and one of the best ones is only 18, seriously talented), and the oldest are a bunch of 50-somethings, including myself. It's really remarkable the depth of talent and the variety that brings to the table. Even if I did stop writing, I sure wouldn't stop reading.

In my head, I feel no older than when I started with the fic, many many moons ago. Every now and then, though, my brain sits up and says "50! My god!" When I was a kid, 50 was such an old age.

(And I find myself greatly resenting being on the far side of culture's attention, with so much of the world being focused on what those ne'er-do-well 30-somethings are up to. Not to mention the 20-somethings who think they're grown-ups now. Feh. Offa my lawn.)

My mom says the same thing Connie. Not about fanfic, sad to say, she finds that thought kind of embarrassing in the abstract, although in practice. she's enjoyed stories I've brought to her attention. But about fiftysomethings living like they are old.

Why should anyone care how old a fanfic writer is? I feel it's akin to being a sports fan.

I'm slogging through cutting. I've started considering cutting out Savin and Rainier, two characters that aren't major players overall but play a key role in the beginning. I'll have to think about how that would work, the other possibility would be to merge that subplot with another one so it's all part of the same threat instead of two different ones.

No progress due to working late. It seems like I'll never finish this up. Things will look better once work calms down I suppose.

I'm hoping to have a chance to read through chapter 1 aloud tonight, I'd like to post the latest revision to my blog. If I trip up on any sentences, I figure they have to be rewritten.

Also, I'm in the final chapters listening to the text-to-speech. So far it seems okay though there is the usual wordiness and awkward sentences. I'll be curious to see feedback on the ending chapters, I don't have anything from this deep in the story yet.

I wasn't able to do much last night, but I got my read-through done and updated my blog with the new revision of chapter 1. I've lost a quarter of words in that first chapter which probably means I use too many damn words.

I had to run and errand and listened to part of the last chapter. That last fight will need some work. Also when the MC makes a choice, I need to emphasize that she knows (even if she doesn't want to believe it) she can't have her cake and eat it too.