I don't think I've written anything really good since the computer virus. It sounds ridiculous, but I think it shook my confidence. Any suggestions?

Write a drabble where you have a character smite a virus?

I mean, just something ridiculous and silly and that you can take your frustrations out on?

Maybe. I suppose it's like being afraid after somebody broke in your house.

Based on what we were talking about in the literary thread, about detail and not wanting to overwhelm a manuscript while at the same time informing it, this is a snippet of what I wrote yesterday. This is the type of feel I'm trying to go for. Keeping in mind that the character in question is a seventeen year-old, extremely wealthy Cuban girl, intelligent, but kept fairly sheltered. This snippet if from a scene taking place on New Year's Eve, 1958.

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"I spoke with your father earlier today. I believe he was actually hoping that I'd be able to convince you to get married this spring or summer, before I started law school, so that we could be settled and on our way out of the country—especially with things the way they are." His expression grew serious as he gazed down at me.

With Fidel, I knew he meant. But mira, this was Cuba. Things were never settled, at least not politically. Someone was always trying to overthrow someone else. "Do you really think it could be a problem?" I wanted my adventure, true, but I wanted the things I held most dear, my family and my home, to remain the same. To be there at the end of the day.

"I don't know." He lifted his head, glanced around quickly and when he spoke, his voice was even softer than before. "Before, it's always been a case of favors exchanged and money promised and our lives and businesses could go on as before, but listening to our fathers and my tíos, they truly feel there is something different about Fidel. That the things we took for granted in the past aren't likely to be as simple anymore."

True. From what little I'd seen, el comandante definitely seemed cut from a different cloth—believing fervently in Cuba. But perhaps… not the same Cuba I knew.

"Do you want to get married right away, then?"

"Only if you'd want to." He smiled. "And I know you don't. Not yet. So I told him we could wait. And that regardless, I'd take care of you and wouldn't allow anything to come between us. I wasn't wrong, was I?" His hand trembled slightly over mine, hiding what I knew rested on the third finger, as if he was waiting for my assurance.

Barb, that seems perfectly natural and concerned with the tide of the times to me. Sort of like the conversation DH and I had yesterday concerning the income-producing retirement account we set up years ago with Merril Lynch.

Not as romantic, but sometimes lovers have to discuss currents that affect their lives--they can't always be immune to real life.

Thanks, Bev. For the most part, that's about as romantic as this story is going to get and that scene is set within the context of a flashback. It's definitely wanting to be more a women's fic/mainstream sort of story which means I have to curb the romance writer impulses.

But yeah, you're right-- even sheltered as these two were, they couldn't be completely immune to the fact that there was a definite storm on the horizon.

Anyone want to beta my "Smile Hon" essay about the Baltimore-obsession thing?

Anyone want to beta my "Smile Hon" essay about the Baltimore-obsession thing?

hey, erika, I'd love to but won't have time until next week.

Perfect. It's not finished enough now anyway.

Barb said in Lit'ry:

I'm trying to finish Susan Wiggs' Just Breathe. Not sure I'm going to get there-- it was one of those cases where the book is thisclose to really going somewhere interesting and unique and the author chose the cliché, every single time.

That and the lead character is a complete waffle.

Okay, I don't understand this about publishers--hell, about readers.

There's a woman in my writers' group who writes fantastic short stories. Now, I'm incapable of short fiction; I can do short commentary or opinion, but my word meter gets tripped with fiction, and I have to go back later with the machetes and weedwhackers to find the story that's in there and trim all the shrubbery and undergrowth out. So I am sort of awed by her ability. She thinks it's no big thing.

Anyway, she was building this story--absolutely beautiful job of mounting tension, letting us get to know her main character, the circumstances of her life, the situation with the secondary characters, and the pathos of losing essentially her sole companion. I thought I knew exactly where the story was heading, and it was really, really good. She was going to bury the dog on the property. She had made a person-sized grave, square and deep, and lowered the dog into it, and then went inside. Upstairs to shower, and dress in her night clothes. Took the pills. Put the letter on the sideboard where it would be found.

...and laid down on her bed? What?

She was aghast at my aberrant mind when I told her I expected her character to arrange herself in the grave with the dog. It's where the whole story had been leading--if you followed the breadcrumb trail I did. That was never her intention, she'd never even thought of it. And her ending was so freaking ordinary and gutless, I actually wondered why she'd even bothered to write the story. I mean--not leaving the land was the entire point of the story, wasn't it?

So--my question is, I suppose, is the entire world, including publishing, so gutless as to refuse to even take a flyer at a new idea or a new concept or a new perspective? Like tv series, does everything have to be a remake or a clone? And why IS that? Who actually thinks that's a good idea?

Um. Sorry for the rant. It's One of Those Things that rankle.