Snow!

Snow is in the air! As the weather report has been constantly reminding us, this is a very cold winter. It’s especially fun for the east coast where no one knows how to deal with it. The city of Philadelphia has voluntarily shut itself down twice in the past few weeks. First the polar vortex, then just regular winter storms. It’s been pretty cold out here.

What’s hilarious about this is that I moved away from the polar north (i.e. Wyoming) to get away from cold winters. They seemed to have followed me. For a while I was pretending that it wasn’t that cold for the purposes of justifying my exodus. Now that reality caught up with me I’m just going to wallow.

The pictures are from my tree just outside my window from the last storm. As you might see from the second picture it had a lot of ice. So much ice that the tree is no more. It split in half and now instead of having a few of a flowering cherry tree in the spring and summer I get an uninterrupted view of the parking lot. Yippee! At least I got awesome pictures before it died. 

On top of that the city has so many streets that plows just can’t make it. Mammoth Hot Springs, where I grew up, has ninja plowpeople who get the snow off the streets sometimes before it’s even fallen. The six Philly plows currently in operation are a little behind when it comes to blizzards. Some of the back roads are clogged for days until someone can get to them. Where it’s personally inconvenient is when I want to go out walking I’m having to wade through ankle deep snow with cars that are sliding in every direction. I always wanted to risk my life for exercise!

Anyhow, other then that the snow is beautiful and I’m just enjoying bundling up through another winter. Luckily it isn’t -1,000,000 like it is in my hometown so I can still go outside. I’m thinking positive thoughts people!

Edits- Structure vs Shine

As everyone knows at this point, I’m editing a novel. You might have gotten a few clues from how I keep whining about it. Since it’s already a trend I don’t feel comfortable changing it up at this point. Thus I’ll be whining from here to eternity, or at least until it’s done.

I had a lot of really big plans when I started off. Previously I’ve only ever done cosmetic edits. The one major edit that I tried totally wrecked the novel by not maintaining the tone and humor of the 1^st draft. I really didn’t want to make that mistake again. I was going to do spruce up the language, cut down the chaff scenes, and just in general shine it up.  Plus I would make tone clearer instead of working against it.

Turns out it didn’t need a coat of shine. That would be like doing a facelift on a patient with a leg coming out of her ear. As I went  through the 1^st draft I kept thinking ‘This should not happen here. It should happen a lot earlier’. So reorganizing became the name of the day. Plus I had a lot of interesting stuff happen off screen. That’s really silly considering it was more interesting then what we happening onscreen! I’ve decided to call this stage a structural edit. Things are getting moved around and a lot of new content is being written.

Recently I came across a scene that made my editing fingers itch. It was bloated, over done, and just begging to get fixed. I looked at my timer and the list of things I needed to do that day and let it go after making sure it was internally consistent. *sigh*. Now multiply that by a couple of hundred and that’s what I’m looking at in the future.

So it’s not quite going how I expected it, but I’m pretty sure that’s okay. At least I know what I’m doing in my next draft! Until next time friends.

Riding Bikes and Slowing Down

Growing up you couldn’t get me off my bike. Despite being incredibly uncoordinated I loved having my own form of transportation. A little bit of independence. I took corners too sharply, went way too far from home, and generally got into all sorts of trouble. If you ask nicely I can still show you the scars.

When I got a little older thinks conspired against me biking wise and my love affair waned. My last clear memory of biking was on a frontage road in Paradise Valley Montana. It was just as beautiful as it sounds. The grasses had dried to a golden brown and the air had just a hint of the coming winter. I got left behind by my mom and her friend and I was slowly paddling along, enjoying the beauty and using my imagination to fill the empty places in that remote place. Then these two ladies came roaring out from behind me. “Speed up slowpoke!” my mom’s friend called. “I’ve carting a baby and I’m going faster then you!” It was the last I biked for fun. Since then it was just a grinding way to get from point A to point B.

Anyone who know me can tell you that I do everything at top speed. I’m a firm believer that if it’s worth doing it must be even better to do it ten times fast. So it’s bemusing to look back and realize how many times I’ve burnt myself out on something I love. It wasn’t enough that I was exercising, I had to do it for two hours a day in every conceivable way. It wasn’t enough that I was writing, I had to write 8-12K every day. My expectations were impossible to keep up with.

At the risk of sounding like a fortune cookie one thing that I keep coming back to is how I can be so focused on the end result that I forget to enjoy the journey. I thought if I just pushed myself harder I could outrun everything else. Well, the worst always catches up with me. Now I’m trying to enjoy the moments in between.