behindtheax

It's hot

This is when the school kids start scrambling to make friends with the ones with pools. Back yard pools are a rare thing in the city but there are a few in this neighbourhood and my kids have been lucky with an invite here and there. Heat and haze and thirsty long neck pansies and browning grass. Summer is here and this old house is like a sauna. I am not complaining though because I love the sun and I love sitting under the grape vines at night when things start to cool down. Greg has strung little clear lights all though the branches and it is pretty sitting beneath them. It was a nice weekend. Greg’s parents are up and the visit is going very well. I was also at this silent auction fundraiser on Friday night and picked up a new acoustic guitar for a quarter of its actual price. I guess no one else wanted a guitar that evening? Erin has been studying guitar all year at school, so now she has one here if she wants to continue with it and Monica has been playing with it, making us laugh by making up songs with this put on country twang. Her new CD will have song titles such as, “I’m rounding up the cattle without you.” She is a bit of an entertainer.

I am also happy that I'm finally making a bit more progress with this short story that I have been playing with for over a month called “The man in the field.” However, I am finding this “show the story, not tell the story,” a lot harder to do than it sounds. I keep wanting to give a long detail history to every character and I catch myself time and time again deleting paragraphs of rambling background that the story doesn’t need. I have been thinking a lot lately about what to do with my cache of writing from over the years, in particular two short chapter books (I think for the age eight – twelve group) and I am debating if Lulu.com is maybe a place for them? That is after I do a complete editing job on both and find an illustrator to help me with the covers. Not there yet, just pondering if this might be something to toil at. A couple of months back I wrote a fantasy story for this summer contest that Gryphonwood was having, where a monster had to be pivotal to the plot and I won!! I have a small fear that I may have been the only one who entered but still I am very pleased. Maybe Fantasy is my niche? After getting the news I got excited about possibilities and went combing through my collection and what I found is that although my writing doesn’t hold up in a lot of my stories, the stories themselves do – I still like most of them but they all require a major rewrite. Anyway, lots to do this morning and none of it is writing. Sigh!

posted by mary j. @ 10:07 AM