Five Things Make a Post
Dec. 11th, 2009 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrj1. Dad arrived for a week's visit (a wedding and a memorial) and told me all sorts of horror stories about his flights. On the other hand, if you're going to absent-mindedly pack a kitchen knife in your carry-on, you can't expect the trip to go completely smoothly.
2. Over lunch today I started matching names with characters on my Dramatis Personae list. I'm starting with the major characters and will fill in the minors as I do the revision I think. But I'm not quite ready for that as I need to work on surnames and place names as well. Also forms of address. Using the usual English words just doesn't feel right, so I think I once again need to pick some Latin roots and ring my changes on them and see how it looks.
3. Wrote another fill-in scene in Part I. It occurred to me that if one of the justifications for saddling the unexpected heiress with a professional bodyguard is the potential for abduction and forced marriage to gain control of her fortune, then it would probably be a good idea to actually have a foiled abduction somewhere in there, otherwise everyone looks unnecessarily paranoid. Besides, it means protagonist #2 gets to kill someone on-screen, and it may actually be her only chance to do so in the entire story. I'm sure it would be very frustrating to be a highly trained bodyguard and professional duelist and then not get to kill anyone on-screen in the entire book.
4. It's a good thing I like to do lectures fairly free-form and off-the-cuff, because when I got pulled in to do a training session on one day's notice, only got my hands on the powerpoint file hour before the training, half an hour later discovered that I would have no power except emergency lighting in the conference room (and therefore would need to print out the slides as handouts), and then got bumped from the room by a bunch of engineers halfway through the hour and needed to move the entire class to the break room instead ... well, let's just say that a rigid presentation format wouldn't have worked very well. Got some very useful questions as well.
5. Some friends sent me the following: my very own plush headless dancing chicken. (It has a purple tutu -- that's how you know it dances.) It was made by Stuffe & Nonsense. I don't think I'll take it in to work, but a better version of the picture may well become an icon.
2. Over lunch today I started matching names with characters on my Dramatis Personae list. I'm starting with the major characters and will fill in the minors as I do the revision I think. But I'm not quite ready for that as I need to work on surnames and place names as well. Also forms of address. Using the usual English words just doesn't feel right, so I think I once again need to pick some Latin roots and ring my changes on them and see how it looks.
3. Wrote another fill-in scene in Part I. It occurred to me that if one of the justifications for saddling the unexpected heiress with a professional bodyguard is the potential for abduction and forced marriage to gain control of her fortune, then it would probably be a good idea to actually have a foiled abduction somewhere in there, otherwise everyone looks unnecessarily paranoid. Besides, it means protagonist #2 gets to kill someone on-screen, and it may actually be her only chance to do so in the entire story. I'm sure it would be very frustrating to be a highly trained bodyguard and professional duelist and then not get to kill anyone on-screen in the entire book.
4. It's a good thing I like to do lectures fairly free-form and off-the-cuff, because when I got pulled in to do a training session on one day's notice, only got my hands on the powerpoint file hour before the training, half an hour later discovered that I would have no power except emergency lighting in the conference room (and therefore would need to print out the slides as handouts), and then got bumped from the room by a bunch of engineers halfway through the hour and needed to move the entire class to the break room instead ... well, let's just say that a rigid presentation format wouldn't have worked very well. Got some very useful questions as well.
5. Some friends sent me the following: my very own plush headless dancing chicken. (It has a purple tutu -- that's how you know it dances.) It was made by Stuffe & Nonsense. I don't think I'll take it in to work, but a better version of the picture may well become an icon.
