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Wednesday, March 17, 2010

Indoors on St. Paddy's

It’s the second cold, grey day in a row. That’s another week of Florida cold, though winter is almost spring, and everyone here is more than ready to be warm. Ah, well. Not today. Lovely seashells on the table, however, remind me of the beautiful, not-too-long-ago, sunny--albeit cold--walk on the beach of St. George Island, a cheery thought to inspire me to count my blessings.

I rewrote one of my short stories on Monday morning. It works so much better that it’s like a brand-new story, and all it took was changing from a third-person omniscient narrator to a first-person point of view, letting one of the characters talk about another and, in doing so, reveal much more of himself than the eye-in-the-sky had revealed. Well, I say "all," but you understand that there was quite a lot involved, though the story practically wrote itself once I restarted in the right voice. That was gratifying. A less successful session followed yesterday morning, with the one last story that isn’t measuring up still not cured of its weaknesses or given any definite direction, but today I made great headway in what will be the final story of the cycle, the one that ties the others together. I like it. It’s surprising. It’s different.

Now from house to library, where I need to do a little research, but--the books I need are not available in Spring Hill or Weeki Wachee, so we will “have to” drive to Brooksville to get them at the main library there. Great! An excuse for a little county road trip!

The weather is still crummy, but the rest of life has taken a turn and is going more my way.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What pretty and cheery bowls of shells, and what a nice, newsy post. I am looking forward to reading these stories when they have allowed themselves to be fluffed up for company. I'm glad the work is going well.

Anonymous said...

Those sun-kissed seashells have the blush of summer sands and breezes upon them. It won't be long now before the warm weather settles in.

P. J. Grath said...

The shells do seem to hold summer, don't they? Another good work morning today, and we're headed to the dog park, despite more cold and grey clouds.

Anonymous said...

We've been to St. George Island! That's where Barry's parents stayed when they visited Florida. Barry just insisted you need to visit their park and "go fishin'"!