you broke the boy in me but you won't break the man

I had a fantastic day in the city of sin. San Francisco has been incredibly warm for the last couple of weeks, and I decided to take advantage of the sunshine by walking down to Union Square. I spent a couple of hours at Samovar in Yerba Buena Gardens, eating overpriced food, drinking overpriced tea, and working on my novel. Even though the food is overpriced, it's quite tasty; my salmon quiche was great, as was my cherry oat scone, and both the pot of English Breakfast tea and the later cup of masala chai were excellent. I will say that their cups leave something to be desired; the handleless earthenware mug that my chai came in was so hot that I thought it was going to burn my fingers, which explains why handles became an accepted innovation. But the atmosphere was good for writing, and that's all that matters.

After a couple of hours, the place was starting to get too crowded with tourists (yes I will scoff at them even though I'm about as midwestern as they come), so I vacated and went in search of a couple of card stores that I wanted to check out. Paperwhirl and Avant Card are both on Grant Avenue within three blocks of each other, just below the gates to Chinatown. I spent well over an hour browsing their selections, which was totally unnecessary and totally fun. While neither of them had a great selection of blank/non-themed cards (since I want to send random cards, and not be limited to once-a-year birthday cards), I did pick up my Christmas cards for the year. If Crate and Barrel already has their Christmas ornaments out (I swung through the store and browsed, although I didn't buy anything), I can buy my Christmas cards before Halloween. When I'm going to write them, I don't know -- the book has to be the focus for now. But at least they are sitting on my desk, so I can write them if I'm in the mood.

I spent the rest of the day at home; I took a nap after I walked back to the apartment, then took a bubble bath, then spent five hours working on the book. I'm reworking Malcolm's train of thought through the book, which is an interesting editing experience -- it's a combination of adding or changing single lines in some scenes, and adding or deleting whole paragraphs in other scenes, so that the overall narrative arc paints a different picture. I think I'm getting close -- I need to write a completely new scene from scratch and add a few lines to one of his closing scenes, but it's not bad. My goal for tomorrow is to finish that and do the rest of the main edits that I've highlighted for myself, so that I can spend next week/weekend doing another line-edit and final polish. Then it's time to start querying agents...ugh.

Yesterday was good too, but I was exhausted and fell asleep while watching a tivo'd episode of Craig, so I didn't blog. Work was bleh, but I had a long dinner with Terry and Lauren (aka Subz) -- Subz was on sabbatical and just got back this week, so it was great to catch up with her over margaritas and enchiladas at Fiesta del Mar. Nathan showed up about halfway in, so I got to see him as well for the first time in a couple of months. It was a great way to start the weekend, particularly since the rest of the weekend is meant to be v. hermitlike. Now, though, I should go to bed so that I can get up tomorrow and keep writing. Goodnight!