I almost can't bear to look at any more words tonight, but I shall persevere for your sake (and for the sake of any arguments this blog post could settle years from now, since that's an unexpected side benefit of recording my whereabouts...but since I only saw two of the nicest people I know today, there are unlikely to be resultant conflicts).
But the word well is nearly tapped out - I got some good writing done, and I read two books, and I did a bunch of other word, so my eyes are starting to cross and my language processing centers are burned out. I spent the morning working at home, sustained by coffee and a granola bar (and later a homemade cobb salad). I also read most of a book that I had to judge for this contest, but eventually I realized that I was going to be super late if I read any more of it, so I showered and went down to San Mateo for a writing date.
Anne and Barbara were, as usual, delightful to hang out with - and for once I actually got some decent writing done, which is easier to do when we see each other more regularly and so have less to catch up on. It may have also helped that I decided to stay until 5:30 instead of trying to leave at 4 to beat traffic - traffic has consistently already been bad at 4, so today I decided to see what waiting did to the commute. I think it was lighter than it usually is anyway, but leaving at 5:30 was no worse than leaving at 4, and I got way more done. And I also had twenty minutes to talk to Anne at the end, which was good because I had some writing-related stuff to vent about and she's a v. good listener for that.
But I eventually left the peninsula and drove home, and it probably felt faster than usual because I talked to [censored] the whole way. I hadn't talked to him on the phone in ages, so we had a lot to catch up on. Then I got home, finished the book I'd started this morning (verdict: meh), took a break to read royal family gossip (très importante), and made a tuna sandwich before picking up the last book that I had to judge.
I had hoped I could just skim it, but I ended up reading most of it (all of it, but I skimmed bits), which took four hours. The prose was really pretty good and I liked a lot of the characters, but it's in the 'inspirational' category, which I've never judged before, and so the book by definition wasn't just about the hero and heroine's relationship with each other, but also about their relationships with God. This brought back bad flashbacks to my hometown library, and the horror that ensued when a new librarian took over when I was in high school, tossed almost all of the romance section, and replaced it with religious books. Sigh.
Still, most of the story was pretty good - although perhaps I should be taking away the message that I'm a bitter, vengeful heathen, but I find it a little difficult to believe that all of these people forgave each other for a lot of horrible things (dead secret babies, adultery, emotional abuse, etc.) after single, relatively brief conversations and a reminder that God is love. Good for them, I guess. But forgiveness is one thing....peace is quite another. And all the conflicts between all the characters wrapped up a little too quickly and conveniently for my liking.
However, there are worse ways I've spent four hours in the past, so I'll take it. And I entered my final scores just in time - interestingly, the two best books of the five were the two self-published ones (I'm including the inspirational that I read tonight as one of the two best). The other three were by publishing houses that have ebook-only lines, and the books were likely printed just to be entered into the contest - and I've got to say that I would never word for any of them, given the editing and formatting issues (and also the fact that going with an ebook-only press is pretty dumb, since you can do all of that yourself for more royalties, and the only advantage of going with a publisher right now is if they can put you in print and sell you to big stores like Walmart).
But enough of my inside-publishing talk - you don't care and I'm out of words. Goodnight!
But the word well is nearly tapped out - I got some good writing done, and I read two books, and I did a bunch of other word, so my eyes are starting to cross and my language processing centers are burned out. I spent the morning working at home, sustained by coffee and a granola bar (and later a homemade cobb salad). I also read most of a book that I had to judge for this contest, but eventually I realized that I was going to be super late if I read any more of it, so I showered and went down to San Mateo for a writing date.
Anne and Barbara were, as usual, delightful to hang out with - and for once I actually got some decent writing done, which is easier to do when we see each other more regularly and so have less to catch up on. It may have also helped that I decided to stay until 5:30 instead of trying to leave at 4 to beat traffic - traffic has consistently already been bad at 4, so today I decided to see what waiting did to the commute. I think it was lighter than it usually is anyway, but leaving at 5:30 was no worse than leaving at 4, and I got way more done. And I also had twenty minutes to talk to Anne at the end, which was good because I had some writing-related stuff to vent about and she's a v. good listener for that.
But I eventually left the peninsula and drove home, and it probably felt faster than usual because I talked to [censored] the whole way. I hadn't talked to him on the phone in ages, so we had a lot to catch up on. Then I got home, finished the book I'd started this morning (verdict: meh), took a break to read royal family gossip (très importante), and made a tuna sandwich before picking up the last book that I had to judge.
I had hoped I could just skim it, but I ended up reading most of it (all of it, but I skimmed bits), which took four hours. The prose was really pretty good and I liked a lot of the characters, but it's in the 'inspirational' category, which I've never judged before, and so the book by definition wasn't just about the hero and heroine's relationship with each other, but also about their relationships with God. This brought back bad flashbacks to my hometown library, and the horror that ensued when a new librarian took over when I was in high school, tossed almost all of the romance section, and replaced it with religious books. Sigh.
Still, most of the story was pretty good - although perhaps I should be taking away the message that I'm a bitter, vengeful heathen, but I find it a little difficult to believe that all of these people forgave each other for a lot of horrible things (dead secret babies, adultery, emotional abuse, etc.) after single, relatively brief conversations and a reminder that God is love. Good for them, I guess. But forgiveness is one thing....peace is quite another. And all the conflicts between all the characters wrapped up a little too quickly and conveniently for my liking.
However, there are worse ways I've spent four hours in the past, so I'll take it. And I entered my final scores just in time - interestingly, the two best books of the five were the two self-published ones (I'm including the inspirational that I read tonight as one of the two best). The other three were by publishing houses that have ebook-only lines, and the books were likely printed just to be entered into the contest - and I've got to say that I would never word for any of them, given the editing and formatting issues (and also the fact that going with an ebook-only press is pretty dumb, since you can do all of that yourself for more royalties, and the only advantage of going with a publisher right now is if they can put you in print and sell you to big stores like Walmart).
But enough of my inside-publishing talk - you don't care and I'm out of words. Goodnight!
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