Note 1: Nyah, nyah to those of you predicting bad weather for this weekend. It was glorious.

Note 2: Apparently it was glorious across the entire country this weekend. Apart from a burst of chat on one list, I think I got a total of fourteen e-mails this weekend, and ten of those were spam.

Note 3: Shopping! The stores are finally starting to have a few things I like. It's been a bitter struggle since the diet. I had to get rid of 80% of my wardrobe and I've been searching desperately for replacement items for the last ten months. I haven't been lucky with blouses or shirts yet, but should the weather decide to take a turn for the chilly, I'm good for sweaters.

Note 4: Yes, I did in fact spend another glorious, sunny Sunday writing. Due to various bursts of scribbling one or two evenings last week, as well as Sunday morning's usual hours-long stint, I had 37 pages of debris to key in yesterday.

Note 5: I really hate transcribing.

Note 6: On the other hand, I usually take advantage of the opportunity to do a bit of judicious editing (and pruning) when I have to key stuff in, which is all to the good for The Reader. Especially the pruning. The less of me the better, I always think.

Note 7: I didn't find much to prune or edit yesterday. It worries me when the first draft is so bland that there's no obvious idea for how to pep it up.

Note 8: I'm staying firm with my plan, though. I'm shoving the story down on paper, regardless. The theory is that if I have a solid grasp of the story structure and write to that structure, I should be able to fix any little deficiencies later.

Note 9: It's just a theory. There's a distinct possibility that it's not a reliable one.

Note 10: I lined all my color-coded index cards up, one after the other, on the floor yesterday and stared them. In the end, I decided that the original idea, that slashy bits should be used to cover any deficiencies or tedium in the case under investigation, was a wise one. I removed three cards marking character and/or plot development for the case and replaced them with four cards marking developments of the slash story. More sex, that's what I decided The Reader wants. Not the description of hours spent with bad guys.

Note 11: The key to writing a convincing "bad guy" character is to remember that everyone is the hero of their own story. I think my bad guys are one-dimensional because I forgot that. One of the main things I have to do in the Grand Edit is round them out a trifle.

Note 12: My writing, at least in this story, has all the characteristic earmarks of the enthusiastic but talentless amateur. The similes are banal, clichés appear on almost every page, the characters are generally lifeless, and the plot is far too linear, pushing on toward the last page with a relentless pace that even I, the Fond Author, find a bit mind-numbing to trace. However, I glance at Note 8 and remind myself that it's all part of the plan.

Note 13: It's important at this point to repeat something we covered in an earlier entry. It doesn't really matter if this story winds up "for the public" or not. I still maintain that no story that allows you to spend hours and hours messing around with color-coded index cards, pens, and post-it notes can be counted entirely as a waste of time. Even if I wind up tossing the story in the trash, it has to be said that I've had a lot of fun planning it.