Well, dear readers, I am sitting here like so much fish, listening to American composer Quincy Porter’s concerto for viola and orchestra. We issued some Porter on Bay Cites and I really like his music so I’m thinking about issuing this along with a couple of pieces I love by Norman Dello Joio. Anyway, this is a lovely concerto any way you slice it and I slice it sideways. Prior to that, I was at the Coral Café with Doug Haverty – I brought him three album covers to scan for upcoming projects and I had my second chicken salad sandwich of the day and it was quite good. I also managed to watch the first twenty minutes of a Netflix documentary, thank goodness in one part and only eighty-five minutes, called The Hatchet-Wielding Hitchhiker. It’s interesting so far.
Yesterday, I got almost eight hours of sleep but was pretty tired for the day. I futzed and finessed the previous day’s writing, which didn’t take very long, and then off 100 pages went to Muse Margaret. Then I wrote about eight new pages. I had the first chicken salad sandwich of the day, had the first Muse Margaret telephonic conversation, and then plopped down on the bed for a minute that turned into two hours. Once back up, I had the second telephonic conversation, watched the twenty minutes of the documentary, and then went and met Doug at the Coral Café, after which I came right back home, which is where I happen to be at this precise minute.
The first telephonic conversation with Muse Margaret was great – she loved what she’d read of the 100 pages so far – about forty-five of ‘em. She had some tiny things that are easy to adjust and wanted me to give a bit more time to some secondary characters, just little things and that’s easy to do, too. So, that was lovely. The second telephonic conversation was a tiny bit of what I was fearing but she didn’t know if it was her being really tired or if what she was bothered by she was really bothered by. I suspect a bit of both, because what she was bothered by is similar to something she was bothered by in GEE and that was very easy to adjust. As I said, what she mentioned has been my biggest fear in this book, but we’ll talk in the morning after she’s read those pages again. Of course, it’s only a small portion of those pages, nothing major, and I’ve already gone through those pages and highlighted in yellow the cuts I think would be prudent to make, basically two to three pages and the cuts are literally so simple to make and I think it would alleviate the issue she thinks she had. And I think I’d like the cuts, too. I don’t want anything in the book to be a timewaster, no matter how much I may think I’d like to include it. Up to that point, I’d been pretty good about not doing that and again, very simple to adjust. But the fact that we’re both feeling a similar thing forced me to figure out how to negotiate the rest of the book and I came up with something I think will work really well and I’m really excited about it because it solves everything I was worrying about for the last sixty pages of the book. I’ll run that by Muse Margaret and I think she’ll like it, at least that’s the hope.
Today, I’ll be up by eight-thirty because she of the Evil Eye is coming and I must be out of the house by nine so I don’t incur the wrath of the Evil Eye. I’ll go have a light breakfast somewhere, do some stuff, then come back at noon and hopefully by then, Muse Margaret will have called and we can go through what I feel would be prudent cuts and she can tell me if she still feels what she felt and if she feels the handful of cuts will solve that issue. Then I’ll absolutely do fifteen pages. I’ll write most of the afternoon, take a break for a bit, and then continue writing for a few hours in the evening. Then I can watch, listen, and relax.
Tomorrow is more of the same, same with Thursday and then Friday or Saturday I’ll see the first cut of episode eight, which is a jam-packed episode, so I’m really looking forward to that.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up by eight-thirty, have a light breakfast, do stuff, have a Muse Margaret conversation and figure out a few things, write, take a break, write, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: What do you think are the absolute nadirs of the Internet and social media? Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have had two Muse Margaret conversations or as I like to call our conversations, The Muse and I.