Characters

So apparently one of the teenagers in my house started this thing on facebook (or brought it to the house's attention; I'm not quite sure. Facebook isn't my strong suite.). The challenge runs thus: to name 15 fictional characters that have influenced you, or your life. Not just ones you really liked...no, actual influence. And not to spend much time thinking about it. The latter stipulation guarantees that I'll later gasp at some odd moment tomorrow and go "how could I not have put X on my list?!" but so it goes.

So of course I had to do mine (again in no particular order):

1. Tremaine Valiarde
2. Kade Carrion
3. Aslan
4. Raamo
5. Eponine
6. Javare
7. Phèdre nó Delaunay de Montrève
8. Tanaros Blacksword
9. John Ross
10. Catherine Chandler
11. Adrick
12. The Doctor
13.Menoly
14. Martin the Warrior
15. Bastian

I posted a reply on facebook, but I don't have any faith in that strange bewildering site, so I am posting here as well. So, anyone know where my various characters came from? What would your list be?

A New Job

Today I had my first day as administrative assistant at the law office. Hurray for a new job! It's part time which suits me great. I go in long enough to get stuff done and not long enough to be counting down the hours and minutes till I get to go, and then I have enough day left to go off to a coffee shop and write.

That's the theory anyway. Today I went to a coffee shop and updated my novel's files so all the work I did for writing sample would be integrated into the current working draft of the novel (they'd been separate files since the working drafts were divided by chapter and the writing sample was one continuous file I was monitoring for word count. But the latter had all the recent proof reading and editing.) Next I stared at the current chapter. I went over some planning notes for the novel. I stared at the current chapter some more. Then I checked email and did web stuff. I glared at the current chapter.

I did do some work on what will likely be the next chapter. That one's going to be about as tricky as this one. But I'm hoping the one after that will go more smoothly. I'm trying to resist the urge to skip ahead since one of the primary goals with this particular writing project is to practice continuity of beginning to middle to end. Most of my drafts suffer from this urge to skip around.

I think tomorrow I'm going to have to put into effect a "no internet until the first page is written" rule. With the last chapter, once I got it going again, I wrote it all the way to the end, and that one had been stuck for months.

Anyway, I'm very hopeful, both for my chances of having focused writing time and at the prospect of having some income.

Death of a Car

A few short months ago I posted here about our first ever car, our shiny red Geo Metro. Ok, run down but nevertheless rather cute Geo Metro.

Now, the car is dead. It successfully took us on a short road trip to Sacramento and back for Thanksgiving. It sounded as fine as it ever does.

The day after we returned we went shopping (unsuccessfully, I might add). On our way back from the mall, we turned a corner, continued a little ways down the block, heard a terrible wrenching noise, and coasted to the shoulder of the road.

I'm thankful there was a shoulder of the road to coast to because we were there for about an hour before the tow truck found us. Anyway, getting home that night was a bit of an adventure, but we managed it.

The car has a busted transmission. I don't know much about cars, but everyone we've asked has heard "transmission" and then asked when we're buying our new car. So apparently we're in the market for a new car already.

Not that I'm not grateful for our cute cheap little first car. It got us going, it launched Ron into the working world. And the price was definitely right. Now we'll have to see what we can find for the next one.

Application Away

After much frantic work, days of rewrites and late nights of editing, I sent in my application to the creative writing fellowship at Stanford. I've been dreaming about this fellowship for years, before I'd even moved back to the bay area. At last I've actually applied. If I got it, it would mean two whole years of being able to do nothing but ply my craft, writing novels. I even know which ones I would finish first.

So keep your fingers crossed. Many will enter, only five will win. It feels a little like fiction writer's lotto.

Love and thanks to everyone who was an extra set of eyes as I did the last frantic days of proofreading!

I have to admit to some humor (and occasional exasperation) as different people's views of grammar, comma usage, style etc came into conflict over proofreading. One person said I was abstaining from commas and had me add scores of the things (I refused a fair few, but added quite a number). The next person to set eyes on it said I sprinkled commas in like salt! One short paragraph drew particular attention--the grammar was wrong but, debatably, within the bounds of poetic license. Firm lines were drawn up with two for and two or three against. In the end, I yielded the field and fixed the grammar. I don't think the feel of the scene suffered too much for it!