Stuff and Nonsense

First of all, have you heard the latest casting news about The Hunger Games?I like their choice for Peeta (left) and I can sort of see Gale (right), and I'm still not sure about Katniss (middle). But the people who are most important to me are Rue and Haymitch and Cinna. What about you?

I won't be doing much writing this week, unfortunately. I have a lot of work to do on my freelance project to meet an unexpected deadline. I'm also subbing an extra kickboxing class and some other things that will keep me busy. TCB will have to wait, and I hope it's better for having stewed in my brain a bit. Friday night I think I have a date with my manuscript.

It occurs to me that if I keep writing on Friday nights and Saturdays, maybe I should look into sexing up my work a bit, you know, to keep it interesting for me.

....

Right. First I'll work on having my protagonists share a Real! Live! Kiss! and not just an almost kiss. Baby steps.

I went home to Connecticut last weekend and dug up my end-of-semester summaries from my writing professors. THAT was a good reminder of how far I've come. There was a lot of, (I'm interpreting here) "You know how to make your writing sound like a story but the story itself isn't really there."

I also found evidence of the feud I had with the Head of the English Department, my poetry professor and a man I still love to hate. I wrote a poem in iambic tetrameter which was about finding meaning in life and overcoming thoughts of suicide and he made fun of it in front of the entire workshop. He was one of those people who thought if you hadn't read contemporary American White male authors then you have no clue what you're doing.

But I digress.

Last night I had more weird dreams. I've been having a lot of them lately. Last night's involved a trip to Japan where everything was sheathed in snow and ice. Holly Black was there, running a dumpling cart. The dumplings were expensive but I couldn't resist ordering one for me and Husband. I love Holly Black. I love dumplings. Win-Win, right? All I remember about the rest of it was that Husband was late, the dumplings took forever, and I attempted to make a joke to Holly, which fell flat. She just sort of looked at me for a moment and then went back to her dumplings. Since I've met Holly, I found this whole thing hilarious.

It's raining here in Vermont--a noted improvement from snow!

[Photos: GettyImages/WENN]