Finished revising “Girl…

Finished revising "Girl Meets Girl Meets Boy" this morning. Got rid of the journal and letter bits, put it all in third person limited (though I shift from one character to another partway through, and I'm not sure the transition is seamless), cut a thousand words. It's much better, but I'm not sure it's actually worth publishing yet. This is one of my oldest stories, and I have a great fondness for it, but I was a little shocked at how bad it was. It was stunningly dramatic -- one of the characters pretty much wept constantly, and she also shrieked; he shouted a few times. There was murder and mayhem and rape. There were transitions from high emotions to total calm in the space of a sentence. There were wild fluctuations in point of view with a callous disregard for readability. There was extremely implausible dialogue. Even on the technical level, there were errors that I can't imagine making now -- for example, thoughout I used this format:

"Yes." she said.

instead of:

"Yes," she said.

It was such a pain fixing all of those. I suppose in the end that I'm glad I've improved so much -- it was a good reminder that I have learned a few things since 1993. But I hadn't realized that I was ever quite so bad. Now I'm scared to look at any of the old stories that are up on this site.

Lisette's about to go off for a casting director audition -- if I understand this right, it's when you audition for a bunch of casting directors, in the hope that they'll be impressed and remember you for their next show. Once she leaves, I'm going to put the headphones back on and try to write a new story; I'm really dubious about the one I just revised, and I always like to send an editor multiple stories anyway, so they have some choice and so I don't just get shot down on the grounds of their already having a story just like this one. That's much less likely to happen if you send them two, or three. More than three is also bad, for different reasons. Unless they ask for more, of course. Then this evening, dinner with Zak and his wife. I may try to persuade them to go someplace with spicy food; Lisette doesn't like it (I trained her to eat curry back in high school, but she has fallen out of the habit), and I get cranky if I don't have my chili peppers pretty regularly.

Hollywood story #3: A friend of Lisette's who works as a make-up/hairstylist person came over this morning to do her up for the audition. Lisette asked her what she would do with my hair (currently down to my ass). She said that I could lose a foot of it. I laughed. I pointed out that without the weight pulling it down, it fuzzes out on either side of my head. She said that was what products were for; she started to go on to explain what I could use to keep my hair from doing that, but I cut her off, explaining that I was way too lazy to do anything of the sort. It's actually much easier having long hair, though no one ever seems to believe me on this. I also explained that as a writer, I had no obligation to be beautiful. She said that my friends would surely appreciate it if I tried.

I can't figure out how to explain what a disconcerting notion that is -- something along the lines of -- if my friends cared what I looked like, they'd be in big trouble. :-) I think I muttered something about my friends being all computer geeks, which seemed to satisfy her...I then escaped to check e-mail.

She was a very nice person; she just clearly lived in a different world, a world filled with beautiful people and those who aspired to be beautiful people.

Most days, I'll settle for not being repulsive or smelly people.

6:45. Finished a new story, "Beth and Julie's Wedding". At the moment, I think it's one of the best things I've ever written. I'll undoubtedly think better tomorrow, but in the meantime, woohoo! :-)

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