Quiet morning so far. …

Quiet morning so far. Kevin took the baby for most of last night because I was just so exhausted; my throat's a bit sore, and I think I have a bit of a cold. Although maybe the tiredness is just because I've started exercising again -- if I'm stopping breast-feeding, I'm not automatically burning all those lovely extra calories. And I really would like to lose those remaining twenty pounds of baby weight. So it's back to trying to eat sensibly and exercise some for me. Sigh. Gods, I've loved just slathering on the delicious butter and cheese the last six months -- "Hey, it's not for me, it's for the baby!" :-)

So far, I'm all about the exercise you can do at home, because somehow getting dressed and packing up baby and puppy and even just going for a walk generally seems like too much effort. So I've been playing Dance Dance Revolution; Kevin's family got him a Wii for his birthday, and the game is definitely harder when you add hand movements to the dance steps. I've done an hour a day the last two days, which is plenty to make out-of-shape me break into a fine sweat -- we'll see if I can keep it up.

I spent a little while this morning being totally girly and shopping for cute baby hair bows of all things; trying to finalize Kavi's Xmas outfits, since if we want a family photo for the holiday cards (yes, cheesy, but I love the cheese), we need to get cracking on that. I know, I know, it's not even November, but it takes time to get the photos done, then order and receive the cards, then actually write the cards and put them in the mail. I used to aim to have my holiday cards mailed out on December 1st -- if I'm going to manage that this year, I need to get going. The first tricky bit is finding someone to actually take the photo with us and baby and doggy -- I don't think you can take pets into places like Sears photo studio, which is where I'd otherwise go for this. I did manage to google one pet/kid-friendly photographer who'll come to your house and do a 20 minute photo session for $75, which is a reasonable option, but I think I'm going to see if I can con one of my friends who takes good photographs to attempt it first. If they fail, we'll try a professional. :-)

Not sure what I'm going to do today, exactly. Clean the house and do some laundry and cooking, but that shouldn't take more than a few hours. Jed is coming by, and if baby allows, I should try to do some writing. I workshopped the revised YA novel this past weekend, and by and large, they really liked it. Yay! There are many many small things to fix, though, and one or two medium things.

I need to make my main love interest more lovable, for example. How do you do that? Jennifer Cruisie has her protagonists rescue dogs -- I hate to have to rely on that, but I'm not too proud to do it if I can't come up with something better. Not sure this world has dogs, though. I suppose he could rescue a monkey. But wait, they're demon monkeys. That's not sympathetic! Oh, I'm so confused...

2 thoughts on “Quiet morning so far. …”

  1. Mary Anne,

    re the love interest – a question – do you need to make the main love interest more lovable to everyone? (readers and your characters) or more lovable to one (or a couple) of your characters? (and thus probably to the readers).

    i.e. I find women with glasses quite cute and lovable, a woman who smiles and laughs at the same time I do even more so. For me, though I like the kindness of a woman who helps animals – since I am deathly allergic to pets that’s actually not all that lovable a feature for me (since it bodes ill for a future of living together – I literally can stop breathing around too much pet dander & hair – so can’t have animals sleep with me etc).

    Anyway I’d suggest that you think about what small gesture or habit your protagonist would find completely and utterly lovable – even if it might not be (especially if) something that everyone generically thinks of. A physical habit that is endearing? A personal quirk that the protagonist thinks is cute (on the tv show Numb3rs the physicist friend often eats monochromatically – something that most others find very odd but his love interest finds endearing, she also puts up with his lack of an actual home for much of the series).

    (I don’t own a car – I’m hoping that someday I’ll meet a woman who finds that endearing vs. some signal of my potential lack of financial resources or manliness)

    Shannon

  2. Mary Anne Mohanraj

    Well, Shannon, it’s actually more that I’d like the readers to fall in love with the love interest. That’s a trickier problem tha making my protagonist do it, I’m afraid, and is unlikely to be universally successful. Still, that’s what I’m aiming for. 🙂

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