Holiday Period

Whatever holidays you celebrate in this season….or firmly avoid, in this season…I wish you all as pleasant a passage from December to the New Year as possible.  We will be having a quiet holiday season, since we can’t drive at night and thus can’t go to the Sing-Along Messiah, or any performances, or attend the late service Christmas Eve.  I’m just a wee bit sad about that.  I LOVE that service.  I sang that service for years and years and years and miss it.

But still, the season is the season and it’s silly to ignore what we can have, including the streaming of that service from the cathedral in Washington, D.C.

Meanwhile the rewriting goes on.  First rewrite–better but not enough.  Second rewrite–better here and here but still problems in these other places.  So I’m working on it.  There is a sort of slump in the middle, my agent says, and–thinking about it–I can see what he means.  It doesn’t slump in my mind–I know there are things going on, but to my agent they seem kind of “busywork by minor characters”.   People going back and forth…stage business sort of.  OK.  That’s because the underside is busily making trouble, but it’s still hidden, a lot of it.  So bring that up to the surface.  Find the right characters to discover it, the right villains to leak it in conversation somewhere–or just show them directly.  I have two, at present, that I can use for that.

10 thoughts on “Holiday Period

    1. Agent isn’t involved in the actual revisions; he just tells me what isn’t working And it’s not “just to keep the story moving” but to make it more like fiction and less like nonfiction. Plain narration (no dialogue) even when it includes interior thoughts, memories, etc. is more like nonfiction in its “weight.” It’s more telling than showing. Sometimes telling is the quickest, slickest way to cover a given piece of narrative ground…but it’s also less “alive.” Nonfiction writers often use fictional techniques and vice versa, bringing in interviewees with quotes…dialogue.

      Agent doesn’t know what I’ve done in revision yet, and won’t until I send it to him.

  1. Did you ever, for your own fun, write out the battle at the end of “Kieri’s First Command “?? And which of Julius Caesar’s battles did you choose to have Kierie’s unit in the role of “The 10th Legion to the rescue “, saving the day?

  2. Elizabeth, are you familiar with Mr Iceland? I’m watching Megan Elphick’s final Vlogmas. The way he is showing her how to ride the Icelandic horse is TOTALLY different than what I’ve ever seen. Gives me totally different ideas about your horse nomads.

    1. I also watched her final Vlogmas vids on Mr. Iceland. Loved the last one in particular. Went out and tried (though I don’t have a riding hall where I can be with him w/o Rags around) seeing if I could “lower my energy” etc. I had, from some source I can’t now remember, read (and also heard) about the importance of breathing with horses, both while riding and while working with them generally. The just being with the horse and waiting for it to come to you is part of an older thing…Oh, I know…I have two books by an English writer, who was very traditional-training-styles in one way and very untrad in others. For instance, his approach to working with a young “spoiled brat” stallion was to turn him into a field of older mares. Who thumped him and nipped him and weren’t intimidated at all. After that, the horse was “glad” to be rescued by a mere human, and training went on easily. To teach leading, he’d halter a foal and tie the lead rope to a mare’s tail with enough room it could nurse or just stay sorta close, or follow along. But he was an outlier, and Mr. Iceland is a bit more outlier than the others. But effective.

  3. To all who may be snowbound today, unable to be with the people you wish; to any whose electric power has been cut off (if you can read this at all): this is what it means, “there was no room at the inn”. Celebrate!

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