Back Pedalling

http://www.myfirstbra.net/

O.K. Maybe some girls as young as eight do need a bra or camisole or something to cover themselves. I think I misspoke. Aren't we all glad we don't have to go through adolescence again? Yikes.

Thisbe is asleep in front of the screen again, but her tail is tucked around her feet and not lying across the keyboard.

Another more or less leisurely day. I am enjoying this. We ate tuna and noodles for dinner tonight. I don't use cream of mushroom soup (yech!) but make my own sauce, tonight from chicken broth and cream and season it with dried green and red pepper flakes, a pinch of cayenne, onion and whatever. Of course potato chips on top, although bread crumbs would be yummy, too. We had a fruit salad with freshly cooked cranberries, dried apricots, apple, clementine and pear. Delicous. Fruit salad is a neglected dessert, tasty and healthy. And one can always jazz it up with a cookie or two, right?

I signed up for an online writing class on beginnings. Instructive, I hope.

On the Gather site, I 've been reading some of the finalists who made it to the second chapter. Some are quite good--some talky, some full of action, most have a lot of suspense, no humor that I can see, workmanlike writing, no great literary distinction, but taken as a whole somewhat better than one would expect. Not what I would buy, but I like one or two of the entries quite a bit.

I think it takes something extraordinary to stand out from the crowd these days. I'm getting a little tired of women being killed in disgusting ways, tired of the hero or heroines significant other killed, tired of all the cliches trotted out, each with just a tiny twist. What if I'm getting tired of crime fiction?

Well, as they say, shit happens, and right now I'm reading about Sarah Winnemucca who was an influential woman in Western Nevada, a Paiute who lived not far from the Black Rock Desert. Hard to imagine tribes living out there, but they did. And I'm reading Proust, now into book 3, The Guermantes Way. Reading and not writing. Truth be told I'm not sure that I can write another book without some positive feedback coming my way. Maybe get to work on those short stories, none of which inspire. The blahs, the blahs! Another reason to suck it up.

New Year's Resolutions, anyone?