Personal Update:
You may not be seeing much of me on Twitter, this blog, and so forth for a while. I’m head-down in a new project, and can’t type fast enough to keep up. 12,582 words since the first of October, and they’re good. They’re done. They’re finished words. Unless I find some fine new golden thread in the story somewhere that needs to be teased out into the front of the tapestry a time or two behind me, I won’t change any of the first five chapters. So, yeah… see you about the middle of November! I’m always on the BlackBerry, of course, and I always check @replies and DMs, so if someone really wants to bug me, there you go.
A Wee Bit o’ Writerly Technique:
Just for fun, before I dive back in. My son (in his capacity as beta reader)(don’t laugh — my family are well read and insightful, and not at all afraid of me. They make great beta readers), read the following passage:
“Matt? … Matt, it’s your mother. Pick up, ok? … Ok, listen, Matt, I know this is tough, but come on, you can’t just drop off the face of the Earth, ok? You know she wouldn’t want that. Matt, pick up… Ok, I’m coming over. I know you’re there. I’m coming over. Just wait for me, ok? Matt? … Wait for me, ok?”
His comment was “Matt’s mother says ‘ok’ a lot,” and I said “Yes. Because people do that when they’re concerned about the validity of what they’re saying.”
When a dyed-in-the-wool sexist offers up his advice on women, when a geek talks about the superiority of Wintel-based machines vs Macs, when a preacher rolls his words out over the heads of his flock, you won’t hear a lot of you know, ok, like, ok, you know? We do that to seek affirmation when we’re not sure of the truth of our statements. So to write a worried mother, not at all certain that her son is, in fact, going to be all right when she calls, yes, I will use 5 ‘ok’s and 6 question marks, ok?
