Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Squeezing It Out

Squeezing It Out

Well, Chapter 1, Part 2 of Worst Luck is up and ready to read. It's pretty short. I've been working on it the last few days, though considering my busy weekend and the time it took me to complain about my busy weekend, I didn't have all that much time to spend on it. Still, I feel like I've been sitting on the toilet for hours and hours with the Reader's Digest, straining and pushing, and only producing the merest wee little turd.



But I am already seeing the benefit of writing this first draft in a blog... along with the actual audience of specific people I know who will read it, there is the implied audience (whom I imagine clamoring and foaming at the mouth with anticipation for the next installment) that has been imaginarily egging me on to squeeze out this wee little turd of fiction; and so rather than letting the story languish as I ordinarily would when nobody besides myself knows of its existence, I went ahead and squeezed it out.



And aside from the wonderful creative feeling of putting real words (and a few I made up) onto the cyberspace equivalent of paper, this project has really given me something to think about besides my daily run of worries and amusements. For example, I discovered I'd have to get rid of a plot-point that I was going to depend on when I asked my uncle (the cop) if the court would impound property after granting bail to prevent a flight-risk from absconding (it wouldn't... if the flight risk was too great, the court wouldn't have granted bail in the first place); this slight disappointment, though, opened the door for a few interesting legal arguments that I am going to think through to see if I can use them.



I still need to find out more about the criminal legal system, aside from just watching Law & Order and/or any of its many spinoffs. I plan on taking some Fridays off during the summer and attend arraignments and trials in San Francisco to get a better atmospheric feel for the place as well as gaining some familiarity with the criminal process. Plus, I have to figure out how to get either a reliable description or an in-person tour of the inner workings of the police department and city jail.



It's all so very fascinating.



Other than the novel, nothing much has gone on in the last three days except the purchase yesterday at lunch-time of an utterly immense silver ring set with the biggest garnet I've ever seen complemented with turquoise beads and lavender CZs (you can see it here). I've got to do something about my shopping practices... the ring was only thirty bucks, but it will cost more to be sized up (it's much too heavy for my pinkie); besides, these things add up after a while (on top of the seven videos and four books I've bought this pay-period, there are also a bunch of gifts and meals I've bought in the past few days). If I keep shopping at this speed, I'll never get my credit-cards paid down or get any cash saved up for dental work or car emergencies.



There I go again with the daily worries. Back to the world of Danny Vandervere with me.



Toodles!



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