Well, on with life...
Sep. 9th, 2004 09:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsWell, some crises are taken care of and others are festering like old shoes-- the car's in the shop for the warning light and the ringing noise, and the tune-up's only four months away so maybe, if the warning light isn't too expensive we'll just bite that bullet now and have it done.
I had two writing sessions yesterday and their contrast is most illuminating. The first half-hour, I wrote 61 words. Yeah, you read that right: sixty-one. I was struggling for an opening. I have no idea where the story is going, but I really needed Polly's depression to feel visceral, and after listening to the NPR show yesterday on opening first lines I decided I wanted to really get it right.
In the second session, on the way home, I had another half hour and I wrote 14,91 words or so. They all seemed to come concisely out of that opener, and the way it's set up. I'm a little worried about whether or not I'm doing the characters I've set up the correct amount of respect. Rhiane is a bit of a fragile girl at this point, and Ilonca's brassy facade may be just a facade. We shall see. Polly's really the nifty character though; I got him drunk and he just blossomed with this great, rambling sexist rant. A good hook to build off, especially if he's trying to get into Rhiane's skirts.
I finished lesson 38 of my Japanese classes; I'm a bit behind schedule, but the skills are still building, rather than fading. That's reassuring. And as I said, when I listen to anime, especially girls' anime where they speak more formally than boys do, I can pick up most of what they're saying now, so long as there aren't too many nouns. And the vocabulary of SF anime, even girls' SF anime like Stellvia, leaves me a bit perplexed. And I learned the suggestive tense-- "Let's do..." I also learned (from watching an episode of Marimite) that there is a future tense, used for emphasis. Not the "I'll watch this (at some time in the near future)," which is indistinguishable from the present tense, but "I will watch this," with some emphasis on real desire, and it seemed to be distinct from the "I want" tense. Must look it up, but I left my Bleir's Japanese Verbs at home.
Omaha had her weekly meeting, so I made dinner: tuna noodle casserole, quick and easy and still mostly home-made, with bread crumbs instead of cheese on top. Omaha perfers it that way, and has even made a recipe card with her version on it, so we can agree on how to make it. After dinner, Omaha, Kouryou-chan and I sat down to play a game of Life, a thirty-year-old version that doesn't include career changes or mid-life crises. Hardly realistic. But it's really a good test for Kouryou-chan, who needs to do math like "You have 50,000; how do you get 30,000 out of it?" She's really learning now. She read a whole book to me last night; a short Little Critter story but, wow. She reads for content. It's cool.
There was supposed to be an LJ meet-up in Fremont tonight for anime fans; there are 71 people registered on the meet-up list according to the website, but as of 10:00pm last night I was the only person signed up to attend. Unless that number changes drastically before the end of the workday today, I guess I'm just gonna fret about the car.
And now I need coffee...
I had two writing sessions yesterday and their contrast is most illuminating. The first half-hour, I wrote 61 words. Yeah, you read that right: sixty-one. I was struggling for an opening. I have no idea where the story is going, but I really needed Polly's depression to feel visceral, and after listening to the NPR show yesterday on opening first lines I decided I wanted to really get it right.
In the second session, on the way home, I had another half hour and I wrote 14,91 words or so. They all seemed to come concisely out of that opener, and the way it's set up. I'm a little worried about whether or not I'm doing the characters I've set up the correct amount of respect. Rhiane is a bit of a fragile girl at this point, and Ilonca's brassy facade may be just a facade. We shall see. Polly's really the nifty character though; I got him drunk and he just blossomed with this great, rambling sexist rant. A good hook to build off, especially if he's trying to get into Rhiane's skirts.
I finished lesson 38 of my Japanese classes; I'm a bit behind schedule, but the skills are still building, rather than fading. That's reassuring. And as I said, when I listen to anime, especially girls' anime where they speak more formally than boys do, I can pick up most of what they're saying now, so long as there aren't too many nouns. And the vocabulary of SF anime, even girls' SF anime like Stellvia, leaves me a bit perplexed. And I learned the suggestive tense-- "Let's do..." I also learned (from watching an episode of Marimite) that there is a future tense, used for emphasis. Not the "I'll watch this (at some time in the near future)," which is indistinguishable from the present tense, but "I will watch this," with some emphasis on real desire, and it seemed to be distinct from the "I want" tense. Must look it up, but I left my Bleir's Japanese Verbs at home.
Omaha had her weekly meeting, so I made dinner: tuna noodle casserole, quick and easy and still mostly home-made, with bread crumbs instead of cheese on top. Omaha perfers it that way, and has even made a recipe card with her version on it, so we can agree on how to make it. After dinner, Omaha, Kouryou-chan and I sat down to play a game of Life, a thirty-year-old version that doesn't include career changes or mid-life crises. Hardly realistic. But it's really a good test for Kouryou-chan, who needs to do math like "You have 50,000; how do you get 30,000 out of it?" She's really learning now. She read a whole book to me last night; a short Little Critter story but, wow. She reads for content. It's cool.
There was supposed to be an LJ meet-up in Fremont tonight for anime fans; there are 71 people registered on the meet-up list according to the website, but as of 10:00pm last night I was the only person signed up to attend. Unless that number changes drastically before the end of the workday today, I guess I'm just gonna fret about the car.
And now I need coffee...
