It’s a beautiful day! Summer (sic) has finally arrived in Half Moon Bay! The sun is warm, the breeze is mild, and I’m not leaving to go to work today!
Ben made a vegetarian chili last night, which I had for lunch today. Om nom nom. My favoritest co-worker ever brought me kefir* grains** this week, and I’ve started making kefir. I put a few spoonsful on top of the chili, just like it was yogurt or sour cream or, you know, kefir, and I ate it, and it was delicious. Mmm.
The other thing I did today was that I finally started the second draft of my vampire story, with a completely new main character. I’ve been putting it off for weeks (since my last post), because I don’t really want to re-write the whole damn story. But! It worked out pretty well today, sitting outside in the sun (mmm, warm), I managed to see the first scene, and then I started writing. It just kinda flowed. The new MC has a voice, which the last one didn’t, and I’m unreasonably amused by her. (Which makes me fear no one else will find her amusing… but that’s what third drafts are for!) I think I wrote about 1000 words*** today, and felt much better about it than I would’ve about rewriting 1000 words of the first draft.
(Incidentally, 1000 words is about a fifth of the rough draft–which doesn’t seem likely for this second draft, because I’ve only just gotten to the point where the first draft “started” [after I hacked off the initial two scenes that sucked†and therefore weren’t counted].)
And yesterday I looked up who Mandelbrot was, and decided that I like him quite well as a namesake for my MC. Who’s a girl. I dunno, the name popped into my head, that she’s called Mandy, and it’s short for Mandelbrot. And I couldn’t remember who Mandelbrot really was, so I was afraid he was a serial killer or something. But no, he’s the guy who discovered fractals, which works for me, though I haven’t figured out why her parents picked it.
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* It’s like yogurt, only runnier and different. This morning’s batch was solid and wobbly just like yogurt would be, though it fell apart when I transferred it to a different container.
** Kefir, you see, is also a bacterial growth, just like yogurt, but the bacteria grow these gel-like modules around them, which are called grains. It’s really strange, and looks a little like cottage cheese, and you strain them out before drinking the kefir (though you don’t have to), and then put them in a new container with new milk, and they keep growing. Yum. I’ll have to report more about this as I continue experimenting.
*** One of the troubles with writing long-hand is that you can’t give an actual number, without doing something dumb like counting. Computers count for you. Someday, maybe I’ll learn how to compose directly into a computer. My recollection is that I usually fit about 150 words into a page of my notebooks, and I filled 6 pages. But I seem to recall that sometimes the number was more like 200 or 250, and I don’t remember if that was in a different shape of notebook, or if it really varies that much depending on how big my words are.
†Ok, they didn’t so much suck as just not have a place in the story. I did keep them, because some of the description was relevant.