11.18.2011

Endless Devotion and other stories

Five years ago this afternoon, I sat in a coffee shop across from a reserved young man, sipping a mocha and hoping my green cowl-necked shirt looked cute enough. Lou seemed, like me, to be enjoying the fact that we'd progressed from his answering my questions about the Catholic Church—my ostensible reason for being there—to spilling life stories and talking over common experiences with sparkling warm eyes, which had much more to do with the real reason.

That day, I caught my first glimpse of happily-ever-after.

* * *

As of yesterday, I'm approximately halfway through my little novella—right on track to finish in early December.

Currently distracting me: my finished novel. It seemed wise to read through it again, since I worked on it for eighteen months without stopping, and golly... there's something about that story that makes me want to forget about food and sleep and the Internet and everything that makes demands on my time and devote myself to making every line perfect.

* * *

Writers' link of the week: Mike Duran on making the necessary sacrifices. On account of which, I have been thinking about deleting Tweetdeck from my computer. I tend to go to Twitter when I get stuck for ideas, and that's a dangerous wormhole straight to procrastination.

But that's another whole post, in which I go on debating whether Twitter is really worth my time as an aspiring author.

* * *

Music of the week: There's a free download of a Danny Schmidt song, all acoustic and poetic, over at the Franciscan Sisters of Christian Charity site. I don't know how long it will be up, but it's there as I write. H/T Mark Shea.

* * *

Funny of the week: If you watch more television than I do (shouldn't take much—I don't have a TV), you'll get more of these pairings of literature and pop culture than I did. But I still found some that made me laugh.

* * *

Now I've got a thousand words to write, more novel to read through, a house to clean and dinner to make and a bunch of cooked pumpkin to freeze.... that ought to fill the rest of my day.

Happy weekend!

6 comments:

  1. That's a unique way to hit on young men, asking them about Catholicism. Although the reserved ones are always the ones you want to watch out for. ;)

    I'm beginning to think I shouldn't give you any more book recommendations & should instead start pushing on you to finish your novels et al so that we can read them.

    Ah, television. I have a love/hate relationship with it. Just got satellite hooked back up yesterday after being off for 9 months or so. I could give it up completely except for sports.

    Although with my new Kindle Fire, I'm pleasantly surprised at the large number of shows I can watch on Amazon for free or at a low cost.

    Oh well, should probably get back to writing Advent sermons.

    ReplyDelete
  2. LOL, George. Hey, it worked. :)

    Yeah, my first novel is basically done. It's just that I'm the world's slowest querier. I need to get that thing out there.

    That Kindle Fire sounds pretty awesome.

    ReplyDelete
  3. So, we should take up a chant of "Query! Query! Query?" :)

    Yes, the Kindle Fire is awesome. The only downside to it, IMO, is it's only wireless; no 3G, so if you don't have access to a wireless network, you can't really use a lot of the bells & whistles.

    Although I understand why Amazon didn't include 3G with the Fire. With the ability to stream music & movies they would've been eating the cost of a lot of bandwith. Oh well, maybe in the next generation of Fire's, they'll allow you to pay for 3G.

    I've contemplated letting you have my old 2nd generation Kindle in order to lure you more deeply into eBooks. I'm still not sure, though, that I want to be that mean to you. Kindles are evil, of course, forcing one to buy lots of books because it's so darn easy. Although I have done a lot more reading since getting eBook readers. Perhaps not the reading I should be doing, though... ;)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Must. Query. Must. Query!

    We've talked about getting a Kindle for a while, so if you want to get rid of your old one, let me know the details and how much you want for it. :) I like Kindle for PC and use it now and again, but the reading on a computer screen is hard on the eyes. And portable as my laptop is, it's not something I carry around in my purse.

    Yeah, though, that at-your-fingertips thing is a powerful marketing tactic. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. That is so cute! I love it! Obviously your green cowl-neck was cute enough :)

    ReplyDelete

All comments are currently moderated. Friendly comments are welcomed with fairy music, magic wishes, and possible unicorn sightings. Troll comments will be Transfigured into decent-looking rocks or Vanished. Spam comments will be shot down with blasters.