Thursday, July 26, 2012

So we're back, and glad to be - a fun road trip indeed.

Bah Hahbah was delightful, if indistinguishable from Ogunquit, KBP, Rocky Neck and a bunch of other places. We caught an improv comedy show Saturday night, staffed by refusgees & wannabes from Second City - in fact it is apparently their Class A training team. Lots of fun. 

St. Andrews NB is home to Kingsbrae Garden, well worth a slight detour off the highway, and a couple of hours peruse.

Amherst NS is well worth stopping in on the way from someplace to someplace else if you've run out of energy and just need to pull in somewhere for the night. Windy as a bastid though, and home to windfarms.

Moncton was a mere sign on the highway.

Halifax is biggish, and urbanish (it's easy to get hooked on the "ish" like in Antigonish). Some interesting architecture, some history, buskers (girl about 13 with braces & uke, any number of fiddlers). Took the "Harbour Hopper" tour, the Haligonian version of Duck Tours - was fun. We lost in Halifax, ventured out without streetmap, got turned around & took 45 minutes on foot to find the car. But - it was fun (NOW it was fun).

Annapolis Royal was delightful - small, entirely manageable on foot, interesting (but not fascinating) late 18th & early to mid 19th C. architecture; terrific earthen fort (Fort Anne, French, 18th C).

Visited the historic Gardens in Annapolis Royal - absolutely lovely.

Visited the Fundy Tidal power facility & learned that as a prototype it has taught us that tidal power on the B of F is not practicable with turbine technology.

Visited Port Royal (Habitation) 1930s recreation of the buildings from 1605 that the French fur trappers built, and that the Brits destroyed when they sailed up from Jamestown and stole all the trappers stuff (they - the trappers) were not home at the time.

Drove down to Digby NS (scallop capital of Canada, perhaps the world) & caught the ferry to St. John. Digby is notable ONLY as a town you have to drive through to get to the ferry.

The ferry was a nice boat ride indeed. Good WX, windy as a bastid.

St. John is largeish, industrialish, gritty, not worth going to, but worth passing through.

Straight shot home from StJ - back down to Calais, across to Bangor on Rte 9, I95 down to 101, home again, home again, jiggety jog.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Ya gotta love this.


I had a tag line on my work email; lots of people do. We shift them and change them around. Lately I've had a quote from John Barth:

"In art, as in lovemaking, heartfelt ineptitude has its appeal, as does heartless skill, but what you want is passionate virtuosity." - John Barth"

It's been there for a few months now. I was just told by my boss that HR complained (didn't say whether someone else had complained, but I suspect that's the case). So I've removed it, and put "this space intentionally left blank" - I suspect I'll be told to remove that too.

Sunday, July 8, 2012

Well they (writing coaches, teachers, fellow writers, people who write books on writing like Stephen King, etc.)


Well they (writing coaches, teachers, fellow writers, people who write books on writing like Stephen King, etc.)
always threaten that it'll come - the "AHA!" moment, when you've been wrangling and wrestling with a plot point (or an entire story arc) or a character issue or some continuity glitch, whatever - you'll hassle with it and worry it to a nub, and walk away fuming, time after time, and then leave the WHOLE GODDAM MESS to just lie there and ferment - all the while promising you'll get bck to it (sincerely promising, I might add, this is not an exercise in procrastination but real, dedicated effort frustrated by "process"). So you walk away. Then you walk back, and you poke and you tinker and you bitch and you moan and you walk away again, and you mutter and you grumble, and then you sit down again and look at all the shit you've got, and you maybe start another "Yet Another Take on the Plot Issues of my Great American Yatta-Yatta" and if it's the right time of the right day, you type out "What if...." followed by something that screams back at you "YES!!! That's IT!!! And what took you so long, you DUMB SHIT???"


I got a great deal done today, between reading & critiquing on group members stuff, and working toward pulling the trigger on the "real" D2 of TWD. I had the "AHA" moment, and I know what the real macguffin is, now just sorting out which plotlines to tweak and which to ditch. I think I'm onto something, and it was obvious, and archetypal, and staring me in the face all along.