The week in stress

I got my packet back from Pete on Thursday. He wrote a very nice letter about my work. I realized that I had gone kind of off the deep end trying to make sure I did as many revisions as possible before sending it to him. The result was that there were several parts of it that were virtually nonsensical. I didn't realize it till I read his letter and was upset about it. Then Marc read parts of my chapter out loud to me and I almost started laughing. It was just so out there.

Not the whole thing, though. Pete really liked the dialog . started revisions and it doesn't seem like it will be too hard to fix. I was able to create a guideline for myself to keep me at least somewhat grounded, which is I imagine that the narrator is telling the story to someone in particular. This keeps it intimate and makes going totally off in language land more difficult.

I am terrible at beginnings. I struggle with this with every chapter. Maybe I shouldn't even be distinguishing between chapters. Then nothing would be a beginning. I could do it later.

I saw Mindie on Wednesday. We talked for about three hours. She is going to a writers' retreat in September where Jack Driscoll and Dorianne Laux are going to be teaching. I'd like to go, but it's $525. I could ride up with her and she offered to share a room (otherwise it would be $625) but I don't know how I would convince Marc that I need to spend that much for a weekend workshop. But, I'll buy a lotto ticket and see what happens. heh.