Writerly Things

Been a bit since I did a personal update. Last week practically flew by; Saturday was a big game at work that we did for a promotional stunt to help one of our product sell a little better, and I spent the rest of the day kind of lazing around. Sunday, Liz and I met up with a real estate agent to get a better feel for what's out there and to discuss our home ownership goals, and today we're going to take a look at a house that sounds great, but might be just a tad out of our price range. It's been empty a while, so the seller might be bargained down - or there might be something wrong with it. We'll see.

Sunday evening I watched Kill Bill parts 1 and 2 in order, which I thought would help them gel into a consistent movie. Instead, it really only served to highlight their differences. The first part is almost entirely action, while the second is almost entirely story and dialogue. Not that those things are bad, but I suspect it was editing that made them so; if the movie was planned as one, long film, I have a feeling the action would have been spread over the whole thing.

Yesterday I went to an excellent Alliterates meeting, where I got some really good feedback on the first three bits of my new novel (after doing the 10,000 word chapter thing in Crocodile Man, I'm going more Kurt Vonnegut and am calling these 1,000 word vignettes "chapters.") Work keeps me busy, but not with busy work, if that makes sense; I've had the chance to do a lot of the more managerial tasks lately, and the writing bits I'm good at, while passing off the busywork to my assistant. Delegating responsibility has always been my biggest flaw, so I'm easing into it.

Oh, here's an accomplishment: at our office, time seems to get sucked into these unnatural black holes called meetings. Last week, I had no time for bullshit, and we were supposed to do an ad concept meeting for an upcoming expansion, where we figure out a concept for the ad. These are usually creative brainstorming sessions, and can get pretty (unnecessarily) lengthy, because people don't always know when to stop brainstorming and start making decisions.

Typically, five or six people attend these meetings. For some reason, only three of us could make it, which helped. Meetings are like trips to Blockbuster to rent a video: the more people you have, the (exponentially) more time it takes to choose a movie. So I came in, said "OK, here's my concept." We talked about it for a bit, came up with a good solid headline, found art we could use, and agreed.

Total elapsed time: nine minutes.

Although I doubt that session will end up on my resume as an accomplishment, it felt great to carry the big guns of authority and timeliness for once.