Bits and Pieces

Friday is the day for collections of random unrelated topics, right?

→ As I get further into my current storyline, I'm very excited to discover that I'm coming up with a lot of subplots and character details that will flesh out this slightly lacking story without requiring much change to its main plot. This seems like it will make revision easier. We'll see how that goes.

→ I love that when I muse about a research question on the internet, my friends take it upon themselves to look into it and pass on facts and sources. I have the very best kind of friends. Oh and by the way, I wonder how I would find a medical text designed for laypeople that was written in the 50s or 60s.

→ Lots of people in the book world spent this week at Book Expo America, so I spent the week daydreaming about being an author who gets to appear at BEA. This was a nice break from my usual daydreams of being interviewed on NPR.

→ Sometimes it takes an hour to write two paragraphs. Sometimes it takes half an hour to write an emotional moment, and then you decide to remove it from the scene. Other times, it's as if you actually know what you're doing.

→ There is totally no law that requires a list to include five items. I checked.

That's the latest dispatch from the word mines. Have a good weekend!

Good Stuff Out There:

→ At The New Yorker's Page-Turner blog, Ryan Bloom discusses What the First Line of "The Stranger" Should Be: "[The] first sentence of 'The Stranger' is so elementary that even a schoolboy with a base knowledge of French could adequately translate it. So why do the pros keep getting it wrong?" (Thanks, The Millions!)