Everybody watch Veronica Mars on Nov. 7th. They taped that episode at my hotel. No, I wasn't there when they did it, and I don't think anyone from my hotel is in it. They brought in their own extras, but taped at the front desk and the bar. Cool, huh? And rumor has it they'll be back.

(Speaking of hotels, go check out this article at USA Today. Finally, someone's on the side of beleagured hotel workers. These are just a few reasons why I refuse to work front desk. I've had plenty of strange things just answering phones. http://www.usatoday.com/travel/news/2006-09-14-bad-guests_x.htm )

I finally got futher on my WOTF story. I can see daylight at the end of the tunnel. A shorter tunnel, since I cut 3,000 words (three scenes) from the beginning. I figured out that, while it's not backstory, it's not as important as I thought it was, even though I liked the scenes. And this way, I think enough stuff is dropped along the way for the story to make sense without putting in a lot of explanation.

Also, something JJA said in an interview on douglascohen's blog made sense "So many stories in the slush are structured like novels instead of short stories. I don't know if it's just a matter of blindness to the problem, or if it's just that the writers in question haven't read a whole lot of short fiction, but there are narrative tricks you can use in a novel that you can't get away with in a short story. A short story is a much less forgiving form; in a novel, you have room for digressions and subplots and the like, but a short story needs to be more focused." (Go read the whole interview if you haven't already; JJA also mentions stuff he's seeing too much of and stuff he's looking for.)

So I've been looking for needless digressions. There were some in the first few scenes. Snip, snip. And in Kate Wilhelm's Clarion book, she said the story is about the protagonist's problem, and he has to be the one to solve it. So I'm working on making my guy more proactive. Still needs more scenery description.

And I have a plague of flies. I swear I keep shooing the buggers out, but more and more keep appearing. No, I haven't bought a flyswatter yet, and the cat has little interest in them unless they're upside down on the ground and buzzing.