So last week I showed off some pretty spiffy shots from inside the Sailing Ship Columbia. And I noted that the spindles in the windows of the displays seem to hinder getting a good shot........
......unless your camera (and wrists!) are thin enough! I discovered my Panasonic Lumix would fit through the bars fine, so I put my camera wriststrap on, put my thin wrists between some spindles, and got to shooting!
I believe this is a little cupboard for silverware/etc.
Doctor or mate's cabin?
I think this is from the next cabin:
No, the head is not accessible to guests.
And of course the place I'd love to live! Captain's quarters!
Here you can see the spindles, and how little I could see.
And, a few more cabins, I believe on the other (starboard?) side of the ship.
We arrived at the annual VNSA Book Sale in Phoenix at the fairgrounds (by the Coliseum) maybe a bit after 9 AM. It opened at 8, but there's a substantial line to get in until maybe 11 or later (the line was gone when we left at 12:30).
Yes, this is meant to be artistic, yeah....
As recently as 2009, maybe even 2010, they had two lines feeding in. This year they had one, which is fairer but takes away the chance to get in earlier by picking the right line! Was in line behind some of the SAME PEOPLE I'd been behind 2 years ago (my brother's friend's family). The line can be slow; the fire marshal makes sure the place doesn't get dangerously overcrowded. A great way to pass the time is to make conversation; we ended up spending about 30 minutes or more talking to a nice couple behind us! And we finally got in at maybe 10:20.
Inside there are something like 500,000 books, DVDs, etc. I initially gravitate toward what they're now calling "Treasures," which has historic books (my favorite!). Rare & Unusual is also awesome...it tends to be more expensive, but sometimes they have some deals. I got an old tour book of either England or Scotland (I forget which) for I think $8 one year. And in that section, once I even got one of the better Dance Dance Revolution games (DDR Max 2) for $3! At that price I couldn't pass it up for a friend, even though I already had it. It was scratched but played fine.
This year I went looking for stuff published before 1923 (public domain!). 2 years ago I got a ton of tiny books (just the right size for dolls) at 80 cents to a dollar! Paperbacks are $1.50 and the money goes to charity! I tend to buy stuff that looks like it might be good, figuring it's for a good cause.
A view inside.
Once you're (finally) inside, you can easily spend a couple hours browsing. People bring backpacks, suitcases, handtrucks and crates--anything you can use to carry books. They do have some plastic bags for you but they were in short supply this year, and get awful heavy. Sundays are half-price but I find Saturday is plenty cheap. Highly recommended if you like books at all!
$31.60, baby! They had some...interesting little books that were the right size for dolls and looked almost like mini textbooks, so if you see a peculiar tiny book in there, that's why! :)
And to top that out, my mom met me later with her Valentine's present to me!
So the New York Times archives only list 8 articles with the word "valentine" in the headline from February 10 - February 16, 1921. Makes my work easy.
Here's one that made my jaw drop a bit.
AMERICA'S 1918 MOST PERFECT GIRL WEDS
Miss Betsy Buell, Selected by Smithsonian Institution, Marries Frank R. Valentine....
Though the article makes her sound like a rather old lady (and she WAS over 60 at the time), Ms. Bailey lived to 1953, and appeared in a few films in the mid-1920s. You can see a picture of her legs at Find a Grave.
BIG TEA PARTY GIVES HOOVER FUND $32,500
Society Bids at Biltmore for Boxes and Seats for Gala Performance of 'Carmen.'
HOPPER THE AUCTIONEER
His Wit and Antics Stimulate Sales--Clock Ticks off $134,736 as New Yorks' Gift Since Saturday.
I gotta say, Ms. Bailey's benefit sounds like more fun to me.
I would have thought that the Casa Grande Bulletin would have had something about Arizona statehood--February 14, 1921, Arizona was having its ninth (!) birthday. Nothing there, though.
But for the sports fans, they did have a story about the big game that happened the prior Sunday:
Local Fans Enjoy Game
Notwithstanding a cold wind that blew from the souhtwest (sic), quite a good-sized crowd gathered last Sunday to watch the scrub game between the local players of the North and South Side. There was quite an interesting game, which see-sawed until the end of the eighth inning, when the game was called with the score 8 to 8. There were some new players, some of whom gave promise of becoming a fixture on the regular team. A game has been arranged for tomorrow afternoon. The fans should all turn out and get a line on the new material. Game will be called about 3 o'clock...
Jana Bommersbach's post gets a bit political but it's worth skimming just for the description of celebrations back on February 14, 1912, when Arizona became a state. I do wish that we had more planned for our centennial but I haven't heard anything.
Sharlot Hall, Arizona historian, wore this copper dress to deliver Arizona's electoral votes to Washington D.C., circa 1924, per The Prescott Victorian Society site.
The last chapter and epilogue were very, very difficult to write, because I had to close up a huge mess of plotlines as well as I could. It's a very complicated story that I'm just not a good enough writer to pull off at this point. Someday I'll revisit it, but I'm SO grateful that day won't be any time soon! You can read a little about it at my About Me and My Writing page.
So I have a co-worker who would like to write a novel, but he worries that he wants his novel to be GOOD. (One cure for that problem is NaNoWriMo. It's a great way to see that yes, you can write something if you take the pressure off.)
For most people, it seems, the first draft is really rough, and the edits come later. In other words, the art of writing is really the art of RE-writing. Even if you have a solid outline and a solid plot, you can always polish your writing to make it sparkle. But first you have to have something to polish!
Animation is the same way:
Even rough/imperfect drafts can be really beautiful, as in this line test for Beauty and the Beast. And if those rough drawings hadn't been done, the movie couldn't have been made.
I hate to see anyone not write just because they're worried it won't be good enough. Frankly, some authors have become fabulously wealthy with novels that critics (and fellow authors!) don't consider to be remotely well-written. And I think the best way to learn to write is to just do it (and once you're strong enough, solicit feedback). I learned more about writing for publication from six months of giving and receiving critiques on Critique Circle than I did from my Creative Writing degree. And Critique Circle currently costs as little as $0 a year (free membership; $49.00 a year for some excellent perks; $89.00 a year for no ads).
Now, all that said, it's easy to give advice and much harder to follow it. I struggled with those last two chapters because I was afraid they wouldn't tie up the story satisfactorily. Yup; I fear they're not good enough!
Still, the best advice is, just do it.
If you write, you will eventually have a manuscript. 500 words a day for about 7 months will give you 100,000 words (the very HIGHEST word count most beginning authors should strive for). Unless you have exceptionally short chapters, one chapter a week will give you a novel in well under a year.
Of course, as I found out through NaNoWriMo, if you just start writing with NO plan, you may end up with a story that's incredibly hard to edit. (Especially if time travel always creeps in to your stories, like it does into mine.)
One brilliant idea for conceiving a book is the Snowflake Method. The basic concept is, start with a little kernel of a story idea, and then build on it until you have a coherent storyline. Eventually you'll get a detailed plan to write your novel! As a bonus, you'll end up with an outline you can use when pitching your work to editors and agents. From the site:
There is no reason to spend 500 hours writing a wandering first draft of your novel when you can write a solid one in 150. Counting the 100 hours it takes to do the design documents, you come out way ahead in time.
I actually attempted to use the Snowflake Method before I started "Flight from Endwood" in 2006. It didn't work so well, but I was pressed for time and didn't pause to actually think through how the story would actually work. I ended up plotting a romance for two characters (Edwin and Miss Liang) and they had absolutely no attraction. Had I actually considered my Snowflake more critically before I started, though, I might have saved myself literally years of edits, and might have a pitch-able novel right now.
But I'm going to try the Snowflake thing with my next project (Chosen: Bonnie of Sheshack). That's another novel that I wrote and substantially edited about a third of...but I'm going to get working on it in earnest presently, and get something out there. Still, I'm not going to rush it before I get a very solid outline in place.
Anyway! I think I'll celebrate the completion of my manuscript by the adding of chocolate to milk. :)
