Tonight, told my writing class that I won't be back in September, and why. Namely that the class starts up again ten days after my due date. (Given that I fully anticipate needing a C-section again, though I do plan to try going through labor again, I am expecting I will not be in a physical condition to attend, let alone a state of sufficient mental acuity. New babies, and parental adjustments, tend to be somewhat distracting.) Everyone was happy and supportive, but only one person said she'd noticed I'd been wearing loose clothing to class. Acumen fail on the part of my classmates. :) I did promise to stop in at some point in the fall term with both my boys in tow.

And the class's first summer meet-up got planned. Unfortunately, for the weekend of Comic-Con. Ah well; perhaps I'll be able to make the second, which will be sometime in August.

So one quarter ends. And next week another begins, for Squiddle's classes, at least. And one evening class for Wonderful Husband.

I've got a project started of going through the foot or so of reviews from my writing classmates that're stacked on my desk, and condensing down the edits I want to make to my copy of each ten-page section. And a number of the edits are good and thoughtful.

But then there are the sticklers for grammar who keep going "no semi-colons in dialogue!" and I just want to bash their heads in. WHY THE FRACK NOT? Some I take out, but some, I would genuinely speak that way, so I'm leaving them. (I find it hilarious when they circle semicolons with that note about dialogue, without bothering to realize the bit they circled isn't dialogue.) Also bugging me in the category of "slavish adherence to the rules" are the people who swap phrases around so that every single fricking sentence ends on the strong word. (They do this in their own writing too.) And I just look at it and wonder if they've tried reading some of the sentences aloud, because the way they phrased it does not sound right in English.

Of course, there are the classmates who comment that my writing is "smooth like old whiskey," and I just stop and take a moment to savor that. Because my writing has improved, particularly in the last hundred pages of this book, to the point where I'm enjoying each section as I edit it to turn in to class.

Mind, I still have to go revise the first two-thirds of the book to the same par....

I have a list of reasons my writing class teacher frustrates me. (Yes, I know I've ranted about her here before.) But high on the list is the fact that she just doesn't pay attention. At least not to my submissions.

"Who is this character?" "It just said, Maralys, in the paragraph above this one." "Oh." Grr....

Honestly, when it gets to the point that she reaches one of her own notes for a correction and says, "Oh, well now that I've read it, that makes sense," I just want to throw something at her.

I realize she's a senior citizen. I realize she does not read or write my genre, and thus has no knowledge of its vocabulary and conventions. But when she doesn't even respect my writing enough to bother parsing what the words mean, I get a wee bit testy.

Of course, I was also cringing when she was talking about one of my fellow student's family history (sorta memoirish?) submission tonight. Particularly the part where she was talking about one of the people in it as a character, and I had read ahead to find out the "character" in question is my classmate's grandmother.... There is a certain discretion and respect one should be able to expect when talking about kin. Even when they're framed in written words.

...because Emergency Services decided to spice it up some. With a surprise earthquake drill. Which involved a mandatory evacuation of the building. Fortunately it was a mild night. Fortunately it was also a light night, with only four entries to review in class. Had it happened next week, with eight entries, our class might be a bit unhappier....

So Maralys said AGAIN this week that I have too many characters. I flat out told her I do not, not for the genre I'm writing in, and that I do in fact need them all. I said that they're like a Jenga tower - take one out, the whole book topples. I am sick of her not listening to me, and I am sick of getting the shortest review time of anyone being edited.

Unfortunately, I've investigated my other local options for writing classes/groups, and pretty much there aren't any. OCC has one, but I've already taken it at least once, and unlike this class, it's limited to four repetitions. So I am being torn about whether or not to sign up for the next class in January. I like my classmates. I just do not really like my teacher.

In somewhat brighter (literally) news, we got our trees trimmed today, including a few (in the corner of my kitchen garden) being removed. The backyard is going to get so much more light now! The trees were cut back by something like 75%. And when they trimmed the lemon tree, they pulled the fruit off the cut branches. ^_^ We kept one bag and let them have the rest. The only downside is that the limb one of the skychairs was on was starting to envelop the phone line, so it had to go. So now we only have a hanging spot for one skychair. :( Ah well, we were never really both using them at the same time anyway.

Since he has to be up for work for another couple hours while processes are running, Wonderful Husband is currently putting the second coat on the bathroom ceiling. ^_^

Myself, I have just got back from my writing class (moved to Tuesday this week because of Halloween). My classmate Bob, who writes literary short stories, got reviewed tonight. We were universally dissatisfied with his newest, wherein the main plot thread did not get resolved. He said he was using the piece to test us. Dorsey and I, sitting on opposite sides of the room, said in perfect unison "I feel like a guinea pig." Broke us up laughing, at least.

And now, looking at the paint sample card for the bathroom walls, I notice that the shade lighter is "Sea Air," and the shade darker is "Sea Wave." The latter of which makes me think, hmm, maybe I should look at paint chips when searching for Transformers OC names....

Yesterday was Wonderful Husband's birthday. I also had writing class last night. I was accordingly hyper-efficient and did up chicken cacciatore in the morning and put it in the crockpot, and stopped by Wonderful Husband's favorite bakery (Sensitive Sweets, an allergen-free bakery) on my way home and got him his requested birthday brownie and chocolate chip cookie. Had dinner, he opened his presents and cards, blew out the candle on his brownie, and I went off to class. Birthday celebrations shall continue in Las Vegas this weekend.

It says something about how long I've been taking the class that I tend to tune Maralys out when she starts a narrative anecdote. Either that or I'm a bad student, not hanging on my teacher's every word. Possibly a mix of these two.

But, wonder of wonders, she actually admitted in the class that those of us whose submissions are at the end of class tend to get short shrift! That's more self-consciousness than I'd've expected from her. Not sure if it's related, but amusingly, both Bridget (#4 of 5) and myself (#5 of 5) got near-perfects from the class. Well, except from one of the new students - he handed my ten pages back to me and it almost has more red ink than black! I suspect his writing style is very, very different from mine and that I will end up ignoring 95% of what he has to say. Flipping through his remarks, it seems that he wants me to remove all of what Maralys calls the "lyricality" out of my writing and make it read like a Grisham novel or something. I'm sure someone could do a decent fantasy novel written in that style. I am not that person.

Tonight there were six entries for the writing class to go over. The first was Carol's. Ostensibly as an exercise in how to begin/writing first pages, Maralys took over a half hour going over hers. Some of the rest of us pointed out the MAJOR ERROR in that she blatantly contradicted herself within the nine-page entry, by method of failing to smoothly merge two different versions of the story.

(When I bitch about classmates not rereading their work before submission, it is ALWAYS about Carol. And Maralys seriously thinks she's the closest of us to publication?)

Furthermore, of the six entries, two got punted to next week. Fortunately, next week there were only three entries. The first of which is mine, since the other two got edited this week as well.

Only going through the first bit of the next section to edit tonight, since, well, bed and all that, but I'm pleased with the results. Ending on page 202/617, at 124,692 words. Down 380 words. Booyah~! Briselied has consulted with the nuns, and next the PoV switches back to Higami. Quickcheck subject of the night was messenger birds. So far as I've found, it's pretty much only pigeons, no matter what ATLA says about hawks. Anyone know differently?

And it's raining! ^_^

So, six new students in writing class this term. I was expecting maybe half of that! But Maralys is once again hitting some of my buttons. Stuff like, "writers have tragic backgrounds and we write from that pain."

Um, NO. Sorry. I've actually lived a pretty damn happy life, and I still consider myself a writer.

"A beginning novelist will never sell a book over 100,000 words."

*looks at the 600+ page first novel by Patrick Rothfuss that I really should finish reading*

And, crowning it all, lack of time management skills and her favoritism toward certain gen-lit-writing classmates meaning Carol gets a half hour of discussion on her submission, Pat (who writes sci-fi) gets less than ten minutes, and I get booted to next week.

Argh.

I like this class, really I do. Some of my classmates are great writers and I've really grown a lot. Just, sometimes, things really grate at me.

My writing class is at 6:30 Wednesday nights. It's just a mile down the street from my house, but I have an hour commute and don't get home until 6:00. This gives me just enough time to bolt something fast for dinner, get to class, and get my submission in.

This also means my submission is usually the last one on the reading list. Which in previous terms has meant I sometimes got booted to the following week. This term, with a dearth of submissions, that's not a problem. Last night I was fourth of four.

Number three got absolutely shredded by the teacher. Not entirely without justification, but perhaps a bit more harshly than the writer and the entry really deserved.

Is it bad that, while sitting there listening to the diatribe, I was thinking "Well, this means that I'm not going to get shredded tonight..."?

(And indeed I did not. I've been getting very few corrections lately, which means I must be doing something right. Though every time Maralys starts talking about how lyrical and poetic my writing is, I am always waiting for the "But..." to come into it.)