Dichroic Reflections

tired and a little needy. also impressed.

I didn't row Wednesday due to lack of sleep (Rudder woke up with an unsettled stomach, and when he's up, I'm up, because I sleep too lightly to be a asleep in a room with someone who's awake. He felt better by morning but we were both a little short on sleep. You didn't need to know any of this.) so I did today. (Yesterday morning I went flying before work, to get ready for a stage check - practice checkride - that's supposedly going to happen this weekend.)

So anyway. Short-interval workouts are insidious. 30 seconds on, 90 seconds off, with the "on" being at race pace or actually a bit higher, more like the all-out effort I'd use for a racing start or a power 10, and the "off" at a paddle. Eighteen of those, plus about 3500 meters etady state to start and maybe another 500 at the end, and I'm beat. I'd like nothing so much right now and to go home and take a nap. Or just close the door and crawl under my desk.

It's a little annoying that the place we fly out of hasn't scheduled either my stage check for this weekend or Rudder's flight in a Cirrus, whose company reps are bringing one in for people to try, considering that it's now Friday and thus the weekend is TOMORROW. Perhaps they haven't noticed.
(While I was typing that someone called me and told me they have Rudder scheduled in the Cirrus for 8AM tomorrow. Wonder when they were going to tell us? Still no word on the stage check, though.)

So that's today. Back to yesterday-matters. First, if you haven't read the fanfic story I posted yesterday, scroll down and read it. I'll wait. (Unless of course you've never read L.M. Montgomery's Rilla of Ingleside, in which case don't bother. It's not a standalone sort of story.)

Back? Good. Tell if you like it. If you don't, tell me why not. I don't intend to make a practice of this, but I didn't really intend to write this one either, so in case it happens again, I should learn what I can from this. I have gotten some nice comments from people whose opinions I respect (and one sort of confusing one) but it's kind of bugging me that none of the people in the group I actually wrote it for have commented. (One exception, but she beta'd it for me, and she's too nice not to comment on the finished version after I asked for her help earlier.) There is no reason on earth this should be bothering me; I sid it was a gift for the list, and once you've given something you can't attach strings to it. Also, as I keep reminding myself, not everyone reads their email every day.

Also also, it's just a little fanfic: I took some care with it, but it's not really a serious effort. It's short and simple. I wrote it in a couple of days and didn't take as much effort as I would have if it were to be published somewhere other than my own site or maybe a fanfic hive where it will sink unnoticed and rarely read among a horde of other stories, many with the sort of grammar that discourages reading past the first paragraph. (Note: I'm taking about this one story only. I have read and enjoyed fanfics that were very well-written carefully crafted stories that undoubtedly took loads of time and effort. This wasn't one of those. I know because I was there.)

But this has given me a small insight into what it must be like to have written a book. Magnify my feelings a thousandfold and I can glimpse what it must be like to send your craft, your oeuvre which you've labored for years to built, then polish and make water-tight, out onto the wide oceans, and then wait for news of it, for people to tell you they've seen it and it's afloat, trim and trig and on course. Or before that, when you're sending out the manuscript to only a few people, but a few whose opinion matters, because if they like it they will publish it and then it can venture out into the wider world. Very scary. It makes me think authors must be stern and resolute people, with strong stomachs. (I can think of a few who might laugh to think of themselves in that light. Unless you can honestly say you really do write for yourself and not for the world's opinion, at all at all, t's probably best to just go around the corner and laugh quietly to yourself. Let me keep being impressed and take the compliment as it's given.)

Posted by dichroic at June 10, 2005 01:13 PM