At It (Again)

I'm at it again. Another presentation---filled with sight and sound---is being created on my laptop, and this one, I'm sure, will be seen in its full glory next week at the

VEMA Rappahannock Regional Conference

because this time, I have the correct connecting cord (mini-DVI to VGA, if you must know.) I will, however, again be backing up everything to a PowerPoint DVD, on the off-chance that this cord flunks as spectacularly as the last three. I feel simultaneously like the most careful and the most daring presenter in the world.

I'm also working (more slowly) on the YA poetry manuscript I burned through after the SCBWI NY conference. 40 poems! Yippee! On the other hand, I have only a vague idea of how they tell a story. Not-so-yippee. Must work on this. Actually, I love working on this.

And I have completed a pass at an outline of New Recruit that my editor requested. I need to clean it up a bit, and also scribble madly in my novel notebook everything that came to the surface as I did this. An outline is never simply an outline. An outline is like those x-rays they take at the dentist to detect hidden cavities. Yup, I see all my novel's flaws in stark contrast to what I had hoped it was. I knew this would happen, which is why I had to trick myself into doing it by importing the manuscript into Scrivener, and using the synopsis function, so I could have those cute little index cards to push around and play with. *

On the other hand, I had moments as I was re-reading my manuscript for the first time in two months, of not recognizing my own writing. Oh! That's good! Look how she did that! That's when I know the story is working---when I don't recognize the hand behind it.

*Anybody else out there use techno-gadgets, like presentation or writing software, to motivate themselves to tackle a task? I feel as if I might be a geek amongst Luddites.