Learning from my Mentor and Dashiell Hammett

I finished my last diet-soda yesterday. For the time being, I am consuming green tea, coffee (1 cup a day), ginger tea, and Perrier. These are all things I enjoy anyway, so it’s not that much of a hardship.

Although I do miss my Dr. Pepper Zero.

I received feedback on the last assignment from my mentor and was happy to hear that she enjoyed the story I’d written. She rightly pointed out that the story is not really a short story but a beginning of something much longer, possibly a novel.

The next assignment sounds like it’s going to be a great deal of fun but also a big challenge. Getting the assignment done will also help me reach my word count for this week. Although I’m not reaching my daily word count goals, by tracking it on a spreadsheet, I’m able to see an increase in the number of words per day and that’s exciting.

Every year we try to take the kids, who are now both adults, to see a musical or a live music event. Money has been a bit tight this year, so I didn’t think we were going to see any shows. But since my wife’s birthday is coming up at the end of January, I decided to buy the family tickets to The Book of Mormon Musical. The show is not until April but it’s nice to have something to look forward to.

We will also be seeing David Sedaris a couple of days before the musical at Toronto’s Massey Hall. Two great events lined up for the beginning of April. I am so cultured!

Part of studying writing today I came across the notion of a riposte. The example given was from Dashiell Hammett’s “Thin Man”. The lines were:

              Nora: “How do you feel?”

Nick: “Terrible. I must’ve gone to bed sober.”

I do love me a good riposte. It’s right in line with my sense of humour.

I’ll keep this post short tonight as I have lots of writing to get done. I am going to give dictation another try tonight to keep things spicy, get in some practice and hopefully see a higher word count.