Monday, February 27, 2012

Day Three - In House Retreat or is that In-House-Retreat?

Hyphens!!!! They drive me crazy. It used to be commas but I'm good with them now. What is hyphenated and what isn't? Please don't tell me because none of your answers will agree with any of the other ones. I know this. Think I'm going to go visit the Grammar Queen. I used to be able to find her.
So, here I am on Day three of my in house retreat.  I'm a bit sleepy. I went over to my friend Wren's house to watch the Academy Award. A small group of us have been doing that for years. About thirty - the group morphing and the host house changing. But the last couple of years it has been at Wren's. We watched two long hours of the red carpet, dishing the dresses, moaning about the camera work and the dopey 'personalities' who were wrangling the stars. Finally - the awards show - with Billy Crystal - our absolute favorite. And Cirque de Soleil (which is a Canuck company, y'all) and funny bits and terrible bits and entrancing bits and then - right after Cirque performed their magic and Billy was about to tell us something hilarious, it happened. The signal failed. The wonderful magic of Bell's fibre optic system went kahblouie and despite a long call with someone in New Brunswick, and Wren lost to us in the garage for forty minutes with him on the cell (the phone, the computer, the television were all down) we still had nothing. So the four of us sat and decided on appropriate measures Bell could take. We decided, after not much thought, that they should send us to Hollywood next year. Yes - where would the movies be without the likes of us? Nowhere, that's where. We can't regain those two hours - sure, I'm going to watch it all lonely today on my computer - but NO the magic was destroyed. And Bell must pay. We'll handle our own gowns and getting a cab to the Your Name Here Theatre (as Crystal called it last night) - but Bell must pay for flights and a reasonable hotel room. It is only fair.
Now - back to my life. I will continue working on my package. Ron went through it with a big red pen - he's good with grammar and even if I don't agree with all his hyphen rules they seem as good as any one's.
I can't bear the thought of going through the manuscript again, but I will. I will read it aloud. It should take me about four hours.
Do you know I killed over 10 thousand words in my revision! Man oh man, I pared that sucker down.

Tonight I'm going to the Writer's Federation to pinch hit for Gwen. She teaches a writing course there on Mondays but is away for three weeks in AFRICA!!! I'm on deck tonight and have plans to teach mindmapping with a focus on the hero's journey. I'm looking forward to it, as long as it doesn't snow...

Here's another gratuitous picture...a bit of colour in these grey feb days

3 comments:

Hart Johnson said...

bloody hyphens. I have trouble with them, too. I will tell you, though, Penguin tends to use them for two words that modify a noun (In-house retreat) but not if they stand alone (we will handle it in house). But then Penguin ALSO wanted me to put two words together more often than I normally would.

I hope your party was fun, even with the lost signal.

Liza said...

Wish I could attend your class...

Carol Kilgore said...

Your spot of color has make my gray day shine!