Empowerment

Fiorella is moving into another stage of grief--anger. She's angry at what happened, angry at people who derided her sorrow, and angry at her own helplessness. But, as friend Shiloh Walker pointed out, Fio is NOT helpless--she can write. So this afternoon Fio finished the third revision of her work-in-progress, decided to self-publish a book that's been sitting in her documents pages for way too long because it was considered too "daring," and plotted out a book about a woman who is flaming angry--like she is.

Literary Notes

Hooray for Fio--she's back in the saddle again.  Yes, she picked up her notebook and went over the first three chapters of Phillipa's story yesterday, and today she'll review three more chapters. It's been a long time coming and  feels so good!
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Fiorella attended a little get-together of about six neighborhood ladies last week where the hostess mentioned that Fio is a writer, igniting interest which Fio hopes will leads to sales. Word of mouth is still the best advertiser there is. Thank you, Kathy.
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Fio's going to get on her bandwagon now and complain about men's fiction--thrillers--being considered respectable and women's fiction--romances--being snickered at. It's sexism, plain and simple.

Mosquitos, Writing, Languages, Art

Fio and Husband have had an in-house mosquito problem for about a week now and emptying out standing water isn't doing the trick.  Fio has got to find some kind of safe in-house spray. Wish her luck.
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Hey, hey, hey--Fiorella has finished revision #3 and will start #4 today. On the other hand, her email is on the outs again. Time to switch to gmail.
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Fio is satisfying her language hunger with el espanol, but the art hunger is growing again.  Is that woman never satisfied?

Catching up with Fio

Fiorella rewrote yesterday's blog because it didn't flow right when she reviewed it that evening.  She's like that--a serial revisionist.  Anything worth doing is worth doing better.  Stay tuned.  This blog will probably get a revision too.
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Fio's numeral-reviewing project in seven languages got bogged down somewhere along the line so she decided to work on just 1-10 instead of 1-20.  She can rattle off those  numbers in Spanish, German, and Russian again, and is working on Telugu.  Latin and French should be easy enough once it's their turn.  But, now Fio wants to add Mandarin to the list.  After all, she has an appointment with her Chinese dentist next month.
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Husband and Fiorella started putting together an art desk last weekend, but they screwed in the center crossbar upside down and haven't had the time to fix it.  Ah well, there are seventeen more hours left in this weekend.

Reflection

Fiorella went back and revised her poem from yesterday.  She's like that, a serial reviser--after all, anything worth doing is worth revising.  She's that way about herself too, always correcting or reforming..  Hence the heart surgery, the hip surgery, the plastic surgery, and the visits to the voice pathologist.

If only she could go back and revise her life.

Dwarf News (Revised)

Fiorella forgot to mention that she caught up with the Roloffs the other night.  Amy and Zack were on an expedition to climb Mt. St. Helens while Matt was having a little red schoolhouse built for the  Western town display at the Roloff farm.  Jacob only appeared briefly, and Jeremy and Molly were nowhere to be seen.

Too bad.  Matt, Amy, and Zachary (who practically ran up the mountain), were not enough to carry  a one-hour show.  Fiorella understands that climbing a mountain is tough, especially for a fifty-year-old female dwarf, but grunting gets boring after a while, and switching back and forth between the mountain climb and the construction of the schoolhouse didn't relieve the tedium.  There was no real conflict--we knew Amy would reach the top, and we knew the schoolhouse would get built in time. In romance writer speak, the show had a sagging middle. 

Especially dreary was Matt's constant prattle about how he was trying to please his wife with a surprise.  Number one, he's used that line before to justify whatever he wants to do. Number two, it sounded like he was trying to soften the egomaniac image we all have of him. Amy also tried to polish up the family, casually mentioning that she has three kids in college now.  Since Molly always took the academic high road, that must mean that Jeremy and Zack have finally gotten their heads together.  Fio is happy for them, but she would have preferred a show with the old drama.

On to other dwarf news, Friend Paula told Fio that she's read that Jen and Bill have adopted a dwarf baby, just as Fio hoped.  No sagging middle there.

Note to readers to rise early:  This blog has been revised from an earlier version that was, unfortunately, edited last night when Fiorella's brain was fried.

 

A Revision Kind of Gal

What has Fiorella been doing lately?  Well, she's been working on revisions of PRINCESS OF BOSQUE BEND, as suggested by the divine Liza.  "Aaw, poor Fio," you say, but actually Fio enjoys improving things.  In fact, she'd revise till the proverbial cows come home if you let her.   And why not?  She's been working on herself ever since she was born, smoothing off the rough corners of her personality, finally dropping some weight, decorating her house, her yard, and herself.  She's even revised her face with eyelid surgery.

But now comes a biggie--a face lift.  That weight loss did more than shrink her thighs--it sagged her jowls.  Um--not that turning a year older had anything to do with it, of course.

Word Hoarder

The great thing about revising is that Fiorella has been encouraged to give fuller histories to not only her heroine, but also the supporting players. Of course, there's a trade off--the scenes and golden words that need to be cut. Not that Fio ever really cuts anything. Instead, she moves discards to her "back story" folder, assuming there will be a place she can use them later.

Rotsa ruck.

Revision Blues

Fiorella feels strangely bereft today. She finished her requested revision of the first fifty pages of Princess of Bosque Bend and sent them off to New York--twice, in fact, because her "send" box went squirrely on her and didn't record the first time until after she'd submitted the pages the second time.

Fio hopes/prays she correctly interpreted said agent's advice/guidance. But, in the meantime, after four days of being dedicated to nothing but revision, she feels odd, like there's something she should be doing, but isn't.

Oh, yes, there it is--the Christmas tree needs to come down, her desktop needs to be unloaded, and she needs to start communicating with Husband again.

On the other hand, there are 250 more pages waiting to be revised.