Day 27 Challenge

Hi, it’s Christina –

It’s the second week in May…the sun is shining…the sky is blue…and IT’S FREEZING! Almost literally. It was 34 degrees when I woke up this morning. I actually had to put the heat on last night. You don’t run the heat in May, you sleep with the windows open in May! Why is Spring so reluctant to stay with us this year?

Today I will be spending the day finishing the book I have been editing for another author. I have been working on it for several weeks, averaging only 10-15 pages a day because, literally, every paragraph had some type of edit. I am down to the last twenty pages and I am determined to get it off my plate TODAY. The story itself is really good, but it needed a lot of work – grammar, word choice/variation, sentence structure, continuity of tense, a few plot inconsistencies and the characters needed a little beefing up. Thankfully there were only a few spelling errors and the errors were on the same words throughout, so they were easy to spot. (No red squiggly lines when the document is a PDF.) Hopefully the author will take my edits to heart and make the changes, because I truly feel he has a good story and it should be shared.

The timing is perfect, because the next edit request is due today or tomorrow. I did a sample chapter already and I am looking forward to reading the whole story. Based on the first chapter, unless the author lost her mind and made a mess out of the remainder of the manuscript, the edits should be moderate at most and I am thinking they will lean more to the minimal side. Where in the previous edit I had to spend equal time between the technical and the artistic, I believe this one will be mostly on the artistic – Are the characters strong, likable, and realistic? Does the story flow properly? Are there any inconsistencies? (A character died in chapter 7 but then dies again in chapter 10 – don’t laugh, I’ve seen it. “Joe stands up”, but he was already standing. “June 1^st”, when mathematically, with all that has happened in the story, July 1^st would be a more likely date, etc.) A good part about this new author is she reviewed the edits I did in chapter 1, and then insisted on going through the rest of her manuscript to see if she could fix some of the errors before she sent the entire thing to me; definitely a good sign.

Let’s get on to the challenges, because I have a lot of work to do today…

Yesterday’s challenge was:

 

A scent reminds you of the past…

 

The family vacation was finally here, a splurge, two weeks in a cabin by a lake. We had just checked in and we needed to do the grocery shopping. The owner suggested instead of going to the chain supermarket in town, we try their local farmer’s market instead, so we took her advice and headed to the opposite side of town.

 

I had pictured open-aired farm stands with locals hocking their locally grown fruits and vegetables. Boy, was I surprised! A one story, warehouse type building, which easily could stretch the span of a football field, was laid out in front of us. The five of us exited the car, entered the south end entrance through massive garage doors, and were instantly overwhelmed by the sights, sounds and smells.
 

As expected, there were various fruit and vegetable stands, but there were vendors selling meats and cheeses, baked goods, dairy items, farm fresh eggs. There were also stands which held discounted household items such as cleaning supplies and paper goods. Stands with handmade clothing, bedding and wooden items. The variety went on and on. We elected to make a clockwise loop through the market, ultimately ending up where we started. As we wandered our way through, shopping baskets over our arms ready to hold our purchases, we would stop at the various stands and make our selection.

 

When we made the turn at the far end of the market, my nose was assailed with the most heavenly scent, a scent from my childhood, a scent which brought back a flood of memories of working with my grandmother in the kitchen. Then what to my wondering eyes should appear, but nearly forty feet of counter which held virtually every item my grandmother made. There was bread, nut & prune roll, cookies, sour cherry pie followed by fresh hams, kielbasa, stuffed cabbage and peppers, chicken soup. Everywhere I looked was one of my grandmother’s creations.

 

Another 2 minutes and I probably would have been able to actually have a completed story for one of these challenges.

Your Day 28 Challenge is:

 

Mickey and Minnie’s relationship may be in jeopardy…

 

You have 10 minutes (be honest). There is no right or wrong, just write. Spelling and punctuation don’t count and NO ONE is allowed to criticize what someone else has written. Go.