Not every journey starts with a single misstep...

[desperance]

How many times have I started a new book, got far enough along to snatch a breath, to think "Phew, here we go, just getting into things nicely," glanced back over what I've done - and then ripped it all up and started again?

That would be none, actually. Not ever. Never.

Never till now.

*tears up a dozen pages, starts again*

In other news: there is a Ferrari parked on the corner. When I say 'on the corner', I mean this in a very literal sense: on the pavement, where it widens to swoop around the corner of the park. Presumably its owner doesn't want to risk the beautiful object in any legal parking spot, and so plants it where it can most inconvenience pedestrians but should be safe from accidental damage. Hmmph. I am not the kind of person who drags his keys along the flank of a costly car, just because it's there - but it is there, and it didn't ought to be, and much as I love Ferraris, I still wish someone in authority would come along and give it a ticket. But they won't.

Comments

[mizkit.livejournal.com]

...at least you didn't get fifty pages into it before you did that? I kind of did that with the book I wrote this summer. I got to about ... 130 pages, I think (maybe only 90, but 130 sounds more accurate), realized it was all horribly screwed up and cut about 40 or something pages and rewrote whole huge chunks of what was left so I could go on. We hates that, we do.

Call the cops about the Ferrari!

[j-luc-pitard.livejournal.com]

Was that the story you started the other day? Did you start with an outline or just go for it from the first line? I've torn up (metaphorically since I write on the laptop) work, but usually that's because I realize I don't know where it's going (and that's been short stories).

I'm not one for keying or any other sort of retribution, but you could put a note under the wipers. I've done that before.

[martyn44.livejournal.com]

Seeing as its Sunday, a phone call to the council about this car that's been so obviously dumped is out of the question . . .

You could try tying a balloon to the exhaust pipe.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Was that the story you started the other day?

Yup, that's the one. Stupid snarling book-thing, sassafrassin'...

Did you start with an outline or just go for it from the first line?

Went for it, largely. It will need an outline, but I want to write the opening chapters first, before I even consider where the story might be going. Gives me a grounding, somewhere to spring from. At the moment I'm not even sure where it ends, which is usually the other thing I do know. First line, last line: all else to be discovered...

I'm not one for keying or any other sort of retribution, but you could put a note under the wipers. I've done that before.

Me too. Seriously abusive, on occasion. But alas, the moment is gone. So is the Ferrari.

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

Too late now I know, but I just found this link via joedecker:

http://iparklikeanidiot.com/

Might be of use in the future perhaps?

[desperance.livejournal.com]

Oh, damn - now I really wish I had taken a photo...

Also, want those stickers. Want. This whole parking-on-pavements thing is a bugbear with me; there are whole communities here who do it routinely (two wheels on the pavement and two in the cycle lane is a favourite), and no one is ever going to stop them, so a mass stickering is just such a good idea.

[pogodragon.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean, and entirely agree - I hate inconsiderate parking (and I drive a big car that I would really rather not get scratched/damaged).

I have developed the habit of parking in remote corners of car parks where I have to do the unthinkable, I walk a bit further to where I want to get to. My method means that I usually find a nice parking space, don't have to squeeze into barely big enough gaps and don't have to worry about the paint work on my car. Roadside parking I only park with my wheels on the pavement if that is explicitly how it is designed to work - there are a few placed here that have lines painted onto the pavement for parking, and a wide enough pavement that pedestrians/wheelchairs are not inconvenienced.