7,706 Words... God Bless These Blogs

Katie and I had a two hour writing session last night, which led to much hilarity, but for me, very little story development. This is ok! Every word I write is a good word, because it pushes me closer to 50,000 words. I went off on such a tangent I lost my way back to the story, but I think I've found my way back now. Thanks everyone for the continued support, and for posting such great excerpts on your own blogs. I have been without Internet the last couple of days, but I should be in more regular contact with the blogs this week. I can't believe how far ahead everyone charges! It has always been my style to plod along. I run out of things to write and write really stupid things for a while, then begin the next writing session trying to make sense of what I've done and who I've introduced. I have spent that last two days writing about a character who I have planned to get rid of... his only part in the story being that Alice breaks up with him... but I find I like writing about Jake Dempsey, and so I keep writing about him. Here is an excerpt from last night's session with Katie... sorry about the sports references but Jake is a sports writer, and I stole a large chunk from Katie's blog. "As Damien was escorted out, Jake saw that his moment had come. “Jake Dempsey, To(Ron)To (!)” Jake announced, using his hands to create parentheses. “You’ve continued to demonstrate support for star player, Phil Kessel, despite the fact that he has shown himself to be a defensive liability… he scores goals, but perhaps you should consider getting together a search party to locate Kessel on the backcheck.” Jake made no attempt to make this seem like a question. Torts raised his eyebrows incredulously. Jake continued, seeing that Torts was obviously close to the breaking point. “Given the weak state of Toronto’s defense overall, do you think it might make sense to bring back some of Toronto’s star defensive players, such as Aki Berg and Jeff Finger, to strengthen the blue line?” Jake waited for, and received the response he was looking for. There was a classic Torts line that had been delivered to Jake on so many occasions that at this point it had almost become Jake’s alone. Ron Tortellini looked both contemptuous and amused as he delivered it: “Stop coaching, Dempsey.” But then, as Dempsey’s coup de grace continued to sink in, Tortellini grew increasingly agitated. Perhaps he was remembering how particularly useless those two defencemen were… Torts had once famously pulled Aki Berg out of the lineup and replaced him with an orange construction pylon. To be fair, the pylon was more effective. When later asked about the move by reviled sports reporter, Pierre Maguire, Torts responded mysteriously with a guarded “I’m not going to tell you.” When Pierre Maguire turned tail and hustled away, his pink cheeks blazing with embarrassment, Torts had smiled and chuckled to himself, clearly amused with his own wit, as though he had told someone he was ‘trying to quit’ or perhaps called someone a ‘cheesester’. Whatever the case, whether it was remembering the desolation of having Aki Berg and Jeff Finger on his blue line, or Jake Dempsey’s continued insistence on offering ridiculously stupid coaching advice, Torts lost his Fonzarrelli-like cool. “Get the fuck out of here,” he grumbled, running his fingers through his salt and pepper hair, and looking as though he were about to charge over the top of the podium and strangle Jake. The press conference had instantly become a YouTube classic." I would also like to include a quick excerpt featuring Alice's dog, Queenie, who is obviously an older version of Pixie.

Queenie had been so immediate in her uncharacteristic approval of Jake that Alice had been caught off guard. Prior to allowing Jake into her apartment, she had prepared him for the fact that Queenie was really a one person dog, and would likely retreat to a corner, casting resentful looks in his direction whilst simultaneously delivering hurt looks of reproach in Alice’s direction. It was a peculiarly well-honed canine skill that Queenie had mastered. “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Jake had said, in that annoyingly self-confident manner in which he said everything, “I’m a dog person.” Alice rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I’m sure I’ve never heard that one before,” she replied. Jake just smiled at her with calm self-assurance. At that point, Alice sort of hoped that Queenie would bite him when they entered. But contrary to her possessive nature, Queenie had frolicked like a 1 year old pup when Jake entered, bringing him her favourite toy, a pathetic tiger whose tail and one leg had been chewed off, and who looked the worse for wear to say the least. Queenie had had the tiger since she was a puppy, and she presented it to Jake, proudly wagging her tail, with her tongue hanging out of her face in a most undignified way. By the way, is anyone experiencing difficulties with getting blogspot to recognize paragraph breaks? And is anyone else finding it increasingly difficult to prove you're not a robot?