The Balcony Garden

I normally like to plant a few flowers on my balcony during the summer. Nothing fancy, just a few annuals in flowerboxes. I skipped it last year due to wedding planning. Now that things have calmed down from WisCon, I had a chance to take of the flowers. I picked some up at Walmart today: three heliotropes (a pretty blue), two miniature roses (dark red), and a tomato plant for Eugene. I didn't take pictures after planting them; maybe I'll do that later this summer. Of course, now that the balcony has some flowers, we have to spend some time sitting out there instead of always working on our computers.

Writing: I was pretty busy with other chores during the afternoon, so after dinner, Eugene and I went to the bookstore, where I wound up bringing about seven paperbacks home. Since we no longer have space for books, and since my "to-be-read" pile will soon overtake the Sears Tower, perhaps that was foolish of me. Someone has to keep the publishers in business, however. I had a fairly productive session with Lennon's Line; I got most of the way through editing the first chapter and added a short scene from Jack's (Jo's uncle) POV. The new section is still rough, but I can polish it later.

Sue commented in her blog about my discussion of characterization yesterday. One of the things she mentioned was that her characters had a counterbalance or foil. I do this too: George accepts his link to Beatledom with far more grace than Jo initially does, for instance. And John's clone, Paul, is the perfect foil to John. Character interactions can be quite complex and deserve more than the brief mention they're going to get tonight, as I should go to bed soon. But before I go, I also want to mention that Sue and commentators also thought that a character need not be completely likeable as long as he/she is interesting. Perhaps that's all I need from my characters in the beginning of the story, that they be interesting. As long as the readers don't end up rooting for the wrong people, I should be OK. But I'll be even better tomorrow after some shuteye....