Hoppy Easter!

Many more people, I think, ride bicycles than steal them, which is a good thing. It only takes one, though, and I was fortunate not to run across her today.

I rode up to Trader Joe's and was, not surprisingly, the worst dressed person in the store. Right as I got there I realized I'd left my keys at home and had no way to secure my bike to the shopping cart corral, as is my wont. Fortunately, and frighteningly, there's a guard stationed right outside the market. Why a guard is needed is anyone's guess, but I applaud this modest effort to keep the nation's workforce gainfully employed. If he didn't have this job, he might resort to stealing bicycles.

I carried my bike up the steps and found an out-of-the-way place to put it, thereby earning myself a nod from the guard. Not a smile, but it beat him reaching for his gun (if he had one).

I was dressed in my Easter finery (a black U2 T-shirt, shorts, and sandals) and was immediately aware that even in a place like Trader Joe's, which caters to a secular, liberal crowd, fully half the people in the store were dressed to the sevens. Not the nines -- I saw no evening or dining wear -- but as close to it as I've seen in, oh, a year. Men wore new suits and shiny ties, women often had hats.

Or, bonnets.

I bought some brie, bread, and sausage and rode home.


Got another chapter of BTS rewritten. It's fun, so far. Not only do I get the pleasure of replacing weak verbs with thoughtful ones, I also get to play around a lot with dialogue. In November, when I wrote it, I kept vacilating between writing dialogue and expostion, continually hoping that one or the other would spark some idea I could follow. After a few pages of meaningless dialogue, I'd move the people around, hoping that would start something.

Anyway, what I'm finding about dialogue is that I still do it poorly. I do a lot of describing, a lot of gesturing, far more than is necessary. I excuse that on the basis of time. When I'm writing it, it feels as if it's time for Sid to scratch his chin or something, but when I read it it's only been three seconds, not ten minutes, since he last did that.

Also, if the dialogue is any good at all, it will show such things as amazement or anger. No sense writing it.

Another trick I'm using is to cut and condense it. I'm trying to put two or three of Dina's lines, say, into one. I'll have to read it later, of course, to see if it sounds natural. That's the thing about dialogue: I think it should sound like someone talking, and that "someone" shouldn't be the author.