Today (and a bit of yesterday) were spent in Kyoto. I’ll be honest, I didn’t do a lot or see a lot… I went to a couple shrines, I saw an ancient castle, I petted some cats, and I ate a lot of convenience store sandwiches.
Like… a LOT of convenience store sammiches. The Japanese convenience store sandwich is a thing of beauty. Their onigiri (balls of seasoned rice wrapped in seaweed and usually with a flavourful “core”) are great and inexpensive, but their sandwiches… I am absolutely, 100% going to miss those.
In other, WRITING-related news, I managed to finish the first draft of the next short story I sold! Huzzah! I’ve sent it to the Writers Group with the hopes they can review and give me some feedback… I can tell it’s pretty good, but it’s missing (or rushing, or not spending enough time on) something. Still, it was a bit like pulling teeth to get it this far. But now that the first draft is done, I’ve already started blocking out the audio version in my head. I have a month to finish the written portion and record the audio, so basically as soon as I’m wheels-down in Toronto I’ve got to start organizing that.
Sadly, this means I have to return to editing… Novel 5 has some pretty serious edits needed, but it’s an interesting process, considering I wrote the first draft so very long ago. There is the temptation to just scrap the whole thing and start from scratch, but that’s mostly the voice in my head that hates editing with the passion of a thousand suns.
Right! The Shinkansen (bullet train) I’m on is about halfway to Tokyo, so I’m going to read for a little bit and then get back to editing!