Becca’s World

Since the movie’s coming out soon, I’ve heard more talk online about The DaVinci Code – who’s reading it now, who loved it, who’s planning to get the book… Thought I might check it out for myself.

My library only had one novel by Dan Brown, Digital Fortress, but I didn’t mind taking that as a sample. And the subject matter appealed me since it’s reminiscent of Randall Ingermanson’s Double Vision, a book I really enjoyed.

I think I’ll just catch the plot of The DaVinci Code from the movie, ’cause Brown’s writing feels like a highschool English assignment: poor dialogue, inconsistent point-of-view, overuse of exclamation marks – look who’s talking here, but still…

Not that you care, but Mr. Brown, you earned yourself a thumbs-down from Becca. Now I have to decide whether the premise of Digital Fortress is worth slogging through writing that should have been polished and honed by a professional.

I’m not sure exactly why, but I have Go Fug Yourself on my RSS feeds. Maybe it’s the sarcasm or the funny photos of celebrities, very possibly both. Anyway, this entry made me laugh. Mostly just what J.J. Abrams is thinking, but that’s quite enough to make me pass it on.

I had planned to have fifteen chapters in my first novel, and I’m up to number ten in this current pass of editing and fleshing out. I’m starting to feel that the story is so much closer to completion. Sure, I still have a tendency to write mostly dialogue, which I call the “Hemingway Syndrome.” (I’m not a fan, have only read one novel in fact. I could be totally off-base about his style, so I beg those familiar with his work not to stone me for my ignorance. )

Anyway… my point is that I no longer feel this is an interminable process. I will move on to another project before I hit old age!

P.S. I thought word count was determined by dividing the total number of characters by five, but it seems my word processing software thinks otherwise. Maybe it’s programmed to account for spaces between words while I’m not? I should go with its result of 46, 937 words. Not too shabby!

Saturday marked six years since Brad and I were married! We had a picnic on Zuckerberg’s Island, which is one of my favourite places to sit and watch the river flow. Then we visited Syringa Creek Park, where it was windy but still pleasant. Saw quite a few ground squirrels there.

We had supper out and saw “The Wild” at the local theatre. (Pretty good show, btw.) Then we finished off the day watching “The Karate Kid” on TV.

Sunday was another great day, with trips to Merry Creek Trail and Waldie Island Trail. In the evening, we watched “The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” and “Pride & Prejudice.”

Between these activities, I finished reading Emilie Loring’s Spring Always Comes and wrote a bit more for Chapter Nine of my novel.

Finally getting back to the original Star Trek series. Picking up where I left off in the summer, I watched the final two episodes of Season 2. It was neat seeing Gary Seven and Roberta Lincoln in “Assignment Earth” after reading The Eugenics Wars: Volume I last year.

Twenty-four episodes before I get to the series that started my Trek obsession. (I plan to watch every series, in order. That should keep me steeped in Trekkie-heaven for quite a while…)