To celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary and  both our fiftieth birthdays, Chris and I took a three week trip to Dublin, Liverpool, and North Wales. In 2005, we'd married at Portmeirion in Wales.  I will spare you the hundreds of great pictures we took of sea gulls, pigeons, funny signs, close-ups of flowers, and hundreds of other things, and just show the most evocative...

...And a GREAT website on writing.  My favorite scifi/fantasy website io9.com brought this to my attention.  He has a lot of wonderful things to say about Writing.  (Unfortunately, I see there are more books I need to buy...)  But here is an excerpt from Mr. Wendig's latest blog on writing:

1. HEY LOOK A PROBLEM

2. HEY LOOK A SOLUTION

3. THE END YAY

That is not nearly enough story.

A story should look more like:

1. HEY LOOK A PROBLEM

2. I’M GONNA JUST GO AHEAD AND FIX THAT PROBLEM AND –

3. OH GOD I MADE IT WORSE

4. OH FUCK SOMEBODY ELSE IS MAKING IT WORSE TOO

5. WAIT I THINK I GOT THIS –

6A. SHIT SHIT SHIT

6B. FUCK FUCK FUCK

7. IT’S NOT JUST WORSE NOW BUT DIFFERENT

8. EVERYTHING IS COMPLICATED 

9. ALL IS LOST

10. WAIT, IS THAT A LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL?

11. IT IS BUT IT’S A VELOCIRAPTOR WITH A FLASHLIGHT IN ITS MOUTH

12. WAIT AN IDEA

13. I HAVE BEATEN THE VELOCIRAPTOR AND NOW I HAVE A FLASHLIGHT AND MY PROBLEMS ARE SOLVED IN PART BUT NOT TOO NEATLY BECAUSE TIDY, PAT ENDINGS MAKE STORY JESUS ANGRY, SO ANGRY THAT STORY JESUS GIVES EVERYONE MOUTH HERPES

A lot of the complexities and consequences that should be found are often skipped or zipped past — but all of that (which you could roughly lump under the single term UH-OH) should not be avoided. You should instead be hovering over that turmoil. In a flight, we want to get past the turbulence as fast as we can. But in fiction, we thrive on turbulence.

Do not hurry past it.