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Taking the test for my California licence tomorrow.  I've been a licenced driver for 15 years but the idea of taking the test still gives me the heeble jeebles.

You read the book right? The ones I've taken (in other states) are always questions taken directly from the book.

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Yeah, I have the book on my iThing and I've perused the sample tests etc.

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Have chest infection but I can't really say no to a €1000 black tie I've just been invited to by the boss...(for free)

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I still can't parallel park very well. I found out if usually if I back in to it, I do better, but I have to try so hard to not ding someone's car.

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I still can't parallel park very well. I found out if usually if I back in to it, I do better, but I have to try so hard to not ding someone's car.

 

How I was taught, which seems to work: your front wheel even with their sideview mirror, turn the steering wheel all the way, and back into the spot. Don't hit their car.

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Actually it comes from the French, 'a pareil parc' which means 'similar to a park.'

So really they're asking you to improvise on a theme. Express yourself, Pam. Let it all out!

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Where in Kansas are you from? I've got family all over the state.

 

Grew up in western kansas, middle of cattle country, and now live just outside of Lawrence (home of the Univ. of Kansas). 

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There was a film about the riot girl movement and the elf singer of bikini kill being shown at the film Festival and I forgot to go:(

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Grew up in western kansas, middle of cattle country, and now live just outside of Lawrence (home of the Univ. of Kansas). 

 

My family is from Hamilton County (as west as you can go), and my brother went to KU. Lawrence is the best. Western Kansas is...well there's family there.

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Licence aquired.  Well, in a couple of weeks once they've printed and mailed it, anyway.  I only missed one question.

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It's two thirty here and I'm still awake 'cause I can't stop stressing about my family, even though I know I have no reason to. Depression sucks. :getmecoat

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My family is from Hamilton County (as west as you can go), and my brother went to KU. Lawrence is the best. Western Kansas is...well there's family there.

 

I have a fondness for western Kansas, but couldn't imagine ever living there again.  In a lot of ways, it gets a bad rap.  There's actually some gorgeous country out there, you just have to get off the interstate to find it.  

 

I agree that Lawrence is pretty much the bomb.  Though from what I've seen, most towns of that size with a good college tend to be pretty cool.  You get the energy and stupidity of all the college kids, and the adults who stick around tend to be pretty awesome people.  Plus lots of interesting events that are free or cheap, even if you're not a student.  Got to see Max Brooks talk about zombies a few days before Halloween.

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My NaNoWriMo novel is going to need a second draft pretty badly. My prose is pretty shocking - all my practice in the last few years has been non-fiction. I've kind of lost control of the main character's arc because I made everyone she knows too nice, my vague outline is revealing I have pacing problems, I have no idea how to end it and basically every detail I've made up about the limited setting I'm using I've realised I'll have to fix because it conflicts with the tone I'm going for. Which I might not even be hitting!

 

Still, it's ironic that my greatest success in NaNoWriMo to date has been this year, where I'm doing it to practice doing long-term projects and the story I'm writing is kind of a pastiche of books I like (although said pacing problems has meant it's taken on a much cagier tone than the inspiration), as opposed to previous years, where I'm had a story that must be told.

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I want to know more about the conflicts between details and tone.

I have a lot if difficulty with pacing too.

Also, why are nice characters a problem?

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I didn't go for NaNoWriMo this year, since I was busy wrapping  up my actual novel, which after a year of editing is now very close to being done. Fourth draft with small refinements. Pretty happy with the current results and hopeful this'll actually get printed.

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I think excercises like this are just meant to reveal your mistakes and help you grow anyway, so I say do t sweat it Merus.

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Yeah, I'm deliberately trying to get words in a file rather than agonise over the perfect word choice. I have perfectionist tendencies and I'm also pretty lazy, which is a terrible combination for actually getting things done.

 

So the story I'm writing is fantasy, and one of the character archetypes that shows up occasionally that I pretty much always enjoy is the suspicious young thief that learns to trust people. So I've built a city patterned a little off Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, where an already crime-infested area was abandoned by the police when for some reason residents objected to the police just beating up black people to keep the rest in line. Problem is, police didn't exist until relatively recently, so having a police force is a lazy anachronism. They might end up becoming part of the army in the second draft, but then I have to come up with a reason why the city slums are a hotbed of crime that the authorities are ignoring.

 

Naturally, because I'm supposed to have a character that doesn't trust people, she needs to have a reason. But I've got basically everyone turning on her partway through the book, so I also need to make sure that has tension, and I wanted part of the character arc that she's heading down a dark path and doesn't realise it, but I think I made things too comfortable. And in trying to make her likable and give her an early motivation, I made her relatively generous and put her mum in debtor's prison, which means mum can't have been in there long because debtor's prisons are terrible.

 

Articles are much easier to write.

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So the story I'm writing is fantasy, and one of the character archetypes that shows up occasionally that I pretty much always enjoy is the suspicious young thief that learns to trust people. So I've built a city patterned a little off Pruitt-Igoe in St. Louis, where an already crime-infested area was abandoned by the police when for some reason residents objected to the police just beating up black people to keep the rest in line. Problem is, police didn't exist until relatively recently, so having a police force is a lazy anachronism. They might end up becoming part of the army in the second draft, but then I have to come up with a reason why the city slums are a hotbed of crime that the authorities are ignoring.

 

Speaking as a medievalist, you could just say that the slums are the province of tax farmers, who pay the authorities a lump sum every year in exchange for the right to get their money back from the people living there however they want. That would explain why the slums would be pretty much ignored, in addition to maybe providing the source for a surrogate police force?

 

Yeah, I don't know. Until maybe two hundred years ago, self-help was how the law got done, so the question is not why there are no police in Ye Olde Pruitt-Igoe, butwhy there are police anywhere else. Good luck!

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Honestly that'd probably work; it'd give me opportunities to blood the hands of the upper classes without having them kick puppies, and it'll give me a new faction to play with, which takes some of the pressure off the various thief crews.

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There are plenty of interesting historical policeish forces to look at in Wikipedia for ideas.

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