Huh. I guess I do believe in outlines after all

So a shocking amount of writing advice I've encountered is about cutting the excess away, and this has rarely been my problem.

I tend to produce first drafts so condensed as to be downright gnomic, and then show them to friends who are kind enough to be informatively bewildered at me until I unpack.

Related to this, I always said I don't outline, at least outside my head. It occurs to me that my first drafts ARE outlines, really. Just, I outline in actual paragraphs.

Huh. That's an oddly useful insight.

In other news I forget where I recently saw someone comment that you can tell the difference between bad allergies and a cold because colds are PAINFUL, but that, sadly, is also very useful information right now.

Apropos this rotten cold, a poll.

I've been hearing about this whole 'tonsil removal and ice cream' thing basically forever. And it puzzles me greatly.

Admittedly, I had my tonsils removed when I was 18, and had had serious trouble with them for years, so it was a fairly complicated removal, but it took me slightly more than a week to successfully consume 2 litres of water within a 24-hour period and thus win my release from hospital and my ever-present IV, yclept Henry. (Not, sadly, "Henry IV": I would totally do that now, but this was then.)

Cold water, as well as even the most forgiving solids, took ... rather longer. There's a reason nobody tells you to put ice directly on fresh stitches, let me tell you what.

Had anyone attempted to feed me ice cream directly after the surgery they would have been exceedingly fortunate to escape having suffered no more than a paint-strippingly old-fashioned look (and only because my throat was too swollen to allow me to talk and I was too loaded on Demerol to throw a punch, at that.)

Therefore:

Poll #17145 In this poll, "ice cream" can also mean frozen yoghurt, sorbet, rice dream, etc.

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 93

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I had my tonsils taken out!

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I was a child, and there was ice cream, and it was good.
12 (12.9%)

I was a child, and there was ice cream, and it was awful.
1 (1.1%)

I was a child, and there was no ice cream
6 (6.5%)

I was an adult, and there was ice cream, and it was good.
2 (2.2%)

I was an adult, and there was ice cream, and it was awful.
0 (0.0%)

I was an adult, and there was no ice cream.
3 (3.2%)

I retain both my tonsils and an uncontrollable desire to tick boxes.
69 (74.2%)

(Optional but interesting) My tonsils were removed in (year):

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