Literature Break

It was one of those days where I'd said I would take it off, but woke up this morning wanting to finish off that short story (it's so close to done). However, I did this and that and the other thing and ended up not writing after all. I'll finish the story tomorrow, and if I'm real good, maybe I can still to my revision of My Brother's Keeper and send that off sometime next week. Wow, something in the mail? That reminds me that I have to tweak my query for Crystal Past, find a new title for the book, and start sending it to publishers now. I'm also supposed to fit some exercise in there somewhere. Hey! Who's giggling? Oh. That was me. Ahem.

I'm just about done reading Bruce Holland Rogers' book Word Work. If you're writing, you should read this book. His perspective is fresh, his essays inspiring, and the way it's written, I feel like I had the guy over for dinner. You hear reviews like that all the time, claiming how the author's tone made you feel like they were right there, but this is the first time I ever felt that way. After reading his book I just want to hang out with the guy, ya know? And Eugene, Oregon sounds like a really neat place to live.

I'm also contemplating posting an old short story on Forward Motion for some crits. (This might be biting off more than I can chew.) It's a story I really like but got a few rejections; I want to know what's wrong with it. It's a SF story with a romantic theme and a sad but hopeful ending. I don't write much SF anymore, but I'd really like to see this piece find an audience. It's also one of the first pieces of fiction I wrote here in California when I was living down in Redondo. Maybe it's too sentimental. I dunno. I'll let you know what happens.

'Nuf said.

1500 words and almost done

Got a late start with the writing today, but still managed to get 1500 words. Or course, I thought this story would be done almost ten pages ago, but like many of my stories, it keeps rolling. Though the end is in sight. I also managed to work my main character out of his predicament. Now it's time for my neato dénouement that, hopefully, will add resonance to this story. I do anticipate a healthy amount of revision on this one. But I still think I like it.

1300 words in an hour

I decided today, due to the roof of my life caving in (once again) that I'd have to scale back my writing time to an hour a day, instead of the two to three I've been doing. This might only be temporary, especially since I'd really like to get in a sold 2 hours when working on the novel, but there's so many things I have to take care of, I need the extra time. The good news is, I can still manage to be pretty productive in that time. I wrote the bulk of my last novel in one hour every morning at 5 AM, before trucking off to the day job. It worked well enough. I seem to average about 1000 words an hour (if I know what I'm doing). This doesn't always happen, of course. But my schedule is also flexible enough that if I don't hit 1000 words, I can hang in a little longer to get there. Any less than 1000 words a day gets very frustrating for me. Happily, today I managed 1300 words in my hour. From there I went to the dreaded checkbook to find out why there's a $70 discrepancy between what I calculate I have and what the bank says I have. (Incase you haven't guessed, that's $70 in the bank's favor, not mine.) Just one more bump in the road. At least I'm writing every day.

Short story is still plugging along. Still not sure what to think of it. I may have, perhaps, "picked this one too green," as Damon Knight would say. The problem? I have yet to figure out how my main character is going to get out of his predicament. I knew I should have thought of that before starting, but I was so anxious to hop into another story. Oh, well...I'll figure something out.

About 1500 words today

Finished off another chunk of BN homework, which leaves me now to write the first scene of the novel. Probably start work on that this weekend. In the meantime, I've picked up that short story I started at the cabin and wrote another 1200 words on it. I'm still not sure it's all that great, but I'm not worried. I see it more as a literary experiment than anything else. I'm using a frame story (something I don't think I've ever done) with this piece. It's a little awkward, but if it comes out the way I envisioned, the story as a whole will be stronger with the frame. Without it the conflict becomes rather one dimensional. Can't have that!

Reading News: Only that I'm reading a book I was assigned in high school but never finished: Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities. Thoughts so far: I like it and should have read A Tale of Two Cities when assigned, though I probably wouldn't have appreciated Charles Dickens as much. Then again, I probably would have. I've just always had an aversion to someone telling me what to read. I much prefer to pick things up on my own, when I want to. I also imagine we would have ripped the thing apart instead of enjoying it, so...

Blogger Down; Lost in the Mountains

Well, it seems blogger didn't want to publish a post I'd written several days ago, but it looks like things are working again. I haven't blogged all weekend because I was up in Big Bear at a friend's cabin. We had a nice time--lots of walking, lounging, and eating. We did get a little lost on one of our hikes when we left the trail. Ooops. But we managed to find our way back before it got too scary. And no run ins with coyotes or mountain lions, just a lot of rock climbing and scanning a horizon that looked pretty much the same in all directions. You know? Fun!

Even wrote a bit. Started a short story I'd been kicking around in my head. Not sure what I think yet, but experience has taught me not to make any judgments yet. This story features characters from my last novel.

Oh, yeah. I have another article in Vision, so you better go take a look http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issue%2011/Genmystery.htm.

Enjoy!