Five hundred words on YAWT (Yet Another Working Title) amid heavy editing. Plus I learned just enough about Corona Discharge to scare myself. The name sounds awful, like something you'd see soaking into the dirt out back of a border town tavern. But I assure you, it's not anything like that.

Crap. That image is now burned into my brain. I'm going to stop describing stuff now.

After Friday evening's INK critique on one of my latest short stories, Steve and I worked together Saturday sorting out the comments and suggestions. By noon, we had fixed the timing problem that plagued the piece since day one (past perfect vs. flashback stuff) and a few hours later, the piece was whipped into submission shape. Now to wait for the next Writers of the Future quarter opening (April 1st).

Next up was deconstruction of Working Title, a story with characters, a setting, and a situation that has a firm grasp of my attention even through all the missing parts. My problem was, still continues to be, that I don't know the ending. Part of that's due to not knowing the thoughts and reactions of the main character when years later, he's brought face to face with the guy who destroyed his dreams. Sounds simple enough but naturally, it's complicated.

We talked through some of the story line and Steve took notes for me. This will be the first story I've had to create an outline for but I think that might be because it's a BIG IDEA story with lots of people and setting stuff thrown in to make it deep and rich. If I can pull this off, it'll be the hardest thing I've ever written, even tougher to write than all those 50K, 60K, 75K NaNoWriMo novels I've hacked out over the years. But I'm not looking at this story, still untitled too btw, as the best thing I'll have ever written, just the toughest and a good learning tool. I've never outlined a short story before; the basics of each usually just flow from my head. This one's been different from day one, perhaps telling me I ought to outline more often. Or maybe I'm starting to think up BIG IDEA stories for the first time and if so, good. I think I'm good at creating believable characters and settings. I could always use some decent ideas and situations.

Today, another old, previously labeled 'dead file' story is being looked at. Too much emotion surrounding the critiques received on that one to talk about. In my eyes, it held such promise once and then, after a suggested rewrite or two or three or more, it all fell apart. Sometimes it might be good to leave something alone and move along to other things. That's been a tough lesson for me to learn although I think I'm getting better at letting my own voice have a say here and there.

We watched No Country for Old Men and The Mist last night. Odd, odd, odd. Naturally, The Mist being from a Stephen King piece (which I found excellent btw back in 1980 or so), sucked so bad it was enough to give a relatively stable person nightmares . . . from the directing and acting. No Country for Old Men was odd in that I like it, but knew that if as a written story it would be presented to our writing group, it would most likely be shredded. Choppy, confusing, almost incomplete seeming scenes, yet I found the dialog a joy and a hoot to listen to. Nothing like watching a Coen movie to make me feel creative and good about myself.

On a whim, I jumped on an impulse I wanted to act upon for a year. I joined Broad Universe. But there's more behind it than simply wanting to join this organization, a group that seems to fit in everything I am. That was another whim; that of participating in a reading at a convention.

Someday I hope to be able to participate in a panel, or group of panels and it would be ever so cool if they just happened to be on a topic(s) of which I might actually know something about. But what's just as cool to a newbie writer like myself?

Why, getting up in front of Gawd, Gnu, Zoot, and a bunch of people I won't know and reading some of my work.

That's right, I may have scored a reading for Norwescon as part of the Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading session Saturday at 6 p.m. thanks to MKHobson. I'm unbelievably happy and excited!


*SQUEEEE!*


Now that that's out of my system (that's a big fat lie btw) I know all the readers in the BU group will have between five and seven minutes to read. You know how hard it is to chop down a story that was already short to something that will fit under seven minutes read out loud? Grueling, but my edit-happy friends would be proud.

I took a 1600 word story which if you have never read a 1600 word story out loud, you might be surprised to learn that it takes about ten minutes to read, pared 300 words out of it hoping to keep enough for it to make sense, and I still come in at six and a half minutes reading it out loud. If I stumble at all, I'm sunk.

Practice, practice, practice.

Just so you'll know what I'm spending my weekend doing. But would I want it any other way? No way! I love a challenge!

Working Title Number One. I finally printed the whole thing out by individual 'chapters' to try to make sense of it all. I read somewhere that this method can be helpful. Must be helpful for those who aren't this confused.

Working Title Number One is basically a running monologue as it currently sits at just over 5K words. Needs more dialog, much more dialog and several others important structural things I'm sure though I have no idea what at the present. I like the voice of the piece and won't deviate from that. I've already cut most of the beginning out even though I liked the feel it provided to the reader about the narrator. But it was slow and didn't really serve a purpose. Snip, snip. Maybe I can work some of it back in later in the story but I'm not gonna hold my breath.

I'm tempted to cut more out from the beginning (the second beginning for those of you keeping track) but again, it will remove a big part for the reader, this time of the setting. I like the images this new beginning shows but I still, still don't have an ending.

Basically, it's a mess and I don't know what to do with it. All I know is that I want to write this; I like this story. I think, I believe it could be a great story (maybe just to me but I'm okay with that right now). I was hoping by printing out the sections, I could lay them out on the floor and see how the pieces fit together.

It's not working. I might have to break the sections down even further. Paragraph by paragraph? Sentence by sentence? It seems so tedious and goofy. What comes after that? Word by word? Blue screening? Ugh. Never had to do this on a story before, hope to never have to again.

It would seem that too much contained within one section relies on stuff that is followed up in later sections. Three sections are set in the present, four in the past, yet they intertwine. How could I have written such a confusing jumble of words? It makes sense to Me, but only kind of.

ETA: I wonder if I could integrate the second beginning into the exposition part. No, not the crappy exposition part, the part that the story needs in order to be a real story. You know what I mean, don't you?

Today I had flash of brilliance and changed a small part of Ash, the short story I finished last week. Something Steve mentioned a couple of times during his critique of it finally made sense to me and so out went most of the foreign text. I had to run across something similar in a story I was reading in the bathroom when it hit me.

What? Are you saying you never read or have great ideas while in your bathroom? Yeah, I thought so...

Afterward (don't ask after what) I pecked out a few words on a current WIP and made some minor changes per Steve's suggestions before he left on a business trip. And now, I should either be writing my fingers to the bone or reading something, anything, anything at all rather than sitting here bored and aimlessly staring off into space wondering what I would do and what would become of me if I had to spend the rest of my life alone.

It's not a pretty scenario so let's not think about it right now.

But then again (thinking about it anyway because there's no one else here to stop me from doing so), I do have a horribly bad, unfinished short about a woman who practically lives alone because her husband spends about as much time at work as she spends in her garden which is all.the.time. Maybe I could use this time to peck at that short, because really, do I really need to play another age of Age of Empires?

I must have needed some away time from my current WIP even though that away time seemed to be sucking my will to continue with it. For as much as I hated the story yesterday, a little chop here, a little revision there and I'm back to kind of liking it.

Still, it's going to be a long short story, something I'm not entirely comfortable with. I like the short and sweet, hit them before hard before they realize what a load of crap it may be, kind of story. Two thousand words, maybe three at the most. This one might end up around seventy-five hundred. It's also requiring lots of explanation and from everything I've read, that's usually not good. Still again, when I employ many of the tricks I see in other speculative fiction works, I leave my main critic wondering what the hell's going on.

I'm not going to worry about that just now. Just write the damned story. That's where my head is at. A thousand words today. They say every writer either hates their work or they love it. Today, I definitely love it.

More notes to self:  

#235 -  Remember that one day last year when you decided not get all anal retentive about properly filing all your SCWC stuff in one place?  Well you finally found all that stuff, didn't you?  Okay then, now get over yourself.

#236 - Work on toughening that skin.

#237 - Remember it's a long process.

#238 - Celebrate the completion of the first short of 2008 now.  If not, come critique day you'll wish you had.

#239 - Stop trying to be helpful.  It usually isn't wanted.

#240 - Work on toughening that skin.  Again.

#241 - And finally, if you think you're going to have one of <i>those</i> days, spare the world and stay in bed.

I should be writing. No, correct that, I need to be writing but instead I'm lamenting the latest critique from my significant other on the re-write of a story I read at OryCon last month. He hates it. No, correct that, he doesn't hate it; he says, "It's better" and my ears hear his voice trail off at the end of "better" as though he's a flat tire and just now ran out of air.

Of course, he doesn't really sound this way but that is what my ears hear and my heart feels. I ought to just forget what he says because since when do family relatives know doodly-squat about writing anyway.

Let's not mention he's a writer too...

But if I write it to please him, I ought to just give him the story and let him write it because it surely won't be mine and sure as hell won't sound like me.

Ever feel like going back to the original version of the story and calling it good regardless of if it ever sells or not? Would shelving this story be such a crime? I think I need to move on.

Accomplishments this week:

- Got a story in the mail for 1st quarter '08 WotF contest.

- Spent seven hours rewriting the story I read at OryCon's ORC.

- Spent two hours later rewriting two different versions of same story per several ORC suggestions.

- Spent another two hours rewriting yet again after another critique amid much gnashing of teeth.

- Read first short story in a Fantasy and Horror anthology and am still confusing. Wondering how and why.

- Decided to let others do the writing for a while.

Things probably not worth pondering for any length:

- Inconsistencies.

- Hows and whys.

- Being in the right place at the right time opposed to not.

The INK meeting was highly productive.

That sentence sounds terribly drab and boring but it is truthful. We could have talked hours longer on the bright shiny-ness that was OryCon and I've no doubt we'll have more discussions about it in the coming months. But for the time being, we've settled on the group's 2008 plans of which several have already been set upon toward accomplishment.

Dang, but we can be a productive group when we decide to be!

Today is the final day of NaNoWriMo. INK proves, once again, we rock because we all have finished our novels. Ris and I spent several hours at the Washougal Library last night in support of other area writers who were, are still striving to finish their 50K words before midnight tonight. But really, any amount of words written for NaNo during NaNo is worth celebrating. Big pats on everyone's backs for participating at all, no matter what your word counts are!

I spent my time at the Library working on a short story rewrite. At OryCon's ORC (Open Read and Critique) I was given a great idea for improving the short story I read and I'm working on implementing it. But I ran into a temporary snag while working it in. Maybe it was just the atmosphere; the Library being bright and cozy with nice, polite people sitting around typing quietly but I had the hardest time getting into the right frame of mind for the scene change. The frame of mind? The story's main character gets aroused while participating in a writing critique session, not over the content being read but because he's daydreaming and he's daydreaming because he really hates participating in writing critique sessions.

I have the tendency to think and write in a man's voice (really, I'm trying to learn to think female but it's just so boring to me), and although I have written a sexual man's part before, it was harsh and brutal. This one requires subtlety. It's just a different frame of mind. I'll get it, I know I will. It'll come to me soon.

This happens every time. I read something I have spent a lot of time writing and I think to myself, "Who wrote this? It couldn't have been me."

I mean that as a compliment. A writer's swelled head/big ego kind of compliment. I only hope I can write the second half of the novel as well.

I'm reading through the first half of the Car Novel I began last year and every time I think I'm making progress, I realize all the edit notes I'm taking are actually slowing me down. I've now got four days to get through twelve chapters and an outline. It's not as easy as it sounds as I'm spending nearly two hours on each chapter.

Let's see, twelve chapters times two hours, that's 24 hours plus an outline, there's another hour, minus sleep, that's fifteen or sixteen hours plus writing up a new outline for the second half, there's another four or five hours...

If I haven't already, I'll admit I suck at math. But I do think I can write fairly well. Let's hope I can afford to trust an accountant someday or I'm in big trouble.

OryCon is coming and some local authors are starting to post their known programming schedules. I feel special knowing beforehand where some of my favorite people are going to be. This year will be my significant other's first trip to Portland's SciFi convention, the place I finally saw the faint light at the end of what then was my self-imposed "I want to be an author but how" tunnel. If I get half of the wealth of information I gathered last year, it'll be another huge success in my eyes, and I'll immediately register to attend again the following year.

I've already committed to participate in as much of the new Rogue (Open) Reading & Critique sessions as I can. This was a scary but wildly inspirational and informative experience for me at the Southern California Writer's Conference last February, and one I hope will turn out similarly at OryCon.

Of course, now I’m kicking myself for not submitting a piece of work to the OryCon Writer’s Workshop. Nothing I can do about it but remember how big as year it’s already been for me and find courage for next year.

Last weekend was all about INK writers and writing. I came away from our get togethers glowing...no, beaming over critiques I received for a piece of my work and seeing a friend putting pieces together in learning the craft of short story creation. I can only hope my writer friends get anywhere near as much help and knowledge out of our meetings as I do. I feel very fortunate to know both Ris and Kami and to witness and read their works in progress.

This week I'll wrap up my car novel re-read and edit notes and will start working on the outline for the second half of the novel. My goal is to be overly prepared and itching to jump back in to that world on November 1st and to keep going throughout the month as my 50,000 word National Novel Writing Project. Secretly, just between you and me, I expect to reach 50,000 words with a week in the month to spare in keeping with my tradition created over the past three years. It's exciting to think that a month from now, I might be closing in on the final chapters. This novel is so very real to me I find I owe it to the characters to finish it, polish it and take the steps necessary to get it published.

Hang on Cecil. Hold on, Floyd. It won't be much longer.

I haven’t started working on those new short ideas I came up with over last weekend. I’ve been working on rewriting my last two finished shorts, numbers 3 and 4. And I presented short number 2 to my writing group (INK) for critique. Got some good ideas on what that one’s missing and as soon as I’m finished with numbers 3 and 4, I’ll jump right on a rewrite for number 2.

Confused yet? Just wait until I’ve got a dozen or more under my belt. Hopefully, a couple of these will be published or soon-to-be and I can start referring to them by title.

INK group meeting went well. I was impressed with Ris’ script from June’s Script Frenzy competition and I got a copy of Kami’s nonfiction piece to critique at the next meeting. I sent them both a copy of short number 3; my permission piece, and have already gotten back a lengthy critique and sent back a second rewrite.

And July isn’t even over yet. I’m still on target. As if I had any doubt.

Tomorrow I’ll begin rewrite of short number 2. Tonight, however, I think I’m going to take this voice I used so heavily in shorts 3 and 4 and begin short number 5. It’s just screaming to get out on paper.