Links in a chain (of being)

Whoever heard of vacation hitting someone hard? Last night I was not struck with an obligatory urge to go to bed early and voila, here I am bleary eyed at lunch time. The entire weekend was also a bit unproductive. I was social; I did hang with friends. But otherwise, I brought none of my various plots to fruition.

On the other hand, there is news of a small sort. One of the editors at the sports story site got back to me, and gave me an assignment. Not long after, I completed my fourth story for the site, however I've yet to receive any feedback from the editor who gave me the story to do (and it wasn't even much of a story, just a loose frame of an idea, and a rigid title of sorts).

Likewise, I discovered, or rather re-discovered a site called Fictionaut (two people, when told this story over the phone both replied "Knot, like k-n-o-t?"). I will admit to not knowing at all how the site functions, but there seems to be hundreds if not thousands of writers there. Since discovering that I could post, I've done so. The first story published was lite-sci-fi, if that's even a term. The second was actually flash fiction, one that I'm proud to say even garnered a comment from another author. The third was among the first science fiction shorts I wrote; I like it because it has all of my initial sensibilities and vigor before I was influenced, even marginally, by "what people are reading now" and "what the magazines are looking to publish."

Despite these bits of news, I did intend to do some serious editing this weekend. I drafted up to chapter 10 of the novel, and that being a round number, decided to do something I've never done before: go back to the beginning, and read all the way through to where I'd stopped before the novel was completely drafted. I call myself taking extra steps to make sure the work is sharp. Extra sharp, even. But then a chilling fear crept up in me: that I would find glaring error after glaring error and that by the last chapter, I'd just delete all of it and hold myself.

But now, except for an award ceremony tomorrow, I really am on break. I really don't have anything to be doing. I have no excuse to not exude my fuller energies to push forward. So, what else is there to do but push forward? I must confess again to only having questions.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Push, and breach

The imparting or exchanging of information

Let's play a game