Thought-Drive

Thursday critique with a Wednesday one following makes for a lightning quick turnaround. That is, given an assist from a particularly social weekend. I hung with three different friends on three consecutive days and now here it is Tuesday. I thank my stars that it was only the one piece to plow through, and that it was only 24 pages. The group has refocused on getting things sharp and them sending them out, so this piece was further along than normal. In a bit of shamelessness, I actually gave the writer to be critiqued my newest piece in hopes of extracting some more feedback for myself (I mean, he wasn't doing anything but waiting for his feedback, right?). One of my friends lumps this under a personality trait of mine called the "feedback monster." I can't say it's an incorrect assessment. The previous story I wrote got decent reviews. At least, all issues pertained to the same topic: the hardest thing that the story in question had to do, which was describe

Well, today is the last day of the summer semester, and it would appear that I haven't noticeably ruined anyone's life or steered anyone wrong to the point of them soaring off a cliff. I cound that a win. But, I've found that our impacts are hardly visible until much later, after we've make them. This quandry is actually the focus of a mountain notes I've been expanding, and pushing in the direction of yet another novel project. I've come to more fully understand a joke Chris Rock made in a recent stand-up in regards to the difference between a job and a career (along with people with jobs and those with careers). And I realized the differnce between writing and preparing to write. I call them notes, and sometimes I call the process outlining, but really, it's just preparation. I've become confident that I can throw my creativity at virtually anything, and in my mind, whatever it is will sprout blossoms and produce colors. And while that's all well

Lately, I've been catching up on things I should've done earlier. This mostly includes watching movies and television shows (it sounds like I work pretty hard when I say it like that, right?). A friend of mine chastised me for a statement I made about how much writing I do. I told her, seriously, that if I compounded up all the time I spent doing things that furthered or lead to writing, then I don't do much else aside from eat and sleep. Which is not to say that I live in an internment camp. I do it because I like doing it. I got a copy of a signed contract back, and was invited to yet more online groups. The welcome was warm, and the emails of things rated from stuff I need to know to stuff I don't even understand is up to maybe 100 or so a day. I have discovered a really neat feature in my email client that lets me "mark as read" things I haven't actually tended to. Check back with me later for when that bites me in the ass. As a recent movie (which I

Good things are producing good feelings, today and they have little to do with the extra day off work. As predicted (my prediction was accurate, so that's good, too), hitting chapters 5 and 6 of the novel were good for the momentum. I'm up to 7, with plans for 8 and looking back I think to myself with some pride about how I got this far. It's so much easier now, a breeze compared to the still-fresh memory of the teeth-grinding fiasco of the first handful. In addition to that, I have another short story in mind and it makes me laugh boisterously and say out loud, "Awesome, that's awesome!" I'm excited.  In other news, I've read the previous short story about ten times and am really tired of looking at it. It could be that it's so much longer than most shorts I write. Or it could be something else, which watching the first episode of Lost provided insight into. A friend, a certifiable "Lostie" sat me down and watched me watch the episode.