Thought-Drive

As per usual, I think about blogging, and then I do something else instead. I wish I could sit down with some of the personalities that do this sort of thing regularly and well, and pick their brain about how it is for them. I mentioned some time ago that I was using a very simple organizational tool that laid out all my projects and let me tab notes about the progress of each. (I'm still brainstorming on the first act of the play, but the script for the comic is about ready to be put down. The short story is slipping, though, so I'll be attempting that soon.) I've continued to use it, even more so now that the novel is marching along. I'm almost 30k in, and it's transitioned from concepts floating around in space to story elements with relationships to each other, details in between. I have an idea of where it could actually go, and that feels pretty good. But one of the bullets lower down the priority list was concerning my networking and submissions. The idea ...

Just over a week in the new place. I missed my first great opportunity to write, but I only feel a little bad about that. In the time since bringing in the last box, a few different ideas have bubbled up out of my nighttime thoughts, one of them so strong it formed into a kind of sense during the next waking day. I feel good. I will put words on the page again. It's also June, which is obvious, but was not so apparent to me as when I went over my mental list of things I wanted to accomplish over the next few seasons. Primarily, I'm getting back up onto the submission horse. The house that accepts submissions without an agent will be opening its doors again this winter, and I would like to have another offering. The plan was to write all year on the latest novel. And now it's June. So, a step back to organize, in a real space others who might keep me accountable could see. First, the novel. I have things outlined up to a certain point, but I need to go back and famili...

I've always found journeys interesting, from those most strictly defined to those unbound by figurative language. I find myself in position these days to stare into the back of many a contractor's vehicle. There's a surprising amount of carpet, and a somewhat unexpected amount or pride, also. What perplexes me more than anything though is how often the painter is surprised at how much space they're missing, that there was no plan to haul away what they just purchased. Staring at the back of their head, or the side of their face, all of their posture begs the question of "how did it get like this?" Much like the carpet, the shelves tell a story, the paint splatters, the piles of equipment, the disparate pieces of various machines, broken poles, ruined brushes, scraps of paper and plastic and plans. Recently, a kind of fog lifted for me. I had a few different things rolling downhill at me, and after dodging a few of them (or, letting a few of them roll over m...

Tis the season. For falling into funks. The writing has been proceeding, albeit at a slow pace. I've been hamstrung by the start and stop pace created by the research required to keep this off the ground. Normally, my chapters hover around 2,500 words. That's been strangely consistent across series, across genres, across years. I theorized early on that a specific amount of detail is required, like the rubber casing surrounding copper wires, to transmit understanding and create immersion for the reader. And it depends a lot on where the author is starting, what needs to be explained for the story elements to make sense, so the narrative can proceed. In more modern settings, I found the chapter word count dropping, because everything was so very similar to our modern world. In fantasy settings, not medieval but different worlds entirely, certain things had to be clarified, but where I didn't explain, the trappings created a safety netting in the medieval understanding. Some...

Been under the weather. Yet another phrase I cannot parse. The sickness delayed some things, but only delayed. However, even healthy I likely would've procrastinated in doing the research needed to get the latest project off the ground. I never did go back to looking into agents or researching publishers. I just don't feel right unless I'm writing. Maybe I should talk to someone about that. So, for a few different reasons, waking up at 5 with a story playing in my head was less than ideal. And for a few different other reasons, I rolled out of bed at 5:30 with my hands out, trying to catch the thoughts tumbling out of my mind. Two thousand words in, chiding the sun about finally getting up, I was happier, in general, and I think I was better, too, having learned some things already about my world and the characters in it. It's going to be a longer prologue, I think, an introduction to the internal logic of the space and some of the major actors moving about. I also...

"I want them to be great writers." I'm not sure why I jumped at that, but I did, as if I didn't need, or want, to hear anything else. Thinking back, there wasn't an ounce of pause in me, not a mote of modesty to wonder at my inability to help with that, or to wonder just how far I had to go to be great myself. Today I start a new job with that as my mission statement. Some years back, a bunch actually, my mentor told me about his lament at discovering the distinction between "a writer who teaches" and a "teacher who writes," and how he had looked up in recent days and discovered that he had become the latter, and the former, his goal, had gotten away from him who knows when. Like a lot of my lessons, I recall thinking to myself, "well, I don't want that to happen to me." So far, it hasn't. Speaking of things that haven't been happening. NaNoSubMo is tanking. I started research only yesterday about publishing and sub...

I think I need to go camping. Let me back up. The submission is done. That one is. Going in, I thought that I would wash my mind of the stress, distract myself after all the triple checking and document attaching with trying to start and then to finish the next story. It is November after all, and I've avoided NaNoWriMo every year someone has asked. I was either in the middle of something, or just finished something else. I finished the submission process November 1, so it only made sense. Except they only allowed one novel per author. I had worked on sharpening three. One fell out because they didn't want that kind of story, and another because, well, there was only one hole and I had two pegs. Instead of feeling like I was ready to move on, I felt like the task wasn't done. I finally looked up the Atlanta Writer's Conference details, and learned how many weeks I was late. They have agents, from publishers most people have heard of. And they have a finite number...