The Great Sea

Story Beginning

2010-04-15T09:24:00.006-05:00

I recently wrote a short story. It didn't work out as well as I would have liked, but I have yet to edit it. Lacking anything else remotely worthwhile to write about I thought I would post the first few hundred words here to see how it goes over.

Of course, the only person likely to read it here has already read the entire story and rendered an opinion. haha

I call the story "The Fight". Here is the beginning.

The Fight
by Bevie James

Tiffany left the kitchen with Darryl in tow, pursuing her with dogged determination.

“Leave me alone!” she wailed.

Why did he have to get like this? Why was he so insecure?

“No. I’m not going to leave you alone until you answer my question. I think I have a right to know.”

She wheeled on him. Darryl was crossing an invisible line.

“Then you think wrong! What gives you the right to demand to know anything about my life? We’re not married.”

“Would it matter if we were?”

“Who cares? We’re not. So stop with the ‘I have a right to know’ bullshit. You have the right to ask. Nothing more.”

She turned away from him again, heading for the bedroom. But Darryl wasn’t going to let her off so easily. He hurried and blocked her escape. Both of his hands were up in a stopping gesture.

“Okay. Fine. Maybe I was out of line with the demanding thing. But we’ve been going out for a while now, and I thought we were getting close. I thought I mattered to you.”

“You do.” Maybe he was out of line?

Darryl relaxed his posture, but only a little.

“Okay. Good. Then let me ask again. Have you been sleeping with Gwen?”

Chivalry

2010-04-07T10:46:00.003-05:00

I'm kind of out of story mode right now. Been writing a lot of poetry. My typical stuff. Bad. haha

I did post a couple of things on the Legion of On-Line Super Heroes blog. Feel free to check them out. No great shakes. Both draft pieces.

Fairyhedgehog said she notices that I am happiest when I am doing a lot of writing. Looking at it from my perspective I have to say I agree. Not that Fairy needs any affirmation from me. She's quite brilliant. And inciteful. Not that she incites people. Inspires would be the better word.

She also said she cannot make up her mind if it is writing that makes me happier, or my being happier that makes me write. The chicken and egg thing. It fits. I'm certainly chicken. And I'm kind of an egg. Rotten egg. Left too long, you know?

I still have story ideas floating around in my head. It's just that none of them want to come out yet. And I haven't the energy to grab one and see what can be made of it.

Did try something recently. Tossed most of it in The Archives. But I still like the first paragraph. I don't suppose it hurts anything to post it here.

Kimbra paced her cell. Three steps to the door. Three steps back to the wall. On her return trip her eyes would drift upward to the barred window over her head. The blackness which looked in was no darker than the feelings she bore in her heart. But time was moving. The cold grey of dawn couldn't be far off. Soon after it arrived she would be taken out to the courtyard. And executed.

The Lonely Woman

2010-04-03T06:34:00.003-05:00

Not many people care for my poetry. Even I only like it sometimes. That's because I don't follow any rules, which all good poetry does. The rules may be obscure to those of us not familiar with the many cadences and structures. There are many kinds of poetry.

But when I'm sad I tend to write what I call poetry. It's just a way to express feelings that tear at me from within. Sometimes I wonder what kind of scars there are on my insides. No wonder my stomach doesn't work properly.

Anyway, this came to mind just this morning. I don't have the energy to write a story so I wrote a poem. It isn't a good poem. Not well thought out at all, I think. But I wasn't into that. I just wanted to get it out. And keep it within my favorite theme: medieval.

So, here it is:

Lonely Woman
by Bevie James

You know, I could not have invented this story in a million years
And were I to have read it before living it would say, People don’t behave like that
And yet here I am. I lived it.
Or, should I say, it killed me.

Once there were four friends. They were good friends. Happy.
They liked to laugh and tease and make merry together. For that’s what friends do
The three men all strong and virile
The pretty little woman

Around them there was misery. War was ravaging the land.
And each declared to the others how were it not for them they would leave
Leave the tiny village
Leave the country entirely

And then they were betrayed, cruelly and played for fools
It was at this time the strongest of the four suddenly disappeared from sight
Gone from the village
Gone from the country

The three remaining friends huddled close together, drawing upon each for strength
They left their tiny village, ravaged by the war, and found a new place to dwell
A new village of their own
A new place to call home

But the one grew restless and bored, and began exploring the area for interests
And quickly his feelings toward the woman changed from love to disdain to hatred
And he accused her of things
Looked for reasons of fault

The woman began to collapse, for this restless one had been her champion knight
They had shared the things only lovers share, in broad daylight and in the night
She pleased him well
He pleased her too

The war pressed close and panic ensued, and things were done in a hurry
The woman, in charge, tried to keep the peace, but her efforts resulted in ruin
Her champion left
Abandoned her in need

The champion returned but the woman resigned, and gave her role to the wise one
But things were falling apart, and the champion continued to revile her unceasingly
Looking for fault
Making it up at need

To save the village the wise one turned command to the other, who really was not fit
He did his best, but the weight was heavy, and he tried to bear it alone
Not good for him
Not good for the village

The woman tried to help, but was left out more and more, and so she lost her mind
And things unraveled quickly. Hatred and mistrust growing like a disease
Nothing she did worked
Nothing she said was right

She was expelled from the village and cast to her own. By a lover who hated her now.
And weeping and mourning she made a new place, in the shadow of a friend’s home
Hoping for forgiveness
Hoping to be loved again

The village was overrun, and new leader installed as king. The woman’s time drew near
She cried out for answers and sought to talk, but silence met her ears
Not a word from any
Not a sign that any cared

In time the woman was attacked, by a friend of the village that was lost
She cried out and was recognized, and the attack was withdrawn at last
Acquaintances remembered
Safe but still alone

She called to another village, to let them know what fell
And they said they understood and offered her a place by their well
A new home
A safe place

But her love for her friends was great, and she turned down the offer of help
She would remain in the shadow of her village, hoping they would forgive her again
And they would be together
They would be happy

But the one friend spied on the village, and the other reviled her friends
So the last friend the woman had, believed her of treason and left
Now truly alone
The end of hope

And so the woman sits quietly, knowing the war rages about
Knowing that sooner or later, the war will visit her house
And she will die
And it will end

Do you believe this story my friend? That friendships could so easily die?
Well it’s true, I’m sorry to say. That we really all think alike
Rash to conclusions
Never to forgive

And so I walk in sadness. Knowing my fate is now set
There is nothing to do that will change things, and alone is how it will be met
For I am that woman
And loneliness is my life

Oblivion

2010-04-01T12:19:00.002-05:00

Last year was my most prolific year ever with writing.

What a contrast to this year, when I hardly write at all.

Spyscribbler recently posted about what can be hard about writing. I missed the post when she first wrote it. Been very lazy about visiting other people lately. Actually, for some time. Been feeling sorry for myself. That can become as addicting as alcohol, cigarettes, drugs - or even sex.

Not as fun as sex. haha

I commented something to effect that what makes writing hard for me is realizing nobody but me is ever going to read it. As this reality presses down upon me I find myself wondering - what's the point? Okay. I wrote a detective story about a woman who is mistaken for a high-priced call girl at an all women's retreat. I like the story, but I haven't even bothered to edit the first draft. It sits in a file on my computer. Unread.

Same with my story about the guy who discovers reality is not what he thinks it is when multiple realities become threatened. Including his own.

I have a story about two women trying to make a homestead in the mountains, under the threat of a ghostly phantom.

Fire Red has been read by one other person. Apprentice has been ready by two or three, and then rejected by an online magazine.

White Wolves and Wizard Girl were never finished.

All of these stories have been written since September 1 of last year. In fact, with the exception of Fire Red, they were written last fall.

But none of them will ever be read by anyone but me. I don't write well enough for others to read. And you know what?

I never will.

Growing Old With My Stories

2010-03-16T17:26:00.002-05:00

I have read how storytelling has gone through its stages. The result being, stories that were classics in the 1800s would have been rejected in the 1920s. And stories from the 1920s would not be accepted in the 1950s. And those would not make it in the 1980s, and the 1980s stories wouldn't make it now.

I suppose it's a bit like another form of entertainment: vaudeville. Hysterically funny. Until about 1930-40. Then it seemed to lose it's charm.

It got something of a rebirth in the form of television. Most of the early comic shows were basically vaudeville routines. Those lasted until the 60s, when situation comedies and variety shows took over.

Variety shows ended in the 1970s. So did the really good situation comedies.

Now it's phony reality shows and horrible things like dancing with the stars and idol. If I believed they weren't staged I might like them better. As it is, I don't watch any of them.

But for the person who truly liked the old shows - Dean Martin, Andy Williams, Nat King Cole, Carole Burnett - watching a new one would not be bad. It would be refreshing.

Same is true of the situation comedies such as Dick Van Dyke, Andy Griffith, and I Love Lucy.

My problem is I PREFER those shows to what's on today. Just as I tend to prefer the older written stories to what is being written today. A matter of taste, I suppose. A sign of age? I don't think so. I know several people near my age who adore the current stuff.

Guess I'm just a dinosaur in disguise.

And that's the way I write. Old.

haha

The Silent Actor on a Deserted Stage

2010-03-15T11:23:00.003-05:00

You know, sometimes I throw too much effort at a thing. It's fun. I enjoy it immensely. And I find myself devoting far too much time with it.

When the object of my - obsession - is a story, it's great. I churn out words like goose droppings. And they're probably about as useful. haha

But when it's something else my writing suffers. My creative forces are directed elsewhere, and no stories get written.

That's what's been happening for the last ten days or so. I got myself involved in one of those online gaming worlds and I'm having a blast play acting like I'm living in medieval Europe. Having never been to Europe I have no clue how realistic it is. But it's fun.

Still, after ten days I'm finding my thoughts drifting back to my writing. I can never abandon it long. Even when I'm frightfully discouraged. Writing is kind of who I am, I guess. I'm not nearly so good at it as I desire. Kind of like the would-be actor/actress watching plays from the wings and wishing s/he could be out there, too. And when the performance is over and everyone has left the theatre, s/he sneaks out on stage and performs a soliloquy to an empty house.

But I sense another writing surge on the horizon. Or around the corner. Or bubbling up from within. Wherever it comes from, it's near.

Steps in a Process

2010-03-09T09:01:00.002-06:00

Well, the first rewrite of my new story is complete. It was a slow go, and it took twice as long as writing it.

Yes, I know. Good editing takes even longer. I heard how some people spend three months writing a story as long as the one I wrote in a two weeks (40,000-words), and then spend the rest of the year editing it into something publishable.

Unfortunately for me, I lack the editing skills to achieve that kind of success. I work hard and read what I've written and make all kinds of changes. And when I'm finished I think I really have something. Then someone who really knows how to edit looks at it and shows me that I really found just a small percentage of the faults.

So that's where I am now. I wrote the story. It's a hero story starring my latest here: Fire Red, a young woman who possess the power of fire and electricity. The setting is a couple hundred years after the Great Wars, which destroyed much of the earth's environment and its population. In fact, it is because of the Great Wars that Fire Red has her power.

I've edited the story. Trying to find inconsistencies, poor sentence structure, and confusing points. I think I did all right. But I know someone else will look at it and wonder why I didn't proof read before giving it to them.

That's where I'm at now. Looking for someone to read it and tell me why it still needs work.

It never ends, does it?

You Can't Rush Art

2010-02-28T17:35:00.004-06:00

I'm probably wrong about this idea I have. After all, what do I know? But I just realized something.

I begun the year with the goal of writing one million words this year. I came within about 40,000-words in 2009. So what happened? I began the year writing - nothing. Nada. Zilch.

Not only that, I didn't feel like writing. I didn't want to write. And so I didn't.

I tried a few times, but the efforts were half-hearted. None amounted to anything. Soon, January had passed and it was February. The goal was pretty much shot. You see, to make one million words in a year I have to write about 2,800-words every day. And after 31 days I was already 85,000-words behind schedule.

So the goal was over. No realistic chance of making it. Because I'm not foolish enough to believe I would write EVERY day. Even last fall, when I wrote two novels in about six weeks I didn't write every day. Just most days. So my average daily output - when I wrote - would be nearly doubled. Over 4,000-words every day I wrote. It wasn't going to happen. Pressure off.

So what happens in February?

About mid-month I get the idea to start writing a new hero story. Ten days later I have a completed draft of 40,000-words. How was this possible when just a few days earlier I didn't want to write at all?

Well, the obvious answer is that we filed our state and federal taxes. Our income has continued to drop steadily for the past seven years which means we are still getting returns instead of having to pay in. The returns we got this year meant we could stay in the apartment another few months. One level of stress removed. Temporarily.

But I think there was something else going on. And it's what I alluded to at the top of this post.

Last November I tried to do the Nano thing. Didn't like it. Even though I never officially signed up. So I quit it. Immediately after quitting I finished my novel with days to spare.

I think a LOT of writers make the mistake of setting an artificial deadline for completing a writing task. Now when you have been paid to get something done by such-and-such a date, that's one thing. Or if a writing contest, or submission window has a cut-off date, that is also something. But when the deadline exists simply because you said it would, it's artificial. And creativity can't work in that kind of an environment.

I did not set out last year to write a million words. (Just as well, seeing as I didn't quite make it.) But I wrote prolifically. This year I set the goal. Couldn't write a thing.

Write a novel in a month? Seemed an easy enough challenge, seeing as I can produce a novel in 2-3 weeks. Couldn't do it.

Artists - even amateurs such as myself - don't work well under artificial deadlines. Some do. And if that describes you then by all means go for it! But if you find yourself setting deadline after deadline, and you can never achieve them, then perhaps it's time to say, "To hell with getting it done by July. It will be done when it's done. I'm just going to write what I feel like. And when." And who knows? You may find yourself writing every day.

Just a thought.

The Hard Part is Upon Me

2010-02-26T13:30:00.002-06:00

Well, the reveling is over and the editing has begun. (ye-ay)

I'm not a good editor. That's because I'm not a good critiquer. The things others see tend to be blatantly obvious.

But I generally miss them.

But I'm trying.

I know the theory that if I were to put the story away for a month or two, and then come back to it, I would probably see the obvious, too. There's a problem with that approach. At least, in my case.

You see, if I put anything away for that length of time my brain decides it doesn't matter anymore and I WON'T pick it up again and see the obvious. I won't pick it up at all. So I can only afford a day or two and then I have to get cracking on it.

So that's what I'm doing with my latest hero story. I'm cracking on it.

I think it's a good story. And fairyhedgehog, who's comment in my previous post reveals she has read it, too, also likes it.

It's not a perfect story. It needs work. There are things which even I see as obvious. And those are the things I am going to work on. What's the term? Low-hanging fruit.

I'm still early in the first chapter, but I'm making adjustments here and there. It's coming along. I read fast, write fast, and edit quickly. So perhaps in a week or so I will have a "polished" draft. Kind of brassy of me to say that. And, like all brass, to TRULY polish it will require some heavy elbow grease and hard work.

That will be the third write.

Maybe I'll just have it plated. What do you think?

Chalk Another One Up

2010-02-24T08:35:00.002-06:00

Well, I have done it. I have completed my latest draft. It's a 42,000-word story about my latest super hero. Began it ten days ago. Or was it eleven?

I love it when things come together and a story just flows. That's what happened with Fire Red: Hot Times.

Now comes the hard part: Editing.

Wouldn't it be great if we could just write great pieces of art on our first try? Supposedly, there are writers who do that. I'm told Dick Frances never changed a word once he wrote it. He did all of his editing in his head beforehand. Not sure I believe it, but as I can't disprove it I'll accept it until I hear otherwise.

Unfortunately, I'm not like that. My first drafts read like, well, first drafts. And that means I have to rewrite them. Not fun.

In the meantime I intend to revel in the fact that I wrote another story. Huzzah, huzzah.

Finding a Story

2010-02-20T20:50:00.002-06:00

Been writing my new hero story, and it's been coming along nicely. Not perfectly. Nicely.

Most of my writing has been taking place in the early hours, between four and eight in the morning. But I have done some during the day, too.

The story hasn't gone completely as I originally planned. But then how could it? When I began writing I had little idea of the plot. However, by the end of the first paragraph I understood my character's inner conflict. Halfway through the first chapter I knew my antagonist. Well, I knew him from the first. What I didn't know was how he would work his way into the story.

It's a risky way to write - beginning without knowing when one is going. I've done it many times, and I must confess that most of the time it just plain does not work. I start writing without knowing where I'm going and that's exactly where I wind up. Not knowing where I'm at.

But sometimes it works. It worked this time. I'm glad.

Do you ever write like that? You have an interesting character, but you don't know what to do with her? So you just start writing and let her tell you her problems, and she and the characters she meets let you know what the story conflict is. Like I said, it doesn't always work.

New Works - All Small

2010-02-14T15:31:00.002-06:00

Well, thanks to some very good help I should be submitting my Little Red Riding Hood spoof later this week. I don't know that it's what they want, but they say they take all genres as long as the stories are flash fiction - 500 to 1,000 words.

Meanwhile, I have begun a new hero story. Only don't look for it on the Legion Blog. I haven't completely abandoned it, but this new story doesn't really fit that mold.

The story I'm working on should be less silly. I intend to focus more on character than abilities. Who is this hero? Why is she a hero? What is it costing her to be a hero?

There is nothing wrong with a basic story about heroes and villains, but sometimes it's good to know more about a character. Helps the reader identify.

Another Task Completed

2010-02-10T11:04:00.004-06:00

So the week's just over half over (I still don't count weekend days as part of "the week") and I have completed the next rewrite of my Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale spoof.

I always worry about my rewrites. Did I make my story better? Or worse? Did I add life in? Or did I take the guts out of it? I never know.

That's the problem with not having confidence in an area. One can actually do well and not ever realize it. Just as one can do poorly and not realize it, too. We've all seen that. And since some of what I've written and thought was good has been returned to me shredded, and soaked in red ink, I guess I have fallen into the second category more than once, I'm ashamed to admit.

My problem is I do not know how to measure quality. I only know what I like. And sometimes what I like is not considered quality by others. And sometimes what's considered quality by others I don't like at all.

I get this with music and film all the time. The top rated television shows? The ones people record while they're at work so they don't miss an episode? I never watch them. Ever. B-O-O-O-O-R-R-R-R-I-I-I-I-N-G.

And/or annoying.

There are plenty of comedians I don't laugh at. And plenty I laugh at that others don't.

The same is true with books. A lot of what others rave about I find dull. Even with the fantasy genre, which is my favorite reading. But just because it's fantasy doesn't mean I'll like it. And just because it's not doesn't mean I won't. I like what I like, whether it was done well or not. Those awful monster movies from the 1940s and 50s? I love em. Yeah, they're hokey. The writing sucks. The special effects suck. The acting is embarrassing. But I like em. Well, a lot of em. Not all.

And so I never know what's good. My assumption now about my own work has changed. Since I seem to be so out of step with the majority on everything, the likelihood is that my own work sucks. But this only bothers me because it means I will probably never be paid for it, and not many people besides myself will ever derive enjoyment from it.

And that's a shame. There are few things more pitiful than a story that isn't shared.

A DIfficult Week Ahead

2010-02-08T15:46:00.002-06:00

Been unable to edit due to family being around almost constantly. If writing is difficult to do under those circumstances, editing is nigh impossible.

Writing is a free time, when the body does all it can to keep up with the mind. It can't, so the mind gets to take frequent rests.

Editing is the exact opposite. The body can relax because the mind is struggling to figure out just why that sentence sucks, and why that paragraph is nothing more than infodump, so how can it be rewritten to be interesting? Do these other scenes actually contribute to the story, or take the reader away from it? Not easy. Not easy. Not easy.

And yet I get the impression there are people who actually prefer editing to original writing.

I knew a guy who wrote computer software who was like that. He hated writing new programs from scratch. However, he just loved doing maintenance work on existing programs.

For myself, I'm a creator. I like ruminating about stories in my head, and I love telling them. But I struggle with the actual language when editing. I miss so much of what is so obvious to others.

Well, if I'm given the time I will be working on editing this coming week. Hopefully, I will see the things which need to be seen.

Rewriting Again

2010-02-05T15:45:00.002-06:00

So I've rewritten my fairy tale. Not going to post it. Got a critique for it and I've got a bit of work yet to do. And when I finish the next rewrite I intend to submit it for publication.

Not quite thirty years ago I had a writing instructor tell me she believed me to be a natural novel writer. So here I am: writing flash fiction.

Guess I'm starting over again. The who fairy tale parody thing is something from my teenage and early twenties years. Back then I loved to make fun of common stories, movies and television shows. It had always been in my mind to submit things to Mad Magazine. Back in my youth that was one of the premier comic books. It cost 50-cents (compared to 3-for-a-quarter), but it was well worth the money. I kind of got in tune with their writing staff, for it was not uncommon to see things I was working on show up in the magazine a couple of months later.

So I have returned to editing my own work. Something I had not expected to do much of this year. But in order to get my fairy tale spoof up to speed I'm going to have to work at it.

Who'd of thought?

New Fairy Tales: Little Red Riding Hood - Removed by Author

2010-02-04T11:30:00.004-06:00

I'm sorry. I felt like being whimsical, and Writtenwyrdd suggested I might try rewriting an old fairy tale or two. But here it is: My retake on Little Red Riding Hood. Done in a whimsical style. Be warned: This is the unedited version. (I'm not editing much of anything lately.)

Well, if you didn't read it before you won't be reading it now. I've removed the actual story from this post in order to rewrite it.

Sorry.

How it Began - Kind Of

2010-02-03T17:00:00.002-06:00

Been in an awful writing rut of late. This hasn't happened in a good many years. I don't much care for it.

Writing small pieces helps. I think. At least I feel like I've written something. There may not have been any point to it, but at least I've put words into the computer.

I wrote my first story when I was in grade school. That was such a long time ago. I have no recollection of my earliest stories, other than that I wrote them. Most tended to revolve around dogs, cats - and ghosts.

It was a ghost-mystery story which brought me my first acclaim. I was in fourth grade. That would have made me nine-years-old. We were given an assignment to write a ghost story for Halloween. It had to be at least two pages long - hand written. There was no limit to its length. That was a mistake my teacher would not make with me again. You see, while everyone else wrote two - or almost two - pages of story, I wrote ten or twenty pages. I forget now if each chapter was one page or two.

The story was about a family of six taking a vacation at a castle overlooking a small lake. There were several ghost sitings, disappearances, and missing treasure. My hero and heroine (brother and sister) ultimately solved the mystery by proving the castle caretaker responsible for the ghostly hoax. He was a smuggler. (If this sounds strangely like Scooby Doo you must remember that I was only nine - and Scooby Doo wouldn't be on television for several more years.)

A few things stick out in my mind about that story. First, I left a loose end, which I didn't realize until after the story was "published". Amazingly, I was the only one who saw it. Second, my sister, Gayanne, who was an avid reader and considered herself a better storyteller than me, was quite jealous of the attention I got throughout the school as a result of that story. And third, I was hauled around to every classroom in school throughout the day so I could read my story to each class. (This was my "publication".)

For years I devoted myself to ghostly tales. Not all were hoaxes. Living in what I (and nearly everyone else) believed to be a haunted house gave me what I considered to be a certain level of credibility. After all, I knew first hand some of the manifestations which happened in a haunted house.

By the time I was through with junior high I had added another dimension to my writing: sarcasm. Parents (mainly my mother) and teachers and certain older siblings filled me with enough anger and disgust at how foolish people in charge can be. But in those days I was completely powerless to say just how foolish. Until I discovered I could disguise it in stories. The more clever knew exactly what I was doing, but they also tended to let me get away with it.

In high school I discovered true fantasy. It was like coming home.

Probably my most popular stories were those which involved the people I knew in real life. I wouldn't even bother to change names. They were all comedies along the vein of the Airplane movies. I would take one dominant trait or behavior from each person in real life and make them be like that ALL the time. Or, even more amusing sometimes, make them the exact opposite. Most found it both amusing and flattering. Some were offended. My response to them was always the same: If you don't like how I portrayed you then don't be like that.

I did several plays. My favorite is lost. The Monsters. I wrote that after my mother gave me five packs of bubble gum cards. The cards were monster cards. On the back was a piece to a puzzle. Being a bit of a puzzle addict I found myself going to the drug store and buying every pack of cards they had until I could complete the puzzle. It was a collage of monsters. One in particular was a very sexy looking vampire. This inspired me to write my play. It was a comedy. It's gone now. Probably thrown away. I've tried several times to rewrite it, but lightning seldom strikes twice you know.

It's been years since I've seriously tried writing a play. I wish I was more involved with theatre, but there is no theatre near here. The closest is forty miles away, and that's just too far to justify the expense of getting there and back.

Meanwhile, I write small pieces of a story which currently has no plot. It's just a bunch of events. I know what I want the conflict to be, but I have to think it through properly so that all of the motivations and plans make sense within the world I have created. Sometimes that can be quite difficult to do.

A Lot of Nothing Has Been Written

2010-02-02T11:29:00.002-06:00

Wishing I could write again, but feeling my creative wheels spinning against the muddy ground of de-inspiration, I decided to update my yearly word counts. What this is is an Excel workbook with a worksheet listing every writing project I've undertaken in any fashion or form this year. This includes novels (attempts at), poetry, short stories, writing exercises for other blogs, plays, and my own blogs.

I was surprised at the quantity of things I've tried to write thus far in 2010. Forty projects started. Most fall into the poetry-blog categories, so I guess that's kind of cheating. The word count for all of this is 20,000-words for the Month of January. What a far cry from the 60,000-word novel started and finished months of past September, October and November. And only about a tenth of the way toward my one-time goal of a million words for 2010. I don't think so anymore. I would really have to go on a writing spree to catch up. I'm a complete epic novel behind. [smiles]

Part of my problem is that my mind moves on to something else before I can settle down and begin writing what I've been thinking about. My creative thoughts are like a butterfly which cannot make up its mind where the best pollen is. No story thought seems to stick around long. I've been trying to corral a certain one, but it's proving elusive.

Nothing I Want to Write

2010-02-01T19:09:00.003-06:00

Got no work in progress. Not really. I'm working on background data from a story, but I'm not actually writing the story. Not even thinking heavily about a story. Just working on the background data.

I feel drained. It's coming up on two years since I was last kicked out of the work force. I've spent most of that time writing. Not getting paid for it, mind you. But writing just the same.

It's hard to be a writer when one no longer believes one can write. It's like, why bother? Right?

But it's even harder being a writer when one has no inspiration to write.

Right now I have no story I want to tell. But I want to tell a story. Does that make sense? Not really, I suppose. Despite all I have written in the past eighteen months I am less confident in my writing now than I have ever been in my life. It is why bother time.

My Sister-in-Law

2010-01-27T09:37:00.000-06:00

I saw a knight in battle. I told my sister-in-law. The silly woman. All she could think to ask was whether it was a good night.

And when she dropped the expensive plate she blamed it on a bad air.

She knows nothing of sailing. For when I told her my uncle had left on an ocean voyage she said she hoped he found a good aisle. She also warned that he should follow some boy.

She must have misunderstood about who was doing the sailing, for as I explained about things she shook her head and said I was crewed.

And she wasn’t keen on me telling her I thought she was a butte.

But she did give me a compliment when I told her I was thinking of playing some rugby. She said I would be bowled over.

When she told me I should be bridled I replied I was not ready for marriage.

She asked if I was going to help count the senses. I told her there were only five.

She doesn’t like chickens. She keeps saying that they’re foul.

But she’s very religious. When I asked her what was for supper she replied a friar.

She doesn’t know much about animals. When I pointed out some antelope she told me they were news to her.

So although we don’t always get along, I very much intend to be at her house tonight. You see, she said there is going to be a whored of people there.

Happy Rabbit Hole Day!

The Hidden Story

2010-01-26T11:55:00.003-06:00

So, I've begun work on the extensive background required (in my mind) for that story I mentioned the other day. You know, the one which is kind of obsolete now because of the internet? Well, I decided to give it a go anyway. But the background work on this one is incredibly detailed. It could be a week before I actually write on the story itself. And then I will only get in a chapter - or maybe two - before having to return to the background work.

You see, the background work on this story is not history. It's taking place simultaneously with the main story. I guess you could call it a sub plot. There is a lot going on, and the danger is in devoting too much time with minor things and ignoring the Main Plot and growth of the Main Character, which is pretty much what the story is about: the Main Character.

Filling a story with too much going on is dangerous. Not physically to the author, but spiritually, to the story. Readers can easily become confused, or bored. Both are death cries to a story. What good is a story is nobody wants to read it?

At the same time, stories without other things going on had better be very short. Otherwise Readers can become bored as well, as longer stories cannot be singly focused. Well, generally should not be. I'm not going to be absolute about this because as soon as I am somebody will point out some great work by some great author which violates this very principal. But generally longer stories have several things going on. The trick is knowing how much time and effort to devote to each of these things. And ultimately, ALL of these sub plots/stories are required to actively contribute to the Main Plot/Story.

Most of my minor plots/stories are set for this current work. The one, however, is so incredibly detailed it is impossible to have it all set out. In a way I suppose it is foolish of me to devote so much time to a portion of the story which will only occasionally raise its head to be seen. Kind of like the creature in Loch Ness. But like Nessie, this piece of background is fundamental to all that remains visible most of the time. To put it another way, no story about the Loch Ness Monster is complete without some idea of what Nessie is doing below the surface most of the time. In real life we haven't a clue. In fact, not everyone is even convinced Nessie exists. But I have the luxury of being able to fill in those pieces - even if the reader will never read them.

It's like the old Tickle Bee game. The bee was in a plastic rectangle. It had a magnet in it. The idea was to guide the bee through the maze using another magnet attached to a wand beneath the game board. You couldn't see the wand, but you knew of its presence every time it interacted with the bee. The bee couldn't move without it.

Sometimes, what we don't put in a story is more important than what we do. It's important, as the creator, to know these things.

I think so.

It Seemed So Clear at the Time

2010-01-22T08:01:00.002-06:00

I have been trying to encourage the Muses to come by for an extended visit. I don't think they like apartment living either. But what I have been doing for the past few days is working in Excel. I like Excel. If it were easy to write my stories there I probably would. But what I have been doing is listing story titles in Column A, and then below in Column B I list the characters I currently know to be in that story. In Column C I indicate the character's gender and (sometimes) purpose in the story. Column D is used for notes about the story, including spoilers. Most of these works were started but never finished.

One of these unfinished stories has been in my head for a very long time. I found the beginnings of an effort to actually write it, but the effort didn't get very far. Only about a chapter. But there were many one sentence notes about what I was expecting to happen.

I remember working this story out well while I was at my last job. The job was fairly mindless for most of the day, freeing my mind to do more important things like work out story details for whatever writing project I currently fancied. Unfortunately, that was like two or three years ago, and now most of those thoughts have long since flown away and/or dissipated in the winds of time. But I had managed to write some notes about what I was thinking.

Unfortunately, the notes I made, while useful at the time (while the ideas were fresh in my head), don't help me much now. Here is a sampling of what I wrote - fully expecting myself to instantly recall the entire scene at some undefined later date.

Jim's first meeting with Devlin Sands
Jim meets Isaiah John Mark
Jim has supper at Overs' Pizza Parlor (I know this was a good scene because of who Overs is. Unfortunately, I can't remember it at all.)
Jim meets Massie Ford
The incident at Overs' Pizza Parlor (I vaguely have an idea of what this is talking about)

I don't remember any of those scenes now. And that after spending hours dreaming them up. A couple that I do have more clear recollections of include the following:

In Massie's Apartment
Mr. Christopher reacts
Rock bottom
The championship is decided
Who is Blibben Overs

It's the kind of story I know I would enjoy (after all, I thought it up), but in all honesty I think it's a story who's time has passed. The internet has pretty much made the basic concept obsolete. But maybe not.

I'm finding myself tempted to work on this story. It's kind of a risk as I have already worked on it once and set it aside. The likelihood that would happen again if I took it up is fairly high. (It's always easier to do something a second time.)

But it's good to know the Muses are paying attention to what I'm doing. I've also been tempted to go back to Animal Kingdom. That story is about fifteen years older than this later one, and I have set that one aside two or three times.

The oven has been preheated and the stories are ready to bake. Maybe.

We'll see.

Bevie Meets Modern Day Technology

2010-01-21T08:38:00.004-06:00

Thanks to a very generous friend I now own a laptop computer. Not sure if she wants her generosity broadcast or not so I'll leave that piece of information be.

I've never owned a laptop. Haven't even used one since like 1990. Then it was a Compaq. Didn't much like that one. Small keyboard. Small view screen. And if you didn't sit directly in front of it you couldn't see what it was displaying.

This one is much different. Much better. But still awkward to a confirmed desktop user.

I prefer my larger keyboard at its slant, as opposed to the flatter laptop keyboard. But setting the laptop at an angle makes most of this adjustment.

The screen is only slightly smaller than my giant monitor, so that's not a problem. And as my giant monitor is going dark, the laptop screen is actually a significant improvement. Much better resolution. Much brighter colors.

The desktop has nearly ten times the hard drive space, but that's really a non-issue, I think. I have one of those dongle thingies that allows me to transfer large volumes of files between computers easily. Just unplug it from one computer and plug it into the other and that's it.

The laptop also came with a new game I had not played before. Son found it. It's cool - and kind of addicting. But most games are. Basically, the idea is to prevent this colored balls/circles from reaching the end of a track. To do this one has a shooter positioned in the screen's center. It contains randomly colored balls/circles. The idea is to shoot the balls to the line working its way to the center. Get three in a row of the same color and they disappear. I was so impressed when I completed a level the first time. Then I saw the scores. It took me something like a minute and a half to do it. The previous owner's score was there, too. Nineteen seconds. So much for feeling proud.

The biggest adjustment is the mousepad thingy. I don't particularly like it. It's very much like a trackball, and I hated using those. I worked at a company in which the two main members in my department insisted trackballs were better and so everyone had to use them. Oh, I was so happy when they fell out of favor and I was allowed to use a mouse again.

My biggest problems with the pad is its placement and its sensitivity. Its placement is just below the keypad, which means I can't rest my wrists. Yes, I know. I'm not supposed to rest my wrists. But the fact is, I do. Also, because of the placement, my thumbs keep tapping the pad. And working in Excel this is a problem, for every time I tap the pad it changes the cell I'm working in.

These are nuisances and corrected simply through personal adjustment. They are well worth the generosity of my friend, and I am very much thankful for the laptop.

Hmm. I had meant to write about a certain story I have. Oh, well. Maybe next time.

An Epic Tale of Epic Proportions

2010-01-17T07:12:00.003-06:00

Wrote some notes about Swords of Fire last night. Revisited the Great Sea's beginnings. The original creation story was never finished. Which is just as well, since quite a bit of it has changed now. Writing - and thinking - has shown me more and more and I have revised the origin concept.

It still began in the Void - which was nothingness. In my mind I see it as blackness. Not sure why nothing equates to total blackness instead of total whiteness, but it does in my mind. I guess because it's a kind of light, and ALL light is white, while NO light is darkness.

But the Void was not all there was. The Void was simply a place where there was nothing. The Void itself was contained in something else, which I have yet to name.

The ring of earth, coated with a heavy layer of ice, is still present, as is the Fire, except that now there are two instances of Fire which merge into one.

Changing the foundation of a creation has wide sweeping effect. Every story which follows will be affected. Perhaps it's just as well Swords of Fire is not published yet. Once it's published it's written in stone. Kind of.

Do you ever do this? Revisit the beginning and modify it to suit knowledge you have now but lacked then? Story knowledge, I mean. Who, and what, things are.

Do you have a story that you just keep working on? Always and forever? Or do you always leave behind what's written and move on to new things? I can do that with most things, but not with Swords of Fire. Swords of Fire is my life.

Right now Swords of Fire consists of six books: two of which are actually written and a third which has been begun.

There is a background story for what was once a minor character which is now large enough to encompass three or four first novels.

There's so much to say. And so little time and skill.

Ideas are Vapors in My Mind

2010-01-14T12:05:00.002-06:00

Fairyhedgehog posted about avid reading on her blog. The post is HERE. I commented on the post, bragging about my ability to come up with thousands of story ideas - without actually having written them.

Now I find myself wondering how much of an exaggeration - or minimization - that was. How many story ideas do I come up with in a day anyway? Not how many do I write. Writing a story can take ten, twenty or even a hundred times as long as reading it.

But last year I managed to write a lot. Including poems (which in my case are very short stories) I wrote 111 projects, finishing 97. That's about a story idea every four days. But how many ideas do I actually come up with? And coming up with ideas - does it prove anything? What?

I think I may begin a journal of story ideas I come up with this year. Since it looks like I'm not going to be able to write nearly as much as I desire I will be regulated to imagination only. It's a fun place to be, but it's hard to revisit ideas and enjoy them the same as before.

And should I include story ideas I have that I haven't started? How do I go about tracking this I wonder? I have no misgivings whatsoever about predicting at least 500 story ideas over the course of a year. I might even be able to double that. Talk about bold, huh? But coming up with an idea is easy. Writing it is HARD. Time consuming. It's hard for the work to keep up with the ideas. And when better ideas show up work often stops.

How about you? Do you come up with a lot of ideas - but fail to actually write them? How many do you get? How many do you actually try to write?

I Confess: I Don't Feel Like Writing Anymore

2010-01-13T22:38:00.002-06:00

I have been attempting to write - but I have been accomplishing nothing. January becomes two weeks old tomorrow and I think I have yet to write more than a few hundred words toward any story.

The inspiration, enthusiasm, motivation have all departed for places unknown. The clouds of story ideas which once filled my head have dissipated with the blow of seeing my writing time on the chopping block. I - have given up again.

Been trying to apply for the job which will kill my writing - and possibly me. It hasn't been easy. The first guy I talked to was great. He explained a lot of things and then got some basic information, which he passed on to the hiring people. These people are idiots. Or I am. Or both.

The girl (and I deliberately say 'girl' instead of 'woman' or even 'young woman') was confusing to listen to. She started a profile for me, which would be used as an application for employment. And rather than simply tell me the website to go to, she had to email it to me. Well, okay. I had it officially written down.

I go to said website and find that since the girl has already begun a profile for me, I must sign in using my username and password. Guess what the girl never told me? That's right. I didn't know my username and password. So I had to email the girl back and ask for the information.

Oh. She also said she would be sending me the email in like five minutes. It was at least four hours.

So she sends me the required information and I begin to fill out the job application online.

They want to know what high school I went to. Give me a break. I haven't attended high school since the 1970s. Who gives a rat's a*s what high school I went to?

The next section was employment history, and it is here I am stuck. Why? Because of my own personal irritation with certain questions. They not only want to know where I have worked (a legitimate request), but they want to know how much money I made while working there. What the h*ll use can that possibly be to them? And unlike the paper applications, in which I just leave those fields blank (and explain - should it be asked for - that it's none of their business), the online form will not allow me to continue without filling this information in.

So I sent another email to the girl (who had sent me an email stating I was to let her know when I had completed the form) asking just why this information was needed, and informing her that I consider it an invasion of privacy.

I suppose I have already established myself in their eyes as a regular pain-in-the-a*s and may not get the job after all. That will go over really well with Spouse. But d*mn it! It's bad enough to have to beg for a job in the first place. But to have to give up private information just because is too much. They cannot want this information for any good reason. I mean, come on! Do you know what the job is? Restocking shelves in grocery stores. Even the first guy I spoke with acknowledged it isn't rocket science. Reminds me of a Donovan song: Goldwatch Blues.

Here's a YouTube link. It's a funny song. Lyrics after the link.

GOLDWATCH BLUES
Donovan

I went up for my interview on the fourth day of July.
First old man he questioned me until I nearly cried,
Made me fill in forms until I shook with fear
About the colour of my toilet roll and if my cousin's queer.

CHROUS:

Here's your goldwatch and the shackles for your chain
And your piece of paper to say you left here sane.
And if you've a son who wants a good career
Just get him to sign on the dotted line and work for fifty
years. CHORUS.

He asked me how many jobs I'd had before.
He nearly had a heart attack when I answered, four.
Four jobs in twenty years, oh, this can never be
We only take on men who work until they die. CHORUS.

He took me outside to where the gravestones stand in line.
This is where we bury them in quick-stone and in lime
And if you come to work for us on this you must agree,
That if you're going to die please do it during tea. CHORUS.

This story that you heard you may think rather queer
But it is the truth you'll be surprised to hear.
I did not want no job upon the board,
I just wanted to take a broom and sweep the bloody floor.
CHORUS.

Transcribed by Stephen Sander
steve_sander
cacdsp.com

The Pen is Mightier Than the Computer - Sometimes

2010-01-12T07:32:00.003-06:00

Been doing some writing with pen and paper. That's how I wrote Tavaar's backstory. I filled six writing journals during my lunch breaks when I last worked. There is a tactile satisfaction in using pen and paper to write a story as opposed to a keyboard. Of course the computer allows for multiple copies without the extra effort. And no matter how much one writes a computer always uses the same amount of physical space to keep it.

I'm trying to modify my writing style. Trying to keep myself aware of the five senses and include things like sound, taste, smell, sight and touch when describing a scene. Don't know if this will actually improve my writing or not, but it's always fun to try something new.

I will continue to write fantasy. It's my place to write. But I'm still focusing on writing new projects and not investing much time in editing. Editing (in my mind) presupposes a belief that a work could one day be published. I don't think I have any such beliefs anymore. So I will write new things and enjoy them alone.

The Broadsword Swings

2010-01-11T10:20:00.003-06:00

Life is a two-edged sword, and so are most of the things one encounters while living it.

Everything has a price. Even winning. To achieve it one must often sacrifice other things.

For half of 2008 and all of 2009 I had the luxury of writing whenever I wanted. Well, not quite whenever. If Spouse and/or Son was around I could pretty much forget about accomplishing anything writing wise. But often Son was in school and Spouse was at work. This left me alone at the house, and eventually the apartment. The result of this wonderful free time was my most prolific time ever in writing. I wrote over 100 different things, from simple exercises to complete novels. And if I were to include blog posts the total would rise to two or even three hundred.

It was fun.

That time may now be coming to a sad end.

You see, for all the enjoyment I took in the past eighteen months, there was a price that had to be paid. That price was the absence of money. And the absence of money has meant the loss of health coverage, family trips, better food, repairs and replacements on equipment, and even the loss of our house.

At my age, with my skill set and health, it is not easy to find replacement work. And to be perfectly honest, I have not exhausted myself overmuch seeking out employment with places I know would kill my spirit. I was feeling alive again such as I had not felt since - a very long time ago.

But play time seems to be coming to an end. And with it joy time. There is every reason to believe I will get the latest job I applied for. And while this job will provide something around $200 per week wages (about $160 spendable), there is also a price to pay in having it. In my case, the price to pay is the reduction in time to write.

I have tried many times (and still attempt it) to write when Spouse and/or Son are around, but the simple truth is neither of them respect my writing time and feel free - even obligated - to interrupt me while I am writing. For those of you who write you know the time required to 'get in the flow'. A one or two minute interruption can result in a lost of fifteen or twenty minutes in writing. And if one is being interrupted every ten to fifteen minutes that can mean no writing at all. And so it has been for me.

If I get this job, and right now it appears I will, I will lose three of my five writing days. And the two which will remain will be separated by days.

So I will earn upwards to $1000 each month. Around $700 spendable. If we simply used the money to keep up with the rent and not buy insurance or better food I could probably replace the computer within a year. But to what end? If I'm not writing anything, who really gives a damn. Right?

Most of my stories have happy endings. Not all, but most. Why can't my life have one? It's turning out just like I feared. I'll never write anything that matters. And so there will be no point or purpose to me.

Life sucks. And then you die.

What I'm Doing

2010-01-09T12:57:00.002-06:00

Well, I have begun writing something. It's not going as fast as I want, but then I'm letting myself get distracted a lot.

We'll see how it goes.

That's the problem with writing on inspiration. Without it, or with it distracted toward something else, writing doesn't take place.

Depending on how next week goes I may be writing more and more as time goes on.

We'll see.

No Progress Yet

2010-01-07T18:30:00.002-06:00

Not achieving any progress toward my writing goal. I've managed a single poem and a little more, but nothing of significance. I doubt I've written even so much as 5,000-words yet. Not to worry. Yet. I write on inspiration and feeling more than dedication and resolve. When inspiration strikes I can easily put together five and ten thousand word days.

What I have been doing thus far is wasting my time with computer games. They're an excellent time waster. One can play for hours and accomplish literally nothing. Sometimes that's exactly what one needs to get one going. It's like recharging.

I've got a lot to write and I'm hoping the Muses will complete their holiday soon. Then I shall write up a storm.

Until then - I waste time.

Turning Up the Heat

2010-01-04T13:42:00.002-06:00

Stories. Sometimes they come easily. Sometimes they don't.

Right now my thoughts are swimming with story ideas. I want to write, but no single idea wants to jump up and be taken. Kind of like watching popcorn kernels in a popper. Sooner or later you know one is going to explode. The tension mounts as you wait.

That's what it will be like. One story idea will POP! And then they all will. My task is to try and keep up with them all. Good luck to me.

The Year is Over

2009-12-31T12:59:00.002-06:00

Well, it's year end 2009. A productive year for me, if not entirely successful. As I recently posted my accomplishments I won't go through them all again now. Suffice to say, I wrote a LOT.

What I am most proud of is that I opened myself up (or was opened up) to new types of writing. Very exciting. Creatively satisfying. This new area of creativity is directly responsible for three of the five novels I wrote this year - as well as at least a half dozen stories and more than a dozen poems.

The area continues to expand, and I currently have three or four story ideas floating around in my head right now. I've tried writing some on them but they're not really ready.

That's the nasty thing about story ideas, isn't it? It's kind of like waiting for supper, or Christmas. But no matter how much you whine about it, you just have to wait until it's there. I hope they're good stories when they finish cooking. I truly like them now. They're fun to think about.

I have a lot of goals for 2010. Not sure I will make any of them. I would like to repeat a prolific year and write another 1,000,000-words. I came a few thousand short in 2009. I would like to write at least six novels (and with my new ideas I might like to see it go higher) and complete a lot of short stories and poems.

I think I'm writing better than every before. At the same time I expect my writing is no place near what is required in order to call myself a professional. A pity. I do like to tell stories.

I have two ideas for stories which could be worked into plays, or a television series. Have had those for more than a year. But they're still cooking. Bigger projects require a longer cooking time. Like a turkey compared to a game hen.

If I had any money at all (I honestly don't have any) I would start a local theatre. I would also like to publish a small comic book for the Legion of Online Super Heroes. But that requires money, too.

Lots of things I would like to accomplish. To be honest, I'm not expecting to accomplish any of them. Probably my best shot is to simply write a lot of words. Quantity over quality. But you know what? I don't think quality is all it's cracked up to be. After all, there are plenty of cr*p books being published by reputable publishers. How does that happen anyway?

Oh, well. I will just keep on writing. It's what I do.

Play Acting

2009-12-28T03:45:00.004-06:00

Been away from blogging for a while again. Not that many notice, I think. I have mixed feelings about that. Sometimes it's a comfort to be out of the main flow. Sometimes it can be quite lonely. That's kind of the way life is, isn't it? I call it the two-edged sword. It cuts both ways.

Been thinking about all kinds of stories, but I have done NO writing since before Christmas. Why not? Mostly because I discovered a new online community which is quite addictive: Wizard101. I think I stumbled upon it while doing research on wizards.

The graphics are cartoonish, but they work very well for me. All of the costumes and mythical creatures. Right up my alley - of which the game has many. I actually dreamed the better part of a story about the game. Few of my stories come from dreams, but some do. Unfortunately, I didn't write this dream down and now it has faded in memory. If it's any good I'll dream it again. I do that, you know. Have dream reruns. Do you do that? There are a couple of dreams I have been having since I was very young. Some of the elements of Swords of Fire were inspired by dreams.

Anyway, I think the game's worth a look see - unless you absolutely do not wish to become addicted to something new. The game - in its early stages anyway - provides enough rewards to encourage continual play and returns.

In the meantime, I have not been writing. But as I have done just about everything in the FREE version I can now, that may change soon. We'll see. For now I'll keep playing.

Have fun.

Hope your Christmas was spent well.

Merry Christmas

2009-12-24T21:47:00.000-06:00

Have a a very Merry Christmas.

Addicted to Writing

2009-12-17T15:47:00.002-06:00

Okay. Yesterday I said I had no plans to write any more this year. Well, it didn't take long for me to come up with a new plan. I've started something new. Not going to say what it is. That seems to be the kiss of death for all of my projects: officially announce them before I'm finished, or nearly finished. Suffice to say it is another novel.

Have applied to join an online critique group, too. I'm horrible at critiquing. I don't understand why most of what I write is cr*p, so how can I tell someone else how to improve their writing? I'll give it a go.

What I really need is for someone to sit down with me and some piece of writing and walk me through the analysis. Perhaps after doing that in a master-apprentice setting I can learn something and become both a better writer and a better critiquer.

Meanwhile, I will be writing my new novel. If I finish it before the end of the year it will make six novels in one year. That's pretty good, I think. Even for rough drafts. Of course, it isn't quite fair. I've got dozens upon dozens of book ideas in my head dating back to when I was in school. I just have never written them.

I like to tell stories.

That's the Way it Is

2009-12-16T11:23:00.003-06:00

Nicola Morgan has a post on her blog (here) about writers reading the right things in order to write well. It's a good post and worth the read. I do recommend it.

Reading that post confirms some of my own suspicions about myself. You see, I do NOT read a lot of modern fantasy. I can't afford to buy books anymore, and I have never enjoyed borrowing them; not from friends or the library. So most of the fantasy (my genre) which I read dates to the 1950s, 60s and 70s, with a sprinkling here and there of more recent things.

To be perfectly honest, I generally prefer the older works to modern. This puts me out of step and, in equally honest fact, makes me wrong. No doubt my writing is affected in ways I can never fully comprehend by the fact that I keep re-reading works from the past instead of what is on today's bookstore shelves. The most recent things I can think of having read date to the 1990s: Elizabeth Willey's, Well-Favored Man (I love this book) from 1993; and Tanya Huff's, Sing the Four Quarters (read recently) from 1994.

Nicola Morgan lists 9 things a writer risks in not reading current works in their genre:

1) not knowing the rules of the genre.

Yeah, I'm probably guilty of this one. Fantasy Readers are no doubt expecting certain things that I am simply not delivering.

2) not knowing what's already been done.

Definitely so. If you were to ask me to name five, or even one modern fantasy author I don't know that I could. Unless Willey and Huff are still writing.

3) not writing in an original voice.

To be honest, this one doesn't concern me. Yes, I know it should. But it doesn't. My voice is my voice, and if another author is already publishing work with that voice it is my loss. I don't really see how I can successfully change my style.

4) not being passionate about what you do.

I take exception to this point, but I think Nicola Morgan and I may be using separate definitions for 'passionate about what one does'. There is not an hour of my waking day which does not contain some time devoted to devising plots, scenes, endings, characters, places, and so forth. But I think Nicola Morgan is talking about something else. The passion to share ideas with other creators. Not sure.

5) not being able to show or feel total commitment to a career in this genre.

This one I confess I don't really understand. If reading modern works is a requirement then certainly I am not showing commitment. Not sure what 'feeling' it means. Like I indicated above, I HATE borrowing books. I want to BUY them. I want my books HERE, with me. I want to return to them at whiles and refresh myself in someone else's creativity. Sometimes (often) that occurs in the middle of the night. I NEED my books close at hand. They can't be if they're not my books. And even before my financial collapse I allowed Spouse to virtually shut down my book buying.

6) failing to sell it to an agent or publisher because you cannot show knowledge and commitment in your covering letter.

No doubt. No doubt at all. I hope by covering letter she means query, because if I have to have a query, a synopsis, AND a covering letter I may throw up.

7) remaining outside the world of your future fellow authors.

I expect I would anyway. I like people. I really do. But I don't hang out with anyone anymore. Not for so many years that I have lost the understanding of how it's even done. I am the monkey who never learned to properly socialize. So even if I had a ton of money and bought every new book that came out as soon as it hit the shelf, I would still not be part of any author/writer group. Too stressful. I don't know how to do it. I don't like being at family gatherings anymore.

8) displaying disrespect for your fellow authors.

This, if true, would be most unfortunate, for I have nothing but respect for those who have written and attained, and for those who are writing with attainment in mind. Even those who aren't necessarily writing to be published. So many people write better than I that I am in no position to give them disrespect. But don't assume that just because something is easier than breathing for you to do that it isn't a tremendous work of effort for someone else. And it has nothing to do with disrespect.

9) displaying arrogance.

I have been accused of this. Often. Even by people who are supposed to know me well. But let me tell you something about arrogance. It isn't always what it looks to be. Sometimes, what looks like arrogance, is nothing more than fear. And sometimes it is nothing more than ignorance. And sometimes a person is just simple. Arrogance is an attitude, not a behavior. I was once criticized for not trading places with a co-worker who asked if I wanted to. In my mind I was doing the worse task, and I deemed the offer simply to be a good will gesture, so I declined. Later, I was reamed by the one in charge for making my co-worker do a nasty job. But my refusal had nothing to do with avoiding a nasty job. In my mind, that was why I was doing.
My not reading current works does not mean I think I don't need them. It's more about the money to buy them. I have always been of the mind that I can wait until I have the money before getting what I want - or even need. Two years with broken teeth because I couldn't afford to go to the dentist and get them fixed. (Now I've broken another one. Last spring. No money. No dentist.)

Nicola Morgan suggests, and I have no reason to dispute her, that not reading current works within one's genre is a sure-fire way of not getting published.

As I indicated at the top of this post, that kind of confirms a suspicion I've had for some time. But for now I will continue to hold off. I just do not have the money.

In the meantime, I write. I write with the voice that I have. I write the stories I enjoy. Perhaps some day after I am gone somebody will take them and rewrite them. And then they will be okay.

A Million Words, And I Wasn't Even at Full Speed

2009-12-15T09:39:00.003-06:00

So December is about halfway completed. We are most of the way to Christmas. As I am not planning on writing anything new in the next three weeks, nor finishing anything in progress, I thought I would post the final year's accomplishments now. Why? Because I haven't got anything else to talk about right now.

According to the time stamps on my computer files I have worked on 111 writing projects this year. This, of course, does not count blog posts, nor anything I have written which failed to get into the computer. Fourteen of those projects failed to reach completion. The rest are all in at least a completed first draft mode.

I wrote 58 poems. Many of these wound up here and on Tales From The Great Sea. My poetry pretty much s*cks, so I don't know if it's worth going to that blog to search for what I posted. Two poems did attract comments. If you're interested in those, here are the links. One is titled "The Girls" from August 2, and the other is "Kadassa, Tahk and Brills" from June 8.

I also wrote 29 short stories, of which 24 have been completed. Included in that are my eight Hero Stories, of which five were finished. I never finished "The Taming of Pelage", starring Panthera and Pelage; "Twice the Fun", starring Feathered Guy Anthropist and the Inamore Twins; or "Flaming Hot", starring Fire Red and Thunderbolt.

There were 10 entries to other blogs, including: Evil Editor; Whirlocher (I actually won an award for this entry), Writtenwyrdd, and Kiersten Writes. I suppose technically those are not true writing projects, but I enjoyed them. They were longer than some of my poetry.

And finally, I worked on 14 novels, finishing five: Shadow People, Summer Shade, The Sweet Girl, Swords of Fire: Traitor, and Swords of Fire: The Prophecies of Madatar. Those last two probably shouldn't count as they are both well past 100,000-words and were begun long before 2009.

White Wolves of Dawn could have been finished, but I let myself get sidetracked to other projects. It is still only a third to half finished.

I only submitted two projects for publication: Swords of Fire: Traitor (a novel) and Apprentice (a short story). Both were rejected, but I was given notice that Apprentice had gone to a second reading. Not sure exactly what that means as I do not know the number of submissions they received, nor how many readings a work must go through with them before it is accepted. But the story certainly carried some merit. Personally, I think it may be the best thing I've written all year, and possibly the best since I wrote the poem after Daddy died. (I don't have it anymore. I gave it to Elizabeth.)

I mentioned part of this list on a comment to T.Anne's blog. She commented that it looks like 2010 might be a big revision/edit year.

Not too likely.

You see, while I am producing more than I ever have before within a given period of time, and I think I'm writing better than I ever have in all of my years, my personal confidence in my ability to write - and certainly edit - is at its lowest ebb ever. Never, in all of my 50+ years have I felt more worthless and incompetent as a writer. And never have I been with so little hope of accomplishing anything with it.

I love to write. And I guess that, as long as I am able to, I will continue to devise new stories, and possibly rework old ones. But I have found that, after my most productive year ever, I am left with the very real sense that the last planted dream of my life is never going to sprout. Like all the others, it, too, has died, and I merely delude myself by trying.

One hundred and eleven writing projects. Just under 1,000,000-words. (If I were to finish White Wolves of Dawn I would break the 1,000,000-word mark for 2009.) It's very possible I can best that mark in 2010. Assuming I see 2011. We'll see. I am planning on rewriting Swords of Fire: Book I and Book II, and finishing Book III. If I make that I will have half a million words right there.

Songs Which Touch the Heart

2009-12-13T14:36:00.003-06:00

Songs are tremendous things. They reach inside of us, slipping past the walls and barriers we put up to protect ourselves from emotional pain, and touch the real us. It is not unusual for me to find myself in tears at such times.

There have been a few people in my life who have done the same thing and d*mned if I know how they do it. It's like there are no walls. They begin speaking to me and suddenly I find they are inside, touching the real me, and I don't know how they got there.

They don't touch me physically. (At my age and appearance that never happens anymore. [smiles]) It's all on some kind of spiritual level. I guess you could call them my songs.

I was in the big car today, driving alone. I was meeting a sister about half way between our respective dwellings. She had purchased a new car battery for our small car. A complete idiot had left the car door open for four days and the battery died forever. We have no money to purchase a new one and my sister insisted on doing it for us.

But I had the chance to put in some music dvds I made up a few years ago on the computer that died. Most of the songs on these self-made musical compilations are not enjoyed by Spouse, but some have intense meaning for me. Some mean nothing at all to what was intended when they were recorded, I'm sure. Several make me cry.

The song selection followed no particular artist or group. Neither were they all 'up', 'down', 'energetic', or 'slow'. They were whatever I happened to have been feeling like at the times of their creation.

It is this kind of musical collage which often gets my inspirational circuits firing. And so it was again today. As I listened to a Moody Blues song, from their Threshold of a Dream album, I found myself envisioning an ending. Most often that is where my ideas for stories begin. They ending.

Story endings are precious to me. Often, my story endings contain a note of sadness, and loss. For every victory comes at a price. Everything we have, not matter how precious it is to hold, came at a price. So with joy their is sorrow. One cannot truly know one without the other.

I have a new ending now. What I do not have is a starting point to reach it. On the way back from my rendezvous I arrived at a possible climax, which will proceed the ending by mere moments. I have the premise of what the struggle has been. The ending is one of tremendous gain. And tremendous loss. But with the tears there is the sense that all is as it should be. To not have that loss would somehow be wrong. Oh, if I were only the writer to put the story together so it could be shared.

Do songs inspire you to new stories? They do me. I love my songs. Both physical and spiritual.

The Desert of Learning

2009-12-10T11:46:00.003-06:00

I'm long-haired right now. I'm not being metaphorical or anything. I actually do have long hair. My bangs have dropped down to my nose and it keeps bugging me.

Need a hair cut.

I've never liked getting hair cuts, even when my hair is much longer than I like. A couple of times I have let it grow down to my chin.

Some people love to fuss over their hair. They're constantly changing styles (and even color). I had an aunt who made herself go bald because she was using so many different things on her hair it all fell out. Took months to grow back. Then she wore wigs.

I'm not much for wigs either. I've worn a few in plays and they're not comfortable.

My problem is I don't like to fuss over my appearance. I want to look nice. I just don't want to work at it. And so I look like sh*t. That's the opinion I've been given on more than one occasion anyway.

I got to thinking that I'm kind of like that with my writing, too. I very much want to be known as an excellent writer. Even more so, an excellent storyteller. But d*mn! I hate working at it. Work is so - hard.

I keep telling myself that working for a thing hardly means I'll achieve. After all, I've never achieved anything I've worked at before, so why should this be different?

Don't know. But I do keep working at it. D*mn it's hard.

That's what I'm finding with my Swords of Fire military history, although "hard" is not precisely the word I'm looking for. Tedious. Boring. Those fit much better.

Learning to write was easy. As easy as falling off a log. I did that at a very early age. (Learn to write. Oh, and I fell of a log, too. Several times.) Learning to write well is like crossing the desert. I'm constantly plagued with thoughts along the line of, "Who in the h*ll came up with this plan anyway?" And, "I'm going to die out here and nobody will even know."

Did I say that learning to write well is hard?

Changing the World

2009-12-09T08:42:00.002-06:00

I have returned to establishing the military history of Swords of Fire. I've started it several times, became unhappy with the progress, or discovered significant errors and/or omissions, and resorted to starting over again. So this is yet another attempt. But I'm happier with the effort than previous tries.

For one thing, I have been forced to do some rethinking on the structure and rules of military service. According to the old rules the family's military force used to drop to virtually nothing. Not realistic when one considers this is a warrior family. Changing the rules and then projecting those rules across the Compound's entire 352 year history will help with the actual story. I don't have to feel uneasy about the likelihood of Sayla being an officer, or Shello being High Marshall. I will have the data behind those declarations - or I won't, and those declaration will have to be abandoned. That would be a nuisance. But it's happened before.

That's the double-edged sword effect of establishing real rules and extrapolating them through the backstory. Cool passages, written before the implementation of said rules, suddenly become contradictory. Sometimes, with modification, they can be saved. Most of the time they cannot.

There was a time when I was having the Elves travel by sea to the world of Verona, where all kinds of cool things happened, including the final confrontation between Madatar and Shatahar. But then I had my last major rewrite and suddenly, the Elves weren't going to Verona. No less than six books got squashed because of that single change. Six books. Cool stories, all of them. But they could no longer happen because the Elves weren't on Verona.

That's the hard part about writing stories and planning ahead before all of the extensive background data has been completed. Or even just writing the stories. You see, it wasn't Book I's rewrite that changed the Elves' destination. It was Book III. But the overall story is much better this way. And Madatar's confrontation is far more intense. Or will be. Assuming antoher major rewrite doesn't make that passage go away, too.

The World as I See It

2009-12-07T14:16:00.003-06:00

Well, it has been a busy day for me and I have accomplished a lot. Unfortunately, it was mostly rework.

While compiling my time line of events I began to see several discrepancies in my Swords of Fire database. I've always known they were there, but I have always put off the repair job until later. Well, today was later.

The good news is that I made the repairs. The bad news is that all of the time line work, AND the military history work I have already put in is garbage and must be tossed. Got to start over. Pity.

I told my friend that working on all of this historical data makes me feel like I'm working on a giant model railroad set. Everything has its place and the pieces fit perfectly. I made the remark that while I may not write well enough to suit the people who matter (everybody but me), I am laying one heck of a solid foundation. Names. Dates. Events. It's all falling into place better than knowledge we have about our own history. My Daddy was a b*stard child from the 1920s. Back then that was serious shame and people tried to hide that. Daddy, being such a child, was tortured by his older relatives. Nearly killed several times. But the end result of all of that is all I have now to trace my blood history is a name. And I have not been able to find anything on that name.

So I can't even trace my own lineage back two generations through my father. I have fifteen generations put together for Swords of Fire. I know nobody else is impressed, but I am quite proud of the effort and the results. It isn't finished. It may never be finished. That's the thing about building a history. Until I've accounted for every moment of every day for every person there is still something more which could be done. Kind of cool.

God created mankind in his image. I believe that includes the power of creation. And, like any good offspring, I try to emulate what has been done before. I guess you could say Swords of Fire is my own version of creation. I just haven't done as good a job is all.

But it's still lots of fun.

Do you do world building? I've never met anyone who has to this extent. I wonder if there are others, or if I am truly alone.

It's Hard

2009-12-06T16:44:00.003-06:00

It's a pity there is no room in this place to take out my archives and reread some of the things I wrote fifteen, twenty, thirty, and even longer ago.

Much as I need to still improve my writing it is interesting to read things I wrote long ago.

When I was in high school I was still throwing away the things I had written when I was finished. I mentioned this to my creative writing teacher and she chided me and told me to stop doing that. She said even those things I began but did not finish had value, and that some day I might even want to go back and finish those stories. That was the beginning of The Archives.

A lot of my writing has still been lost. Some of what I have written has only existed on a computer hard drive, or disk backups. The computer died and the backups can't be read by newer computers. My luck, huh?

But a lot of what I have written over the past forty-some years remains. Every once in a while I come across something. Some of it has been copied to this computer. When I look at what came before I am filled with mixed feelings. When I wrote it I believed it was good. Now I read it and find myself appalled that I would write like that.

One the one hand it makes me feel good that I write better now than I used to. On the other hand, I am left with the nagging feeling that I still write like crap. Getting better? I think so. Writing well now? Apparently not.

I find myself envious, and even jealous, of young writers who got published at very young ages. There are teenagers who are published. I still don't write that well. It's very depressing.

So why keep writing?

Because some things can't stay inside, and writing is my best way to express those things. I love music, but I don't play any instrument well (nor do I practice enough to change that), and I have a voice like beef jerky. Emphasis on the jerk. My drawing, painting, and sculpture does not satisfy.

So it's writing. Putting words together to express ideas and feelings which boil up like an eternal underground reservoir. And like Old Faithful, I regularly puke out the pressure. I suppose it wouldn't matter, except that for some vain and selfish reason I would like to share my stories. But in order to do that I have to write better. I have to make it to the top of the game. A difficult and often depressing journey which I can't even make myself abandon.

It's no fun being a writer.

Another New Idea

2009-12-04T15:47:00.002-06:00

I came up with a new idea for a story yesterday. Although posting it on the internet constitutes publication I decided to post it on a new blog, a little at a time as I write it. If you are interested in reading it you will need to email me and let me know, though. Several of my blogs (including this one) have been getting hit with garbage comments. I have moderation turned on so I just reject them, but it is a nuisance. This blog has been hit every day now for six days running. So the new blog will only be viewable by those who are invited. If you want to be invited let me know. [beviejames@gmail.com]

Oh, and if you do wish to read the new story, Across the Sea of Time and Water, feel free to critique, if that is what you like to do. Or just read, if that suits you better.

I won't post every day, but hopefully often. It's easy to start something and then let it fade. We'll see. But I'm not posting to Tales From The Great Sea anymore, and very seldom to Faith in Forgiveness and Cat in the Buff. Haven't decided about Legion of On-Line Superheroes. Interest fell off for the heroes during NaNo. We'll see if it picks up again.

This blog and A Voice in the Wind will probably remain reasonably active for the next while, too.

Lately I have been working on the time line for Swords of Fire. It began at -100 years before the founding of The Compound. I have only been dealing with births, deaths, and weddings in this go through, but I just completed Year 7. Only 345 years to go to catch up.

Didn't work much today though. Son has the day off from school and has been taking up computer time. So I have been reading (Well-Favored Man, by Elizabeth Willey) and taking naps. Heck of a day.

Let me know if you're interested in the new story.

It's Like Model Trains - You're Never Finished Creating

2009-12-02T10:05:00.003-06:00

I've decided to take a completely different approach to Swords of Fire. So I'm not writing right now.

Hey, that's a novel approach! [collective groan over bad pun]

Actually, there is madness to my method. I have to let things 'cook' for a bit. It's almost like writing a new story from scratch, only worse. I know what has to happen almost all the way through.

However, while I am not writing at the moment I am not completely wasting time. Well, not in my mind. (Oooh, another pun.) I've put together a PowerPoint presentation of every character who was even named in the latest Book I. Believe it or not that's 171 characters. Yeah, I know. Too many. Nearly all of those names showed up for a single sentence and then were never heard about again. Still, I took the trouble to add a PowerPoint slide for them indicating their basic demographics. Later, I will add biographical information. Call it a glossary, or Companion Piece. If I really get carried away I might add objects and places, too.

What I'm working on now is a time line. Still using PowerPoint. I'm adding births. The earliest recorded birth took place 100 years before Khirbah founded The Compound, and 452 years before Book I begins. The plan is to record all 6,762 recorded birth record into the time line. After that I will add the 2,455 recorded weddings and 2,364 recorded deaths. Then comes the really fun part: recording events.

While all of this is going on the revised story will continue to cook. And when it is ready, I will begin writing again. Assuming I have time.

So it looks like my string of consequtive months for writing complete novels is going to come to an end at three.

I wish that I could go backward in time to when I was young and just starting to write my own stories. There is so much I would tell myself that would make such a big difference in how my life would proceed later. But if I did my young self would come to one of two conclusions: My older self was either a scary ghost, or a crazy old coot. In either case, the message would fail to get through.

Sometimes I wonder if that wasn't me who haunted The Old House way back when. The size would be just about right, I think.

Byproducts of Writing: Honey or Crap

2009-11-30T08:32:00.002-06:00

So today is the final day of NaNoWriMo. A good many people who's blogs I visit have participated. I am aware of two who have announced they achieved their goal: fairyhedgehog did; and so did T.Anne. Congratulations to both of them.

There are others who, for this reason and for that, weren't able to get the time. I know how that goes. Sometimes it's there and sometimes it isn't. And just because one has the time it doesn't mean they know what to write.

I, of course, was not officially part of NaNoWriMo. I was part of a blog started by Writtenwyrdd which was like NaNo, but I bailed on that a couple of weeks ago. The idea of having to write was too distressing. That constraint made me want to do anything but write. So I bailed and finished up my word count in short order.

My November word count was a little on the low side. I attribute this to the holiday, which resulted in less alone time. But I got a lot done.

Overall, I wrote more then 64,000-words. I tallied this up by using the Word Count on the eight things I wrote in November. The biggie was Summer Shade. That's over 50,000-words, but I only wrote 45,000+ in November. Summer Shade was begun in October. White Wolves was begun in September, and I added another 5,700+-words to it, before setting it aside in favor of Summer Shade. I began a new novel, Hexagon, but soon set that aside, too, so I could rewrite Swords of Fire. That will probably pick up the pace in early December, only to stall for the Christmas holiday. And I wrote some short pieces, including one of the more erotic things I've ever put to pen or computer. That was a sudden inspiration.

In all, I worked on eight November projects, finishing five. This makes three months in a row that I have finished a novel. I am not writing as many words as I have ever written in a short burst (that was 30,000-words in a single day), but I seem to be writing more consistently. It's a pity the stories aren't being shared. Nobody except me has read Shadow People or The Sweet Girl. Part of Summer Shade was read by others, but not the whole story.

It's funny, storywriting. Some of the things I am writing now I thought about forty years ago but never got around to writing. Back then I wasn't able to. There are things a ten-year-old just doesn't understand. But the stories were there. They never go away. They just continue to cook.

Anyway, if you participated in NaNoWriMo I hope you achieved your goal. If you haven't then I hope you are within range. You have the rest of today. If not, I hope you don't become so discouraged as to give up. Perhaps these kinds of deadline things don't work for you. They don't for me. If you never seem to be able to make NaNo, then why not try this?

EVERY month is a kind of NaNo month. But there are different rules. Write what you want. When you can. As much as you can. There are no word limits or requirements. Write when you can. That's all there is to it. Just write. Oh, and don't give a damn about whether anything is well written, or even makes sense. Just write. Tell the story. Get it out there. Once you've done that you can always change it. If you feel like it.

Good luck.

When You Got It, Flaunt It - When You Don't, Dont

2009-11-29T18:31:00.005-06:00

My work on the Swords of Fire rewrite is a leisurely effort. To put it simply.

Actually, it's quite the understatement. I've written less than 5,000-words.

But it isn't my fault. Son is on holiday break and it's impossible to write with him vying for computer time. So I dabble at this and that and wait until such time that comes when I can actually write.

Did most of my writing in the middle of the night. Actually, that's always when I seem to find the alone time I need. Spouse has been working evenings, which means I am not alone during the day. Son is at school during the day which means I am not alone evenings. That leaves the middle of the night. Assuming I wake up in time for it. I often do.

Some people are able to schedule time every day to write. It's the same time, too. I never know when I'm going to have the time. And energy. Just because it is the middle of the night and everyone else is sleeping that's no guarantee I will be awake. Of course if Spouse is snoring it's a safe bet. And if my legs hurt especially bad. But there is no guarantee.

I'm not worried, though. Guess I'm accepting more and more that what I write, and want to write, doesn't mean jack sh*t. I'll keep working at improving my technique, but I have no reason to believe anymore that any of that work will ever amount to anything other than an exercise in futility. My choices are to either write cr*p with contentment, or write cr*p without it.

Do you ever feel that way?

I do. All the time now.

All. The. Frikkin'. Time.

Same Story Different Eyes

2009-11-28T12:43:00.002-06:00

Stories are amazing things. Emphasize this and you have a love story. Emphasize that and you're making a political statement. Quests, personal growth, action, adventure. All of these things are part of the same story. We, the storytellers, simply decide which elements will be emphasized and which will be minimized - or even ignored.

I have always known this, but it is with Swords of Fire that it is really brought home to me. Particularly this time. All of my previous story-shattering rewrites involved making major changes to the story, the time line, and a host of other things. Not this time.

This time I am telling the same story as last, but I have changed the angle at which I look at it. And now it seems to be a completely different story. It's the ten blind men and the elephant thing.

By concentrating on aspects I had kept in the background, and pushing to the background things I had focused on, I now have a new story. And yet it's the same. Hopefully, I will be happy with what I wind up with. Writing it, I feel a greater sense of intensity, urgency, and danger than I did in the previous version. In the previous version those things built slowly over time until they reached the climax. Now, beginning the story about a week later than Traitor, it feels like a different animal. And so I have given it a new name: Fire Mountain. It is appropriate, because the new focus is on the mountain and not the treason. The Mountain, and its surrounding lands and waters, contain the prize. It is the prize. The stakes are high and the risks are higher.

The rewrite is also going to bring forward characters who otherwise were not even mentioned. Now they will play a role. Some significantly. Of course, this means other characters are going to have to fade into the background.

Something else to come out of this is an epiphany of how I can create a database table containing an instant list of who is descends from who, instead of having to search and do time consuming calculations. Creating the table will take time, too, but not more than a few hours. But it really is useful. Trying to figure out if Bordan is descended from Bolar is a bit of a pain in the a*s. And then I will have the data henceforth.

I like The Great Sea. I guess if I could go anywhere it would be there. But I suppose that only makes sense. After all, I'm the one who created it. Kind of.

It Never Goes Away

2009-11-24T18:19:00.002-06:00

Well, it turns out yesterday was more than a strange chance. Today I began an earnest rewrite of Swords of Fire, Book I.

I have rewritten the story literally dozens of times, but only a few have been of the nature to change the story's basic flow. This is one of those times.

For the first time in more than ten years I am not just rewriting the story, I am changing nearly everything. Ultimately, the start and ending will be the same, as well as certain key milestones between. But the actual road map has changed.

Maintaining the travel analogy, instead of traveling from Minneapolis to Los Angeles by means of heading south to Texas and then west to California, I am going to cut through the mountains and take the Denver route. Both routes allow me to visit Kansas City and Las Vegas, but each also presents its own places of interests.

And so it will be with this new version of Swords of Fire. The title will change.

Of all the stories which pass through my head this is the one which matters most. I will keep working on it until I find a presentation which works for an audience.

I have to. There's no other way.

A Long Story is Made of Short Scenes

2009-11-23T14:21:00.005-06:00

Just finished doing something I haven't done in a long while: wrote something new for Swords of Fire.

The entire Saga has been put on hold while I explored a new realm of creativity with Apprentice, Ekundayo, The Sweet Girl, Panthera, and Sassy. But I think about Swords of Fire every day, even if I do not actually write on it.

Now I have only completed the first two books - and neither of those is ready for prime time. (Probably never will be.) I've started Book III, but I'm no where near the climactic battle. So why I should be concentrating on something that occurs in Book V or VI I don't know. But it's something I have been thinking on for more than a year. Nearly two years now.

I guess when a thing's ripe you harvest it. Whatever.

Typically, I do not like writing scenes from the future. I've done it. Many times. But nearly so often as smart writing says I should. You see, I like writing to a milestone marker, and these scenes in my head become those milestone markers. They're my inspiration to keep writing when a thing is going slowly. Without the milestone marker I lose interest and fade away.

Generally, the markers have to be close enough in the future to realistically be reached in a few days. This gives me my childish immediate gratification. And to write them early often results in the equivalent of eating one's dessert before the main course.

But today I just had to write. It didn't come out exactly as I wanted, but I was kind of rushing it, I think.

I have to laugh. Everything I've ever read about writing tells me that whenever I come up with one of these scenes I should write them down. Get them out of my head. I have so many on Swords of Fire alone I suspect I could easily produce a 100,000-word volume just on vignettes alone. Anyway, this little scene took a couple thousand words, and I was rushing it. Left out some things because I am short of time and I wanted to finish it before I had to leave. I could have written more. I still have ten minutes.

Oh, well.

I wish I could go back in time and make up for all the wasted years in which I wrote, but failed to learn my craft. At my current rate of decay I often wonder if there's enough time left to get it done.

So maybe I'll add these vignettes to my legacy. Maybe after I'm gone somebody who actually has the skills can put things together and fix them up into something for the world.

Until then, I write.

When Writing Fails

2009-11-21T19:35:00.003-06:00

So remember how I posted about starting a new story - Hexagon? Telling people what I'm going to do seems to be the kiss of death.

After two forced days absence from writing in order to visit with some professional people who didn't have a lot of good things to tell me I have had three days in a row in which I had three straight hours to write. I haven't finished the first chapter.

I'm reasonably close, but the inspiration has faded and I find playing computer games to be far more inspiring than doing anything creative. So either I find new inspiration or I forget about this book and start another.

Ever do that? Start a story and find you don't care anymore? My archives are filled with stories ranging from several chapters to mere titles. That's one problem with having a lot of ideas. There always seems to be a new idea ready to push out current ideas.

Maybe I'll keep writing it. It's actually a good story. Perhaps the problem is so many days where I just could not write. I did wake up early this morning, around four, but I wasted my time playing games instead of writing. Since seven this morning I have not been able to write. That's the way it goes sometimes. Isn't it?

Something Fun to Do

2009-11-19T09:57:00.003-06:00

Writtenwyrdd has new story idea. You can find details here. In essence, it's a progressive story, in which one person comes up with the first sentence or two, then another continues the story. I'm not clear if she actually intends to do this or if it's just an idea she's tossing about.

We used to do something like that when I was young. We would sit around in the living room and someone would begin a story. They would talk for up to two minutes. Then they would create some sort of cliff hanger, or decisive moment, and pass the story to their right. Eventually, the story would return to the originator who would have to find a way to tie up all the loose ends and end it.

Some times it was quite fun(ny). Some times it didn't work.

We did a lot of stuff like that. Mother would also write stories and remove several nouns and replace them with blank lines. She had made up a stack of small cards with names of nouns on them. These would be shuffled and dealt out to whoever was home that evening. Mother, or Gayanne, would then read the story out loud. Whenever a blank was reached the reader would pause and let the next person in the circle flip over their card and read the noun.

The first time we played it we had no idea what the nouns were, so the game was hilarious. Especially when we got to Mother's favorite joke noun: Sour Owl Sh*t. Mother had no trouble with being earthy.

Don't know how many readers this blog has, but if you enjoy things like that you might want to give Writtenwyrdd's blog a few visits. See if it's something she plans to actually do.

A New Story

2009-11-18T18:39:00.003-06:00

So, Summer Shade is done. What to do now?

Well, yesterday I was inspired and now I am at the beginning of another new novel. I'm tentatively calling it Hexagon. It's a fantasy story, of course. But I'm taking a different approach than my normal method. It's following the format of Swords of Fire: Book III (Bonds of Love), in which I follow more than one character. I don't normally like to write that way (or read that way either). But some stories lend themselves to it. Bonds of Love does because I have important events happening simultaneously on three separate worlds. (I need to get back to my epic series soon.)

Hexagon will be kind of like that, except all of the characters are going to be reasonably close. But I'm going to experiment with POV. Probably not a good idea as I have often been criticized for accidentally shifting POV. So to do it on purpose may be a mistake.

But it seems like a cute story. Got interesting characters anyway. And it's a survival story. Five teams struggle to overcome the Temple Master, a powerful Enchanter who has devised a maze filled with dangerous obstacles to be overcome. The teams will be pitted against not only the obstacles, but each other - whenever they encounter each other. Only one team can survive, and not everyone on the winning team is guaranteed to make it. In fact, it's been a long time since any team did.

I'm only a thousand words in, but I think I've got extra writing time on Thursday and Friday, so I may just make a good-sized dent in this thing before the weekend. Hope so.

Anyway, if all goes according to plan I should have another novel drafted before the end of November. That would be cool.

Summer's End

2009-11-16T16:38:00.004-06:00

Well, I did it. I finished the first draft of Summer Shade this morning. Or was it early afternoon? Whichever. It's done.

I did it by writing over 30,000-words in the last six days, including more than 9,600-words in the last two.

Even with leaving out a whole lot of pieces I forgot to include early on it came in at 50,800-words. That's a bit light for what I had wanted, but I let myself get distracted by the NaNo thing and lost a lot of focus. That's how I wound up leaving out so much. Ultimately I just wanted to get it done. But once I quit Nano the words began to flow and I did over twenty thousand words in four days.

Of course the story is crap. That's the way first drafts are, you see. And this one is particularly crap because of all I left out. But it's done. For now. Some day I may return to it and add in the things I forgot. I may smooth out the rough edges and better explain why certain things had to be the way they were. Ultimately, I need to find a way to make it interesting to readers.

Unfortunately, I do not have the power for the last. I can only write what I like, and that does not seem to conform to the modern reader. Ceste la vie.

I will continue creating my legacy. I have now completed three novels in three months. I wonder if I can write another one before Christmas. Well, that's easy to answer. Of course I can. I wonder if I will. That is an entirely different question.

Oh, and I just checked. Between Summer Shade and White Wolves of Dawn I have written 58,491-words in sixteen days. A pity I quit NaNo. I would have made it.

Summer's Nearly Over

2009-11-15T17:07:00.002-06:00

Well, I have come close, but the cigar will go to someone else. Summer Shade is nearly finished, but not quite. The pivotal fight scene has concluded and I have but to wrap up the loose ends. To have finished today would have mean finishing it with the month only half done. Oh, well. I will finish it soon.

However, thanks to my abortive effort with NaNo I have actually left out several important scenes which explain the ending. Wasn't that brilliant of me? I can't think that I have ever done that before.

The completion of Summer Shade means I will have written three novels of 50,000-words or more in three successive months. I haven't ever done that before either.

In fact, except for a brief time in the 1980s when I was especially inspired with creative ideas (few of which were actually started, much less finished), this has been my most prolific year ever in my life.

I am creating a nice legacy to leave my son. Maybe he will be able to earn some money from it. It doesn't look like I ever will.

The Process

2009-11-14T10:18:00.002-06:00

I had a post written and all ready to go, but I deleted it. What the hell. Right?

Been writing on Summer Shade. More then I thought I would. On Thursday I was still in Chapter Nine. Now I'm in Chapter Twelve and building fast to the climactic fight scene.

Not all of my stories have a climactic fight scene. The Sweet Girl didn't. Neither did Shadow People. But they had their climactic moments. There just wasn't a fight to mark it.

Summer Shade did not go as well as Shadow People, or The Sweet Girl. I attribute that to getting involved with word counts. Word counts are important, but they should be left to the editing process. That's when they matter. When writing a draft what difference does it make if you use 1,000; 10,000; or even 100,000 words? The story's the thing. Even established Authors agree that getting the draft out is the most important first step. But some required (and actually enjoy) the pressure of word counts during the drafting process.

For me, it's all about storytelling. I come up with an idea. I suppose you could call it a "What If" scenario thing. That's how Shadow People and The Sweet Girl came into being. It's how virtually all of my stories come to exist.

Sometimes the idea is nothing more than a character or two. That's how Summer Shade came to exist. I spent several days thinking about the two people and wondering what they were like. What was their conflict. Having decided that, I wondered what they would do about it, and how it would ultimately be resolved. This gave me my "Ending". I knew how the story was going to end.

Now my problem was - how did it begin?

The problem I have with beginnings is that stories don't begin at the place where the teller begins. They begin in the background. The history. It's history that influences, or even dictates, the present and the future. So finding the beginning is virtually impossible. But that's not the challenge anyway. The challenge is where to begin telling the story. (Yes, I know you're supposed to show the story, but you know what I mean.)

How much of that history and background needs to be revealed up front? Can some things be shown later? Can some things be left out entirely?

Determining where to start the tale (not the story) gives me a beginning and ending. Now I begin the journey. I start writing.

Sometimes I have milestones between the beginning and ending I wish to reach. It's like taking a trip from Minneapolis to Duluth. I can take the freeway and be there in four hours or less. There isn't a whole lot to see which is interesting driving up Freeway 35, but if I'm in a hurry it works.

But perhaps the goal is more than just arriving. Perhaps I am hoping to enjoy the trip as much as the destination. In this case I take the so-called back roads. These are the roads which expose the details of the land and communities which span the space between my beginning city and my destination city.

Of course, in a story, there has to be a purpose in these back roads. Yes, Forest Lake and Pine City are nice cities, but why are we there? What makes stopping at Hinckley necessary to get to Duluth? Well, for one thing, it's about halfway and that's where we refuel.

What I find in writing stories, is that if I give the characters enough freedom they will show me the reason why the story must go to this place or that. Why does this event have to happen? And if I finish a draft and never do find a reason then I dump that scene.

Story writing is fun. I'm never wholly sure about what is going to happen. The ending I had originally planned for Summer Shade has been changed by the addition of a character I hadn't known was going to show up. Two characters, actually. That's what makes it so fun. It's as much a surprise to me as to the Reader.

But that's what a draft is for. It's the honeymoon process. Editing comes later.

NaNo Ends Early For Me

2009-11-12T17:54:00.003-06:00

So it's been a slow week for writing. I've completely set White Wolves aside and have no plans to continue it until after I finish the other story, which I'm calling Summer Shade right now.

White Wolves, which was started in September, is in Chapter Eight and at 23,920-words. Just over half of those words have been written in November.

Summer Shade was started in October. It is in Chapter Nine now and sitting at 28,593-words. Nearly all of those words have been written in November.

This is the third time White Wolves is being set aside so I can write something else. The first time was when I wrote Shadow People. I was greatly inspired and wrote the whole thing in less than two weeks.

Shadow People was followed by The Sweet Girl, another spur of the moment inspiration. I began it in the last week of September and finished it in about two weeks. Then I worked on a rewrite for Apprentice. I've got another rewrite scheduled, but I'm waiting on the chance one of my readers will send a critique after NaNoWriMo.

FollowingApprentice I started a novel I'm still calling My Life as Charise. Only got a few hundred words into it, though, before I was struck with a new inspiration: Summer Shade.

Before Charise I had already committed myself to finishing White Wolves of Dawn in November as part of the NaNo blog thing. But I have run into something I knew was a very real possibility: I hate the commitment thing and regret agreeing to it. In fact, I hate it so much that I have consciously decided NOT to finish White Wolves of Dawn in November.

I guess it's my non-conformist, childish rebellion, streak surfacing.

Since November has begun all I have thought about is word counts. The result is that I have not enjoyed writing White Wolves of Dawn or Summer Shade. A very good friend of mine suggested I just bail on the whole NaNo thing. And so I kind of have.

White Wolves of Dawn is set aside. I intend to push forward with Summer Shade and finish that. Assuming I can recapture the inspiration I can be finished quickly - also assuming I can consistently get time to write. I haven't been. This week has been horrible. I have not had a single morning to myself. Morning has become my writing time. But I know if I could just get four or five days in a row I could finish Summer Shade. And once Summer Shade is finished I just might return to White Wolves of Dawn. But I won't be giving any word count updates after today until Summer Shade is finished. Then I'll give you the final first draft word count.

But I am counter-inspired by the "write so many words in a day/week/month" pressure. It makes me NOT want to write. For me, writing is 100% inspiration. Word counts are NOT inspiring. Not to me.

In a way I feel like I'm letting down other writers who are feeling the pressure of word counts and trying to achieve the 50,000-words in November goal. But I don't need that kind of encouragment/pressure. I wrote two 60,000-word novels in just over four weeks. So I have no real need - or motivation - to participate in things like this. I joined because I wanted to belong to a group of people I greatly respect. Only I still don't feel like I belong with them. The truth is, they're better writers, better educated, better read, and generally better people. So I'm bailing. It's the only way I can write and enjoy it.

Sorry.

Off Day

2009-11-10T15:58:00.002-06:00

No writing today. Pity.

I'm thinking of putting White Wolves on hold again while I concentrate on The Other Story. I have this sense that - if I could just be given the time to write it - I could finish it within a week. Getting time to write can be a nuisance when people are home with me.

NaNo Blog Day 9

2009-11-09T16:12:00.002-06:00

Got lucky today. Wasn't able to sleep in the middle of the night and put in a couple of thousand words. So when I got two more hours this afternoon I was able to up my total word count for the day to 5,733. It's my biggest daily output this month.

Unfortunately (or otherwise, I don't know), NONE of the words are for White Wolves of Dawn. I wrote everything for The Other Story. Maybe tomorrow I will change that. We'll see.

But I took the weekend off. Too many distractions anyway.

White Wolves of Dawn: is at 23,920 words total.
The Other Story: 20,039 words total.

Today's totals are as follows:

White Wolves of Dawn: 0 words
The Other Story: 5,733 words

Total words for the day: 5,733 words

Monthly totals are as follows:

White Wolves of Dawn: 13,225 words
The Other Story: 14,505 words

Total words for the Month: 27,730 words

So, it looks like I'm putting more effort in on my second story than my first. It goes that way sometimes.

No Progress

2009-11-07T19:02:00.003-06:00

Didn't write at all today, although I did have a couple of hours early when I could have. But I had a nasty headache. And I just wasn't into it today. Even bad writers need a day off now and then. Well, perhaps bad is too strong a word. Sloppy. Yeah. That sounds better.

Did some reading and researching. Lots of ideas floating about, but nothing sticking right now. Just as well. I've got two stories I should finish.

While it's possible I could (should) finish both White Wolves and the other story in November, I'm not so sure I will. But if I don't I should finish them both in December.

Wonder what I'll write next. Maybe I'll try resurrecting The Animal Kingdom. Tried writing that several times. Each time I get a bit further. But I struggle with inspiration now. Not sure why.

Right now I have 26 novels in various states of completion. Four are done. When I complete these two that will make six. So, if I wish to complete something I started earlier, I can choose from up to twenty different stories. The oldest is Legions of Encarrah.

Legions of Encarrah is a quest story. As I remember, Encarrah was a large land on a mountain. It was walled off from the surrounding low lands by a high wall with only two or three access gates. At one time Encarrah had been the fortress where the Guardians lived. There were three Guardians, and each had his/her own legion of warriors. For generations the Legions of Encarrah would come forth to protect the surrounding kingdoms from invasion. But something went wrong and Encarrah went silent. The gates were closed and no one was allowed to enter.

Now an army marches against one of the kingdoms and a young man determines to seek the protection of Encarrah.

I only wrote a little more than 2,000-words, so clearly this was a one-day inspiration. But it might make a nice story to finish. Who knows?

Anyway, I may take Sunday off, too. Don't know.

NaNo Blog Day 6

2009-11-06T18:15:00.003-06:00

So, for a day in which I expected to get nothing written, did all right. It meant waking up early, and taking advantage of Spouse's library trip. But I had a decent day's writing.

White Wolves of Dawn: is at 23,920 words total.
The Other Story: 14,306 words total.

Today's totals are as follows:

White Wolves of Dawn: 2,479 words
The Other Story: 3,003 words

Total words for the day: 5,482 words

Monthly totals are as follows:

White Wolves of Dawn: 13,225 words
The Other Story: 8,772 words

Total words for the Month: 21,997 words

Got some interesting things going on, but neither story is even halfway yet.

NaNo Blog Day 5

2009-11-05T16:37:00.002-06:00

Woke up early and wrote before the rest got up. Here are the new totals.

White Wolves of Dawn: is at 21,441 words total.
The Other Story: 11,303 words total.

Today's totals are as follows:

White Wolves of Dawn: 2,116 words
The Other Story: 1,383 words

Total words for the day: 3,499 words

Monthly totals are as follows:

White Wolves of Dawn: 10,746 words
The Other Story: 5,769 words

Total words for the Month: 16,515 words

The stories are coming along.

NaNo Blog Day 4

2009-11-04T17:31:00.002-06:00

Did okay today. Didn't have as much time as I hoped, but enough to gain on my goal a little. I made a mistake on my Excel document so my numbers might be a bit off. What I know is this:

White Wolves of Dawn: is at 19,325 words total.
The Other Story: 9,920 words total.

Today's totals are as follows:

White Wolves of Dawn: 3,005 words
The Other Story: 2,121 words

Total words for the day: 5,126 words

Monthly totals are as follows:

White Wolves of Dawn: 8,630 words
The Other Story: 4,386 words

Total words for the Month: 13,016 words

I may actually write some more tonight. Not sure. Not likely.

NaNo Blog Day 3

2009-11-03T16:27:00.002-06:00

Well, considering I hadn't expected to get any words written today it was a good day. I got more written on White Wolves, but less on The Other Story. The trade-off was that I was about as productive today as yesterday.

White Wolves of Dawn: 2,710 words
The Other Story: 654 words

Total words for the day: 3,364 words

The good news is that I have mostly caught up on my projected word count. I'm just 253 words short.

The bad news is that I'm over 7,000-words behind on my goal. Maybe I can make some progress on that tomorrow.

Monthly totals are as follows:

White Wolves of Dawn: 5,625 words
The Other Story: 2,285 words

Total words for the Month: 7,910 words

To make the monthly goal of 50,000-words I need to be at 3,333-words.

NaNo Blog Day 2

2009-11-02T20:00:00.003-06:00

Hello. Just my daily NaNo Blog update.

Had some time to myself today, but the inspiration wasn't flowing as well as I would like.

White Wolves of Dawn: 2,144 words
The Other Story: 1,156 words

Total words for the day: 3,300 words

That's more than my daily average but only about half of what I was hoping.

Monthly totals are as follows:

White Wolves of Dawn: 2,915 words
The Other Story: 1,631 words

Total words for the Month: 4,546 words

To make the monthly goal of 50,000-words I need to be at 3,333-words. According to my daily average I should be at 5,442. And according to my personal goal when in the middle of writing a novel I should be at 10,000.

So I'm slightly ahead of the NaNo schedule, slightly behind my daily average, and less than half-way to my personal goal.

Ceste la vie.

NaNo Blog Day 1

2009-11-01T17:50:00.005-06:00

I woke early and thought I might get a couple of hours without interruption so I could write for the NaNo blog. Unfortunately, that was not to be the case. Spouse was up right behind me and Son soon after that. The entire day has been one interruption followed by another.

I am working on two stories simultaneously. Later, I may add a short story or two.

In any case, this all I managed to accomplish today.

White Wolves of Dawn: 771 words
The Other Story: 475 words

Total words for the day: 1,246 words

That's less than half my normal daily average. Maybe tomorrow will be better. It's unlikely I will write anymore today.

Oh, and Writtenwyrdd's Halloween Contest is ready for judging. Follow this link to read the entries and register your vote.

Writing Contest

2009-10-31T23:59:00.000-05:00

Writtenwyrdd has an October contest in honor of Halloween. Write a horror story in 1,000-words or less. The details are here. And here is a picture of the grand prize. I wouldn't mind winning that. So, even though I am not a horror writer, I wrote a horror story and submitted it.

A Log Jam of Ideas

2009-10-31T06:23:00.002-05:00

Just got a look at Spouse's tentative schedule for next week and it does not look like I will be getting ANY writing done in the first week of November. Spouse will be home during the day all five days during the week, and Son will be home Sunday and the following Saturday. This means no uninterrupted time for writing. I might be able to sneak in a little here and there, but not much.

Having nothing better to do with my time last evening I went through the files on this computer, listing all of the writing projects I could find, when I last worked on them, what their word counts were, and if they were finished projects. Don't know if the numbers are impressive, but I'm impressed. The past twelve months have been the most productive twelve months ever in my non-illustrious writing career.

Here are some of the 'cool' numbers, dating back to October of 2008.

Total Projects Worked On: 146
Total Projects Finished: 112
Types of Projects:
..... 1 Editorial
..... 1 In Remembrance
..... 2 Plays
..... 9 Hero Stories
..... 15 Exercises
..... 26 Novels
..... 30 Short Stories
..... 62 Poems
Finished Projects just in 2009: 107

NOTE: Monthly word counts are taken from the last date a project was worked on. Projects ending in April, May, and June, were not written solely during those months, but do fall within the 12-month span. The September and October projects, however, were begun in September and October, and the July and August projects were begun in July and August.

OCTOBER Words Written: 85,096
SEPTEMBER Words Written: 78, 527
AUGUST Words Written: 18,452
JULY Words Written: 2,886
JUNE Words Written: 235,673
MAY Words Written: 300,838
APRIL Words Written: 146,300
MARCH Words Written: 9,016
FEBRUARY Words Written: 2,920
JANUARY Words Written: 6,205
Average Words per Day: 2,721
Average Words per Month: 81,622
Total Words in One Year: 979,461

Since I'm only 21,000-words away from One Million, if I were to add all the words from my blogs, and from drafts which I didn't include, I easily wrote more than One Million Words in the past 12 months. I guess that makes the fact that I may not be writing much at all over the next eight days all the more significant.

Probably the most significant number of all is the one that isn't displayed on the list, and that is, How Much Money Did All of That Writing Generate? A big fat ZERO.

I don't earn anything from my writing, but I keep on doing it. Guess that's how it goes sometimes, isn't it? Well, I've always said it isn't about the money. I think those numbers kind of support that statement.

The past 12 months have been very good for my writing, although I have (literally) shed many tears over it. When I am writing I am happy. When I stop and look back at what I've accomplished I am filled with a feeling of loneliness I can't explain.

I don't know how much longer I have in this world, but I guess I have created a legacy of some sort. That's assuming this computer doesn't crash like the one before. I lost a LOT of work when that happened as my backups proved to be faulty. What I wish is that I could afford to at least print single copies of what I have, as well as back it up digitally, so that the legacy will survive me. The poems and exercises are what they are, but the stories could all possibly be beat into shape.

Twenty-six novels in one year. I suppose that doesn't mean a lot when one considers that only four are finished.

Probably the number which surprises me most is the Short Story number. Thirty listed, but the Hero Stories are technically short stories, too, so that makes 39. I never saw myself as a short story writer before, but all 39 were begun in the past 12 months, and 30 have been finished.

But there's a lot of work in this archive. Nothing of what I've written is fit for publication, And maybe that's what makes me feel so lonely about what I've written. I don't know. It just seems a shame to have 34 stories not being read except by perhaps one or two people.

Meanwhile, my mind is already preparing to add to the short story and novel lists, and there will be other exercises I attempt, and the poems just come when they will.

Oh, and I've also written 1,107 posts for Blogger in the past year, too - not counting those I deleted.

Countdown

2009-10-30T00:23:00.004-05:00

It's Friday. Barely. Come Sunday I join a team of writers over on a NaNo blog to give a go at writing 50,000-words during the month of November.

The blog is the brainchild of Writtenwyrdd, who frequently posts writing tips and helps.

Currently there are 19 writers and 21 projects. And in case you're wondering, I am the weak sister writer, by which I mean I'm not in the same league as the others. So I am quite honored to be included.

White Wolves of Dawn is my project. I began it in September but put it on hold in order to write Shadow People and The Sweet Girl. Now it's waiting for November.

Two weeks ago I believed I would have no problem meeting the 50,000-words. Now I'm not so sure. There is an ugly chance my computer time is about to be serious curtailed again.

What a pity. And for once it kind of matters, too.

Take a visit to the blog. I'm not sure how that will go, but Writtenwyrdd put links to all the writers so you can check on them and see some real writing.

The Manta Ray is a Cool Fish

2009-10-29T09:23:00.003-05:00

Well, I'm sleeped up again and back to what I would consider normal for me.

I've sent Apprentice off to my two Readers. The one ahead in the earlier time zone has already sent back a critique. Why is it that others can see the obvious and I can't? The other reader is in a later time zone and may not even be awake yet.

Which brings me to a bit of a dilemma. With only two readers there is a point at which they will have read the story too many times to critique it as they would like. Reading the same story five or six times with input on the revisions eventually brings one too close to see the problems. Just as I could not see the glaring things raised by Reader in the East.

So where does one go to find readers? It seems tacky to be begging for reading favors when I've got nothing to give in return. And this isn't a great place to ask because, according to StatCounter, I have had six visits in six days. I don't exactly draw the people in. As a writer that is truly depressing.

I suppose my subject matter is just too dull for others. But I have no famous names to drop. I don't know any agents or editors or even authors. I've never been published. I'm not that witty and I'm certainly not well educated. Searching for anything online is a struggle for me so I rarely have cool sites to link to.

I like to write about what I'm feeling, but generally only when I'm not feeling good. Tolkien wrote about that in The Hobbit. I hope I don't get in trouble for quoting from the book, but this is what he wrote.

Now it is a strange thing, but things that are good to have and days that are good to spend are soon told about, and not much to listen to; while things that are uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome, may make a good tale, and take a deal of telling anyway. (The Hobbit: A Short Rest)

I find that to be exactly true. There have been few (if any) people I have personally known who's lives were all sunshine and happiness. The few who have tried to make me believe they do live such a life have struck me as phony - even shallow. Misery is a part of life, and while it is certainly desired to maintain good spirits in the face adversity, some of the finest people I know are suffering the worst. Meanwhile, the shallow people don't seem to be suffering at all.

Either life is completely cruel and unfair, or there is something about suffering which makes a person a real person, as opposed to a shallow shell of a human being.

All the same, if I could I would take away the pain and misery from the people I love. I suppose that would be the wrong thing to do, which is why I do not have that power.

Oh, well, to me. Right?

When a Star Lands in Your Pocket

2009-10-28T15:23:00.002-05:00

Good news. For myself anyway.

I have completed the Apprentice rewrite. Huzzahs and felicitations galore!

As hoped, this rewrite went along fairly painlessly. The critiques I received from two separate Readers were most helpful and gave me clear direction on what I needed to do. Now I just need to put the story back in their hands to learn if I achieved what I was supposed to.

My software project is moving along nicely, too. I've done some beta testing and discovered pieces which worked just ducky by themselves aren't ready to collaborate with each other as a piece of a whole yet. Been dealing with that. Nearly ready for another test.

Been a bit depressed of late, though. That comes from lack of sleep. Been kept awake a night or two and it's taken its toll on my emotions. So I'll try to get in lots of sleep and soon be back to my usual cheery [right] self.

And my Hero Story is posting, too, over on the Legion Blog. It's no great shakes, but the Hero Stories aren't meant to be. Basically, they're all first drafts.

But it's celebratory mood. Well, not really. But it could be. Something else is done. Which leaves more time for the things which are still on the cooker.

Performing a Story

2009-10-27T08:39:00.003-05:00

Well, Son's back in school, Spouse is back to work, and I am back to being busy with writing projects.

The Apprentice rewrite has begun. Barring anything unpleasant I should finish it this week.

I have a new story. The first chapter is completed.

The software I am creating for my soon-to-exist-new-blog is ready for beta testing.

White Wolves of Dawn is waiting eagerly in the gates for Sunday, when the NaNoBlog kicks off. (No link at this time because my understanding is that it is going to be recreated.)

Have written some more poetry.

The words are flowing. But then that's never really been a problem for me. My problem has never been about the quantity of water flowing through the dam, it's more about the quality of that water. Every time I think I'm finally making real progress and becoming worthy to be called an honest-to-goodness writer (authors are published) I discover that I don't know Jack Sh-t (not that I think I want to know somebody by that name) and have further to go than I did the last time I realized I had far to go.

Spoke a little with Son about this last evening on the way home from his saxophone practice. He's very good. This is especially so when one considers he only began playing it last June. But he's not ready to be selling any CDs yet. And last night his instructor was less tolerant of minor mistakes. Mistakes that I, as a listener, wasn't always able to pick up on. Why? There's a recital coming up in about six weeks and Son is slated to play The Pink Panther. For a little more than two months Son has been working on this piece, and he's taken it from simply playing notes to performing.

It's difficult to explain, but anyone who enjoys music knows what I'm talking about. To perform a song requires more than just playing the right notes. There's a feeling which is required. A life poured into the music. This is difficult, and it isn't easy to teach, although I believe it can be taught. Encouraged may be a better way of putting it.

It's the same with writing. Storytelling can be quite hard. It can also be quite easy. Just putting words down on paper or into a computer. But if you really want to give a story to an audience, let it perform, you have to put feeling and life into it. It isn't easy. Not to learn and not to teach. People who don't write don't understand it. But it is work.

It's the difference between a first draft and a polished story.

A Better Mouse Trap

2009-10-25T11:19:00.004-05:00

Got a new tool for confining my writing to a certain size. Unfortunately, it isn't by words. It's by characters. But it works well enough.

It's easy enough to make.

Open up a new Word document.
View Toolbars-Control Toolbox
Choose a Text Box and put it on your Word document
Right click on the Text Box and choose Properties
Set EnterKeyBehavior to TRUE
Set MultiLine to TRUE
Sex MaxLength to however many characters you want

I set mine to 3,000 characters, which results in 500-600 words, averaging about half-way.

What happens is that I am typing along, and when I reach 3,000 characters I can't enter any more. This works fine for times when you need to restrict your word count. The rule of thumb seems to be: Take the maximum characters and divide that by 5. The result will be what you can expect as a maximum word count. Not 100%, but pretty good.

While I find this works well for Hero Stories, Evil Editor assignments, and things like that, I isn't nearly so good for book writing.

But it's cool. I've been using it for a couple of days now.

Love Writing

2009-10-24T08:33:00.003-05:00

Son was sick all week and that means I had no real free time to work on my rewrite of Apprentice. I had hoped to be finished with it by now. Instead, I was only able to put in an hour this morning before Spouse got up.

I don't know if other writers suffer from this, but the people in this place have no qualms about interrupting me when I'm writing. And I don't mean just trying to get my attention because something important needs dealing with. I'm talking about just walking up and talking, frequently about things that just do not matter and do not even require my attention. (Of course, if it does need my attention I won't hear of it until it's far too late for my input to matter. Then, when things go bad, it's all my fault for not acting soon enough.)

My sense is that they do. Why else do so many writers find it hard to generate word counts? People who don't write don't understand that writing does not turn on and off with a switch. It's kind of like making love. If you're not in the mood you can do it, but it's not going to come off very well. And interruptions don't help at all.

So, when interruptions are expected, one doesn't even try. That goes for making love and for writing.

But I did put in an hour. Hopefully Son will be well next week and returned to school during the day. Then I can finish my editing just in time to begin the NaNoWriMo thing.

We'll see.

Something New Again

2009-10-23T12:24:00.002-05:00

I have been honored with a request to participate in a NaNoWriMo blog. Here's the link.

Although I am not officially signed up I will be writing, so Writtenwyrdd has been gracious enough to include me.

Of course now that I'm committed to writing 50,000-words I have little doubt the Muses are going to become annoyed with me an bail out until it becomes clear I won't make the goal.

The risks we take just to belong.

What a Regret

2009-10-22T10:20:00.003-05:00

My grandmother wrote stories. When she got older, past seventy, some of her work was published in books, newspapers, and senior citizen magazines. Mostly it was poetry, but some of it was short stories.

She mostly wrote about life in the early 20th century, which was when she was born and lived her formative years. Some fascinating stuff reading about wood stoves, crocheted mittens, winter excursions, dolls, and life in general growing up in country Iowa and Minnesota. Many of her so-called fictional stories were actually incidents from her own life, glamorized a little, but not by much from what I've been told by her contemporaries - now all gone. My mother is now the eldest living member of her family.

Some of grandma's poetry was about how she felt about things. Nature seemed to be a favorite topic. So did nostalgia. I can relate to that. Nostalgic thoughts are haunting to those who understand how different life could be had certain decisions been made differently. To have imagination is to have regret, for it is imagination which allows us to understand we mucked up at times.

I think some people claim they have no regrets because their regrets do not immobilize them. The fact they can go on with their lives without moaning all day makes them think they do not regret any of their choices or actions. Personally, I think that's bullsh*t. Anyone who does not regret the pain they have caused others is a complete horse's a*s, in my book. And if you believe you have lived more than a few years on this planet without causing someone else unnecessary pain then you are an idiot. Or a horse's a*s.

I think one of my grandma's regrets was that she never fully developed any of her talents. She was gifted in many areas: garment making, gardening, painting, sculpture, and writing. I don't recall ever hearing her sing, or try to play an instrument.

But her talents remained raw all of her life. Most of what she did were things for her to enjoy and the world to miss. I believe that is why she was so happy about the writing she did which was published. She got to share it with the world.

Artists are like that. And writers are artists of a sort.

We don't paint with pigment and we don't sculpt with clay or metal. We do not grow plants and we do not sew cloth.

Writers paint with words. We sculpt with words. We grow words and sew them together. We are artists of varying degree. Some have become masters at the craft. Some of us are fledglings, working solely with raw talent.

But master or novice, we all share one thing in common: We have a need to share our art.

After a Slow Start

2009-10-20T02:32:00.002-05:00

NoNoWriMo begins in twelve days. I won't be part of it because I don't (officially) have a 50,000-word novel to write. I have begun another story. And it's a safe bet it will make 50,000-words. But I've begun it already and it's a safe bet I will either finish it before the end of November, or I will abandon it in favor of another story.

Out of curiosity I just did a search through the computer to see what all I have written since the first of September. I have two active stories (both novels) and 13 finished works, which include two novels. Total word count over the past 50 days: 150,036-words.

Maybe I should sign up for McKoala's Smackdown Challenge. Nah.

My average daily output has been around 3,000-words. That seems low to me, until I consider days like the past four, when I don't think I have 3,000-words to show for the lot.

When I'm writing - on a roll, as I like to put it - I can easily pump out five or ten thousand words in a day. I've done more, but that's usually on days when I put in more than eight hours. Generally, I only put in a few hours every day. That's the up side of being unemployed.

I understand that my writing isn't the greatest, and I don't edit everything I write. Shadow People has only been through one edit pass and The Sweet Girl hasn't gone beyond the first draft. Those two books make up 129,000-words. My poems I seldom edit after I finish. I do that while I write. But those are nearly always less than 200-words.

My Evil Editor exercises (of which I have one in the past 50 days) do get a kind of edit. Mainly I'm looking for spelling errors and making sure I haven't exceeded the word limit.

Few of my short stories get edited much. The exception to this rule is Apprentice, which merits the effort. Apprentice, by the way, does NOT count toward my recent activity totals, so the four days I spent thus far on that can be deducted from the fifty.

With the exception of Apprentice, I'm not really in an editing mode right now. Right now I'm pumping out ideas and stories and not worrying too much about their quality. Editing will come later. Fall is when I seem to write the most. The ending of summer, green grass, and (supposedly) warm temperatures pushes me to nostalgia, which awakens my creative energies. Winter I edit. It's a dry time. Cold and stark. That's when I can rip apart what I've written and replace it with something supposedly better. Come spring new ideas spring to mind, but they're difficult to pin down and write. Summer is complete hard to write, but the story root systems are growing by leaps and bounds as my imagination works overtime without being encumbered by actual writing. Then comes fall again. Harvest time. Like the busy beaver I work like crazy to get as much done before the winter freeze puts a stop to all creative flow.

[long pause while I tallied something]

I've written 89 new projects this year. By new this year I mean I started all 89 after January 1, 2009. Four novels and two short stories are NOT finished. Everything else has at least a first draft completed.

I have 12-exercises; 2 finished novels; 4 unfinished novels; 53 poems; 16 finished short stories; and 2 unfinished short stories.

Total word count for the year: 195, 674.

That's pretty bad when you consider 150,000 was done in the past seven weeks, and I wrote the 200,000-word version of Swords of Fire in a month.

If I could write every month the way I write in September I would easily write over one million words in a year.

But who would read them?

What's There is There

2009-10-18T15:52:00.002-05:00

Do you want to know what's stupid? I am sitting her before the computer with tears running down my face because The Song began playing and I have been replaying it over and over again. What song? The song of Bolar's death. I cried for hours when I wrote the scenes, and they weren't even well written. And now I pulled up the file and did a search for "He is dead." It found the passage in one hit. I read it an cried again.

How silly. Bolar is just a character from the Swords of Fire backstory. He wasn't written well, but his passing brings tears. Strange. To satisfy you curiosity I will include portions of the Death Chapter. Don't expect to tear up. It can never mean to you what it means to me. One person's laughter is another's tears.

But this is what I wrote. I've made a couple of adjustments. The "She" is Tavaar. Probably the woman in the series I love most.

She was standing before her wardrobe, trying to decide what to wear, when there was a knock at her door. It opened and she turned to see Hetahna.

“Good morning, Hetahna. What is it?”

“You have a visitor, my lady.”

A warning chill passed through Tavaar’s heart.

“Sashwa?”

“No, my lady. It is Master Dahrin.”

The warning became fear. Dahrin was Bolar’s great-grandson. He had never come here before.

“I will be right there.”

She stripped off her gown and got into a tunic and britches. Then she raced from her room. Dahrin was standing and waiting. He was dressed in a healer’s robe. His face anguished. His hands wringing.

“Good morning, Tavaar,” he said.

“Good morning, Dahrin. Is something wrong? Why are you here?”

“It is Grandfather Bolar.”

Weakness was attacking her.

“Is he ill?”

“No. He is dead.”

If the world had ended right then she would not have noticed. She ran for the front door.

“Hetahna, watch the children!”

She raced from the house, not waiting to see if Dahrin followed. All she passed was a blur. Her only thought was to get to Bolar’s house. If she could just get there it wouldn’t be true. She slapped away the tears which filled her eyes. The house was before her. The door was opening. She rushed past Jebew, who had let her in. She headed for Bolar’s room. Their room. It was the room they shared. Bewda stood before it, and as Tavaar ran up she caught her in her arms. Tavaar struggled to get past, but for an old woman Bewda was strong, or was it Tavaar just weak?

“I have to see him! Bewda, let me past! I have to see him.”

“It is too late, Tavaar. He is gone,” Bewda soothed.

Anticipating Fun

2009-10-17T11:21:00.003-05:00

Saturday is Music Day on The Great Sea. Don't always listen to music on Saturday. At least, I don't always post about music on Saturday.

I've got a band. Don't think I've ever mentioned that. Five members. Three guys and two gals. Got an excellent guitarist, a drummer, a keyboardist, a flute player and me. I play bass.

The band really only has one problem: I'm the only member who's not fictitious. Well, I guess I should confess the band has another problem: The bass player sucks. Oh, and so does the lead singer. Yep. You guessed it. The bass player sings lead, too.

However, before I dis the bass player too much I got to say the bass player has the greatest enthusiasm.

Since I discovered as a child music was something people could do the the rest of their lives I have dreamed of being part of a band and entertaining on stage. I began by singing Beatles songs in the 1960s. LOTS of others followed. Dozens of artists and hundreds of songs. Some I've listened to today are:

Delaney and Bonnie: Never Ending Song of Love

Mouth and MacNeal: How Do You Do

T Rex: Bang a Gong

Raspberries: Go All the Way

Alice Cooper: Under My Wheels

Actually, I have TWO bands. Both are subjects of stories I have wanted to write for a long time. The one (oops - almost gave away the name) I've been thinking about writing for several years. The other is a recent creation. If ever I actually write the stories I'll let you know the names. In the meantime, I'm replaying Alice Cooper. I like that song.

The telephone is ringing ...

Things to Talk About It

2009-10-15T09:34:00.002-05:00

Great news! I've not only completed my rewrite of Apprentice, but I've already received a very helpful critique on the new work. There's more to be done, but I truly believe the story is becoming more solid and strong. And I'm not just making the story better. I'm learning why the story is better. That may be the most important thing of all, for it helps me with all subsequent writing. By knowing why a story does, or does not, work properly, I can avoid pitfalls and reduce rewrite time in the future.

For the first time in a long time I don't feel so far away from the goal. Probably am not, as the crow flies. But, like a winding river through a tilted valley, the journey may be quite long.

On another note, I now have four episodes in a new Heroines of the Night super hero story. There's an excellent chance I will have it ready for posting next week on Legion of Super On-Line Heroes.

And, I have attempted some drawings of faces. Not turning out at all like I want, but at least anyone should be able to recognize they're faces.

NOTE: Tried another cat drawing. My cat was laying in front of me as I was sketching and I tried to draw his profile. You can almost tell it's a cat. Nose sticks out too far.

And a New Project Begins

2009-10-14T07:39:00.005-05:00

Well, rah rah, blow the bubbles and pass out the gum. I have finished the Apprentice rewrite.

It began slowly, then went too fast, then bogged down, then restarted and went smoothly.

So now I'm working on Heroines of the Night. They're a super hero organization consisting (at the moment) of five female heroes. Caped Blade is their leader and Lasered Lash is second in command. Masked Wizard and Primitive Brute are lieutenants, and Safe Whiffle is the newbie. I'm expecting to finish this up in October and be posting it on the Legion of On-Line Super Heroes blog soon after.

Their first go will be attempting to apprehend Mr. Manners, a polite (but dangerous) master jewel thief. I'm thinking it might go six episodes. I've already written two.

I would like to be able to include cartoon drawings of the characters, but realistically I'm not likely to develop the kind of talent I require in the next few days, so that is going to have to wait. When I finally do get my drawing up to something of a satisfying level I am likely to redraw my heroines and possibly even rename them.

I won't be participating in NaNoWriMo, however, I will be writing. I know several online who will be writing, though. Good luck to you all.

Just a Quick Update

2009-10-13T11:39:00.003-05:00

The Apprentice rewrite is under way and progressing nicely. I think.

I ran into a couple of questions about the ending, but fairyhedgehog, who said I could say is one of my critiquers for Apprentice, explained it well. In essence, I have to do a better job of showing what the questions are in Kiahva's mind and heart, and why the ending I've chosen best answers those questions.

Typically, I write quest novels, in which something has to be done, or retrieved, in order for success to happen. In these books character development and change is still important, but the focus is on the quest itself.

With Apprentice, it is the character transformation itself which is important. Furthermore, Apprentice is a short story as opposed to a full novel. It's a little bit different writing than I'm used to. But then that's how Apprentice came to be. I was experimenting with an entirely new side of creativity.

So the rewrite is moving along nicely. I had thought I might finish it this week. Not sure about that anymore. For one thing, I've only got today and tomorrow this week to work on it. After that Son and Spouse are going to be around and I can forget about getting any real work done. But barring the unexpected it will be finished next week.

Cats and Faces and Horses and Airplanes

2009-10-12T06:00:00.000-05:00

Catlin: From The Shadow People, by Bevie James

I would very much like to draw. For some, drawing has become easy. For people like me it's quite intimidating.

A couple of years ago I attended a workshop the company I was working for put on for its employees. The focus of the workshop eludes my memory, but I do recall an exercise we did. (I've posted about this before on A Voice in the Wind.) We were given a blank sheet of paper and told to partition it into four equal rectangles. In the top left corner we were told to use our dominant hand and draw a house. Next, using the opposite hand, and in the upper right corner, draw a picture of a horse. Step 3 was in the lower left corner. Again, using your dominant hand - but with your eyes closed - draw a picture of an airplane. Finally, in the lower right hand corner, using the other hand - again, eyes closed - draw a picture of a cat.

The moderator then told us what he observed.

Few people were inclined to show others their house picture, but kind of willing to show their horse drawing. Even more showed their airplane, and nearly everyone wanted to share their cat picture. Then he told us about a study which was done some place. (Some group got paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to do this study, I'm sure.)

Questioners went to day care centers and asked four- and five-year-old children, "How many of you can draw a cat?" One hundred percent of the children said they could. I believe the children even were eagerly willing to provide proof. Next, the questioners went to several colleges and universities and asked the same question of young adults. Very, very few said they could draw a cat.

The point was, of course, that we are taught, and we quickly learn, what we can't do. People look at our early efforts and feel the obligation to point out to us that we aren't any good at whatever it is we're trying to do. For most of us it doesn't take to many of these admonitions before we realize we can't do that.

So what was different with the adults who still believed they could draw a cat? Were their first efforts just that good, and so they weren't given the negative critiques? I doubt it. Were they praised for their effort and progress instead of discouraged? Possibly. In some cases I believe so. Or were they just to stubborn/stupid to listen to the comments and proceeded along their merry way, trying and trying and trying, and improving, improving, improving? I think there was some of this, too.

Unfortunately for me, I didn't get the praises for early efforts in drawing. What is more, I was too stupid to be stupid, and not quite stubborn enough to ignore the comments I got. So I put my drawing aside and did other things.

Now, I am well past the early years of my life and I don't draw a heck of a lot better now than I did then. Why not? I haven't been practicing. What a shame. Well, I'm going to try practicing now. I have illustrations I want drawn for my stories, and I can't afford to commission other artists to do the work.

I'm going to begin by trying to draw Catlin, a character from Shadow People, a novel I finished in mid-September. That's Catlin up at the top. But before you go praising me for an early effort I have to confess that is NOT a free hand drawing up there. What I did was search Google Images for a picture of my impression of a beautiful woman. I found one. Downloaded it. Printed it. Put a blank sheet of paper on top of it. Paper-clipped the two sheets together. Walked to the sliding doors. Put the papers against the glass, blank side toward me. Traced the image.

So, before you discourage me on my ability to trace, let me remind you that that isn't very nice. [smiles]

I DO intend to draw Catlin free hand. And in the near future, I hope. But I wanted to get a "feel" for drawing the face. I'm going to work at it - between my writing assignments. Because you know what?

I CAN draw a cat!

Light Work

2009-10-11T09:59:00.004-05:00

I'm officially taking today off from writing. Unofficially, I have already written something. Not a blog entry. These don't count unless I've written a story.

I'm a bit of at a loss for the day. I don't want to start work on Apprentice until tomorrow, when I can work on it without interruption. And I don't want to start anything which might take more than a few minutes to write for fear I will become so enamored of it I don't go back to Apprentice after all.

So it's a day of writing exercises and creative thought.

How Sweet it Is

2009-10-10T07:41:00.002-05:00

Okay, I have finished The Sweet Girl. Just over 64,000-words. I like it. It needs a major rewrite, but I like it anyway. However, I am going to set it aside for now and work on other things. Apprentice needs a major rewrite and so I'm going to be focusing my attention there for a while.

It's funny about writing a book. Like any project which lasts more than a few days there are high points and low points. The Sweet Girl took me a little less than a month to write. About three weeks. I suppose in the minds of some that discredits the quality. How could I possibly have written anything worth reading of that length in such a short amount of time? My only answer to that is that I had the time. For the most part, I have 24/7 to devote to my writing. The only forced breaks are when I take Son to school, bring Son home from School, and take Son to saxophone practice at Northwestern College. Other than that, I'm pretty much here.

But pumping out words has never been a real problem for me. And I don't think I'm horrible at it. I'm not as good as some I've read, and not at all worth comparing to the true literary masters. After all, I've never been able to get any of my work published, so the quality of my writing has to remain suspect.

But I tell good stories. Sometimes.

I think The Sweet Girl qualifies. It's my first serious effort at writing detective fiction. Detective fiction is not something I personally have been into much, so perhaps I failed to wholly capture the detective feeling. I wrote it like a fantasy. In fact, I set it in a fantasy place. The idea is that there is one Prime Reality and many created realities around it. These created realities are used for holidays, and transportation between realities is regulated and controlled, similar to our traveling from country to country. Of course, I have to confess I have not traveled to another country in years. And the only other country I have visited is Canada. And back when I visited it one could cross the border without any trouble at all. The Canadian border guards simply asked why I was going there and told me to have a good time. Getting back into the United States wasn't so easy. Nor as friendly. But no special papers or things were required. I understand that has changed.

I like writing stories and I like it that I wrote something different than I normally write. What I really like is that I'm finally making it a practice to finish things I start. My Archives are filled with half-begun stories and concepts. But just this year, what I have I finished?

Swords of Fire: Traitor (epic fantasy)
Apprentice (short story)
Quest (short story)
Sassy and Otio (2 short stories)
Mist Over Monticello (a Legion Blog story told in five parts)
Ekundayo (short story)
Shadow People (novel)
The Sweet Girl (novel)

Of course, Swords of Fire probably shouldn't count. I've "finished" that more times than I can remember over the past thirty-five years, so it hardly counts as a current project. But even removing Swords from the list I have accomplished a lot this year.

This has probably been my greatest year ever for inspiration. And Ekundayo, Shadow People, and The Sweet Girl have all been begun and finished within the past eight weeks.

When the year began I was convinced something great and wonderful was going to happen, and that it would happen just before, or around, the end of summer. I was convinced it had to do with finances. But maybe it was this. A breakout of writing like I've never experienced before in my life.

I owe a lot of thanks to those who have encouraged me. This is particularly true for fairyhedgehog, who has continued to visit my blog and encourage me despite my manic moods. Thanks, Fairy.

Anyway, I've got another story. Some day I may actually get paid for all this creativity.

A Busy Schedule Continues

2009-10-09T14:20:00.003-05:00

Well, I've learned I need to start (or continue) an actual novel to participate in NaNoWriMo, so I will definitely NOT be signing up. I do have a couple of unfinished novels, but I'm not likely to work on any of those in the near future. Maybe White Wolves.

In the meantime, The Sweet Girl is nearly finished. I'm just past the climax and decided I needed a break to write the ease down to the end. Have to leave soon to pick up Son and I don't want to rush myself. If I don't finish this today I will tomorrow. Final word count should be around 60,000-words. Then I will put the story aside for a few weeks. It needs a major rewrite. Or two.

Beginning next week I am planning on rewriting Apprentice, taking in the suggestions I got from my last critique. When I finish with that, in a week or two, I'm guessing, I may return to writing Hero stories. I've got a couple which have been sitting on hold since the end of July and early August. Won't publish anything from them until they're finished, though. My goal (if I go through with the plan) is to write no less than four complete Hero stories: Panthera, Feathered Guy Anthropist, Hidden Embers, and Heroines of the Night. The last should be especially fun, so I hope I go through with it.

Then I should return to White Wolves. All of that should cover me through the end of the year. Maybe. Maybe not.

Belonging

2009-10-08T06:55:00.005-05:00

NaNoWriMo is soon upon us. Thousands of people around the world are signing up to officially participate.

As I understand it, the idea is to write 50,000-words from November 1st through the 30th. Not sure if this is for one single story, or if a series of short stories would qualify.

To be honest, I'm not clear on what the appeal is. Writing 50,000-words in thirty days is hardly a problem for me - when I'm writing. I've done nearly three times that since the first of September. But then I will also go through a similar time when I don't get five or ten thousand words.

The word count doesn't really matter to me. I once puked out nearly 30,000-words in a single day. I had awakened in the middle of the night and had nothing better to do so I wrote. And wrote. And wrote. Dawn came and I said, "To hell with college. I'm an a roll." And so I just stayed home and wrote. And wrote. And wrote. I wrote fairly steady for about fifteen or sixteen hours straight. When I was finished, I had a ton of words. But put together as I had put them they were basically crap. I still have that manuscript, but it's in The Archives as a momento of something that didn't work. I rewrote the thing (it was a Swords of Fire effort) several times since. Very little of what I wrote that night-into-day remains.

I suppose it comes down to how different authors and writers are motivated to write. Many of the blogs I have visited show word count progress. I've used them myself, posting my editing progress on this blog. I have an Excel spreadsheet tracking my chapters for The Sweet Girl right now. I'm at 47,000-words and coming up fast on the climax and ending. I expect to be finished within the week. But my interest in word count stems more from having been told Swords of Fire is too long for a first book, so I'm kind of trying to limit myself. These artificial guidelines have nothing to do with creativity and, in fact (in my opinion), actually gets in the way of creative thought. But that's just me. I've known writers for whom such parameters are exactly what they need.

All that being said and done I am considering NaNoWriMo because my best friend is going to be part of it, as well as a lot of people I've met online. For me it's more about the 'herd sense', of belonging to a group of people with whom I wish to belong. But I probably won't actually 'sign up'. That will work against my creativity. It's not the way I write. And I don't need any recognition for writing the words. I've already given myself recognition for writing even more. For me, it isn't about recognition and it isn't about proving I can do it. It's just about belonging.

So Tell Me More

2009-10-07T06:18:00.002-05:00

So I had Apprentice reviewed again recently, and I got a lot of helpful suggestions which I am going to try and implement as soon as I can finish The Sweet Girl. (That is very close, by the way. Two chapters to go.) One of the things I was called on about was my dialogue. Too much of it.

This is not the first time I have heard this complaint about my writing. Generally, my characters receive and disburse information via dialogue and not action. I guess I see action as the point where information is used, not transmitted. When information needs to be moved from here to there I tend to use dialogue.

But this isn't apparently what people want to read. People want to read about people doing things, not talking about them. But what about when people aren't doing anything? I'm at a place in The Sweet Girl where everyone is sitting around a table engaged in a meeting. Not exactly a place for a lot of action.

My problem is I see characters interacting through dialogue more than action. Maybe that's because most of the time I'm interacting with people via the internet now. That's dialogue. But even face-to-face, I'm either talking with people or I'm not interacting with them.

So I have to admit I don't understand why dialogue doesn't work. But I've been told more than once it isn't working. I'm accused of telling and not showing. I guess my weaknesses as a writer are paramount, because I honestly do not understand.

Shadow Sweet White Apprentice

2009-10-03T12:59:00.002-05:00

So, this is my eighth post since moving out of my home. It wasn't that long ago (although to me it seems like an eternity) I was posting every day. It's just hard for me to communicate much with the outside world now, even after seven weeks. Guess I expected too much out of life.

Anyway, I'm not sure my not posting is all that big of a deal anyway. It's not like I have that much to say which is of real interest. But on the chance someone might be, I'll provide a status of where I am at with various projects.

I've put my White Wolves story on indefinite hold. Not because I don't want to finish it, but because I have a couple of other projects which are taking precedence right now.

I'm going to be doing a major rewrite of Apprentice. Yes, I know. I said it was finished and even submitted it for publication. It got a reading but was rejected. I got another critique (won't say by who because I'm not sure she would be happy to be identified, even though I do not believe she visits this blog) and talked it over with fairyhedgehog (who said she doesn't mind being identified as my original reader) and we agree the story could profit greatly from the new ideas. It could become a bit larger, as most of the suggestions were for more detail in surroundings and in Kiahva's head (what she's thinking, not grey matter). But at the same time there's a lot to be cut, so it's hard to say.

But Apprentice is also on hold. It's waiting behind my current work in progress: currently under the working title Real Problems. That title isn't going to last. I don't much care for it at all, but then I'm not sure about my original go. Real Problems is the fourth (or fifth) go at giving this thing a title. In fact, now that I'm letting the title ruminate in my head I've come up with one I like much better. It ties in with an important story element. In fact, it's the driving force. The newest (and greatest) working title will be The Sweet Girl. You'd have to know the story to know why it works but, unfortunately, I'm not going to reveal that just yet. I want to finish it first.

Right now I'm in Chapter Eleven and sitting at about 37,000-words. My original plan was fifteen chapters and about 45,000-words. I may or may not reach the chapter goal. I will definitely surprass the word target. It's going to go very close to 60,000-words. Then it going to require a major edit job. But that will have to wait because once I finish the draft Sweet Girl is going to go on a warmer burner while Apprentice takes center stage.

Recently, I finished another short story: Shadow People. I think that went about 60,000-words. Yeah, I know. How can I call 60,000-words 'short'. It's easy. Typically, when I write a story it goes well past 100,000-words. But those are epic fantasy stories. Shadow People is hardly epic. Same with Sweet Girl and even White Wolves.

Anyway, the Muses have been feeling sorry for me because of the house thing and have been entertaining me with a host of creative ideas. What a pity they can't actually make me write well enough to be published. But I'm not sure I would be happy with that right now. I still like the way I write now. My stories are giving me enjoyment, if nobody else. But that's kind of the story of my life.

Don't know when I'll post again so take care.

Starting Over Again - and Again - and Again - and

2009-09-23T09:12:00.003-05:00

So, I set my new story (WWOD) aside for the time being and started a new new story (ACG). (The letters are acronyms of the working titles.)

ACG #1 went about 1,100-words before I decided I didn't like some things and restarted.

Using pieces of ACG #1, ACG #2 made it past the point of stopping on #1, but only by a little. Word length, about 1,400-words, ending with the clever phrase, "I look forward to seeing more of you."

ACG #3 actually completed a chapter. It dealt more strongly with some concepts I am trying to establish, but it didn't "feel right" to me. I liked what I had written, but it just didn't seem to be the story I wanted to tell. Another 4,200-words tossed aside.

ACG #4 became a rewrite of Chapter One and a lot of words in Chapter Two. But that's how it feels to me: like a lot of words. There are more than 2,800-words in Chapter Two, but I don't know that I'm saying anything. I do tend to babble.

So, I've received some good advice and help from a friend, and done a bit of reading which helps. Now I'm going to begin ACG #5. Only it won't be called ACG anymore. I haven't got a new working title but, based on new feelings, ideas, and unspoken messages from my main character, ACG no longer fits what the story is really about. So I'll come up with something new. Something I like.

Speaking of titles, like nearly everyone, I think I'm good at them (and at the same time not being impressed with many who are acclaimed). There have been several books I have passd on because of the title, and when I learn a previous version I think I would have bought the book had the original title been kept. Not always.

Finally, I want to put in a plug for fairyhedgehog's blog. The truth is, I think she may be the only visitor this blog gets anymore, but on the chance someone else passes by I want to redirect them. Her latest post provided me with some help for my ACG problems, and I thought to give her some advertising. Fairyhedgehog frequently posts helpful hints and links.

Plugging Away For - Something Unknown

2009-09-17T11:53:00.004-05:00

So, Shadow People is completed. I even wrote a query letter for it. It needs work, but I have one. What I don't have is a place to send it. But I'm letting the query rest for now.

Meanwhile, I have begun yet a new story. It's in the early stages and I'm only on chapter four. My guess is this story will also run about 60,000-words when completed. It's requiring more research and ultimately will require a more in-depth rewrite. But there is writing taking place, even if it doesn't appear anything will come of it. Of course, why should it? Nothing has ever come of anything else I've ever written.

It's kind of sad, in way. All of these stories, and most of them well and good, and at best they will be enjoyed by one or two instead of many. What a waste my life is.

I'll let you know when I've finished this go.

Inspiration is Not Dead - And Neither Am I - Yet

2009-09-12T05:37:00.004-05:00

So, I have not been entirely idle although I have been absent. But the idea of this blog is my writing, and if I'm not accomplishing anything to that regard, why blog? And since, according to StatCounter, this blog was getting virtually no visits, it's not like it's a great loss if I don't post.

Anyway, I have written a new story. It's done now. I've even gone through an edit. It's only about 64,000-words, which is nothing compared to what I like to write. But it says what it needs to say. To use more words is to simply include filler.

It's title is "Shadow People", and once again it is of a fantasy nature, although not the kind of fantasy I normally write. This time there are no swords, wizards, dragons, or fairies. Well, maybe there are a couple of them. I suppose it depends on one's point of view. That is the hint, of course, that this story deals with subject matter I have struggled with for a great deal of my life. What is right and what is wrong? What is real and what is imagined? And just what does it mean to be in love with someone? Anyone.

I'm not going to go into what the story is about because I haven't written a query for it yet. The joyful part of writing any book. Haven't written a synopsis for Swords of Fire either. I don't know if I ever will. I don't know if I can.

I am a writer. Wish I was an Author, but that's probably more than I have a right to even dream about. But my stories are good stories. They are well worth the read, if you can get your hands on one. Not likely, as those who must decide where to invest their time and money are not interested in my work. A pity. For me and for them. My stories are worth paying for. I know Shadow People is. I would buy it - if I didn't already have it.

Anyway, it's done.

Just thought I'd say.

She

2009-09-03T01:41:00.000-05:00

She
by Bevie James

She was beautiful beyond my dreams or reality
In my arms she was like an envelope of love
But that was a dream

I found her as a child and she made me a man
In her arms I was like burning flame of passion
But that was just a dream

I loved her smile, and her winsome eyes enraptured me
The sound of her voice was like a song upon my heart
But it was all a dream

The child that she bore me was as beautiful as she
The way she touched my spirit made me always feel free
But the girl and the woman were just a dream to me

The love that I feel still dwells deep within
It longs to get out and live life again
To love and be loved
What else makes a man
The power of love makes me be all I can

The girl of beauty lives on in my heart
I embrace her each morning and evening in love
But it is all a dream
Oh to sleep and dream
I dream that I can breathe
Awake I dream again
To dream

Feeling Blue

2009-08-23T16:02:00.000-05:00

Sad and Lonely
by Bevie James

Sad
Lonely
Waiting
To Cry

Sad
Lonely
Waiting
To Die

Sad
Lonely
Waiting
To Fly

Sad
Lonely
Waiting
Goodbye

For that is what remains
It’s all I ever was
That is what I am
I’ve run out of because

Sad
And Lonely
Waiting
To Cry

Sat
And Lonely
Waiting
To Die

Something Different

2009-08-19T04:33:00.001-05:00

Bunby
by Bevie James

Bunby was a dirty little pecker from way back when
He stole Virginia Glaous from me when he said he was my friend
He borrowed my car, saying he needed to go for a ride
But he never said Virginia was with him – so he lied
And when Virginia left our school quietly one day
Bunby smirked and strutted without a word to say
That was back in the sixties, when we knew not which way was which
Now Bunby’s stuck in prison – and he’s someone else’s bitch
Way to go, Bunby
You jackass

Chedis

2009-08-16T09:52:00.002-05:00

Chedis
by Bevie James

Chedis was a beautiful child, gifted in a love of art and wonderment
The life that Chedis lived was sometimes hard, and Chedis’s beauty was often spent

Early in life Chedis learned a difficult lesson, and that was a lesson of love
For Chedis learned that love was not gotten for free, it was not like a dove

When Chedis was pretty, when Chedis was good, then love was forthcoming and with it deep gladness
But when Chedis was selfish, having nothing to give, then love was withheld and with it deep sadness

Gifted in body Chedis was good at sports, and when Chedis won then love did abound
But victory was hard, and there were times Chedis lost, then no love was around

Chedis earned money and had it in measure, and as long as it lasted love was bestowed
And when money ran out and poverty moved in, then love left for unpaid debts now owed

Pretty in body, Chedis gave all that was asked, and while pretty and giving received love galore
The years passed and the body changed, weak and heavy, not pretty, love was no more

Chedis loved music and music loved back, seeping into the soul and making Chedis whole
The tears would fall, released as emotion flowed fast, a raging river from the soul

So Chedis did travel, and searched through all space, and found those who loved without price
Amazed and attracted, Chedis remained and continued, searching to live twice

Where is Chedis now and where is Chedis going that is what is asked
To continue in love and in searching with that Chedis is tasked

Chedis is such a beautiful child, gifted in love and wonderment
Chedis searches for others of like spirit, that is where Chedis went

Shut Down

2009-08-09T07:26:00.003-05:00

Well, my service provider got smacked yesterday and shut down its service for the entire State of Minnesota. Fortunately, they are back up today, allowing me this one final chance to post before going offline due to losing my home. We are scheduled to be back online some time this week, but I'll believe that when it happens.

That's become the story of my life: believing when it happens.

Someone once asked me if I'm a "glass half empty or half full" kind of person. Get the h*ll out of here! The glass is empty you muttonhead.

People like that drive me nuts. I mean, I like to dream more than most people, but ultimately I live in the real world.

I have a character, Elden, in the sequel to Traitor who is like that. I enjoyed writing him because he is just so obliviously positive about everything it drives everyone around him nuts. Some of the other characters become speechless. Some want to hit him. Doesn't matter to Elden. He just continues on his merry way, unconcerned about any setback. To him, everything is part of the plan and so no matter what happens are going according to plan.

This is mostly what my Main Character is confronted by in Prophecies of Madatar: people who just don't seem to be listening. Everyone around him has their own preconceived notion of what is reality and they live accordingly. Unfortunately, none of their realities conform to his own and he spends a good deal of the second book fighting just to make people understand what he's trying to tell them.

I like the approach because there is tension when characters "just don't get it". It can also be used to humorous effect, which I do often throughout the book. But through it all, the main character, while not abandoning his own sense of reality, begins to see these other characters in different light, and comes to appreciate their unique views on life in general, and him in particular.

Began the second edit for Prophecies of Madatar yesterday. As I wrote my good friend, I'm not sure why I'm bothering as I'm not doing anything about getting Traitor published. It looks like I've kind of given up on a lot of things.

In any case, this is the 268th post for this blog since October 21st of 2008. I don't know when the 269th will occur. As I have done with my other blogs (excepting the Legion Blog, which has the potential to continue without me) I will leave off with a song. Most of the songs have been dreamy and sentimental. This one I will make high energy. Let us go out with a bang!

The telephone is ringing
You got me on the run
I'm driving in my car now
Anticipating fun
I'm driving right up to you, babe
I guess that you couldn't see, yeah yeah
But you under my wheels
Why don't you let me be

'Cause when you call me on the telephone
Saying take me to the show
And then I say, honey, I just can't go
Old lady sends me packing leaving home

The telephone is ringing
You got me on the run
I'm driving in my car now
I got you under my wheels
I got you under my wheels
I got you under my wheels
Yeah yeah
I got you under my wheels
Yeah yeah
I got you under my wheels

The telephone is ringing
You got me on the run
I'm driving in my car now
Anticipating fun
I'm driving right up to you, babe
I guess you that couldn't see, yeah yeah
But you was under my wheels, honey
Why don't you let me be, yeah yeah
I got you under my wheels
I got you under my wheels
I got you under my wheels
Yeah yeah

We're gonna drive down to LA
We're gonna watch the young girls play
Because I want you
Because he wants you

By Any Other Name It's a Toilet

2009-08-07T09:01:00.002-05:00

Down to the final three posts (assuming I post every day) before my blogs all go silent. For some reason I feel pressure to write something significant. Unfortunately, that is a bit beyond my ken. (How's that for a cool word?) I seem to remember it as part of a song, or poem, I heard in my youth. Just did a quick lookup. Turns out it's a Scottish word used in British dialect. They have such cool words over there.

It's odd about words. We use them to express ideas, feelings, and a host of other things. And yet we often fail to achieve our goal because the words we use mean one thing to us and something completely different to those we are trying to communicate to. For instance.

Spouse is from Wisconsin. That's like another planet, and the people there struggled mightily with the English language. On my first visit to Spouse's family one of her younger sisters (J) asked I would like to take her to the outdoor.

Now I grew up in rural Minnesota, where American English was the order of the day. Even the foreign exchange students who came spoke better English than we did. But I knew what an "outdoor" was. I had lived on more than one place which had one. "Outdoor" was another way of saying "outhouse". So I was more than a little confused (and concerned) over my future sister-in-law's request. Turns out, in Wisconsin, "outdoor" meant "drive-in theatre".

When we were taken to a nearby town to speak with the caterers, J announced she was going to go get a drink at the bubbler and asked if I wanted to come along. Now I was thirsty, but drinking from a park fountain was hardly appetizing. Except that in Wisconsin "bubbler" meant "drinking fountain".

When we went some place to eat, J asked me if I wanted a Coke. I told her I didn't like Coke. But when I ordered a Pepsi she acted surprised and exclaimed, "I thought you didn't like Coke." I patiently explained I wasn't drinking Coke, but Pepsi. That was when (future) Spouse explained that Coke was any soda pop. So I said, "You mean pop?" They all looked at me like I was some kind of cannibal. "Pop" was grandpa.

A Plan Without the Internet

2009-08-06T11:45:00.003-05:00

Been sitting here wondering what I will be doing with my time come next week. Got kind of a crazy idea. Like most of my ideas, it's wacky, and it will probably never see the light of day. But part of it will. Part of it has.

I expect one thing I will do is continue to write Hero stories. Currently, I have two in progress: Twice the Fun, latest episode published on August 4th; and The Taming of Pelage, first episode to publish on August 8th.

But there are a variety of Created Heroes for whom no stories exist. The link does show Feathered Guy Anthropist, but he's the Hero in Twice the Fun. What I was thinking was that maybe I could write episodes for several others? Even set up a schedule.

Monday - Star Boy and/or Lightning Bolt
Tuesday - Feathered Guy Anthropist
Wednesday - Green Archer and/or Fire Red
Thursday - Heroines of the Night (Safe Whiffle, Caped Blade, Primitive Brute, Lasered Lash, and Masked Wizard)
Friday - Hidden Embers
Saturday - Panthera and Leo
Sunday - Commander Grey, Stamur Chaste and/or Day Off

I wouldn't have to write each Hero every week. Instead, I would stagger their stories so that there was overlap, but never more than three in any given week. At 500-word episodes it would only take about four or five months to generate enough to combine all of the stories into a single Legion Chronicle. If I wrote more frequently, or longer episodes, the process would go even faster. In fact, if I waited an entire year, I might even be able to compile a Chronicle for each Hero. When push comes to shove, I can put out a lot of words - and some of them even make sense.

And let us not forget the Villains:

Wafula and Mulogo - from Hidden Embers' "Mist Over Monticello"
Pelage and Onca - from Panthera and Leo's "Foggy Choices" and "The Taming of Pelage"
Sonsi and Sybarti Inamore - from Feathered Guy Anthropist's "Twice the Fun"
Bwindi and Tobo - to be introduced in Panthera's "The Taming of Pelage"
Simthara and Aggie - from Panthera's "On Trial for Treason"
Thunderbolt - to be an antagonist for Fire Red
Scepter Axe - a short, tough little dude with no place to call home yet
Sagittarius - a mean little woman with a bow
Ragdoll - a bit of a loony
Mr Manners - a foe for the Heroines of the Night
Morshadda - perhaps the most dangerous Villain of all
Loobie - not overly bright in the head, but what can you expect from someone with bright green hair
Flaming Energy - he's slightly insane
Cudgel - a tough lady who likes to play with fire
Amatory and Cyprian - two more darling of beauty and crime

It probably won't happen. But it would be cool! Might even give my life some meaning.

I like writing the Hero stories. The potential is there for me to write about subjects I might not otherwise ever dare approach. And I can do it in a humorous way, with no real point to make. I think those make the best stories; stories who's only point is to have fun. That's what the Hero stores are for me; just plain silliness.

I like being silly. It's what I do best. What a pity no one will pay me for that.

What to Do When Faith and Hope are at Low Tide

2009-08-05T08:22:00.002-05:00

Haven't spent much time on my Swords of Fire Military History of late. Too many other things going on. Besides, it is an overwhelming task which is going to take weeks to complete, even with dedicated time.

Even with my new and improved system I know I am creating errors, but that's hard to avoid when dealing with so many variables. I'm far enough along now that I don't want to stop and reset. I'm just going to continue on from where I'm at and try to avoid mistakes in the future.

One of the basic problems I have is the disparity in population from year to year. Succeeding generations had significantly higher populations than their predecessors. However, with the rule that parents remained home with their young children, and the difference in age between children and parents, about the time the parental generation was retiring from active military service, the child generation was beginning to have their own children. This results in a swift decline of military forces, and realigning companies becomes almost a yearly constant until the new parents are able to return to active duty, and their own children are old enough to join, too.

Right now, at Year 77, I am in the midst of a massive withdrawal of troops. There were 169 warriors in military service that year. In Year 78 that number dropped to 137. The force will go as low as 43 warriors in Years 85 and 86. Then it begins to climb again, peaking in just 25 years before cycling down again.

Each peak in numbers is a bit higher than the previous, and the lows don't fall quite so low. By tYear 352, which is the present for the Swords of Fire Saga, the military never drops below 800 warriors. Numbers are on the upswing as my main character's generation is joining military ranks in huge numbers each year.

Compiling all of this information into a logical order is much more difficult than just writing a story. Yet without this work, any story I write seems hollow. This background information is the substance from which history is made. And it is history which makes great stories.

Sadly, I am currently in one of my "it's never going to be published" moods. This is not just because I have been recently rejected (again). It is also because in order to submit to the next place I found I must have a synopsis. I just don't believe I know how to do that. Not well, anyway. Right now it's hard for me to believe in much of anything. So, I plod along with my detailed work, knowing it only matters to me in any case. Ultimately, that's kind of what I'm left with.

When Time is Short

2009-08-04T08:15:00.003-05:00

I like to write. And while the likelihood I will ever again be paid to write anything is slim, I am likely to continue writing nonetheless.

May not be continuing it online much longer, though. We are scheduled to move in less than a week, and included with that move will be a shutdown (at least temporary) of our telephone service. I connect to the internet via my telephone service. When we get to where we are going there is no guarantee I will have telephone service which includes internet access. If it does not, or if it costs more than we can afford to pay, then my online time is about over.

I do not know the likelihood of this, but I know it is possible, and so I am preparing myself for it.

What I find sad about the loss of my internet connection is not the loss of any real chance to get published. (Everything seems to require the internet now.) But I will lose the only friends I have in the world. And it's interesting to put it that way, since my friends are from all around the globe. My best friend is in England.

It doesn't seem that long ago that I virtually never went online. Even at my last job, in which I had ready access to the internet, I hardly used it. Had no reason. Now it is like my job. In the short ten months I have been active in this cyber world I have met some of the most wonderful people on the planet. I have also grown personally as a writer. I have learned things (mostly what not to do) and believe I now write much better than I did even a year ago.

It has not all been fun, though. I have made friends here and lost them, just as in my face-to-face world. One was driven from the internet, and I was helpless to prevent it. A couple others were not keen to learn Bevie James is not a woman. Sorry to disappoint. If I could change, I would. Wouldn't it be great to be a shapeshifter? Sexuality is such a part of our lives, but sometimes I wish it were otherwise. I just want to be me, and sexually, I'm not always sure what that is.

In any case, I will try to post daily over the next few days. Come next week there is a chance I will not be posting at all.

I guess we'll see how it plays out.