State of the Story

It's Monday so that means another blog post.

First an update on my progress. Second revision has been completed and the story has been passed on to my friend Gary to read. I should have his feedback tomorrow and then the rest of the week will be spent revising and then it will go on to my friend Trevor. After Trevor, who knows. I might even be ready to submit it at that point and then move on to the next one.

One thing I am sure of, I'm going to reuse the setting. I've even taken some time to work on a background document for the setting, something I can refer to when making other stories set there. One event in the current story I think will occur in others will be a power outage. I can use this as a thread to tie them together. Who knows, maybe 10, 20 years from now they will be released together as a collection.

Anyways, since we are on the topic of writing (kinda the whole point of this blog) I should mention the boost I received yesterday. I went to Word On the Street at Queens Park in Toronto. Very cool event, with lots of different booksellers and literary based discussion. Getting there was a challenge. If you've ever driven into Toronto you know what I mean. Once I arrived I checked out the writer's workshop tent and this is where I got half of the boost. At 3pm they had an event where they read out one page that people had submitted anonymously, so I submitted mine and hoped to get feedback. Well, mine wasn't read but from what I was hearing about the other submissions I felt a lot better about mine. I mean, some of them were utter dreck, and I could spot that right away. I wish mine had been read, but listening to the advice being given I think I've avoided the most obvious pitfalls.

Oh, and the second half of the boost? I approached Robert J. Sawyer at this table and he remembered me from two weeks ago in Mississauga. Always nice to remembered.