Monday, October 26, 2009

Short Update

Just a short update this week. Progress goes forward on the first draft of the new story. Over 2800 words so far. Still waiting on some feedback for the Tesseract project but I have a feeling that story is almost ready for submission.

That's all for this week.

Monday, October 19, 2009

The Train Keeps Rolling On.

Another week, another post. I'm being surprisingly consistent in this!

At this point I'm still waiting for feedback on the Tesseracts project. I have two different people reading the story at the same time, so I'll have two different perspectives when I go to make the next revision. However, life keeps getting in the way for both of them and it's been a few days. Hopefully I'll get something tomorrow and I can make another tweak and have some fresh eyes take a look. I'm thinking though that this is getting closer to the end. I'm hoping to submit soon.

The one feeling I'm taking out of this is the sense that I've blown the rust off. It's been years since I've written on a regular basis, and now I've been writing at a steady pace for over a month and a half. I'm doing it. I'm actually doing it. Now all I have to do is keep this up, keep the train on track.

In that spirit, since I'm waiting on feedback, I've started work on another project. It's still in the short story vein, but this one will get submitted to Interzone first and then to Asimov and or Analog, depending upon the results. Already the first draft of the new story feels strong, feels good. I worked for an hour today before I went to the doctors and wrote five hundred words without breaking a sweat. My mental muscles are expanding. As I said, it's happening, it's really happening.

Dang this feels good.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Canadian Turkey Day!

So today is the Canadian Thanksgiving and what am I doing? Why revision of course!

Don't worry, I'm not missing out on any family time to do this. My family had Thanksgiving dinner last night so today was free for me to work on the Tesseracts project. After the feedback I received from Gary the revisions resulting from it have pushed the word count over 7k. I'm going to need to be careful that I don't push it any higher as at 7.5k the odds of it getting in become greatly reduced.

I like what I've added though. It gives the story more, well, texture. I've also placed more action at the beginning, and moved some needed exposition to a section that was a little lean. Overall I think this works better than the earlier versions. Now I just need to get it read by others to see how they react.

The plan this week is to work on something else while waiting for feedback. Maybe I'll start a new story, something in a different setting, or maybe I'll continue working on the setting for the current story, the one I intend to reuse. We'll just have to see.

Monday, October 5, 2009

Time to Nut Up or Shut Up!

Today's title brought to you by Zombieland. If you're looking for comedy and zombies, watch Zombieland.

All kidding aside, it was a great movie. Gary, Jeff, and I went to see it last Friday and the line quoted in the title is going to be with me for weeks. It's simple and direct, and expresses volumes about the character who utters it. It is the character summed up in one phrase. I mean, wow, just wow.

That's one of the things I love about writing; the moment you find just the right phrase and everything just clicks together like a purring machine. It's something I'm working towards, and not much progress was made the last week. I'm still waiting on Gary for feedback, but we have discussed the story and he had a lot of good points. I'm hoping to have his input by tomorrow so I can take it into account when I resume revision.

You're probably wondering what I've done the last week. Well, without more feedback on the story I've been working on background material on the setting. I intend to reuse it, and maybe the characters as well. I have nearly 6 full pages single spaced of background material, and that is still likely to expand.

Something Gary said stuck with me. The antagonist in my Tesseracts story came off as one dimensional to him. Now, granted this characters function is to be more or less a force of repression on the protagonist, and by trying to stay under 7500 words I have to be careful in what I put in, so the character may not get much more time in this story. However, that doesn't prevent me from reusing him in a different story - maybe even recount the events of the same day from his perspective and show the opposite arc. In the current story the protagonist goes from being low to a new high, while in the alternate story the antagonist in the original story can go from high to low.

I'll need to put some thought into this.