Don – Page 99 – DONFOOLERY

“…all alone and unprepared”

One of the reasons I wanted to hook up with a critique group is that I wanted a reason to regularly produce stuff. For the group. Oh, I’ve produced stuff since last time, but nothing the group (because of its parameters) would be interested in reading.

I’m not bitching about how and why I couldn’t. You can read the other blog for that. That’s not even the point.

The point is that instead of furthering work on the various unfinished projects I have listed on the sidebar today–well, okay, only one of which is suitable for the group–do I pull those out and work on them? Hell, no.

What I did was delve into the journal and reworked some pages I wrote one early morning during our camping trip last week. It would’ve been last Sunday, around 7-ish, sitting with my back to the sun, facing into the treeline surrounding the area where we had our campfire.

I’ve got five pages of the best “shitty first draft” I’ve ever written. It’s not a complete piece; hell it’s not even all of Act I. But I’m pretty happy with the progress. I just wish I could shake out a little more of the story, but I spent a fair amount of time working out some of the major beats. I know exactly what the story’s about and how it’s going to end (more or less).

Maybe I’m not so unprepared, after all.

Gonna Be a Bright Sunshiny Day

Just this second, I noticed a small family out on the Arts Quad at the Big Red School on the Hill. A young Mom and Dad, probably both grad students, were throwing a bouncy rubber ball back and forth while Little Baby Girl (who can’t be more than a year old) was reading her little baby book. Mom miscalculated her throw and the ball bounced off of Little Baby Girl’s head.

I couldn’t hear anything from inside the library cafe, but you could tell the baby was screaming. Mom and Dad didn’t seem too worried, though. In the time it took me to write this, Little Baby Girl was hugged and soothed, and is now back up and around, enjoying the sunshine and the grass, almost like nothing ever happened.

Scattered

I’ve just now had to stop, take a deep breath, and just accept that my creative energy is pretty scattershot right now. I thought that some of the writing I’ve done over the past couple of days would take the edge off, but it hasn’t.

Aside from the Raketenwerfer thing, I’ve scrawled about three or four pieces of my patented Vogon poetry. Just the usual stuff I’d never show to another living soul. Though I spent an inordinate amount of time polishing. I might never plan to show them, but at least they should be somewhat presentable in the unlikely event that they are ever seen.

I actually started two first drafts of things that will most likely end up as stories, once I figure out where they’re going. That’s six or seven pieces of writing, NOT counting the random stuff I’ve been cramming into the notebook, before I’ve even opened up the project folders of some of the stuff on the sidebar.

I had the idea that I could take a couple of past ideas, one unfinished and one I thought was finished, and hopefully polish one up in time for the crit group this Sunday. So far, it’s not looking good. Luckily, I have tomorrow off, but I was really hoping to get a jump on things today. Maybe I won’t.

I need to get up and walk around.

@Raketenwerfer

Lit Shuffle: “Post Hoc” by Leslie What

Brain Dump

I ranted like some rabid dog on the other blog some days ago. In case the context might have been lost, the story was that life conspired to deny me the writing time I took off from work to get (i.e. my first paid vacation in years). And since I couldn’t get it because, frankly, there were other needs to be tended to, I went and turned into a brat and went all “scorched earth” on my time. Meaning that I utterly refused to be a good family member and make myself present to attend to others’ very real needs if I couldn’t attend to my writing. Needless to say I made other people’s lives, and my own, pretty hellish for a while.

I’m not proud of that.

Luckily, by the end of last weekend, I got over it, even as I managed (to the possible chagrin of others) to beg, borrow, and steal writing time away.

Stephen King said in On Writing:

Reading at meals is considered rude in polite society, but if you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects.

Well, I managed to jot some things down, anyway. Oddly enough, though, I really don’t think a lot of my company seemed to mind. I made a little bit of progress on the 3rd, and hopefully salable, draft of “The one about the angel”

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I’ve also started drafts of things. Good beginnings of…something. Trouble is, see all those projects on the sidebar, there? Regardless of what I choose to work on, if I can’t get anything finished come Sunday’s critique group, I’m going to be sitting there twiddling my thumbs, and I’m damned if I’m going to do that.

I Don’t Know But I’ve Been Told

…that editing your Blogger entries really futzes with people’s RSS subscriptions. If it did, I apologize. I just wanted a better way of listing my publications and having them show up the way I want them to using labels.

@Six Sentences

Bargains

@Six Sentences

An American Memoir

(This was an entry for 6S‘s first contest. This is the first time I’ve heard of publication as a consolation prize, but I’m not complaining.)

She Talks to Angels

Christian angelic hierarchy – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: The Assumption of the Virgin by Francesco Botticini at the National Gallery London, shows three hierarchies and nine orders of angels, each with different characteristics

* First Hierarchy

o Seven chief Archangels (including Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael)
o Seraphim
o Cherubim
o Thrones or Ophanim

* Second Hierarchy

o Dominions or Dominations or Kyriotites
o Virtues or Dynameis
o Powers or Exousiai

* Third Hierarchy

o Principalities or Archai
o Archangels (all others)
o Angels

Tough Love

I reset the counter for “The one about the angel” as I’m about to start the third draft, now that I read the crit group Act III of the story. Lots of good suggestions were offered. Not just pointing out story problems, but offering alternate ideas, some of which I intend to implement once I work it out on one of my canary yellow legal pads.

I’m basically starting from scratch, which is exactly what I need to do. It’s just the thought of going through the same turf again doesn’t thrill me. But I’ve got to get this story off my plate and back out there. There’s really no reason not to, especially when I have little doubt that by the end of the story, it’s going to be that much closer to publication.

Taking a deep breath…aaaand, here we go…

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