Thirty more pages, and we're into Chapter 11.  Um, on the book, not bankruptcy.

Again, I ended up rearranging some chapters.  I had to go back and put in 2 chapters and 'splain a coupla things.  Otherwise what I wanted to say in Chapter 11 would just hit people like a 2x4.  Not cool.  2x4s are for shelves.  Or doghouses.  Or for boarding up windows and doors to keep out brain-craving zombies and water-allergic aliens.  But I am worried now that Jamie, my narrator, keeps too much to herself, and people are not going to pay to watch her think.  Well--have to worry later.  Must get framework down.  February 24 looms on the horizon.

Speaking of shelves and frameworks:  I know what I want to do with our dining room space. 

Gut it, one wall at a time to minimize the dust (and the trash we have to take out).  Take it down to the brick, and put up shelves. 

Counting the attic & basement, there are 4 floors in my house.  And 2 closets.  No real room for skeletons, much less clothes or boxes or games.  So.  We need shelves.  Because we need places to put things.   We didn't move in with much, but it's all still underfoot, or shoved to the side, and it's hard to make piles of books and jars and dishes look artsy when the HGTV people didn't help you with it. 

Not having a place for whatever is killing me. 

Okay, not killing me... obviously I am still here.

Well.  Actually I'm going to bed.  But you get my drift.

Get yourselves on over to flash fiction online and read this story.

Sometimes I think about going back to school.  I could be a librarian for reals.  People think I should.  Or I could get my MFA and be a writer for reals.  People think I should do that too.  One or the other.

But I think I already am for real.  A BA is enough for me.  I don't think I need more letters or onionskin to know if I'm a real girl or not.  A, I don't know how much more school I want to pay to sit through, and B, if I don't write now, when will I?

I'm 35, and it's been 3 years since Odyssey (okay, 2.5) and 2 since I graduated college.  What else am I going to do with my life?  I want to renovate my house and publish a book and start a family.  Not necessarily in that order and maybe all at the same time. 

So I posted a sign in my office space: Stay Out Of School Or You'll Never Get Anything Done.

I'm averaging 1000-1200 words a day.  So far, I'm 7 chapters, 12,000 words and 50 pages into the WIP. 

I'm in it to win it.

9500 words as of tonight, 2120 of them new.  Very new.   Had to get rid of Chapter 7 & go back to Chapter 5.  But s'all good.

Alas, it's 2 am, tomorrow is church & work, and I won't get back to this until either late tomorrow night or Monday morning. 

Despite what I don't remember, it's amazing what I do remember, and working with that has helped throw a wrinkle into the plot.  I refer to Michael Burstein's lecture on plot skeletons:  Hero + problem--hero tries to fix problem--and fails; fails again; tries again and succeeds.
I think I'm putting a little more meat into the skeleton, but that's okay.  I can make it fall off again. ;)

Something else I'm doing different:  I've noticed that immersing myself, as I write a piece, in the setting/time has helped immensely.  I've been doing research for the 2 short stories I have on the slate after the novel is done, and I'm going to return those books to the library tomorrow and get them again when I'm ready.  I'm going to actually do the research as I write the respective stories.  It's not enough to refer back to notes I took from books and DVDs... I get confused. 

Next story up will be "All The World's A Stage."  Still set in the 30s--but I have some cool new ideas.  I have identified a couple of magazine markets/anthologies for it, and the deadline is in April.  I will polish it off in February and send it off.  Must get "Approaching Critical Math" done first. 

I will finish something I start besides Odyssey and several thousand games of Mah Jongg Solitaire. 

I will.

Work on the novel has been slow lately.  That's partly because I've been doing research for it and another story, and mostly because I've been insecure about it.  What do I remember, what if I don't get it right, what if, what if?  The what ifs can really kill you.  Alas, I am waiting on queries I sent off to a couple of math-friends to help me with the timeline of the novel--what Jamie would have been learning and when.  Mostly because when I did finally get to 10th grade algebra, I spent most of the year counting the cinderblocks in the walls and staring out the (small) window.  So I don't know what I remember from that era.  But what Jamie learns or tries to is going to affect how she feels about herself, and how she feels about herself is going to affect the novel. 

I could just plunk in x and/or y for z situation, but this novel is not a quadratic equation, or whatever the hell those things were/are.  That said, I feel like I *should* be able to plunk in x or y.  I'm a writer, dammit, aren't I? I can work around this stuff.  Apparently this is just a little personal, so that makes the execution a little difficult.  I am not going to make my original deadline of January 31, so I am resetting for February 24.

On to the irony:   After a wonderful, rare dinner out on the town, the spousal unit dragged me to a bookstore, which is all fun and games when you're not a librarian.  The spousal unit seems to think I should be interested in books.  Don't get me wrong.  I am.  But when you work with books, from processing to circulating to weeding, they're just another commodity.  (I'm about to be kidnapped and sacrificed on someone's altar, I know.) So that is the first irony: a librarian depressed by a roomful of books, magazines and puzzles.

The second irony is this:  While I was wandering around, a girl talking into her cell phone passed me on her way back to her table.  I couldn't help but hear her say, "I told that girl.  She better get off the phone.  She's having an entire conversation in public!  I know, right?  People are listening.  Or at least they can hear.  She doesn't care.  So I start backing up, right? And she just gets louder.  And I said, 'Girl, you wrong.'"

Her own voice got higher near the end.  Total irony.

For some reason, it made me oddly happy.

Novel going slower than I want.  Had to redo Chapters 1-5 because the voice of the character sounds older than 13.  So I made Jamie's age 15 (her original age in the other 2 ancestor-stories) and it fits better.  She's still in pre-algebra though. 

You can get to high school without taking algebra.  I did.  In 8th grade I was thirteen and still in mathematics, whereas other people I know were either in pre-algebra or Algebra I.  I ended up taking Algebra IA and IB in 9th grade.  And then again in summer school, because I hadn't got anything higher than a D in algebra during the whole year.  Once I passed summer school, I could go on to high school (our system had so many students that the high school only had room for 10th-12th graders).

Quandary: Integrating memory, reality and believability has been a challenge.  Nowadays we catch learning disabilities fairly early.  Wasn't like that in 1988.  So I have to be careful how I set everything up.  Which means I'm probably inserting waaaaaaay too many reminders about the time/decade.  But I feel it's necessary, to finish Draft #1, to immerse myself in the time.  I have to believe it if anyone else is going to.  My beta-peeps can help me toss out ingredients later.   Thank God this isn't like a cake recipe.  I can take stuff out after it's done.

Doing research for this has been so much fun.  I'm a total research geek and I make no apologies for it.  

Things that happened in 1988
Greg Louganis hits his head on a platform dive but comes back to win two Olympic gold medals. The nation gears up for the Presidential election between Bush Senior and Michael Dukakis.  Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (one of my favorite films of all time) wins 9 Oscars.  Robert Heinlein, Louis L'Amour and Heather O'Rourke die.  Ronald Reagan decides to tear down the newly constructed American Embassy in Moscow because he suspects the KGB had planted listening devices in it.

Girls wear banana clips, dangly earrings, keep their socks over the cuffs of their jeans and dance to Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Taylor Dayne, the Bangles and Rick Astley.  If we are not wearing stretch pants with hooks for our feet, we are wearing stonewashed Guess? jeans, or knockoffs. Our sweaters have big shapes on them and our button-down shirts come in bright colors.  We buy Keds and use markers to color in different sections.  We rat our bangs so they stand up six inches from our heads.  God forbid any girl come to school with limp bangs.

Guys wear high-tops or Converse All-Stars with the laces undone.  Simpsons shirts are very popular, and banned in my school; it's a test to wear a Bart Simpson shirt all day and not get tossed out or get detention.  Jeans are tight and stonewashed, topped off by polos with the collars turned up, or khakis with alligator shirts and sweaters slung around their necks and joined by the cuffs in front.  They might be listening to Poison, INXS, Cheap Trick, White Lion and Whitesnake.  A lot of guys get designs shaved into the sides of their heads, a fad that lasts for a few years.  (Does that mean it was a trend...?)

Guys and girls both wear jean jackets.   We make lines of safety pins down the seams of our jeans or on the cuffs of our jackets.  Not a few of us listen to our Walkmans in the halls, and sometimes in class.  We hate ourselves for loving Joan Jett and dig Terence Trent D'arby's Wishing Well.

Here's the kicker:  All of that was 22 Years Ago.

Man, do I feel old.

Upward and onward... Or onward and upward. I forget. 

That's what happens when you get old. :)  Har-har.

The characters are alive.  The alchemy experiment is working.  Chapter 4 has begun.  The book has been plotted.  The characters are driving the plot.  We all seem to be on the same page, pardon the pun; and we all seem to want the same things. 

It's nice when everything falls into place; when you accomplish something you knew you could do.  It's in you, you just have to get it onto paper.  It makes sense in your head, and this time around it makes sense on paper too. 
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Every hour of every day I'm learning more
The more I learn, the less I know about before
The less I know, the more I want to look around
Digging deep for clues on higher ground

I don't often have a problem with short story beginnings.  I can look back at a majority of my short stories and their respective critiques and say that with confidence.  A few stories out of that fraction would serve better as first chapters to novels, but at least as far as beginnings & short stories are concerned, I'm doing OK.  Novels, however, are different beasties. 

Here's a nice graphic for you as to what I hope to accomplish.  Because presentations are always better with graphics.   Get out your monocles, your spectacles, your microscopes.  I made the graphic in GMP, and it's the first successful graphic I've made in that program since March.

Which is not to say that characters are more important than plot.  But I think we can all agree that characters should get behind the wheel and drive the plot.  Authors are not so much puppetmasters as they are alchemists.  I need to know when to have the characters apply the brakes, speed up around curves, or weave past other drivers.  I also need to know if I'm starting them in the middle of the race or at the beginning. 

I'm a fan of stories that begin in media res.  Some of the best examples I can think of at the moment are films: The Hangover, Go, Memento. Mary Karr's excellent memoir The Liar's Club also begins this way.  As I embarked on my hybridization experiment this afternoon, in the few hours I had before heading off to The Library, I realized I really need a good place for this novel to start.  Part of why the 2nd story felt so flat was because when I reread it, I felt like I was missing something.  I'm the one who wrote it.  So if I feel that way, I know other people will.  And I will not skimp. 

I think the best thing for this novel is to begin in media res with a tad bit of backstory.  Which is where I think I started.  But it could so easily go the other way, with a couple of extra sentences here and there, and then a few more, and then, once again I'll feel like I really need to start 'splainin... and totally blow the opening.

The beginning is the end is the beginning.  So sayeth the pumpkin smashers.  And it is a really weird question: where is the beginning?  This character isn't one who dwells on things like "birth," "family events," etc.  There will be no opening line like "I suppose I should start from the beginning..." or "The circumstances surrounding my birth..." yadda yadda yadda.  Jamie's not like that.  I don't think.

So, a crash course on beginnings for moi, including Nancy Kress's excellent Beginnings, Middles and Ends, and a review of some Odnotes.  I have a sneaking suspicion this is going to be the first novel I've ever actually plotted.  I want to stay on target with it, so I suppose my plan needs to include sub-plans.  And a couple of sub-sub plans.

Yesterday morning we woke up and the house was freezing.  Technically, 52 degrees.  Which might have been warm if it were spring and the temperature outside was not 13 degrees.  It's hard to write when your house is cold.  It's hard to stay in your house when it's cold.  After we left messages for no less than 4 HVAC specialists, I dropped the spousal unit at work and ran errands. 

Turned out the problem had to do with The Changing of The Breakers the night before.  The spousal unit had, in a fit of electrician-industriousness, replaced the breakers in the breaker box.  Mostly because our breakers were a hodgepodge of different types, and total power for our house can't draw any more than 100 amps.  The server was also down, so no Internet access. 

Which led me to a brief moment of panic, thinking "What did people do before the internet and HVAC systems?" 

Well, we're all here, so someone must have figured out something.

We reset the breakers and the server came on;  we flipped the heater switch and got nothing.  Several times we were rewarded by the same kind of click you hear when you get in your car and turn the key in the ignition but the engine won't turn over.  I came home from running errands and flipped the switch again.  Nothing.  This made me a tad gritchy-growly.  I know what electricians charge to come out on the weekends...  But just as I posted this status on my FB page (something about being freezing)  I realized I was hearing the heater.

I don't know what made it kick on, but I'll take it.  Seems to still be running a day later, too.  Total awesomeness right now.

And now, a writing roadblock.  On my way to Novel Goal #1, I reread 2 versions of the same basic story.  Both are 3/4ths done.  Except, in the earlier story, the characters are waaaaay more engaging and therefore the story is more engrossing; there's a lot of conflict.  Not drama--  which I think the 2nd story has too much of.  It doesn't feel right.  It feels like "Sure, I could whip out a YA novel, no problem."  But there's no feeling to it.  Like a mechanically-played piano concerto.  The problem is, the 2nd story is the one I want to tell.  It's a good story.  A good structure.  It could work, dang it.

So I'm off to do some more reading of both manuscripts, and try to make a decision.  Maybe I can cobble them together into some hybrid that outshines and then devours both its parents. 

My holidays were surprisingly low-key.  I ended up sending out my Christmas presents on time, so they were under respective people's trees when December 25 rolled around.  Usually by December 25 my presents are a) on a shelf and/or b) in a store somewhere.  We bought a tree on 13 December and decorated it with a few old ornaments and a lot of new ones.  I dug out more decorations, things I remember my mom putting up at Christmastime, and I set some of those out too.  Plus I made cookies.  And gingerbread.  And more cookies.  We spent Christmas night at a friends' house, but we ate Christmas dinner here, just us, and maybe some people thought that was awfully lonely, but it didn't feel lonely.  It felt like the right thing to do.

I guess what's changed is that I wanted to do things this year, which isn't always true of Christmas, or holidays in general.  A lot of really great things happened in the past 12 months.  Moving back to the Midwest and having a house has done a lot for me.  Best decision ever, and I'll leave it at that so I don't gush.  Suffice it to say that this holiday season I felt it important to establish traditions.

One tradition I have particularly avoided is the dreaded New Year's Resolution, which, in my view, is to disaster as committee is to unhelpful. I've resisted making NYRs because they are the kiss of death for whatever reason--diet, publish, whatever.  It's not enough to change things about me; I have to want to change myself.  There is a slight, subtle but important difference between the two. 

So, a few days ago I went through all the different versions I had of all my different stories/novels.  It took me the better part of an afternoon.  I began to scale back on a few time-wasting activities.  Being a level 200 virtual crime lord is not going to get me published...  I found out I have 20 unfinished short stories and about 3 unfinished novels, 2 of which are 3/4ths done and 1 of which is halfway.  I've been sitting on them for about 2 years.  I have a total of two (2) finished short stories, both of which I have been farming out, with no luck but some very nice rejections; and one finished novel that will never see the light of day through an editor's or agent's office window because I wrote it pre-Odyssey, and I definitely do not feel the need to revisit it to make it publishable.

My New Year's Resolution:  52 weeks, 20 stories, 3 novels.  1 novel due at the end of January; 1 at the end of May; 1 at the end of October.  As for stories, I'll finish the most recent one I began, then use 2 criteria to determine the next one--a) what's close to being done, and b) which one do I feel most passionate about?  And then I'll use FB & LJ to keep myself accountable.  You guys are gonna be soooo sick of me posting writing updates.

Ambitious?  Absolutely.  Will I fall on my face?  Maybe.  Maybe I'll just sprain my ankle, figuratively speaking.  Will I get it all done?  Don't know.  Gonna try though.  At the very least I should end up with some marketable pieces.  This is it, people.  I'm sticking my money where my mouth is, so hopefully later I can stick other people's money in my mouth.

That didn't sound right. 

Here's to starting 2010 off with a bang.

 

At TNEO this year I submitted a story that I got, well, from a dream. It's kind of embarrassing, because I am not one for metaphysical crap except in fiction and film, and even there it's got to work well. As explanations, I'll take a gene that causes these things (X-Men) over most anything else (take a hint, Nicholas Cage). But I wrote this particular dream down almost as I had dreamt it because it was too good not to. And even with 16 mixed reviews as far as character motivations, and a couple of plot-potholes, et cetera, it still works as a story. I'm not saying I had "instant story" or anything, but it's an interesting story and one that when completely revised could actually work.

This all started with a Codex thread about dreams, the gist of which was this: apparently creative people have really cool awesome dreams. Given the semi-success of my first attempt, I decided the next time I dreamt something AND remembered it (there's always a catch) I'd write it down and see what I got out of it. So far, I've discovered a backstory for a flawed and fascinating character, but a dream I had last week concerning an alchemist and the grandfather paradox (yes, my brain does hurt, thank you) would work either as a flash story, if I wrote it exactly the way I dreamt it, or as a longer story--which is the way I am writing it, with more character conflict.

This is kind of an interesting experiment for me. Since we've been working on the house, I've had very little time to write. So when i dream something, which also doesn't happen that often, and it turns out to be interesting, which is even more rare... Yeah. Absolutely. Spend some time and write it down. At the moment, with the attic and the bathroom gutted and awaiting insulation that's 2 weeks from delivery, I need to be motivated to write instead of planning the kitchen renovation, or trying to calculate how many sheets of drywall it's going to take to redo the dining area--things I can't do anything about until spring. If writing a couple of dreams down keeps me excited about writing--awesome. Maybe that means I'm doing more writing in my dreams than in real life.

Which, lately, is probably true.

Oh, and hey.  I started a new blog over at talesend.livejournal.com.  It's more of a directed topic.  You'll see.  But I get to indulge me dark side a wee bit.

So I'm doing the laundry tonight & I turn on the radio to make the task go faster, or at least more enjoyable.  Whatever.  In between Bob Seger's Night Moves & the Eagles' Take It Easy, though, there's this ad for something called Quietus.  Ding!  The Fake Latin Alarm goes off in my brain.  I stop folding towels & yes, it's an ad for homeopathic pills people can take to alleviate the symptoms of... tinnitus.  Apparently this ad has been out since August, but I guess I never got out of my technology-lite bubble long enough to hear it.

Now I know what tinnitus is.  I suffer from it myself from time to time although less frequently these days.  I understand the agony of having a constant buzzing or ringing in one's ears.  It's always there, it never goes away, not even when you bury your head between 2 pillows or jam plugs in your ears.

But this is my gripe (& possibly where I start to sound like a Scientologist /shiver/):  The medical community (God bless its lil heart) has made a living out of naming syndromes or diseases & inventing pills to go along with them.  To a point, this is good news.  There are a lot of people out there who need help with definite but unnameable health issues.  There are also a lot of people who don't really have issues, but can be scared into or convinced that they need this or that pill for whatever reason.

Unfortunately the homeopathic community has jumped on the medical PR bandwagon.  I realize this ad is not representative of the homeopathic/naturopathic community as a whole, but I think it represents a really bad marketing scheme.  The whole point of alternative medicine is to be, well, alternative. For example, the spousal unit and I shop at Whole Foods.  I love Whole Foods, as well as Trader Joe's, but I am completely aware they want my money (& use just as much packaging) as much as Martin's or Schnucks.  When it's time for the farmer's market again, I will go there.  When I can grow my own food w/o killing it, I might do that.  (Although I realize pasta does not grow on trees.)

My point is, there has to be a different answer.  Neither the website, which is really just a flash page, nor the radio ad tells you one of the best ways to reduce the effect of tinnitus is to reduce stress.  That can be handled with exercise, retraining, and the occasional glass of good wine.  Nope, the homeopathic community seems to following in the footsteps of the drug giants and the medical corporations. I applaud the idea of spreading awareness about medical issues--something that really wouldn't have happened a few decades ago--but I think both communities really need to proceed with caution here.  What that would entail precisely--I don't know. 

But I know I'm not popping a pill to fix my ears.

No Scientologists were harmed in the making of this blog post... Yet.

Life since TNEO has been a blur.  Only since yesterday have I been able to sit down and write, even for 5 seconds. July 31 turned out to be an interesting day.  I got a somewhat personalized rejection from Weird Tales concerning "Automatic Pilot."  But it was signed by Ann Van DerMeer...  I didn't have time to wonder too much, because two hours later we sat down with our realtor & lender and signed a stack of papers 2 inches high to close on the house we picked out back in April. 

Most of our stuff was still in boxes from moving here last fall, so moving was just a matter of shuttling boxes, loading furniture & then unpacking.  We washed dishes, put up shelves, did laundry, put books back in the bookcases (so nice to see them again), arranged furniture, put the bed together, put the table together... the list is endless.  What's awesome is that the only things we haven't located yet are my printer cable and our Netflix DVDs.  Everything else is present & accounted for.  I think that's pretty cool.

The house needs some work, but it's a house we can live in and work on, and I'm totally looking forward to ripping up linoleum and sanding floors and stripping wallpaper.  And painting.  This is all stuff I can take care of, and stuff that I like to do. Gimme some good music and let me go.

My sister and her family came through from Massachusetts, and they helped move more furniture and boxes.  She asked me if I wanted to go sight-seeing with them today.  And I said no.  Everything is more or less in its place... Michael fixed up the wifi last night with some help from AT & T... the Linux machine is working again... so I politely declined.  Besides the stories on the shelves, there are others I need to tend to.

That's my job this afternoon--and my only one.  Woot!

After surviving some initial unforeseen complications, like not having my crits done before I got there (I tried!), the nagging cough from a 3-week gone cold, and my laptop's battery dying right at the beginning... I totally enjoyed TNEO.  Susan saved me with a spare laptop so I could finish my critiques.  Of course, she was also evil enough to remove the DVD/CD drive, and the laptop had no internet hookup.  So every night I'd finish a crit, then go crazy from having nothing to do after everyone else was asleep.  I swear, if I come next year, I'm bringing wall decs.  Or I'm going to finish all my crits so I can socialize more, and plan to see the inside of my blank-walled bedroom only for sleeping.  

I got to pal around w/ Odyssey friends and meet a lot of new people.  TNEO is so much more relaxing than Odyssey.  Writing time was waaaaaaaaaaay optional.  I don't know what the topic will be next year, but returning is a total serious consideration--if nothing more than the chance to kick around ideas w/ other writers or hang out and discuss funny crap.  And indeedy there was funny crap.

The topic of choice this year focused on characterization.  I discovered that I tend to write passive protagonists, or protagonists who change through the story but aren't allowed, for some reason or other, to keep that change.  Passivity is interesting to me.  Apparently my very cynical worldview seeps into my writing.  Yikes.  Which is all fine and dandy until someone breaks a nail and makes tons of smartass comments about it.   This doesn't mean all my characters are inactive.  I believe it's possible to have characters who are passive, and make them compelling---just maybe not 20 stories full of them.  No matter what my worldview is. 

Or maybe that'll be my schtick.  Dunno.  The novel I'm writing for Codex is, in essence, an exercise on how a passive character can influence another character; the second character then becomes more active and actually has a character arc, whereas the "inciting" character does not.  I'll be interested to see if I can pull that off. 

Meantime, I'm off to my favorite beach in the world tomorrow.  Then it's a train ride home, during which I'll shore up the basis for Jamie, my protagonist in the YA mainstream novel, who needs a spark or two lit up under her butt.  (Typical fourteen-year-old.)

Happy shiny fun writing time to all of you out there, and I better see you all next year in New Hampshire. 

The other night I was officially in Stage 5 Critique Burnout.  All critiquing and no writing makes me... someone people don't want to hang out with. I needed some me-writing time, but I didn't feel sufficiently creative enough to pull a whole new story from between my ears. Revising, though--that combines critiquing and writing powers.  I dug into my school writing class files.  I haven't touched 98% of these; I went to Odyssey one semester shy of my degree, and we all know Odyssey changes the way you think about your projects. Especially the crap you wrote to get a grade.

Thankfully I discovered at least one of the plays I wrote really wasn't crap.  It's a project I'm still proud of and one I think has plenty of potential--a little 10-minute spot about the lives of librarians.  (I swear we're really not boring.)  I miss the people I used to work with.  It's rare when you go into a library and the librarians are louder than the the library users.  :) Usually we had people coming up to the ref desk to tell us to be quieter.  Or they'd go to circulation and an aide would pass on the complaint.

I'm looking forward to TNEO next week.  After it's over, we've planned a mini-vacation with my sister's family and our friends from Virginia. So I'll be depriving the Midwest of my presence until August, although I have left overseers to rule my province in my absence.  When I return, hopefully the spousal unit and I will be able to close on this house and get moved in.  Then I can set about ignoring unpacking in favor of polishing up projects, finishing up the YA novel & the apocalyptic novel, and start sending stuff off--like this 10-minute play-thingy.  I'll probably work on some stuff at TNEO, but I'm not what you would call a multi-tasker or task-switcher.  Nay, not by a long shot.  So any marketing will have to take place at home base.

That's the news, and since I leave on Monday for wild, weird New England... I am outta here.

Getting critiques done for TNEO has meant getting back into the swing of critiquing, Odyssey-style.  I haven't had a lot of practice these days; we just started up a writer's group in The City, though, so that will change.  TNEO crits are definitely more detailed than the Odyssey 1-3 pagers.  More like 5-6 pages.  When I started critting this time around, I couldn't nail down a format.

I finally got the rhythm down, though, and figured out a format.  I finished a couple of "new" crits, then went back and took the time to retrofit the other crits I'd already done.  Consistency is a good thing, right?  And so are details. 

I took time off from critting yesterday and today and scrolled through my files-in-progress.  Of which I have quite a few.  I tooled through a feature-length screenplay I completed about nine years ago and before I knew it, bam.  I was editing and rewriting it.  And it made me so happy to revisit it.  I've jotted down notes about it here and there, what should happen, what should get cut, and to find myself actually intuitively doing that the other night was awesome.  There's nothing like writing at night at 2 am with music plugged into your ears and what needs to get on paper is actually showing up on paper.  Or screen, whatever. 

With everything that's been happening this summer, I'll be too late to enter it in the Austin Film Festival--my original goal back in 2000-01--but I'm going to shoot for next year.  The screenplay has been my baby for a long time, but kids have to grow up sometime. 

Still no word from a certain magazine about "Automatic Pilot."  Keeping my fingers crossed.