Exuberant Tuesday

February 13

Merry Tuesday! (though I'm posting this so late that it'll likely be Merry Wednesday! before most of you read it...)

So, another foray to the wilds of Hayward to see Timprov and Marissa today. I wish I could just hang out with them all the time (they'd get sick of me, but they're polite, so I could bother them a lot before they tossed me out, I bet). We talked fiction, we wrote, we chatted-- stuff that's not too fascinating to describe here, I guess, but which is wonderful to experience.

I'm so glad I moved to California. I wouldn't have met them, otherwise. We might have corresponded, but that's not the same. Now even after I move I'll still see them sometimes, at Cons, when I pass through wherever they wind up living (no doubt in the Midwest, somewhere)... it's nice, thinking of them as a part of my future. They've rapidly become such a bright spot in my Present...

I wrote a little on the story today (It will probably be called "Carlos the Destroyer"), not as much as I could have, though. The story's not bad... but it's not all it could be. There's some nice language, and a couple of good scenes, and a decent premise, but it lacks depth, somehow-- it feels slight. I don't want to write slight stories. So I took a walk tonight and thought about it, and I think I see a way to give it more depth, more resonance-- make it an important story, one worth telling. Right now it's all premise and character, it's just a goof, but I want it to be more serious than that, I want it to matter to me. I may have found a way, if I can pull it off. I still want it to be short-- I'll be upset if it runs more than 6,000 words, and I'd really rather keep it to 4 or 5K, I don't think it needs to be much longer than that.

I tell you, just reading Ted Sturgeon makes me a better writer, makes me think more and proceed both more joyfully and more carefully. I also read some Nancy Kress stories tonight-- Timprov and Marissa loaned me a collection. That's what I did instead of writing fiction, I sat in Pergolesi and read and scribbled in my paper journal, a mishmash of joyful stuff that wouldn't make much sense in this forum, that doesn't belong here, but that had to come out. It was an outpouring, an exuberant mess that will probably serve as a primordial soup for poetry.

Ramble, ramble. That's enough for now.

Total Word Count: 25,263

Today's Word Count: 1,000

The Daring Darlings:

Jim C. Hines

Hilary Moon Murphy

Nicole Montgomery

Melanie Miller Fletcher

Karina Summer Smith

Anne Hutchins