Metawhatever
February 26
Is this the way to do it? Living every day like it's the only day, not thinking about tomorrow, noticing the cherry blossoms scattered on the deck? I haven't been worried or anxious all day. My unwinding-weekend must have had some sort of palliative effect. Or maybe the freaky dream I had last night (which included white rats (and I mean rats), antlers, women with hands rimed with ice, and stone houses built high up in trees (that last is the result of looking at Jack Yerka artwork, I'm almost certain)) helped flush out some anxiety. I mean, I've just been worried about money. Which isn't worth getting so twisted-up about. I'm a long way from living on the street; if I just pay a little attention to my finances, things will work out fine. And I'm capable of that. I can do it.
Though if any of you want to pay off the balance on my credit card, and my student loans, I'll be happy to discuss the possibility of giving you a book dedication in return...
Sigh. I'd really like to do a comic about Justice Goat and Necromonkey... I don't think I could pull it off as a short story (though maybe I'll try, who knows?). I'm just not very comfortable writing silliness, though I think I could do it more easily in a comic script than in a straight story. I'm good at being funny around the edges of a serious story, I think, but with Justice Goat and Necromonkey... well, the subject matter demands a certain degree of levity front-and-center.
It's probably just as well. It's not as if I have any shortage of projects... novels, stories, and poems, oh my...
Heather has started her novel; I'm so happy for and proud of her! We're a two-novel household, now, whee! She's been on a wonderful streak lately, writing up a storm... it's nice. We talk about stories, about writing, about process... somehow, sitting separately, in our own mental worlds, typing or scribbling our own stories... that's bringing us even closer together. Ain't love and art grand?
Because of Heather's novelistic endeavors, I'm getting all itchy to work on a book... but I want to finish the Frog story! And it's not the end of February yet!
Actually, I want to work on the Frog story, too. So all's well. Maybe I'll work a little on both... Huh, it occurs to me that the settings are converging... the protags of Rangergirl are about to go up to San Francisco, and that's where the Frog story takes place; in fact, I may have some specifically overlapping settings, as I think both novel and story have scenes at the Cliff House/Sutro Baths/Mechanical Museum... I could get all meta-whatever and have the characters appear in one another's stories, not with lines or anything, just as people standing around in the background... the time of year is wrong (one story is in February, one in October), but I could ignore that... hmm. We'll see how whimsical I'm feeling when I write those bits.
Finally sent off comments to my friends who sent me stories; it only took me, like, two weeks. I really love reading and critiquing... I don't know why I'm so slow with the follow-through. Nobody seems to mind much, though.
That's the problem. Not enough negative reinforcement.
On one of them I had what I think were good comments... on one of them I saw a problem and had no idea how to fix it... and on the last I had basically no comments; I thought the story was pretty near perfect, certainly publishable. All three pieces were well-written, thought-provoking, and ambitious, though.
I know some incredibly talented people. It's a good time to be a speculative fiction writer.
Wrote a bit on Rangergirl tonight, just part of a scene that sets-up for some cool stuff later. I'd been really jazzed about writing, but I waited too long to get started, and didn't have enough energy to do more than a couple of pages. I should really do an outline, anyway, at least for the next couple of chapters. All the cool stuff is starting to happen now, here at the infamous 120-page-mark (actually page 125, but close enough); fortunately, I'm pretty good at writing the middles of novels. I just fill them with cool stuff. Maybe a bit of to-ing & fro-ing, but mostly cool, important stuff.
So that's that.
February Solitary Short-Story Dare (now with bonus poetry & reviews!)
Total words written: 21,250
Words written today: 550
Stories written this month: "Henchman Blues"
"On the Underworld Line"
"Melancholy Shore"
"In the Seventh Circle"
Poems written this month: "Dreaming Apep"
"Poor Bahumut"
"Laughing Blood"
"Future History"
Reviews written this month: Do they even make chocolate scorpions?
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