Short Story Update

Garden party is nearly finished. The story has changed a lot but I think for the better and seems to be much easier to understand. The main character, Claude Leroy, also feels more sensitive but driven, and not quite so unstable.

When Thoughts Come Alive has been renamed to Fish Taco Tuesday, a title that really sticks to the story's hipster feel and doesn't give away the main character's, Sunset Carson (aka. Jim Beam), magical ability.

Both stories will be finished a few days before the Clarion application deadline which I am so excited about. I figured I'd be up until 11:58 March 1, but thanks to so many friends and colleagues who have taken the time to read these stories, things are ahead of schedule. Thank you to everyone.

Garden Party

Almost all of the Garden Party comments are in which means it's time to start some serious short story revisions.

In the meantime, whenever I am looking for interesting industry news and links I check out David Anthony Durham's blog. He is the fabulous author of Acacia, and I had the opportunity to talk with him at the Fantasy Matters event in Minneapolis last November where he gave me some terrific advice. He always has great resources up on his blog too so when I checked it out today, of course, I found a terrific link for Colleen Lindsay (aka La Gringa), a new literary agent for FinePrint Literary Management. She'll be handling science fiction, fantasy and graphic novels and also has a wonderful blog full of information for new writers, such as writing a query letter.

Back to work.

snow provokes hat wearing sentiments

Sometimes you get to a point in writing where it seems no good ideas come to you. You have ideas, but know they don't fit what you're working on. Then, you start believing there will never be another good idea, maybe nothing new.

Drawing helps. And now the revision of Chapter Two is almost complete.

Write those new ideas down as soon as they come or you may lose them again, forever, just as quickly as they arrived. But good ideas will always come. Keep working and believing and something new will slip into consciousness and soon you'll be obsessing over it too.

Here's the drawing I came up with to get thoughts going...

Valentine

Valentine, a character in Neil Gaiman's Mirrormask, makes me think about writing--imaginative writing where characters flow in and out of one another in a stream of unconsciousness. It's difficult to kick that left brained, editor out of the writing process and let anything go. Neil Gaiman does a terrific job at this. His stories remind me to write and let the unconscious sneak in and surprise you.

My revision of chapter one went this way. It was full of surprises. I was working at the coffeehouse and had just met Karen Meisner, fiction editor at Strange Horizons. We talked Doctor Who and I was so excited to know you can actually buy a sonic screwdriver, which I will order from Amazon as soon as I finish this post so I can finally open that secret portal I know hides behind our attic door. But when Karen left, I began revising chapter one--writing a scene I have had in my head for sometime--and discovered a wonderful gift Aunt Gloria gives the twins for their birthday. Something I never could have planned to come out in the way it did and something I only wish my Aunt could have given me .

My short story Theodore Lights has now become Garden Party, and I am much happier with a story following crazy characters who enjoy magical vegetables from Claude Leroy's garden. I finished the story by deadline, had it critiqued by my Advanced Fiction Writing class, and felt alright about the comments, but discouraged that so many readers felt confused. Karen Meisner offered to take a look at the story as well, before I turn it in for Clarion, and I am very excited to hear feedback from someone who actually reads fantasy. Then I'll start on the revisions.

Back to revising chapter two, which might end up as chapter three--if only the twins had a sonic screwdriver.

Oh, Bugger

Still writing Theodore Lights. I feel like I have rewritten this story hundreds of times already, come up with some terrific scenes, and then have to take them out because they no longer fit. The story has gone from having a little girl as its main character to being about a guy who can't talk to girls. It now has the structure it needs, but damn, I hope I'm not going to have to rewrite it again.

Reading Neil Gaiman's blog has helped. He is writing the Graveyard Book and blogs about having no idea where the story is going, thinking he knows, and then being lost in the dark again. I think I'm at the point now where I think I know what Theodore Lights is about. If only I had an agent and editor behind me, not to mention 2 million blog readers and fourteen published novels under my belt--then maybe I'd have his confidence in the words.

Back to Theodore Lights.

Sledding

And here's a fabulous winter sunset to close out our sledding adventure:


And Brian wearing my girlie-tight snow pants:

Bet You Thought I Was A Blog Slacker

Blog slacking- not such a bad thing. I've been arranging to meet with a Madison writer/editor friend of a friend, working hard on my schoolwork, and finishing up a new short story. The schoolwork deadline is an odd thing. I did my best writing the two hours before I had to leave for class.z How on earth can you trick yourself into believing you have a deadline daily, so that procrastination brilliance kicks in on a regular basis instead of just before you have an actual deadline?

So that means the first draft of the prologue is done, and like I said I was happiest with the end. Perhaps that means the story will take a new twist.

And the short story I'm working on is a rewrite for Theodore Lights, to be reviewed by my fiction writing classmates (about twelve of them), my professor, and the Tuesdays With Story clan. With all that, seeing as this is already the third draft and finally coming together, I'd say I'll have enough comments to finalize a piece worthy to submit to Clarion by March 1.

And I am having some fun. Mitchell Kim visited last week from Chicago and we took him sledding, for one of the first times in his life. We found a snow-covered stone staircase in Hoyt Park and made a run out of it. I even cleared a jump over Brian's legs.

Here's a video of the action: