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:

Deadlines

Sometimes it's hard to write without a deadline. Well, I asked for it, I got it. My advanced fiction writing class will put me to hard work, asking for ten pages a week. Not that I don't already write at least that, but when you know someone else will be reading it, even if it's just supposed to be unedited, I'm going to make it decent. Plus we'll have two short stories edited in class, perfect for my Clarion deadline, not to mention good for getting into Odyssey.

So today I wrote an awesome addition to my prologue. I figure, why shouldn't the class work for me, right? My ten pages will be novel pages. At that rate, I'll have at least 100 pages by the end of class. That's a good part of the novel. Good thing for deadlines.

My short story When Thoughts Come Alive is now officially on the Critters queue as well, set for review by mid-February.

I also heard about a terrific organization from one of the guy's in class. It's Endicott Studio, a nonprofit started by Terri Windling where all of the sales from the site are donated to organizations working with abused, homeless, and at-risk children. You can link to books from here and buy on Amazon to get a great book and make the donation. They also have a terrific blog with tons of fairytale-inspired artwork, reading, and music suggestions. All with an inspiring message.

Now back to finishing that prologue.