Star Trek Bonus
Jun 24, 2010 Uncategorized
My buddy and occasional collaborator John Bodin sent me this link and its associated two minutes of fun!
Piecing Things Together
Apr 27, 2010 Uncategorized
I pulled all the threads of my “pilot story” together to look at them as a stand-alone short story. Strangely, they came up to–you got it–right at 9,500 words. I seriously wonder if I’m ever again going to write a story that doesn’t weigh in at something other than 9-12K.
This was an interesting process, though. It’s helped me see the ebbs and flows of it, and see even more places I need to file away a few rough edges. I’m going to work on this for a day or two, and I expect then that I may be able to move on.
Finally.
Thinking Bigger…er…or at least more
Apr 7, 2010 Uncategorized
Once again, I spent much of this morning thinking about the high-level plot of this latest story. It’s coming together, and I like it quite a bit. I admit I’m a bit worried about length, though. It looks to me like a 30-40,000 word piece, which is not particularly marketable. And the fundamental idea strikes the SFnal part of my brain only a glancing blow.
I live such a tough life.
When I say I’m “thinking” about the plot, I don’t mean I’m sitting down in my basement twirling around in my swivel chair and staring at the ceiling. That would just leave me dizzy. When I say I’m thinking about the plot I mean I’m fleshing out much of it in little pieces of pseudo-code as I go. I’ve got snippets of character dialog plastered in among journalistic and narrative bits. In a sense, I’m using a free-form version of the snowflake method of plotting.
So, anyway. I’m still not sure what the future holds for this piece, but I’ve vowed to keep thinking about it.
Thinking
Apr 6, 2010 Uncategorized
Great basketball game last night. Butler’s last shot really, really, really needed to go in.
Sigh.
Technically, I completed no words this morning. I did, however, spend more than an hour thinking about the project and jotting down a bunch of notes that increased the size of the file by about four pages. So I guess I did about a thousand words of thinking.
Unfortunately, I’m still not completely certain what to make of this one. Perhaps it’s a failed thread? Dunno, yet. I figure I’ll give it another couple days and if it doesn’t catch me by then I’ll let it be for a while and see what happens. Sometimes things blossom while composting–other times I guess it just turns into more compost.
I’m now far enough along that I feel comfortable enough to “reveal” (as if anyone cares much, eh?) I’ve embarked on a process to get my second novel ready for market. Probably a couple more weeks before it can leave my desk.
Time to hit the road.
The day job awaits me there.
Think again at lunch.
