Weekly Writing Report

This week I had the opportunity to lunch with a good friend of mine who read my story "Moving On," offered some suggestions for polishing it off, and said he was "impressed." I ran with his suggestions and feel the story is solid now. I submitted it to Dialogue last Saturday. It's surreal letting go of a story that I've worked so hard on to get right. But it's time to move on to other pieces. Haha. No pun intended.

I worked some on "The Funeral of Sterling W. Booth." It's another Mormon-themed story. I have one more section to complete before I consider the "first draft" done. I tend to build a work a block at a time. I suppose that's unremarkable, but I have a hard time just writing straight through. I am trying to tame my self-editor to overcome this start-and-stop process. Alas, you work with what you got.

Not much progress on NSG. It's evident that I'm going to have to bear down and just wake up early in order to fit significant, uninterrupted writing sessions in. Otherwise, I'm just stealing time here and there.

The graphic artist who is preparing my cover for "Cocked" is almost done, so I hope to self-publish that story in the next few weeks through Smashwords and Amazon.

Well, write on!

Photo by MAE

Read, write, execute!

Weekly Writing Report

These past two weeks have been consumed by my day-job spilling over into the night, so not much to report in the way of writing.

The first part of the week of the 20^th I was in Chicago on a business trip, but found some time to work on my short story "The Funeral of Sterling W. Booth." (No time to tour, but definitely want to visit again sometime.) Beyond that, I gathered some suggestions from a few readers as to how to improve my story "Moving On." Most seemed to like it overall. Meanwhile, the novel has been on the back burner. I hope to bring it forward starting this next week. I have made some scribbles in my notebook concerning the next part of the current scene I'm working on.

I am progressing in my reading of Roderick Hudson by Henry James. This is the novel that he considers his first. I like the pairing of the two main characters, Rowland and Roderick, in a patron-artist relationship, and I am eager to see how it ends. I am at the part where Christina Light has been introduced and Roderick is sculpting her bust.

One thing I am learning from James is pacing. He presents a scene in detail, and then either summarizes the events of an intervening period or simply says, "Two days later . . . ." He concentrates on character development and how the choices of his characters move the events along. To a modern reader, some of his sentences may seem interminably long, but I enjoy them. Each is a journey in itself.

I am also reading Don Quixote, The Tree House by Douglas Thayer, Lysis by Plato, Fiction Writer's Workshop by Josip Novakovich, and I have just started On Writing by Stephen King. I know, I know. I'm trying to stick to my list of a couple posts ago, but I have A.D.D when it comes to literature sometimes.

Well, I have some time to write, so I'm switching to that now.

Photo by Horia Varlan

Read, write, execute!