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25 April 2011

Whoops

Yet another month has slid by without me posting anything. I guess I'll stop blaming my busy-ness* ...
So, what's new?
I dropped out of Screnzy early**: ten pages in, and for whatever reason, I just couldn't do it. It's too bad: I want to write this stage play, but April is evidently not the time to do it. Maybe I'll just treat it like any other writing project: giving it time to grow in my head, taking the time to write it all, etc.

Bellydancing makes me happy. We had a week off last week, and it feels like forever since I've bellydanced. Sad day. But it's Monday now, so I have class tonight. Yay!

April being National Poetry Month, it's also National Poetry Writing Month, which is what most of my writing has been this month. So, I have managed to write at least one poem per day***, and I think it's been good for me.
In fact, I have this theory that has only been strengthened by the month's exploits, which is that writers should branch out and try not only different genres and different voices, but also different types of writing entirely, to give them new experiences with the written word: writing a screenplay† was good for me, writing poetry has been good for me ... what might be next?

I'm excited about most of my poems: I want to clean them up and examine them for meter, rhythm, rhyme, sound, etc., and see if I can get a few trustworthy opinions about them††, and then I want to see if I can sell my poetry. It's an exciting prospect.
On the other hand, I feel somewhat adrift in the realm of prose-writing currently. I finished one story††† (for Sword & Sorceress), and I'll be submitting it to the writing group on Thursday. I read through it once, fixed or notated the little I saw that was wrong with it, and then had nothing to write.
I want to edit last year's S&S submission, and then start sending it out again, but I've somehow LOST the critique notes. So I went through it anyway, but I can't remember what anyone said about it, etc.
I have two editing projects I could finish: the first Changeling story, and my Lifechanger novel (which I edited most of in March), but those require the computer‡, and most of my writing-time has been at work, where I feel much more comfortable with a small notebook, unless I know for a fact that the cameras are not being monitored‡‡.
And I don't really have a lot of new-story ready in my head. I have one that needs to simmer in my brain a bit longer--I actually have a couple that need to simmer, but they mostly seem to be novels--where are my short stories‡‡‡? I could edit A Ghost Story, since I know where my notes are for that one, but it's out (at Writers of the Future), which means I have lots of time before it'll come back, and Ogre (last year's S&S) is just sitting here, not being sent out, because I want to edit it§. Braugh!
Anyway, I'll figure it out.
Thanks for your patience.

***

*Especially since it's hardly true. What do I do all day? Write a poem (usually at work, if I work that day), sleep, watch House or Bones, umm, oh, and I started reading again recently^, so for a while I didn't even have books to distract me.

^ Fragile Things, by Neil Gaiman. Deliciously creepy and mind-tentacle-rapey. Beautiful.

**That's two years in a row, in fact. The first year was fine. Maybe the thing that is not exactly true for me about NaNo is true for me about Screnzy: Don't care about it too much. If you care about it, you'll never finish it^.
I cared about Lifechanger very much, and not only did I finish it, but I finished it still caring about it, and then I edited (most of) it, and I still care about it, and when I finish editing it, I'll start sending it to the writing group, because I care about it, and then maybe I'll try to get it published.

^The idea being that you are writing very fast, inevitably sloppily, and are producing a rough draft, and since NaNo is aimed at people who have always wanted to write more than people who are already writing (aimed at is the key phrase here), the advice basically assumes that one doesn't know ahead of time what a rough draft is, or what its purpose is. Or something. That's how I've always interpreted it, anyway.

***Except for the one day I forgot (I think it was Tuesday), but I made up for it the next day. And Tuesday was cosmically spooky anyway--I forgot to write a poem, one friend failed her writing goal, another was epically sick, and a third watched a really horrible movie ... all on the same day.

†2009, my first Screnzy. Maybe it's simply beginner's luck?

††Which may or may not involve my writing group: we have attempted one poetry critique/discussion night, which I think was good for all of us, but that's only my opinion, and one member who insists on not "understanding" poetry wasn't there, so ... we'll see how it goes. I hope we do more poetry-critiquing/discussing nights. I liked it.

†††As yet untitled. Hope the writing group will have some suggestions. The setting's based loosely on the Second Crusade, however, and there are unicorns. So, you know.

‡I have a clever system of inputting editing/critique notes into Scrivener, and then ignoring my paper critique notes^ while I critique entirely on my computer. It saves room for the long haul of editing--before, I spread critique notes all over my bed, and went over them one page at a time, fixing things as I went. Which is probably fine for a short story. And it's still what I do to input critique notes, but if I take more than a couple hours to edit (which I do), then I don't have to pick everything up to go to sleep, and then spread it all out again next time ...
^And maybe I could start printing new submissions on the other side of them ...

‡‡There are, of course, cameras all over my little box, but only one of the bosses monitors the cameras that are all over the store and property. I have been known to open my computer during work, but only briefly, like to check the poetry prompt because I'm feeling uninspired. And last night near the end of my shift, I typed up my Blood Promises poem (that was yesterday's prompt), because I was fairly sure the bosses weren't there that late.

‡‡‡I'm not that good at short-story writing: my stories tend to be more complex than I can fit into 10,000 words--or, more to the point, I can't figure out plots that don't take up at least 40,000 words ... Or whatever.

§I'll be submitting it again to my writing group, I think, and with nothing really changed. Alas.

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