Day 1

100 Words for 100 Days June 13 - Sept 20

Progress Bar from Writertopia

Actually I got 1456 words in the Educators' Guide, but because it's a paying gig, I can't share it online. Tomorrow I'll write something I can put up.

The More Things Change or Hurry Up and Wait

Title: The More Things Change or Hurry Up and Wait

Hear it creak and groan?
Are you listening hard enough?
Multitasking the wait away
While the hourglass turns and turns
Only makes the supervisor angry.

Note: Trying to tell the story of the new computer system at work. It involves a lot of hurry up and wait.

I don't like you, Poetry

Title: I don’t like you, Poetry

I don’t like you, Poetry
You’re fine for reading alone
enjoying the images and the word play,
but together in a class?
You remind me of all the jabs from professors:
“Why is this significant?
What does it mean?
What is the Author saying?”
“Maybe exactly what is written is what was meant.”
My answer was never right; I was never right
Haunted by visions of men tearing out insubstantial hair while wondering what kind of fool scholars be we
No, Poetry, I can’t like you
Not as long as you make me be stupid

The old dead only immortal through their thoughts and words would be one thing
They can’t laugh when I’m wrong
Not like my contemporaries who think me
A dried up, prudish, spinster
Poetry, you didn’t defend me that day as I gushed about the imagery.
Is it my fault that spelunking is just like lesbian sex?
Militant feminist lesbian—I’d like to make sure she got left in a non-metaphorical cave somewhere!
Militant feminist lesbian—aren’t I your sister too?
But she and Poetry shut me up for years after laughing at my naïveté.
No, Poetry, I can’t like you
Not as long as you mock me.

Note: I don’t know if that is a good stopping point or if I should continue onto a third verse redeeming Poetry? After all, my hang-ups aren’t Poetry’s fault. I think I will stop it there. Come back in a sequel to redeem Poetry.

So this is my poem explaining my great avoidance of poetry. I wanted it to turn out to be Expansive, but it went confessional instead. Two separate semesters and two separate classes, but both events convinced me I was too stupid to understand poetry, poets were to make me look stupid, and I should stick with prose where I am in the club. I managed to stay away from poetry for years. My one exception was for a story and I only managed that because I told myself I would respond with “It sounds better in the original Greek” to anyone who laughed. It’s been seven years since that one.

100 Words for 100 Days

100 Words for 100 Days June 13 - Sept 20

Progress Bar from Writertopia

Is this going to be a mismash of things from me or what? I have to write poetry and reading diary posts for class, the Educators' Guide gig, and keep up with my fiction. I'm going to try to keep up with my progress here and on the Backpack page. I will post the tidbits as I can; some stuff I can't share because of proprietary reasons. But I need to forge ahead despite everything that's going on.

Five Things I Want to Write Meme

I still don't understand these meme things, and I think everyone who reads my stuff has probably done this already.

The rules:
1) Write about the top five writing projects you want to do. Books, short stories, whatever.

2) Post the rules and the link to where you got the Meme from in the first place.

3) Tag people.

So here's mine done in the order of how much I want to get it done, not the order of active work.

1). Zy's Novel is not mired but I'm having a time with completion. The 100 words challenge will probably help. Here's a quote:

“I’m so glad you didn’t come here to execute him then. The whole spaceport would be dead.”

Zy shook her head. “There’s two witnesses that saw me not kill him.”

“The racketeer’s girlfriend and a bodyguard in your pay.” Investigator Von sneered.

She let the misinformation that she was paying Mealte slide. “And would Lue Ality have any reason to lie for me if I killed Hiqurguet? You can get my records from IGA, as well as all my reports on this case. Now can you please cordon off Per 3 before the murderer jumps planet?”

“You’re actually trying to save racketeers? Doesn’t IGA teach you the only good racketeer is a dead one?”

“See, that’s the attitude they have such a problem with. The one that gets me a gun in my face when I try to find out who’s killing them and how.” The investigator scowled and Zy shrugged.

2. Strix webcomic I really do want to do this, and have no real idea if it will go any further than me wanting it. But vampires, superheroes, and family dynamics; what's not to love?

3. "The Blue Man on the Porch" Short stories I used to be able to churn out fast as least. This one has been more like pulling teeth. But the majority of the my creative writing class two semesters ago liked it (and not a lot of genre readers in that bunch), so it has potential. Here's a quote:

A blue man with a butcher knife locked eyes with her. Cyndia lunged for the rusty shotgun her foster mother kept in the umbrella stand next to the door. She rammed it against her shoulder.

The blue man had disappeared from the front door window.

Her chewing gum cemented in her mouth. The back door was locked; she always locked up when in the house alone. She moved to the back of the living room where she could see the front door, down the hall to the bedrooms, and the archway to the kitchen, and could jump out the window if necessary. She snatched the cordless phone off the coffee table.

4. Canterbury Murder Mystery A project for the Acadiana Medieval Faire, which will probably end up being a dinner theater mystery.

5. "Underneath the Colored Lights" I practically want to write this one only to use that title. Just kidding, but I do think I need to stop being clever and artificial about the protagonist.

I also realized I need to clean out the numbers' sidebar of buried projects and put the right numbers on others.

Noctem Aeternus

This is a new horror zine. I thinkthe Highwayman hitchiker story I wrote might work as a submission.

Submission guidelines

Old vs. New

The Pocket Muse: Endless Inspiration by Monica Wood said the following on page 93 that got me thinking.

And sometimes, when I see my students reaching back through the misty years (to the stuff they wrote in college, usually), I want to grab their hands and beg them to stop. Retrieving an old subject, one that still haunts you, will work only if you begin afresh without looking back. Otherwise, you will waste energy troubleshooting some other writer's work--because you are no longer that writer.

So on April 18th, I looked at my list of stories in first draft stage.

• Zy's Novel
• Strix beginning story
• Canterbury murder mystery
• Acadiana Medieval Faire 2008 Educators' Guide
• Underneath the Colored Lights
• Zy's vacation story
• The Chosen
• Strix: Forget the Sun
• Evil Jack: For Worse
• Wars Are Won By Those Who Dare: Turbo

Just four items were not begun in the 1990s. Of those four, two are fanfiction (that I won't work on without finishing more original stuff) and one is non-fiction. And fiction is what I'm having issues with.

This realization fought badly with my "must-finish-the-story" drive. I had at some point gone back and edited fanfiction created at the same time or earlier. That's okay, that's what my fanfiction projects are for--trying out techniques that aren't ready for original fiction. Some how this continuous rewriting got moved to the original fiction. So why is my "must-finish-the-story" drive being triggered? Why did the idea of setting aside stuff I can't do anything more with--especially after I finished it a decade ago--make part of me throw an inner tantrum?

Zy's Novel doesn't count: it was never finished at any point I worked on it. Zy's vacation short story likewise doesn't count. Rewriting "The Case of the Hideous Medallion" started it, but now it has a new crime and place in that universe's timeline.

Strix doesn't count because I'm reworking the universe and changing formats to a webcomic if I ever find an artist.

"The Chosen" counts. I finished that novel and it was bad. Not horrible idea bad, but a-first-attempt-hide-it-under-the-bed bad. Yes, I could keep it on the list to completely rewrite it, but the rewrite never grasped hold of my brain with new characters and new situations like Strix did. Time to put it away.

"Underneath the Colored Lights" I feel more conflicted about. I finished the story, loved the imagery and characters, should be a strong regional piece and sellable, but it flopped in the beta reading stage. At that point, you are supposed to rewrite. But have I waited too long? Am I better off filing it away as a good practice attempt? Can I afford to?

I'm looking at the "Need to Submit" List, which I should change to the "Need to Retire" List. If I throw everything into the filing cabinet, what will be left to mail out in June? Okay so I'm going to let those three go out and earn rejections in June.

And to deal with the ambivalance over "Underneath the Colored Lights," here it is, published through Google Docs. Read it and answer the poll. I'll give the poll a month while I go file "The Chosen" away.

Possible topics

Commuting hell
Finding time to write vs. everything else
School
Freelance gigs
Blogging
Taking time off

Leave a comment if you have a suggestion for a topic.