Looks like it's damn near over. I'm sure i promised to keep this page updated and running after the spring semester, a toast to how successful that has been (sarcasm).
No, no updates over the summer, but i was busy. My thesis project for my Masters begins this fall and the goal was to have something presentable to begin with, something so refined there would be little for my professors to seriously critique. The result is seventy one pages of material sixty of which i consider well done. Or did, and there lies my problem.
I didn't take into account the need to let the story just rest for a while. This gives me the writer the equivalent of a new reader as later i approach the thing with fresh eyes. I needed this break and didn't take it. I should have worked on other stories. My other major mistake was failing to read it out loud. Now i can't count the number of times I've told fellow writers to read it out loud. But ego is a powerful drug as i'm sure you as fellow writers know. When you're in the flow, hearing it so well in your head you're just plowing through you just do. You never break the magic! I mean you lean back and look at the damn thing and it even looks good. But when you hear it? Out loud? Try speaking the thing in the voice you hope the reader hears? Its not the same. Not a complete mess, but not as good as envisioned.
That's been my last three days folks. All the elements are there, my theme is present, i'm making the points i want. but the whole thing feels muddled, i'm not eliciting the emotional responses i want from the scenes and other readers are confused.
I know its good. I know i'm being overly critical on a piece that's still months away from true completion but i still hear that voice back there saying you suck. Those last three days and today, i remind myself this is normal. This is the dark night before the light of dawn, that i am so much better than when i started so many years ago.
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