updates 29AUG17

Submitted my manuscript for my thesis project yesterday. Seventy two pages but probably a few more before it's finished. I had to force myself to stop thinking about it last night. As a writer like i mentioned in previous posts, its necessary to let the work rest, see it with new eyes before messing with it again. Still the mind wants to list all the things you believe need fixing. I managed to ignore that urge, instead i started working the one I'd let rest while working on Jordan and his problems.

Its about a loner spacer type, brokenhearted, they all seem to be brokenhearted; who joins a mercenary expedition to deep space in search of a fabled lost ship. I have the structure of the thing down but not the body, that lumpy thing that needs molding and shaping to become a real story. It's nice to be poking around in different peoples heads. The constant working on Jordan's tale has made me hyper aware of problems with Cornelius and how his tale must be told.

Its amazing rereading your work and seeing the progress, and where you need to improve. Then you read something written by Mark Twain a couple hundred years ago and are completely floored. Just a handful of pages but the layers and depth of characters! i am humbled. Not discouraged mind you, just...realizing how much more there is to learn. So i put the head down and get back to work.

14Aug17 the summer

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.

11Jun2017 putting the work in,

I am in the bowels of the rewrite for my thesis work "Serengeti on the Bayou," and I'm wrestling with the thinness of a scene.

When I wrote it a year ago I imagine me leaning back at the time with a huge smile at the completeness of it all.

(Almost assuredly not true, but nice imagery.)

Reading it now all I see is what it lacks.

The dialog flows but there's too little. The depth of the characters must be deeper, and the overall theme is not even hinted at. The result is little more than two guys sitting around talking about a murdered woman with nothing underneath.

So I go at it, One paragraph at a time, one line at a time. I'm reminding myself to go deep, to put little stories in to enhance background, to breathe, take my time so that later I can truly say I did my best.

It's a good story. I mean it was always a good story but it's better now, more focused, it finally has something to say. I guess in a way, I have something to say.

I went to grad school to learn how to write but not just how. I needed to know why, if what I said even mattered. I found it does. Just for the thing itself, to find a point, an issue, and expound on it.

I am all over the place emotionally today. Hurling mentally from happy to sad and back all within the confines of an hour. The writing harnesses all that, focuses that emotional energy into the work and I am stable again.

I am watching Tom Selleck playing Robert B. Parker's "Jesse Stone," on lifetime. Good writing and great characters make for a perfect Sunday and I am better.

30May2017 summer vacation

Two months since the last posting. School demanded I stop pissing around and concentrate. The good news is I passed. The bad news? Three months till more school. I hate down time. Worse news is next semester is my last semester. That will mean even more down time.

I get its not really a problem, others wish that was their only concern. I'm just at this stage in life where motivation is hard to come by and self confidence is hanging out with motivation.

So I've resolved to spend the summer working on the story I plan to submit for my thesis. The issue is settling in on a theme that feels solid. The work is an adaptation of three short stories I wrote.

 A familiar event that occurs when revisiting old material is how bad it is. You see not only grammatical errors but characters you under developed and some that took over. The core of the story is solid, it's the subtle nuanced stuff I'm struggling with like the opening and who to delete. I'm at that point every writer get to, the "my god you suck at this!" Point. I'm questioning every decision I've made so far and this fifty or so pages in. 

Then you get a glimmer of the answer, but it's out there, a blur teasing you just out of reach. The answer of course is to just plow through. That's where motivation comes in. I start finding other things to do instead of plowing through, like updating my blog.

Little things to be sure. First world problems as my friend is want to say. The story will be written.

02Mar17 update

God, has it really been this long without one?

Once school got into full swing the idle time seemed to dry up along with the postings. Studying the Harlem renesance, pre 1865 American literature, and a short story class.

The 2865 is mostly on travel writing, foreigners first look at America and America selling its merits to the world. Surprisingly interesting stuff. A heavy read/work load though.

The short story thing is always fun. While not being able to write precisely what I want I am learning the crafting of any tale is just as important.

I wanted to embrace the the Mardi Gras spirit this year but ran into difficulties. It fell right in the heart of my dark cycle, when nothing can lighten my mood but time. I went across the river for Lundi gras but left pretty soon after. Just wasn't getting the usual contact high/good vibrations I used to get there. Watched the whole of Mardi Gras at home, on tv, SOBER!

Eh, I'm better now.😎

04Feb17 I picked up my guitar today.

Haven't done that in years. 

Once I decided to focus on writing I felt music would get in the way.

I love Patti Griffin. Specifically the album (album lol) "Living With Ghosts," There are two songs that constantly run through my head, well they all do but "Moses" and "Forgiveness" are the main ones. I hear the simple chord changes under the powerful vocals and I find myself struggling to not sing out loud.

So I'm learning them. The fingers are all fumbly, stiff, and unsure. My voice the same, but I'm on it LOL.

Not sure how this fits with a mainly writing blog, I guess it falls under the me sharing more part.

Recieved a B for my angel story slong with a lengthy list of problems needing to be addressed. I paraphrase here but I'm pretty sure the professor said 

"it needs a little more time on the stove."

Unintended Shifts in character perspectives at the start, and more focus on the main character is required. Who's story is it? Then don't let someone else dominate.

I introduced people then they disappear. all the usual things you miss on the first seven rewrites.

But Her main beef was my grammar. She expressed disappointment that a graduate level student was producing so many errors. 

I have been hearing this from the beginning. I swear I must have a block when it comes to this.

I was angry, hurt, in short all the emotional states I used to experience oh, twenty or so years ago.

Then I looked at her corrections. Everything was there. She was right. I'd been sloppy. 

So, I allowed myself a couple days of sulking. Now I'm back into the guts of the thing smoothing it out.

All the suggestions were good, some I might even apply. I resubmit the piece 28Feb. Could lead to a better grade, certainly a better story.

21Jan17 There's always the work.

After approximately one month of chipping at my stories, bitching on my blog about being stir crazy from a lack of things to do, school is back. But there was always the work.

Hello one hundred thirty five page reading assignment and critical review along with a journal write up.

Hello short story review complete with suggestions on improvements, several Claude McKay poems to be conversant with by Monday, and start of the "homeless gentlemanl's" story for my next project.

These are of course variations of the work.

I haven't even touched on the execise routine still in the early planning stages. LOL 

I am occupied mentally and physically therefore content.

I am Beefless! Meaning I got no beef with anyone or thing.

I live too much in my mind always. Things are constantly being weighed, decisions questioned, guilt imagined before any act performed. Unfulfilled longings that can never be. They all push at each other, demanding to be first, to be addressed.

It all disappears in the work.

My mind focuses in on the one thing it can control, the fate of my characters. The "is she thinking of me?" Becomes, "how can I make this scene feel real, make the reader feel what I want them to feel?

After all this time im starting to see glimpses, tiny fragments in the flow of my writing along with the occasional line i'm actually proud of. 

The work is a refuge for me, a world i crawl into and put defense satellites around. I've done so many other things but always there was, is, the work.