Well, it's been a while. Lots of things have happened since I last updated. I got all my hours cut at work (SUCKY) and my wife is pregnant (AWESOME, but scary). I've been hard at trying to work. You can quote me on that. Make t-shirts.
The plan is still Poof by May (not April...pushed it back a month). Lately, though, I've been working on a short story that I'm looking forward to showing to some of you. It's superbly weird, but not a bad little story. And by "little" I of course mean that the finished story will a nice, unsalable 15,000 words. Go figure. It's been nice, though, to reconnect with the truth about writing. Yeah, 1,000 words a day gives you a young adult novel in two months (if you don't take weekends), but you still have to WRITE every one of those 1,000 words. And that can be hard. "What do you mean I have to make stuff up and it has to not suck?!"
The one thing I'm learning is that you just have to do it. You just do. And you shouldn't think so much that it kills your productivity. I believe "She Who Lies in Secret" is my best story, and that's just silly, because I wrote that story SO FAST compared to the others. The lesson there? Just write. Go on instinct. Do what you do. When the learning is done, trust that it stuck and just tear out and take names. Don't think yourself into a coma. So that's my big epiphany in the month and a half or so since Boot Camp.
Another thing I learned is that the people who succeed are the people who are too busy writing to spend a bunch of time reading message boards and doing critiques. Some is good. Some is necessary, but I'm determined to keep the main thing, the main thing. See you soon.
Peace.
