The WAL

Okay, so I know it’s been a week since I posted, but I’ve been on vacation and it’s been fairly busy.  My wife is on nights and I’ve taken the kids on a bunch of day trips and to visit my parents so haven’t got much of anything done outside of vacation stuff.

But I did hit another writing milestone last night.  My post-apocalyptic zombie story left the nest last night to perch in the anthology editor’s in box.  A couple of days later than I expected, but I think it’s stronger having waited for the feedback from my beta readers and spent a couple of days polishing.

I did obsess over the final polish and formatting a little, partly stalling for time to finally decide on a title, I think.  The title is “Failing Hope” and once you’ve read the story, you can take several different meanings from the title.  5700 words and released for its first journey into the wild.  Hopefully last, too.  It would be nice if it got selected for the anthology, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting.  I need to get other irons in the fire.

But right now, it’s time to get ready for the beach.

I meant to blog this a couple of days ago, but couldn’t connect to Blog.com for some reason and time has gotten away from me since.  “Skip to My Luu” is complete at 73,264 words.  Not bad for a story that I didn’t expect to much past 65k for a long time.  Is it great?  No.  Is it good?  No.  Is it better than the first draft of “Dragon Summer”?  Absolutely.  I’m going to let it rest for a few months, too, but I think I’m likely to be happier with it when I do come back to it.  There might be as much as half a salvageable story on this one where I think it’s more like one quarter of DS.  So,

It’s a superhero novel if I haven’t mentioned and yes, it looks to be on the short side, but the SFFWA defines a novel as in excess of 40,000 words so I’m in good company.  Besides, I’ve started plotting a high fantasy story, some scenes of which are leaping wholesale into my head with a ridiculous level of clarity and detail.  Looks big, really big, if a bit jumbled a tthe moment, but I’m trying to focus on HI right now, plus a story I’m writing for my youngest daughter.

Wiser than I was this afternoon, anyway.  For reference, the motor in my lawn mower gets really, really hot.  Yours too, probably.  And how, exactly, do I know this, you may ask?  Well, I bumped up against one of those garden rocks that I hate and the left front wheel dropped itself to the lowest level which will make it stick on the tiniest little bump never mind cutting the grass unevenly.  So I shut off the mower and reached down to move the clip for that wheel back up to the middle level.  In so doing, I brushed against what must be the hottest part of the little engine (and why is this spot exposed?).

Total contact time was some not too large fraction of a second, but the result is a roughly 1 cm squared patch of seared skin on the back of my hand just behind the pinkie knuckle.  Blistered instantly and hurt like hell.  But it doesn’t any more.  At all.  Just a thick, white spot that’s stiff and wrinkled and numb.  Completely numb.  Not that I’m looking for the pain to come back, but some sensation when I touch it would be nice.

Moral of the story: um, pay attention to where your hands are, I guess.  Unless you really want another scar, that is.

Draft number two of the zombie story is finished and my two first readers have promised to have it back to me by Saturday after work with comments.  From there, I’ll have eight days to make any changes and do any polishing I want to do before the submission deadline of August 31st.

I like how it reads.  I like how it ends.  I hope my first readers do, too.  And just as importantly, I hope the editor of the anthology I’m submitting to (The World Is Dead) likes it, too.  I just really don’t know.

That’s one of the really weird things about being a writer: whatever you might think of the work, it’s only a good story if someone else wants to read it.  Unless you’re just writing it for yourself and then you’re the only audience that matters.  Me, I’m trying to move in the direction of a bigger audience and that means opening your soul up to criticism and rejection.

I’ll post when it goes out and probably when it comes back, whatever the response is.  Wish me luck.

So I spent 10 km on the highway doing less than 25 km/hr so we could all look at the remains of an accident blocking two lanes going in the opposite direction?  What do people think the police and tow truck drivers are doing anyway?  Try watching where you’re going instead of what happened over there somewhere.  Ack!

My dentist has got it figured out.  He’s installed TVs in the ceiling.  Lie back in the chair, here are you headphones and remote.  Say ah.  Neither the hygenist nor the dentist is forced to make small talk that you can’t respond to because you’re completely distracted channel surfing and they can focus on what they’re supposed to be doing.  The visit goes faster so even though it’s billed at the same rate they can probably see more patients and you get to watch an episode of the Colbert Report that you missed the night before, or whatever your favourite show happens to be.  It’s nothing short of brilliant.  Now, if my physiotherapist would do the same thing so I’d be distracted while he’s working on my knee…

Note that I’ve switched the target length back to 70k.  Obviously, I never should have panicked and changed it in the first place since my characters have made sure I’m on the right track.  Right now I’m inside the last chapter, although I think I might need a short resolution chapter after it, and technically I haven’t actually written Chapter 13, only outlined it (a short Chapter, probably under 2000 words).  We’ll see what the ultimate length winds up being.

I’ve just finished burning three copies of a DVD containing all of the photos taken of my family in 2007.  Yes, that means I finally finished labelling them all which means I’m only seven months behind.  Next phase will be to catch up the 2008 photo sorting and labelling.  This will probably take me until sometime deep in September.  Being caught up will be interesting and unusual.  I think my next major catch up project will be the digitizing several years worth of paper journal entries.  That’s going to take a lot longer.

Half way through chapter 24, more or less.  After that, chapter 25 and then I need to go back and write chapter 13 which only exists as a very brief outline right now.  Another week until I get to write ‘The End’ more or less.  Definite progress.

This is me ignoring the Olympics completely.  Really.  I hope our athletes bring home several plance loads of medals, but I can’t watch.  At this point, it’s the only way I have to punish the IOC for giving the Olympics to a country with China’s human rights record.  Yes, that does make sense.  Make the audience smaller.  This makes the revenues smaller for the CBC and, eventually, trickles back to the IOC.  Yes, I’m probably deluding myself and even if I’m not it’s a very tiny difference and millions of people need to join me for it to have any kind of real impact.

So what are you waiting for?

And please, no one try to say that there’s nothing political about the Olympics.  Until the athletes actually hit the floor, it’s all about politics and I’m not interested in making the Chinese government look good until they start actually being good.  Someday, I hope, but not today.

Remember how I said that I didn’t think that this novel would make 70,000 words on the first draft unless I made some major plot modifications (all the way back on Jun 24)?  Well, the characters in the story helped me make those, and now it’s just possible that it might go that high.  With the plot pieces that I’ve got left, I’m projecting 68.  We’ll see what happens.  My Halloween goal for Heroes Inc is starting to look a little more difficult.

The current chapter borders on goofy, though.  I think it’s going to require an awful lot of clean up during the editing phase.

The zombie story is done, at least the first draft.  I’m trying to pick out a title that doesn’t make the major plot element completely obvious.  Whether the ending is obvious, well, I’m not sure.  I’m going to let it rest for three whole days before I start the major edit pass.  Part of me says that it’s a fun little story and another part says that it doesn’t really stand out in any way.  A thumb up and a thumb down.  Not exactly the best reaction for the author to have.

Now to put in some time on Skip to My Luu.  Last night, I reset the chapter breaks to flow better and to break up a couple of too long chapters, including the one I’m still working on.  There are now 24 chapters in the novel and I’m something near to half finished chapter 22.  The end is definitely in sight.