Saturday, October 28, 2006

Early Saturday

The household is still asleep and, as usual, I am not. Someday I would like to master the ability to sleep past 7 AM. Still, I do enjoy the silence.

I am between writing projects so I'm a little lost as to what to do with myself. There really aren't any ideas on the horizon and it's too early to edit Sing just yet. It needs a bit of distance and time--just a week--so I can see its flaws objectively. It doesn't need much and I don't want to waste much time before getting it out to the magazines. No, I don't have a target market for it yet, though if the hard copy magazine picks up Pomegranate, I'll consider them.


I need to return to Witness Tree and finish the edit, but am dragging my heels. The first 2/3s of it was easy. It's this last part that will require major hacking and slashing and for some reason I am loathe to do it. Why? I suppose its all the self-doubt and back-tracking and rethinking. If I delete this, then I'm going to have to back and cut that which will change this, which means I'll have to re-write this and then this . . . It's all a part of the process, but it's a bit of a headache. Actually a fair amount of Witness Tree has been just that.

I did join NanoWrimo--an annual 30 day "contest" that takes place every November where writers from all walks of life commit themselves to writing 50,000 words of a book. I've always been too busy writing something already and haven't been able to, but have been curious inspite of myself. I've done the math. I'd have to write roughly 1700 words a day to accomplish the goal. Really, this is nothing. I can write a 1000 words in an hour (as evidenced by my flash fiction), I've just got some doubts as to whether writing just write is a good idea. Plus there's this little thing called "life" that involves homeschooling, lesson plans for the money skills classes I'm teaching at the public school, work, and the fact that I've got to sleep some time. So my thoughts are that I'll give this a try. I've got nothing to prove at this point; I already know I can write a book. I'd just like to see if the experience or writing that many words in that few days is everything Geoff White says it is. Of course he runs the Iron Man Triathlon every year and that alone makes me think he's not entirely sane.

So to that end here's the icon of insanity to prove that I've truly gone around the bend myself:

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