This Morning

Been up for a few hours now.

Spent most of the morning writing.

I don't write much about my fiction-writing endeavours. I don't know if it's because I like to keep that particular light under a basket, or what. But it's also because I don't really dig reading somebody else (whether it's an artist, an actor or a writer) talk about their "craft."

But, anyway.

I had an idea for what was going to be a short story, and in the middle of writing it, I realized that what I was writing could work very well as a partial plug for the Colorado-sized plot problem in my novel thingamajig I'd written back in the spring and early summer. I don't know if you call something that fixes a hole that large a patch, but I think it's a way around the chronological problem I had.

On the novel: I used very much the strategy that those folks at NaNoWriMo were using. I looked at all the longer stuff I'd attempted, and at how most (all) of it was in pieces, or simply trailed off. I simply wanted to start, write and finish something.

And I did that. It's not great, but I think it's good for a first draft. I put it away for a few months, and went back to re-read it, and found a couple of problems. One, I knew about from the time I was writing (I'd told myself I'd come back and fix it with the next draft). But, in a classic case of missing the forest for all the trees, while I was writing, I failed to realize I had a major, major plot.

On that snag: There were a couple of major problems with the novel, but the biggest of them was that a major character ended up in two places, performing two different major plot points what amounted to simultaneously. And I was having a hard time figuring out which train to back up, and I think with what I wrote on this morning, I found a way to do it. It'll still be a pain in the ass to fix, I think. But that it's worth fixing at all is a good indicator of how strongly I think of this story.

Speaking writing, I wanted to point folks over to Glenn, over at Hi! I'm Black, who's been chronicling his foray into the screenwriting field. I admire his enthusiasm, and from what he's said, I think he's got a couple of ideas worth working on. Glenn's an excellent writer: it just takes a look at his blog to see that much. If he can translate that into any form of created fiction, he's got strong legs to stand on.