My brain has finally settled into multi-tasking, though I think I had to trick it a little bit. Whatever, it worked.
June 13th
- Winter Warrior – 2347 words
June 14th
- Winter Warrior – 868 words
- New Short Story – one page handwritten (the opening I’d been stuck on!)
- Etherea In Her Veins (short story) – reviewed an analyzed for revision.
The big deal with the short stories is that I don’t want to abandon them. My earlier post about trunking really got me thinking. What if a story was actually worth the time to revise? This one is. I love it. Not only that, but this was the one that earned me the semi-finalist in WOTF a few years ago. I took risks with the story and despite its flaws, it’s gotten good reactions wherever I’d sent it. But the personal rejections mirrored the feedback given to me by KD Wentworth, and I was on a mission to make this story perfect. I broke it in the process, I think. I’m going back two versions to the one that earned the personal rejections and the semi-finalist and fixing that version. Eventually, I can probably write this into a novella or novel, depending on my mood. But for now, it deserves to see the world.
The novel is going well. The latest chapter is learning the motivations of a secondary character. I’m still learning about him too, so I know this one is going to be heavily revised later. I’m just trying to pace myself so he can talk to me while I type.
Dante. The new short story is one of the outlines I created during May. It’s been difficult to pick up the mood I felt then, but the heart of the story is there, I’m just tweaking what needs to happen. I can usually choose a project and focus, busting the story out within a day or two. This isn’t going to be that. But a page a day while the kids are playing around me is good enough. It’ll get me a first draft, but one on paper, which usually makes up for the extra time in stronger coherence.
One more short story is in the queue, waiting for revision. It needs a serious revision as it’s only in first draft form. I was trying to do way too much with the first version. I’ve set a lot of that aside for the novel (yes, it’ll be my next SF novel probably), but this story is about a dying woman and her mom and I’m re-centering the story on their relationship from a military SF angle. It’s weird, but I’m having fun with it.
By multitasking, I’m obviously lowering the word count on the novel, but I can handle the pace. By handwriting the short story, I’m actually sneaking in an extra writing session without stealing time from anyone else.
Back to the writing. Have a great day!
Dawn
DAWN BONANNO 