[ two days, four stories ... maybe ]
September 29, 1998
6:55 p.m.
It counts as tomorrow now, so what the hell. We did a "Circulate" today, which is where you go around the city and talk to whoever you can meet, listen to what they have to say about themselves, and look for cool story ideas. It was a real blast. I talked to a woman who had had stayed up until 5:30 a.m. last night remaking furniture, and a guy at the watch place. I know I want to write a tale with the woman in it somewhere, but not certain where it will go yet. I have managed to finish Brigid's bedtime story today, and I'm about 3/4ths through my "real" story. As I think I've said, I've revised my goal to writing a story for me every day and a story for Brigid every day. But I'm petering out on my story right now. So we'll see how far I get before hitting the sheets. Part of my problem this afternoon is that I really loved the story I sent Brigid (which I wrote in about a half hour, but which grabbed my heart and wouldn't let go). I couldn't stop thinking about it, and as a result it took me about four hours to lot out my sencond story of the day. Then I was down working on it (longhand ... Stefano's PC gave out, so I let him use mine to finish his own story), when Dave Wolverton came down the stairs and plopped down next to me. We proceeded to talk for the next hour and a half. So now I'll push to finish my story here soon. I definitely know where it's going, so that's the "easy" part. I just need to get my butt in gear. My guess is that I'll "finish" the first draft, but it'll be about a thousand words light, meaning that I'll add in a bunch of description and whatnot as I transpose it into the PC. Still, if I can put a "the end" on it, I'll ring it up.   At this workshop, we have something called a "twin". Mine is Chris Flamm, who is a woman who writes "anthropological" SF. The twin's role is to act as your total confidant an all things writing. Chirs and I have been bouncing plot ideas off each other about three times a day. This afternoon she had a vague idea after meeting her "person on the street," but wasn't sure where to go with it. She told me the opening sentence. I told her what her main character's problem was, and she smiled and said. "That's it! I know what the story is." And off she went. Later I was sitting on the fountain's edge looking at a flower floating in it and searching for ideas. I verbally told her the story I wrote to Brigid, and then said I was having problems letting go of it. She looked at me with a tear in her eyes and told me it was beautiful because it told her how much I loved my daughter and my wife. I got a chance to talk to Brian Wightman today (I'm pretty sure of the spelling of the last name, but if I've gotten it wrong, I'll go back and change it later!). He's a first prize winner, and seems to have his thoughts in order. I think you'll be seeing a lot more of him in the future. Enough procrastination ... gotta go write. 6:54 a.m. Regular readers will remember that I often have problems with titles of my stories. The story I wrote last night was one of those. I wrote the whole story, albeit in the psuedocode method that I described last night (inserting descriptive comments in place where better detail will be added in the second draft). But I had no title. But I woke up with it. So now my second official WotF story is "Raining Comets". Today we go to the library. Congrats to Lisa Silverthorne for her sale of "When Sparrows Fall." I would say I told her so ... but that would be bragging!  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
|
 Writers of the Future issue IV |
BACK TO 
|