[ illustrators, and submittals, and libraries, oh my! ]
September 30, 1998
6:55 p.m.
My goal of a story a day hangs in tenuous balance. I was up until 4:15 a.m. last night finishing a voodoo tale. I had never written a voodoo tale before, but I started thinking about the woman I had met during the circulate. Her memory seemed very light and ephemeral, so I latched on to a black magic concept and next thing you know I had a voodoo concept in mind. Unfortunately, I have no idea of any real details of the voodoo practice. WotF policy to the rescue. We spent a couple hours in the library yesterday, with a couple of specific goals and a general requirement to find out as much as we needed to write a story. Perfect! I thought. I need stuff on voodoo, I get stuff on voodoo. Simple as pie, right? Of course, then I decided the main character had an interest in buildings, and that they lived in New York. So then I needed architectural knowledge and an understanding of the big apple. Needless to say, I could have stayed at the library longer. However, deadlines loomed. So off we went, precisely at 4:00. I stopped for a light dinner at maybe 7:00--right after one of the characters literally disappeared on me. It took me several hours to get back on track, and that's why I was up until 4:15 finishing. We submit our stories tonight at 9:00. So I spent an hour this morning "fixing" this one (with some very nice help from my evil twin--Chris and I have taken to calling each other Skippy and the Evil Twin in an interchangeable fashion), as well as massaging "Stealing the Sun" (my first WotF story). I intend to submit both of them. But, I've not written or even plotted my story for today, and it's 7:05. So, as I said, the goal of a story a day looms in the balance. I'll see, though. Maybe I can toss off a short-short. On the good side, I did finish another brief story for Brigid's bedtime (fully formed per the "rules"). So if I step back and look at things, I've actually written seven short stories in four days so far. Quite cool. Still, I want eight!   I think I forgot to mention that my roommate, Stefano Donati, is in the running for the big Grand Prize. We met all the illustrators yesterday, too. Their workshop started with acombined Illustrator/writer tour of the L.Ron Hubbard museum. Regardless of your beliefs in regard to Scientology, you have to admit that this man accomplished more in his life than is uusually considered possible by any normal standard. I got to use one of their e-meters (essentially a bio-feedback device that is used to scan and measure thoughts in order to analyze origins of problems in the Scientological approach). It was really pretty cool. In the whole process, I met the guy that illustrated my story. He's promised to show it to me, but I haven't seen it, yet. My evil twin has, however, and says she's pretty certain I'm going to love it.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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 Writers of the Future issue V |
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