Ten
October 31, 1998
7:32 a.m.
Today Brigid is ten years old. Wow. She's spending the night at a friend's place, trick or treating and having a slumber party. So we held her family birthday festivities yesterday. Presents, dinner out, and a special dessert of angelfood cake that Brigid had said the "had to have." We gave her a Backstreet Boys CD, and she played it at the end of the night. I am not, I'll have to say, a Backstreet Boys fan. Not that I mind them, of course. They play stuff that seems pretty okay. It's just not my stuff, you know? But it is Brigid's stuff. And this got me to thinking this morning about the discussion in other's journals lately. What is "Good", and why is it so? I want to write good stuff. So what standard do I use? Do I use what sells? Do I use what gathers awards or recommendations? Do I use what impresses my friends? Do I use what impresses other writers? Do I use how it works for me? The answer of course, is yes. I'll use all of them. And hopefully, at least some of the tales I write will meet a majority of these standard holder's expectations--and, goodness sake, perhaps a few things I do may even satisfy all of them. But if I don't get all of them, I hope I can manage to satisfy at least a few segments as well as some other artist's do, because last night Brigid stayed up late. And she played the Backstreet Boys. And she danced, singing along with the words she knew, twirling in circles and bordering on the edge of adolescence. She was happy. At some level, that's the best I can ever hope to do.   Finished the first pass review of "Stealing the Sun", another story I wrote in LA. I made some fairly major structural changes, and basically tried to understand the basic direction of the story. I read through a few critiques to get a general feel for how a collection of folks reacted to it. It's science fiction and has a few glaring technical holes that needed mending--it's not like there was a lot of reference material inthe hotel there, and I wasn't writing the first draft to be "right", either. Now it's a decent story. The next step is to add some depth--maybe even a second plot element--we'll see. I expect it to be done in another two or three days. Then it'll go through copy edit, and move from there.  Daily Persistence is © Ron Collins |
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"Any work strong enough to elicit an emotional response is good enough." L. Ron Hubbard (paraphrased) Listening to the Cowboy Junkies this morning. |
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