Short?

I wrote a short story yesterday, the first one in a year.  It's not a good length for me, and I think the lack of dynamic plot is telling.  This could easily be the first chapter of a book, it's so quiet.  (Nooooooooooooooooooooo!)

But I'll submit it to INK the next time around and see what happens.  

The things I'll do to avoid working on taxes.  Now I have a list of avoidance.  Things that are higher on the list will get done before things on the bottom of the list in an effort to avoid doing the things on the bottom of the list.

Vacuum, do dishes

Work on a troublesome novel opening

Wash windows, scrub out tubs and toilets

Trim cat claws

Write a short story

Work on taxes

Escape

My brain is looking for escape routes.  Yesterday I wanted to write on anything except what I was supposed to.  Last night I even came up with a new story idea.  This morning I came up with more ideas--luckily one was for Masks--but the primary idea was for a project that has been on a backburner and will probably stay there for a long time.  I can blame my heavy schedule for this bout of escapism, but that would be just an excuse.  I know how to kick this.  Write anyway.

Definitely owe INK a dollar, and considering Radcon, that'll be another dollar because I'm not going to get a sub in by next Monday either.  Might as well pay up now.  But hey, after Radcon I'll be home free for quite a while.  With two day jobs days of work a week, three max, and the fact that lately my schedule has been arranged so that the workdays are consecutive, I'll have a lot more free time to get writing projects done.  I'm really, really looking forward to that.  Radcon has become my Thunderdome, and all I want to do is get beyond it (she said, dating herself yet again.)  I'm sure once I get there, though, I'll have such a blast that I'll forget all about these silly things called deadlines and goals, at least for a while.

Yet Another FAQ

Everyone has pet peeves. Everyone gloms onto certain issues that they simply can't overlook in writing. I have this thing about first sentences in passive voice. I'm not against passive voice altogether--it has its place--but the first sentence? We haven't even gotten started and we're already distancing the action.

The thing about pet peeves is this--they're irrational and cruel. But they need their due. They're irrational and cruel because no matter how much we hate them, we're guilty of them. Passive voice in the first sentence? Oh yeah, I've written that, and stuck to it too. They need their due, though, because pet peeves arise from seeing the same problems over and over again until you start looking for inventive things to do to yourself so that you don't have to say it again.

I couldn't tell so and so that I didn't like that passive voice in the first sentence because we were out of bread in the house and I had to go shopping and then I forgot to write it down and during the critique I decided that if I hadn't written it down in the first place it must not have been that important.

My (actually Ris' proposal, I was going to do this by myself because you know I can't shut up once I've gotten an idea) is for INK (and associates, if you would like to contribute!) to submit your pet peeves for a FAQ. We can organize it by person, or, if you think this would be a better idea, we can hide in pseudo-anonymity, pretend we don't know who wrote what pet peeve, and just glom them all together into one list.

For the record, I refuse to take the blame for first sentence in passive voice. That doesn't bother me in the least.

Masks on Fire

So I've been working on Masks in a way that gets me motivated to get those marketing letters in the mail and email.  So far I've fixed the opening (I hope) so that Bainswell is more of a threat.  Around the 5000 word mark, Mairi is on fire.  I hope that's soon enough.  Next, I realized that the scene in the snow will be far more interesting if he starts assessing on a very deep level the life he's tolerated so far, so that it makes more sense that he would never go back  In the new version he has a moment of wondering what kind of person his beloved Gutter really is if he can put a small boy's hand into the hand of a man like Lord Argenwain.  Also, I created something for Mark to lose when he ditches the horses.  Horses, you say?  He has two now, and two sets of saddlebags, and the weapons.  He's going to have a helluva lot to carry, and he's going to lose a bunch of it.

Once he's in the port city he's going to be so exhausted he'll let things happen that shouldn't, and in the morning he's going to try to cover up his trail.  This is much more fun for me.  I just hope it's more fun for the audience and doesn't start quite so slow.

BTW, it still opens with Mark in bed, but he's staring at the ceiling, avoiding the waking up trope, and I don't mention the mirror in the bathroom.

Can you tell I'm having fun editing?  Do you know why?  Because editing has changed work stations.  It's now no-longer in the Not Writing station, but right next to both the Not Writing Cover Letter and the Researching Agents stations.  By comparison, editing is a gas and I could do it all day.