News, Real Life, and Ramblings
News: Shadowrun's Corporate Guide (for which I wrote the Mitsuhama chapter) has a street date of July 21st, 2010. Whee!
Real Life: It intrudes on everyone, writer or not. No matter how you try to ignore it, bottle it, or box it away, Real Life has a way of making interfering with all your best laid plans. What's a writer to do? Well, write about it, of course.
I hesitate to say that this is one of the ways you can tell a "Pro" writer from a new or wanna-be writer. But truth be told, most serious writers I've met have this little portion of their brain that sits back from even the worst events in life and says "Now how can I fit this into a plot?"
I've caught myself doing this recently. I wonder what the shrinks think of this behavior?
Ramblings: I used to call myself a novelist. Now, I just refer to myself as an author or writer. I've finally gotten to the point in short story writing where I can tell 1500 words into a 5000 word story that the story is already too long and needs to be cut / tightened.
So that 1500 words I just wrote over the weekend? I'll maybe keep 300 and work the rest of it into scenes later in the story. Still, I needed to write those words just to figure out where I was, what I was doing, and who my characters were. Whee. More story fun. No outside deadline, but putting a personal deadline on of Friday. Should be able to churn out another short by then, right? Unless RL decides yet again to pay me a visit.
Set StoryBlinders = On. Set @RealLife = Ignore. Tally ho!
Real Life: It intrudes on everyone, writer or not. No matter how you try to ignore it, bottle it, or box it away, Real Life has a way of making interfering with all your best laid plans. What's a writer to do? Well, write about it, of course.
I hesitate to say that this is one of the ways you can tell a "Pro" writer from a new or wanna-be writer. But truth be told, most serious writers I've met have this little portion of their brain that sits back from even the worst events in life and says "Now how can I fit this into a plot?"
I've caught myself doing this recently. I wonder what the shrinks think of this behavior?
Ramblings: I used to call myself a novelist. Now, I just refer to myself as an author or writer. I've finally gotten to the point in short story writing where I can tell 1500 words into a 5000 word story that the story is already too long and needs to be cut / tightened.
So that 1500 words I just wrote over the weekend? I'll maybe keep 300 and work the rest of it into scenes later in the story. Still, I needed to write those words just to figure out where I was, what I was doing, and who my characters were. Whee. More story fun. No outside deadline, but putting a personal deadline on of Friday. Should be able to churn out another short by then, right? Unless RL decides yet again to pay me a visit.
Set StoryBlinders = On. Set @RealLife = Ignore. Tally ho!