November
I've figured something out about my history. I've felt like an abject failure for several years. I made no headway in either of the fields I was trying to get somewhere in. I quit trying.
Thde thing was that I came to an impasse in both fields at once, but really I'm such a wuss that whenever I came to a difficult stretch in one of them, I would falter in my efforts in the other.
But now, I've totally tossed one of those -- school teaching -- in favor of another -- infants/patrent ed, in a family literacy program. I intend this to be my last job, if all goes as I hope it will. It's a thing I can do, and it doesn't entail any vicious profiteers telling me how to teach (and telling me the wrong things, things that actually harm students, things that ruin their lives: actually, not potentially), or principals that decide to make an example of me to scare the others, or whatever daned thing they were doing.
So.
I never stopped writing. I slowed down, and I dropped the goal of professional publication, choosing informal venues. (fictionpress is currently down, which frightens me) I've sent out some short stories, which get a better response than my novels, though I think I'm better at writing novels than short stories. But I'm not going to argue with the editors about that. If they prefer my shorts to my novels, that's what they'll get. My current strategy is to write short pieces for publication and novels for fun. Because novels are more fun for me, but short stories are not torture.
That being said, I'm doing November Novel Writing (I tried to call it what it's supposed to be called, but I tripped over all those syllables -- what are they, early Soviet era bureaucrats?). Of course, I'm cheating -- I'm taking up Bella and Chain again. I don't actually expect to finish it in November, since I am going to take some time to work out how to hypertext it the way I want to. I want the reader to be able to follow each of the journals -- Bella's, Chain's, and Anonymous Omniscient Observer's -- or to go through chronologically, or to hop around by keyword and crosslinks. I'm going to redo the artifacts I already made, and make more of them (things like the notes taken by the weird guy who comes to Harry Smith's bullshit talks, the newsletters of the bookstore, and some of the artwork done by Bella and Forager Girl). So naturally this is not really in the spirit of November Novelling. I suppose it's more like Novel in 90, but I don't promise to have it done in 90 days either. I won't start disclosing (advertising?) the locations of the new material until I'm fairly deep into it. The point of dpoing it is that I've wnated to do a hypertext novel for a really long time and I've never lost my affection for the characters of Bella and Chain. If you never saw my first awkward try at this, know this: the characters include a couple of fey found-object artists, a bike messenger who may have a supernatural nature, a dog named Monkey who is much more than he seems, some genial old men -- booksellers, artists -- who know what things mean, and of course, Harry Smith. (note two links there)
So you can see why I am returning to these people. It's sort of a supernatural mystery, the kind that leads the questioner to revelations about the nature of the universe and the threats thereto, but I promise it isn't like most of those -- becaquse I don't like most of those.
Thde thing was that I came to an impasse in both fields at once, but really I'm such a wuss that whenever I came to a difficult stretch in one of them, I would falter in my efforts in the other.
But now, I've totally tossed one of those -- school teaching -- in favor of another -- infants/patrent ed, in a family literacy program. I intend this to be my last job, if all goes as I hope it will. It's a thing I can do, and it doesn't entail any vicious profiteers telling me how to teach (and telling me the wrong things, things that actually harm students, things that ruin their lives: actually, not potentially), or principals that decide to make an example of me to scare the others, or whatever daned thing they were doing.
So.
I never stopped writing. I slowed down, and I dropped the goal of professional publication, choosing informal venues. (fictionpress is currently down, which frightens me) I've sent out some short stories, which get a better response than my novels, though I think I'm better at writing novels than short stories. But I'm not going to argue with the editors about that. If they prefer my shorts to my novels, that's what they'll get. My current strategy is to write short pieces for publication and novels for fun. Because novels are more fun for me, but short stories are not torture.
That being said, I'm doing November Novel Writing (I tried to call it what it's supposed to be called, but I tripped over all those syllables -- what are they, early Soviet era bureaucrats?). Of course, I'm cheating -- I'm taking up Bella and Chain again. I don't actually expect to finish it in November, since I am going to take some time to work out how to hypertext it the way I want to. I want the reader to be able to follow each of the journals -- Bella's, Chain's, and Anonymous Omniscient Observer's -- or to go through chronologically, or to hop around by keyword and crosslinks. I'm going to redo the artifacts I already made, and make more of them (things like the notes taken by the weird guy who comes to Harry Smith's bullshit talks, the newsletters of the bookstore, and some of the artwork done by Bella and Forager Girl). So naturally this is not really in the spirit of November Novelling. I suppose it's more like Novel in 90, but I don't promise to have it done in 90 days either. I won't start disclosing (advertising?) the locations of the new material until I'm fairly deep into it. The point of dpoing it is that I've wnated to do a hypertext novel for a really long time and I've never lost my affection for the characters of Bella and Chain. If you never saw my first awkward try at this, know this: the characters include a couple of fey found-object artists, a bike messenger who may have a supernatural nature, a dog named Monkey who is much more than he seems, some genial old men -- booksellers, artists -- who know what things mean, and of course, Harry Smith. (note two links there)
So you can see why I am returning to these people. It's sort of a supernatural mystery, the kind that leads the questioner to revelations about the nature of the universe and the threats thereto, but I promise it isn't like most of those -- becaquse I don't like most of those.