Did you ever have one of those weeks where you had ideas coming in left and right and you have to write (or paint or sculpt) what's in your head or your brain will explode? Okay, maybe it's just me, but this week was one of those weeks. Carrying on the theme from the last blog post, it was nothing that I planned to work on, either. This time, I decided to ride the wild horse and see where it would take me instead of trying to direct the thing myself. It made for an enjoyable week.
Short Fiction
I temporarily put "The Bing Wong Motel" to the side. Instead, my muse told me to write a story called "Wandering." I was just "musing" (see how that works?) about how I never see anybody hitchhiking around these parts and voila, the germ of a story popped into my head. I start the story off with a quote from William Blake and the sentence "Nobody hitchhikes anymore." The rest of the plot filled in as I wrote. I had the entire 6,500 words written over a three day period.
Once I printed off the first draft of that one, I intended to go back to one of the stories in progress. Instead, I got my hair cut yesterday (I go to a "real" barber instead of a salon). There was this little boy there about to get his first haircut and I had front row seats at the event. As I watched, another story idea popped into my head and I couldn't wait to get home to get it onto my computer. As of this writing, I'm probably another page or two from the end, called "The Deepest Cut."
The goal here is to write more short stories (and poetry) than I'll need for the book so I'll have something to choose from when it's time to pull the book together. I'm going to have twelve stories and six poems in the final manuscript. Right now, I have twelve stories either completed or started, so I should have fourteen or fifteen ready by later this year.
Other
Still waiting to hear from my attorney (I'll call him "Bombastic Bob," a nod to Johnny Carson's own real life attorney, Henry I. "Bombastic" Bushkin). The reason Bob is "bombastic" is because of what he charges me per hour. Oy! Aside from that, Bob is a great guy and I'm hoping he'll be even greater and hook me up with a producer or two. We'll see.
By the way, I've been reading the rest of the books in the James N. Frey "series" of "damn good novel" instruction books. Jim has a lot of good practical advice for novelists and as I've found, no matter what I've learned from my own experiences or other writers, it's always worthwhile to read books and magazines which are geared to helping writers out. I always get something useful out of it. Right now, I'm working out the idea of "premise" (v. theme or moral) and making sure I have a solid one before writing my stories. Very helpful stuff, I'd say.
That's all for today, friends. I hope you're having a creative week and I look forward to hearing from you or at least, reading your own masterpieces.
Until next time, write on!
Michael
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