I’m over the hump

On occasion, I’ve mentioned a novel that I’m working on, None of Them Knew the Color of the Sky.  It will consist of four parts, each told from the point of view of a different character.  Well, almost three years ago I finished Part II.  I was happy that I was halfway done with my novel, but I was a tad wore out, so I set it aside to work on other projects, such as my first story collection, A Man of Few Words.  Since then, I’ve quit my job to take up writing full time, finished a draft of my second story collection, The All-You-Can-Read Buffet which I hope to have out in April, and start on my third story collection, Political Pies, which I need to get out before the election.  Despite trying to do all that, I’ve wanted to get back to my novel.  That’s why I’ve decided to write a chapter a week for it.  Considering that each part is about twenty-five chapters, if I meet the quota, I should have the novel finished by the end of the year.  Well, I’m happy to say that I’ve just finished Chapter 1 of Part III.    Of course, I was supposed to have finished it last week, but I had some issues with house/pet sitting for my sister’s family.  But it’s only Monday, so I have the rest of this week to write Chapter 2 and make up for it.

Cover for “Enigma”

My short story “Enigma” is being published by Books To Go Now.  This is the cover for it.

At first, I wasn’t too keen on it, but it has started to grow on me.

I’ll let you know once it’s up.

Stephen L. Thompson’s December 2011 Newsletter

Howdy,

Welcome to my electronic newsletter, covering December 2011.

My publication news for the past month:

Publication of my story “Revenge” on my Ficly account.

* * *

This month I wrote 6,172 words, giving me a total this year of 56,176.   I met my goal of 50,000 words last month, so all of this was gravy.  Next year, my goal will be to write 80,000.  Without the distraction of a job, I should be able to do it.  In addition, one piece of advice given to new writers is to write every day.  I’m getting better at that.  So I’m setting another goal of writing every day, and I’ll let you know how I do.  To be realistic – since I know there will be days where I’ll be too sick to write – I’m giving myself twenty days of not writing.  I’m counting my days of writing as days where I type stuff up and do a word count to get the total words written.  (In case you are wondering, yes, I know I’m making this more complicated than it needs to be.  Oh well.)

***

I’ve finished my third polish of my next story collection, The All-You-Can-Read Buffet, and am in the process of finding people to read it.  My hope is to get it published in April.  Stay tuned for more.

* * *

Here is my story board at the end of December:

 ***

I didn’t get around to writing a story for this month.  That’s another thing for me to work on this year.

Steve

First draft of The All-You-Can-Read Buffet

Yesterday, I finished the first draft of my new short story collection The All-You-Can-Read Buffet.  The plan is to set it aside for a few weeks, then go through and double check a few things and give it one more polish.  Then in January I’ll ask some of my friends to read through it looking for typos and other stuff.  I’ll go through all of their comments and give it another polish or two.  Then – hopefully in April – I’ll self-publish it on Createspace, where I published my first collection, A Man of Few Words.  But I’m not going to sit back and relax.  I have several stories I want to revise before sending them out next year, as well as work on my third story collection Political Pies, which I hope to have out probably in August or September.  Finishing this first draft has taken some weight off my shoulders, which is always a good thing.

Initial cover design for The All-You-Can-Read Buffet

This is for my next collection, The All-You-Can-Read Buffet.  I have a few ideas to change this, but what do you think?

In case you are wondering, the four books are, clockwise from top left: The Family Mark Twain, Complete Tales & Poems of Edgar Allan Poe, War and Peace, and Familiar Quotations.

Stephen L. Thompson’s November 2011 Newsletter

Howdy,
Welcome to my electronic newsletter, covering November 2011.

My publication news for the past month:
Publication of my stories “A Mother’s Suffering Never Ends” and “Family Rituals” on my Ficly account.

* * *

This month I wrote 8,409 words, giving me a total this year of 50,004. Meaning, I’ve reached my goal of 50,000 words this year! I had thought about trying to hit 60,000 by the end of the year, but I’m planning on spending December working on revisions. Including, the first draft of my next book, The All-You-Can-Read Buffet. You’ll be hearing more about that in the months to come.

* * *

Here is my story board at the end of November:

* * *

Instead of a story, this month I wrote an after Thanksgiving haiku. Enjoy.
Steve

late at night it calls
pleading release from the cold -
the zombie turkey

50,000 words!

I am unfortunately not talking about the National Novel Writing Month, but instead my writing goal for this year of writing 50,000 words. When I hit 40,000 words back in October, I challenged myself to hit 50,000 by December 1st. Well, as of this afternoon I have written a total of 50,004 words! It’s a good feeling.

I’ve done better than last year!

If you follow this blog, you’ll know that I keep track of how many words I write. My goal for this year is to write 50,000. Well, over the weekend – without me noticing for a couple of days – I passed a milestone. Last year I wrote a total of 43,991 words. As of this morning, I’ve written 44,816 words! I still have a ways to go to meet my goal, but at least I’m improving.

Failure of the Memory Sock

Like most writers, I often have ideas as I’m failing asleep. When that happens, we have a choice of either getting up, turning on a light, and writing it down, or hope we remember it in the morning. For a while I kept a notebook and pen by my bed to jot ideas down in the dark, but unfortunately, my handwriting is barely legible when I’m awake, wearing my glasses, and in a lighted room. The next morning I’d often look at the ink scrawled across the page and have no clue what was written. But hoping to remember your idea doesn’t always work, because you sometimes forget to remember something. To counter that problem, I began using the Memory Sock. The way this works is I took a sock with a hole in it and laid it on the floor where I could easily reach it. If I’m just about to fall asleep and have a great idea, I just feel around for the sock and toss it out into the middle of the floor. The next morning, I see the sock and my memory is jogged. Sometimes.

About a week ago, I was just about asleep when I had an idea. So I tossed the sock out into the room. I saw it there the next morning, remember the idea, but didn’t write it down. The sock then became buried under other clothes. A few nights later, I had a dream that I could turn into a story. But the sock wasn’t within reach. So the next morning I found the sock and wrote down the original idea. But after several days of trying to jog my memory, I cannot remember what the dream was I could turn into a story. It’s really bumming me out.

Writing Group Prompt for November

Each month, the writing group I belong to sets out a prompt for the next meeting. We then have a month to write a poem or something from that prompt that we read at the next meeting. I also figured these would work nicely as blog posts. The prompt for our November meeting was “If life were like ….” This is what I wrote.

What if life were like writing? We’d never have to settle for the first draft. If you – the main character – said something stupid when talking to the person you had a crush on, you could just go back and change it to something witty. Diets and cosmetic surgeries would be a thing of the past if all it took were some keystrokes to change your appearance. And if the plot of your life came to a fork and you took what turned out to be a boring, or otherwise wrong fork, you’d only have to go back a few chapters to take the other and see what comes from it. With enough tweaking, everyone could truly become the hero of their own narrative.

However, most people would probably say that some of the greatest moments of growth in their lives came from some of their greatest tragedies. Would people purposely write themselves into a tragedy so they could grow from it? And how would this work if everyone could write their life? Would creepy stalkers keep writing themselves into the lives of celebrities, only to have the celebrities constantly editing them out? And would titles like “Best Actor” or “President” still have meaning if all it took was someone to write, “And then John became Miss America?”

Perhaps it’s best that we can’t literally write our own lives. Life is crazy enough without the insanity that comes from writing.