Almost There . . . Stay On Target

Wow, I haven't blogged in a long, long time, the calendar claims.  It seems like I was just on here, writing a bunch of words no one would ever read, but it was apparently weeks ago.  Also, my hair has gotten longer than the last time I checked.  Should I see a doctor, do you think?

Anyway, last time I wasted your time with my typing, I had begun work on a sequel to "Birth of a Sidekick."  And then somehow, it was April.  I don't really understand it myself, but February and March were each apparently only two weeks long.  Is this how life is going to be from now on, with the days, months, seasons, and decades getting shorter until the morning where I hit the Snooze button and wake up to find someone new is President, and popular music has miraculously gotten even worse?

Anyway, back to writing.  I have quite enjoyed writing BOAS 2, I write four or five days a week, and  have been limiting myself to using "apparently" only once each paragraph, but I'm still not quite done with it.

But I am close.  This thing has gotten bigger and uglier than I ever guessed it would get.  At around the halfway point, I realized I could probably quit there and call it a story in and of itself, and then the second half of the story could be a third story.  Do any other writers do that kind of thing?*  I think at that particular point, the sequel was already as long as the original story, and when I wrote the second half, it turned out to be twice as long as the first half.

And I'm still not done, apparently.  The big confrontation with the bad guy has yet to happen--I meant to start on it today, but I sat on the toilet and emptied the trash instead--and then the story is going to end so abruptly that any reader who stuck with me that far will rue the very day I was born.  That's the plan, anyway.  And after that, I'll have to a) type up the damned story, b) try to fix all the problems with it, and 3) attempt to give it a more Western flavor, at least as far as description and dialogue go.

My plan is to have the story finished this week.  After that, I've got a story for a contest to write.  I've already got the idea (and I sketched out how it would end on a Post-It note at work the other day, only to find it in the trash can when I came back from lunch, so that apparently bodes well).  As all contest stories are, it's supposed to be wicked short, so that should make my job easier.

The "Birth of a Sidekick" sequel has not been a chore to write (though that doesn't mean it's inspired rather than terrible), but I have been tempted, a time or two, to set it aside and start work on the story for the contest, since that may well be easier.  Or more fun.  But at the writers symposium I went to . . . let's see, it feels like eight to ten days ago, but the calendar claims it has been seven weeks . . . one of the speakers really stressed that you must stick with the project you are currently working on, no matter how distracted you are by shiny new ideas.  He said that a writer works on one project at a time, finishes one project, and then can reward himself (or herself) with that second project as soon as he/she's finished.

Apparently.  So I'm going to take his advice, just this once, and keep to the plan,  After those two projects are done, I will possibly have time for one more story before I take up Big's challenge of writing a novel this summer.  And for that . . . I vow to limit my "apparentlys" to one per chapter, at most!

Rish "Ostensibly" Outfield

*Obviously, the writers of BACK TO THE FUTURE, PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN, and THE MATRIX 2 & 3 know what I'm talking about.  Except what they did was worse, even though I like 4.5/6th of those movies.