I'm at the library now, and the deaf guy I used to know is up here at a desk, making the most piteous (and/or terrifying) noises, not constantly, but often enough to startle me and those sitting around. Of course, I may be wrong--the people around him may have absolutely no problem with zombie sounds happening every minute or so, and I could be the only asshole on God's green earth. Still, I thought I'm mention it, since I have to blog every day, and why not fill it with something?
Wait a minute, do I HAVE to blog every day? Yes, a year ago I said I would blog my progress daily, but I don't know that that still has to apply. After all, every minute I spend blogging is two minutes fewer I'd have doing my daily writing* and if I would stop blogging except to write word, sit-up, and push-up count, I'd have more time to get those other three numbers up.
But blogging is easy, and it's somewhat fun, and I guess I'll keep doing it.
Someone on Facebook posted a link to a short story contest today, with a deadline of February 28th to send it in. It is EXACTLY the kind of story contest I used to participate in when I first moved to Los Angeles and began short story writing again. There is an image (in this case, a painting), and you're supposed to write a story inspired by it, as long as it's a thousand words or less.
Well, this I can do, so as soon as I could, I loaded up the laptop and headed for the public library to see if I could write the story in one sitting. In retrospect, what I should've done was put on my sweatpants and filthy orange shirt and done my run before the sun went down, thinking about the story all the while. As it stands, I've spent more than a few minutes trying to figure out my angle on the story's image, which I'll post here:
Is that not one of the more disturbing sights you've seen today (unless you're a Fox News viewer, I mean, but that goes without saying)?
Unfortunately, "Only Have Eyes For You," the novel I finished last week, had an antagonist not unlike the boy in the above image. Hmm. But hey, there's room for an ANTZ and A BUG'S LIFE in this world.
Here's a link to the contest, if you want to beat me in it.
I burned through the story as quickly as I could, using temporary phrases like "Michael says something ominous, and Colin is chilled by it," speeding through mental red lights until I reached "the end."** The WIP is 1068 words. But now I've got to go in (before the library closes) and change the present tense bits to past tense, and replace the placeholders with actual prose. And that's going to add at least two hundred words to it.
But let's say it ends up at 1200 words. That's not bad for a first draft. And though it'll be a bit of a pain to do so, I can shave that down to a thousand in around an hour. It's times like this, though, that I wish the darn library didn't close in twenty-one minutes, or that I had a cabin to spend a day or two a week in, focusing just on writing and editing. Ah well.
I have to say that, typing as fast as I could to get done before the lights start to flash, I felt a bit of that hard-to-define energy you get when you're creating something. It's not the same as how I feel when I make myself run the last block back to the house, or how I felt when a pretty girl smiled at me, but it's somewhere in between.
Sit-ups Today: 111
Sit-ups In February: 477
I finished editing half a Delusions of Grandeur episode, my "My Friend of Misery" episode of the Outcast, a Drabble I'll throw into my next collection (back in the day, before the Dunesteef started, I had it in my head that I could write Drabbles and send them in to the Drabblecast. I would write them all the time, and they were never anything more than jokes, like what you'd write for a Letterman (or Colbert) monologue.*** I have, if I had to guess, about fifteen of them, usually pretty lame--they are only 100 words, after all), and started on a story edit.
Push-ups Today: 130 (if I hadn't missed yesterday, my push-ups would actually have exceeded my sit-ups, which has never happened before)
Push-ups In February: 409
Right before the library closed, I finished revising the story contest story. It came to 1327 words. It seems fine to me, story-wise, and I am reminded of the many, many stories written for those contests that I have yet to run on the Outcast (or put into collections). I guess I could do that, except that I never ever will. They tend to stay unseen for a reason. Stuff like "Lemon Pledge" or "The Guest Room" or "Freshmen" or "Naughty or Nice" (though Big put out--and named--"Naughty or Nice" a decade or so back) could show up on the show, but except for "Halloween Night" and "The Visitor/El Visitante," I've never really thought about doing more of them. Oh, "Closet Case" was written for that contest. And so was the "Grandpa's Prize" prequel, that I've forgotten the title of ("Wish In One Hand").
Well, all in all, I've done quite a few of those on the show. Maybe I'll put "Freshmen" out one day soon.
Words Today: 1327
Words In February: 3294
*I'm not sure how that math works, but my Calculator app claims that it does.
**I never capitalized "the end," for some reason. It's a quirk of mine that may bug you, but really shouldn't matter to anyone but me.
***I was cleaning out under my desk on Tuesday, in preparation for the carpet cleaning, and found a piece of notebook paper where I'd written two Drabbles. One was the following:
Grandpa entered Toys R Us, seeking a model plane for his grandson, since he'd enjoyed putting them together with his own son. The girl behind the counter grinned when she saw him approach, so he walked right on. Grandpa passed the boardgames, Lego sets, dolls, and in the Boys section found action figures, cars, dartguns, and even musical instruments, but no models. Two employees in blue shirts looked at him and laughed. "Excuse me, can you tell me where the model kits are?" he asked them. "Uh, I don't think we have those," one of the blueshirts chuckled. The other just giggled rudely. Finally, Grandpa stomped up to the manager, in a red shirt, telling him his situation. "Sorry, we don't carry model kits. People like to sniff the glue." This only served to make Grandpa angrier. He complained about the employees laughing at him. The manager said, "You see, it's just that you're so darn old."
That's one of the darkest things I've ever written, wouldn't you say? I looked that over, felt an almost physical loathing for it, and threw it in the trash (there was another Drabble on the page as well, but I forget what it said, except for the punchline being, "Wait a minute, is this a dream?" "Yes. Yes, it is.").
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