7 Days Without Blogging Makes One Weak

I actually miss blogging.  Oh, not every day,* but things keep occurring to me to mention in my blog (for example, I heard a song today playing over an intercom, and I thought, "The band that does this is called Avicii.  I don't know how I know that, but I do."**), but then I remind myself I don't have a blog anymore.  So strange.

Big warned me that stopping writing every day might be disastrous (as it was with him), but the end of the daily blog also had the unforeseen consequence of no longer having to admit when I didn't exercise (or write) . . . and so I didn't.

And Big is right, at least partially.  I can't do in March what I did (or didn't do) in February.

At least I ran on the treadmill last night, and nobody complained about the noise.

I keep going to the library, from time to time, ostensibly to write, but on the 24th I spent pretty much the whole visit reading about Russia's invasion of Ukraine instead.  I guess it would be a relief not to have to admit I only had fifty or so words of writing in a day then (or the several other days when there's no writing at all).

Sometimes, some little thing occurs to me that I should mention it in my blog, and then I remember that I'm not writing in my blog every day anymore, so I shrug it off.  For example, I opened up the file called "The People We Touch" this afternoon, to see if it was ready to record, and after deleting the three alternate titles to it (including "Lara Valentine Story"), the file was exactly 11,110 words long.  I thought about arbitrarily adding a single word to it, taking a screen shot, and posting it on my blog, and then continuing the second draft.  But it seems like there's little point to such things. 

(I went ahead and did it)

I finished reading Abigail Hilton's new novella this week (it's called "Distraction," and I was going to post the cover art on here she sent me, but then it occurred to me that she might not want those images out yet . . . but I went to her website, and this one is up there, so I assume it's fair game).  It's about 98% sure that I'll be doing the audio version (after all, that's why I read through it . . . voicing all the characters aloud, right?  It's not just early onset dementia?), and I tried a new voice for one of the characters (Dazzle) that I hope I can replicate when it comes time to record.

This one will be a bit more challenging than the others due to a couple new wrinkles in the story, but it seems to be all from one character's point of view (Roup's), and that makes keeping the voices straight much easier.  Also, I just did "Lullaby" for her a couple of months ago, so nearly every voice is still clear in my mind.  I'll let you know how that goes.

It's been very cold this last week, with the temperature rarely getting above freezing, and I made the mistake of leaving a can of Coke Zero in my car the other day.  It did not explode--it's usually heat, in my experience, that causes that to happen.  Today when I foolishly opened the can to drink it, though, well, it practically exploded, at least so far as the liquid gushed out of the opening and wouldn't stop, until I was semi-covered with it.  

That's why I kept a blog in the first place, kids.

One of my goals for 2022 was to read x number of really good books (I can't recall the amount).  I've certainly managed with one already.  I grabbed "The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett from the library, and I've been absolutely amazed by how well written it is.  

Follett was a spy and espionage writer** who wrote about assassins and Nazis and human/octopus hybrids trained to emulate monsters in Japanese animation, and then made a switch to a historical epic about the building of a cathedral in medieval England, and suddenly he had a new, broader fanbase.

One of the tricks he keeps pulling is letting a character pull themselves out of a bad situation and remark to themselves, "Okay, now things will be better," and then immediately hit them over the head with another terrible setback.  He does it over and over, to the point where every time a character thinks, "If this works out, some of my problems will be over," I slump in despair, knowing that this is NOT going to work out.

It's the sort of thing that makes me wish to be a much better writer than I am.

And that reminds me of where I am in my own writing.  There's a contest that Marshal Latham and I have decided to enter (and Big Anklevich too, though I won't hold him to it like I will Marshal***), and I have less than three weeks left to write the story and send it in (plus, it has to be 1000 words or shorter, which is always a pain).  So, I keep thinking about it, hoping for inspiration.

Last week, when I went walking, I discovered a little pendant or piece of jewelry on the ground by my car.  I feel like Baba Yaga put it there so that I would use it for a story.  I'll take the next fifteen minutes to try to think one up (feel free to time me).

Well, I just decided to "pants" a story, starting with "Olivia Turner had argued with her boyfriend, and seemed to have won the argument.  But it didn't much feel that way." and continuing from there.  I didn't know where the tale was going, so I've no idea if I'm close to finishing it (or if it's any good or not), but it (almost) always feels good to craft a story.

Unfortunately, the darn thing is already over a thousand words, so there's a cloud to the silver lining.

R.B.O.

*Oh, hell no.  

**I just realized "spy" and "espionage" mean the same thing (if they aren't literally the same word), like when you describe me to your friends as a "dumb and idiotic moron." 

***If Marshal fails to write a story for the contest, he has to mail me one of his fingers.