Semi-Monthly Update 01-July-2024

A terrible AI-generated illustration of a scene from my new book. This is terrible. This isn't the scene at all. Let me repeat, this is not actually a thing that happens in the book. At all.

Why yes, the title does say this is the 01-July-2024 update. And why yes, it is 04-July-2024 that I'm actually posting this. I don't see a problem with that.

Reading:

Still slowly making my way through Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut. Honestly I haven't made much progress. It's good though!

Writing:

I'm supposed to write a new short story every two weeks. That didn't happen this past two weeks. But I did two stories in the two weeks before that, so I'm still claiming victory. An on-average victory.

But! I wrote two chapters, 3,600 words, of what might turn into a novel, tentatively named Holes in the Sea. I'm somewhat obsessed with it at the moment, probably more than it deserves. Definitely more than it deserves. That's how projects always go with me. In addition to the chapters, I did gobs of research for it. Gobs. Great jiggling gobs. I invented a pidgin language for it.

The splash image on this post is a terrible AI-generated illustration of a scene from Holes. This is terrible. This isn't the scene at all. Let me repeat, this is not actually a thing that happens in the book. At all. The characters don't look like that. The setting doesn't look like that. It's a book for adults, not middle schoolers. But hey, blog posts are better with splash images, right? Right?

Craft:

I'm still well behind on critiques. I did receive some great feedback from one of my writing groups on my novelette, Epochs Met. The general consensus is that it needs more steady pacing. I think this is correct. The experience of getting feedback on that story, which does not have anything you'd call a "central conflict" has been really interesting. Some readers (who are also writers) really want it to have a central conflict, and for that conflict to come into focus within the first quarter or third of the story. I really do not want it to have a central conflict, and it doesn't. Many good stories do not, but I'm starting to see how this can cause problems. The biggest problem being boredom. So yes, I believe you can write stories without central conflicts. And I'm also realizing that this is hard to do well.

One of Margaret Atwood's "rules" for writing is simply: Hold the reader's attention. However, she also points out that you don't know your reader, and what one reader finds interesting, another finds boring. You can discover the truth of this by writing just about anything and submitting it to a critique forum or writing group. My writing is boring. And my writing is interesting. My writing focus right now, and with Holes in the Sea specifically, is to know my reader, and make the latter true for that kind of reader.

I procured a used copy of Great Beginnings by Georgianne Ensign, which is mostly a book of the openings of other books, with some commentary. It was not as useful as I'd hoped it would be. (I've only skimmed it.) But I am, I think, starting to get a handle on how to establish the omniscient POV clearly in the opening, which I've neglected to do well in the past. This is another thing I'm being intentional about in Holes in the Sea.

Business:

There's nothing stopping me from sending two short stories, The Rocky Path and The Muse, out to journals. Nothing stopping me, but I haven't done it.