The inertia of my recent swing has had some unexpected results. Everything is up in the air. Work, life, writing, the whole deal. Changes at work promise to further destabalize things. Lack of respect by the uppers continues. Changes in other departments may soon force changes in my own. Perhaps they already have.
The novel is getting there. The third act is in full swing. At least one main character is dead. There is no turning back now. I expect to be done by the end of the month. Then it will be done. I will have written a novel. If I can do that. I can do anything.
It's funny how thoughts come to you late at night. Last night I was awake, worrying about this and that, and for once it wasn't just a useless exercise. I had an idea on how to reduce my stress at work and today I make some inquires and met with agreement. Nothing definite yet. Even if it doesn't work out the way I hope, it makes me feel good that this is something that I can take control of. Empowering if you will.
IT'S DONE! Much to my surprise all the loose end gathered themselves up today. The first draft of the novel is done. That's it. I've written a novel.
Of course now the rewrite starts. Actually, I'm going to take a few weeks off from the novel and work on some short story ideas. Then, probably in March, I'll start in on the rewrite. There's a whole lot of work to do. The story will be pretty much unchanged, but there are alot of details that I glossed over in the first draft and there are some awkward moments in a few places that new smoothing over.
Time is an interesting thing. Now that the novel is finished. (Well the first draft anyway.) I went back to some short stories that needed a rewrite. I started working on a story that I liked very much when I wrote it, but now it seemed really simplistic. It didn't say to me what I thought it said when I wrote it. In fact it doesn't say much of anything.
Disapointed I read through another story I thought was good. And it was. It needs work, but it's a good start. It was exactly as I remembered it. I've started the rewrite, in fact I've already doubled its length, and it is going very well.
Went to the kart track today. I thought it would be empty being a friday afternoon, but there were three groups from three different companies with reserved track time. My poor wife had to sit and wait with me for an hour while I waited for track time.
I finally hit the track and it felt like I was driving on ice. The cold weather we've been having made the track slick and the tires never did get up to temperature. It took a few laps to adjust to the slipping and sliding, but I managed some very consistent laps. Fortunately it was the same for everybody, and while my best lap was over a second off me previous best, it was still only about two-and-a-half seconds off the best time for week, which is typical for my better times.
Oh yeah, and once you give in to the fact that you're going to slide, it's way fun tossing the kart sideways in every corner.
Still working on the short story. I think I'm over-writing it, but that's okay. It's easier to take out the fluff than it is to build up an incomplete idea.
If you want your life to change. Make a commitment that the desired change would interfere with. Then the change will present itself and rather than just wishing it would come true, you will have to make a choice. And as Papa Legbe says, "Choices aren't problems, they're gifts." But that's another story. I'll let you know my choice shortly. (The pendulum gathers speed.)
Changes aren't happening as quickly as I thought but things are well in motion. I've got some time off from work coming up and hope that will refresh me. Then it's down to the tasks at hand.
For a couple weeks now I've been looking for markets for several of my short stories. I'm not having any luck. Not like previous stories that were rejected by the journals and magazines to which I submitted, which I thought were a good fit. These new stories seem to have no fit. So what I'm going to do is start rolling them out here. Stay tuned.