Also helping re-light the fire under my ass was the Commie Pinko 48 Hour Short Story Contest sponsored on Hanne Blank's livejournal. I participated, wrote a story over a weekend, and received an honorable mention for it. I'm still fond of the story, and currently have it awaiting critiques on OWW.

On a whim, I rearranged and reorganized my entire office and succeeded in creating a workspace that feels "right". Last night was my first night actually working there, and I accomplished a few things:

• Joined OWW, posted "Golden Boy", and critiqued a story
• Reread "Sic Transit Gloria" and "An Eye For an Eye"
• Found a market for "Sic Transit" and sent it out
• Reluctantly trunked "An Eye For an Eye" (more on that)
• Found the first market for "Golden Boy", as soon as it's ready.

I think this weekend I'm going to try and do some character work on Exile (Alex, talk to me, damn you) and maybe, if I'm lucky, finish the untitled story I've been working on for ages.

God, it feels good to be thinking of work again.

What I found was a snippet I wrote earlier this year, a total departure from the spec fic-flavored stuff I usually come up with. I put it away because I didn't know what to do with it. It seems to meander too much for a short story, and besides that, I'm not entirely sure there's enough story for a short story, but maybe enough for a novel. (Does that make sense to anyone but me? It seems like short stories require more story than novels do--there's more room to roam in a novel, to stray from the point. Even enough room to avoid having much of a point at all--just ask Faulkner.)

I love the snippet. I adore the snippet. The characters, in just 300 words, reach up off the page and grab me by the collar. I just don't know what to do with them. And I'm a little afraid to just write them and see where they go, because of the structure problems I'm trying to resolve. Maybe I should give myself a word-count limit. Maybe 3,000 words. Or 5,000. Just see where they go, and then try to corral them into some sort of outline.

Hmm.

Yeah. Definitely going to have to start rebuilding boundaries on when it's okay and when it's not okay to interrupt writing time. For myself too, cause I no longer have time to screw around and be distracted. I might take to leaving the house to write again. I dunno. Something.

It's very very hard for me to analyze my own work--I mean, I know it's hard for everyone, but there are times when I feel like I just can't think deep enough to write the way I want to write. Like I'm just floating over the surface of everything I write, and when I try to focus more, to take an idea further, my brain hits a wall. Part of it's mental laziness, I know. My brain gets so tiiiired, poor thing. It's not just fiction writing; I've gotten similar comments on several of my lit papers. "Explore this more. I want to see more of this idea. Expand on this."

Yeah. Maybe it's all laziness. I want to try to get out of the habit of slapping a coat of paint on my writing and calling it done. I want to build up my mental stamina a little. I need to do brain callisthenics.

Man, writing is hard.

Also, I had a few revelations on The Exile's Daughter, and I want to start trying to figure out how to work them in.

And did I mention I got a new laptop? That I can actually work from? Yeah. I think it's time to stop dwelling on the vagaries of RL and get back to acting like a writer again.

(You hear that, Universe? I said, ANY. MINUTE. NOW.)

I'm starting to get that itch, the one that says I need to write, and soon. I've been looking at my priorities again, and I'm forced to ask myself, just how many reruns of Law & Order does one need to watch, really? I'm starting to let my reasons for not writing turn into excuses for not writing, and that just needs to stop.

First on my list of things I want to work on is a revision of "Sic Transit Gloria" which recently came back with some highly complimentary comments and an invitation to rewrite and resubmit. The rewrites are pretty much done on paper, I just need to input them.

I'm also turning The Exile's Daughter over and over in my head. I've wondered, pretty much since I started writing it, if it wouldn't make a better YA novel than an 'adult' novel. The conflicts and subplots seem like the type that would appeal more to adolescents, maybe, than adults (which isn't to say that adults couldn't enjoy it--and for that matter, unless my readers are just being polite, haven't enjoyed it). I'm starting to think that maybe, just maybe, I've been away from the story long enough to actually start rewriting it, no really for real I mean it this time. I think I'm just going to have to bug Mer for rewriting tips, since now she's the experienced one here. ;)

We'll see. I'm all a-tingle with nervous anticipation.

I have to giggle at my naive self from five years ago: "I now count myself as a 'real' writer." Yeah. That didn't last. I still waver on that point.

But still. Time to get back on the horse, I think. The time away was useful in one respect: it gave me some distance from all the pieces I was working on, particularly in revising. I had sort of an epiphany about my novel-writing, specifically about The Exile's Daughter. I don't think I know how to structure a scene. I tend to write from a roleplayer's POV, where if I skip over some time, I absolutely have to summarize what took place during that time before I can get to the good stuff. Most of the time, this leads to clunky scenes. At least, this is my theory. Now I'm almost eager to reread Exile, and maybe see if my theory holds any water.

But then, if I start rewriting it again, there's the whole worldbuilding mess to take care of. Hrm. Although, perhaps it's not as much of a mess as I think. A reread will answer that question too.

All in all, I've been a little frustrated at my lack of motivation, and have been experiencing some shadows of self-doubt--but I think the latter comes from a warped sense of time, an unrealistic expectation of how long it's going to take me to realize a lot of my writing goals. I've started to lose sight of writing as an enjoyable thing, something I love.

To try and remedy that, I'm trying to go back to writing a story longhand, the way I did back in middle school. I've got about 7 or 8 pages so far, and for now it's just known as the David story because of my ineptitude with titles. I feel like I'm reconnecting with something through this, which can only be a good thing.

I'm debating focusing on short stories for a bit, finish up the half-finished stories I have lying around, cleaning up the couple I've finished but that haven't seen the light of day yet--you know, clean off my desk before the next novel. Not that I'm not poking around the edges of the novel, mind you, but I'd like a clean slate (not to mention more things in circulation!) before I really focus all my attention on it.

(She says, optimistically. I start a new job on Tuesday, so I imagine writing will be back-burnered, at least for a little bit.)

I'm mocking the chick lit genre and taking on Pygmalion at the same time--what's with me and the Greco-Roman stuff lately?