found_drama

Two hours well spent tonight. Reviewing notes going back to October of last year. Making tweaks to the ideas. Committing to other ideas that I had been “iffy” on. And then: writing. For the first time since I wrapped up “draft 1d” or “e” or whatever. Probably a good six months since the last writing session. (NaNoWriMo not really counting.)

That said, I was thinking about how I had committed to doing another draft this year. And how I had done nothing about that goal in January.¹ Anyway, I did take something of an easy way out for the night… I chose a familiar starting point and recycled some old *ahem* time-honored material as a way of jump-starting myself.²

There was a bit more to it though.  I decided on a new approach for this draft.  A new approach in terms of mechanics and process in addition to some of the different angles I’m going to take for the narrative proper.  Lots of good lessons learned this past November though.  Every one of them will come in handy.

So I managed to put in 1,361 words for the night (about 500 of which are probably “new”) plus some deep review of the “old” notes and text  Not a bad showing.  Now I just need to do it nine more times to get on pace for the year.  And stay there.

1. That looks like this.[↩]
2. This shouldn’t be so bad. For one thing, it’s a start. And besides, one of the Eno/Schmidt Oblique Strategies is: “Define an areas as ’safe’ and use it as an anchor.”[↩]

• Community Gardens

  (tags: gardening Burlington todo)

• Use line breaks in iTunes Comment field

  via Macworld: Mac OS X Hints

  (tags: iTunes hack todo)

• flavordav: A Political History of SF

  via Beyond the Beyond: http://blog.wired.com/sterling/2007/02/a_political_his.html

  (tags: fiction history literature scifi essay todo writing research politics)

Tagged by Pete through the Honor’s System, here’s my contribution to the meme-licious “Five Things You (Presumably) Didn’t Know About Me”:

1. I played lacrosse in high school. But only in high school. Those four years and not much more than a tossed ball before or afterward.
2. I took three and a half years of Russian in high school, was a member of Слава (the Russian Honor’s Society), and was a TA for one semester. Whether this comes before or after the advent of my Cold War Nostalgia is (however) debatable.
3. My first attempt at writing a novel was around age nine when I attempted to construct a narrative line for G.I. Joe that didn’t suck (like the deeply unsatisfying movie from the previous year). If I remember correctly, I got about 30 or 40 pages written before abandoning the project. Which I suppose is pretty good for a nine year old.
4. I am self-taught with just about everything technical (i.e., code-writing & programming, systems admin-ish tasks, graphics and design, etc.) that I use at my job and at home. But you knew that. What you probably didn’t know is that (a) I don’t brag about this anymore because it seems like everyone else is self-taught as well and (b) the one time that I attempted formal training in this field, I found it to be a miserable failure.
5. My favorite snack of all time is Pepperidge Farm Goldfish (the cheddar flavor). I often buy them by the gallon (you know the one I’m talking about?) and just pour them right into my mouth. It sounds gluttonous but really it’s just to keep my hands from getting encrusted with a light layer of salt and orange crumbs.

And let’s see… I’ll tag Wick, Tim, and Creighton.