I came out of the AWP conference pretty jazzed about Meet the Larssons and Project Hometown. I jotted down half a dozen good ideas to incorporate into the revision of MTL, and at least that many ideas for Hometown. Since the end of the conference, however, I haven’t done anything on either project.
Some of that was because I wanted to spend some time with the Siren and the kids, and some of was about being a little burned out after three days thinking about almost nothing but writing. But some of it, I have to admit, was about screwing around on Twitter and Facebook and other places on the internet (or, as our kids call it, “teh stoopid internet,” because it conks out so often). Tonight it was a combination of screwing around with a new toy and doing real bill-paying work.
But tomorrow, as we all know, is another day. After the kids go to bed, I plan to get at least an hour in on Meet the Larssons. As for Project Hometown, I think I’m ready to start the scene-by-scene spreadsheet in the Snowflake Method of outlining. I’ll try to get going on that over the weekend.
During the conference, I met people who had been working on their novels for years, so I don’t think I’m going to beat myself up too much for taking a few extra days off. But my fingers are starting to itch from lack of output, and tweets, status updates, and blog posts aren’t going to cut it much longer.
I received another couple of rejection slips recently, by the way, for TTB and “Mr. President.” “Jimmies” is now the only story I have out there. I think both of those stories need to be trunked for a while, to give them (or me) time to get some distance. I also want to consider getting back to “Jamie’s Story,” which I stopped working on last month and has lingered, unfinished, more or less in the gloom ever since. What can I say? It’s a tough business.
The Unfocused Life 