Category Archives: Process

Third Time’s Not Necessarily Charming

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esc-skunkThird time refers to one more medical incident I won’t go into detail about and yes, I’m fine, but I am so over 2016. Far too many people passed whose work had meant a lot to me and that hurt. Too many people in this country have apparently lost their minds and that also hurts. I hope 2017 is a better year, but there is a chance, if for no other reason than the bar is so low.

Considering how things were going, it seemed very prudent for me to finally get that $#%# story finished and sent out. I had almost forgotten how freeing it feels to get a story out into the world. Once it leaves your hands you’re no longer bound to examine and second-guess yourself and what you did or should have done. It’s time to move on to the next project, and progress is always a potential in the next thing you do, never in what you’ve already done. That’s how progress works. Proud as I am of the work I’ve produced over the last few years—and I do think the story turned out well–the work I’m mostly excited about is what I’m going to do next, and that is the way it should always be, for all of us.

Interesting times are ahead, but then we’re interesting people. So buckle up, and don’t forget to tell your stories.

Happy Holidays.

2016, Can’t Wait to See the Back of You

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Yoshino-1Well, 2016 continues to suck. Last week I heard about the passing of Tammy Grimes. For those too young to know, she was an actress who won two Tony Awards for her work on the stage (for The Unsinkable Molly Brown and Private Lives). That’s all Wikipedia stuff and you can look it up if you’re interested, and all even before my time. I remember her best for two things: She was the voice of Molly Grue in the Rankin-Bass version of Peter Beagle’s The Last Unicorn (still one of my favorite animated films, excusing the duet between Lady Amalthea and Prince Lyr) and for the narration of several Edward Gorey pieces, especially The Wuggly Ump. Hearing her wonderful whiskey baritone hum of a voice rendering the final lines “…from deep inside the Wuggly Ump.” Gives me chills to this day. RIP.

What I thought was a short story might be turning into the first chapter of a novel. Still too early to tell, but the scope is shifting. This could be a good thing or a bad thing, but only bad if I can’t figure out what the story wants to be. After that it’s just seat of pants to the chair and fingers on the keyboard. I’m ready for something to go right.

Speaking of which, tomorrow here in the States we have a golden opportunity to make 2016 suck a little bit less for everyone here and around the world. Let’s not blow it.

Disposing of the Bodies–With Empathy

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sheffield1One of the joys of living with cats is, every now and then, it will be your job to clean up a crime scene, dispose of (parts of, usually) a body, that sort of thing. They bring their prey home. That’s what cats do. Dogs are predators too, but only under the right circumstances. They’re mostly content to let us handle the food thing. Not cats. They are predators all the time. A well-fed, healthy cat is just a more efficient hunter, that’s all. You know all the time they’re purring in your lap or rubbing against your face they are still thinking “If I was as big as a leopard, I would totally eat you.” And they would.

So what has that got to do with the price of tea in Nepal? Continue reading →

In Which I am (Dis) Organized

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Powers-Shadow-Rough-3If you write long enough, one thing you eventually learn is that actual writing is only part of the picture. A big part of the rest is keeping up with what you’ve written, and the longer you spend in the trenches, the more of a pain keeping everything organized becomes. There are different approaches. The system I use is adapted from one L. Sprague de Camp wrote about using, and if anyone reading this has forgotten or never knew who he was, Google is your friend. Regardless, with some updating it works well enough for me. I keep five separate text files: a Works List, a Submissions List, a Sold List, a Bibliography and a Trunk List.

These are all pretty self-explanatory but I’m going to explain them anyway, if for no other reason than to remind myself how it all is supposed to work, because sometimes I am lax. Ahem. Continue reading →

There Are No Ivory Towers

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sheffield1Not for us, anyway. Case in point, the illustration to the left. That is Sheffield. He is the elder (we think) of our two cat brothers, Sheffield and Sterling, sometimes referred to here as “Da Boyz.” This is the context–yesterday I started a new story. What it is or how it’s going to turn out is, for now, beside the point. What does concern us is the simple fact I had stolen the time for it from a period when I was supposed to be working on something else, and I had taken the time for that theoretical “something else” from other pressing projects. In short, I was writing in the mode of “guilty pleasure,” which is one of my favorite ways to do it. Seriously, I get some of my best work done when I’m supposed to be doing something else. A psychologist might make much of that, but I really don’t care. It’s just the fact, and being forced into early and I believe temporary retirement hasn’t changed that. Continue reading →