Time to breathe . . .

I've now done three rewrites of The Sorcerer's Daughter.


I'm at the point where I need some outside opinions on it, so I've sent it to a good friend who is also a good editor for her to take a look. I'm also asking another old friend who is quite an excellent writer herself as well as someone with good very good taste to look it over. Haven't heard back from her yet---she may be too busy to help me out--but she's an excellent first reader so I hope she can.


In the meantime I need to set it aside and quit fiddling with it, until I get the notes back from my friends.


So, what do I do while I wait? Well, plan the next project!


I've got a very basic idea for something an old buddy of mine calls a "bitter homeboy novel." I'll be mulling that over, writing down some thoughts on it, maybe plotting it out.


There's also that pilot for a TV show that I keep droning on and on about. I need to get some work done on that, too. In fact, that'll probably take up most of my creative writing time until I need to resume working on The Sorcerer's Daughter.


It's hard, just letting it sit, but screwing around with it now, while I wait for input from my first readers, would be counter-productive. But sit it must, for now.


I'm taking a couple days off from work--in addition to the holiday--to sort of give myself a chance to breathe, think, mull over, make some decisions, take care of some business. And just relax, without stressing out about anything, for a while.


How am I celebrating Labor Day? Like I said--relaxing. Thinking pleasant thoughts. Maybe watch a few movies or something. I'm not planning on going anywhere, unless something really good turns up.


So, if you are celebrating Labor Day, what are your plans?

Post read-through randomocity

I finished the second rewrite of The Sorcerer's Daughter today.


I still think it's pretty good. I like the characters, and the ending, and I think the language I've used is effective and evocative. I think people will dig it.


Of course, I'm the worst judge of my own work. Hopefully, when I get someone else to read it, I'll get a more honest and detached assessment of its quality.


But that will have to wait a little while longer. I'm planning on spending all day tomorrow just reading it again, straight through, just to get an idea as to the pacing, the flow of the narrative. I won't be making any changes with this pass, though I'll be noting areas that need a little more work.


I did get some ideas for my next novel project, when I'm done with this one. It'll be sort of a coming-of-age psychological thriller. I've got all of the pieces I think I'll need for this one but I'm not sure yet how they'll all fit together.


No hurry, though. It's going to be a while before I can actually work on something else, and I do still have this TV show pilot that I want to write, too. So, I have plenty of time to plot this thing out.


It's been a very long week. I can't go into why, except to say it involves my day job and some frustrations I'm having there. I've got some time off scheduled next week, which I'm planning to devote to working on my manuscript and maybe the TV show project, and that'll give me a respite from all that crap, too.


It's nearly time for the NFL to get started again. I can't wait. Football, how I've missed you!


Oh, well. I'm rambling. But that's why it's called "randomocity."

Struggling to find the cheerful . . .

What a depressing week last week was.


Robin Williams dying, and then the situation in Ferguson, has made me sort of wonder what the point in everything is.


Robin Williams's suicide isn't a mystery to me--I wasn't surprised to learn about his struggles with depression and addiction. Having suffered most of my life with depression--and being hospitalized for it twice--I understand a bit what he was going through and how others around him didn't know about it.


And, for the record, here's my advice if you have someone in your life who suffers from depression. Commit to being there for him or her, or stay away. In other words, don't promise to be there if you don't mean it. Because once you make that promise, the person you made that promise to is going to expect you to be there when their world is at its darkest. If they call on you and you aren't there for them, that makes it much worse. As to what you should do if and when they call? Listen. Maybe they don't have anything to say, and maybe you don't know what to say, and that's fine. As long as they know you are there, and willing to listen, as long as there is that connection, that helps immeasurably. So, even if they call and there's nothing but silence on the line, as long as they know you are on the line, that'll help.


If, however, you promised to be there and they call on you and you just don't have time for them or don't feel like dealing with them, that will only make whatever they're going through that much worse. I can't stress that enough--if you don't think you can be there for that person, then don't make that promise.


As for what's going on in Ferguson, I can't even talk about it now. The authorities in that city provoked the whole thing and they keep making it worse. It seems like nobody in charge has any clue how to handle a volatile situation--it almost seems like they are deliberately trying to keep things stirred up there. It's like they asked experts in how to handle these types of things and did the opposite of what they were told. It's going to get a lot worse there over the next few days, and it'll all be so unnecessary.


I've spent the weekend working on my manuscript, painting, trying to stay inside my own little world for a while. I feel a bit better about things now, but we'll see how long that lasts, when I have to go back out into the world tomorrow.


As for The Sorcerer's Daughter,  I'm pretty happy with the progress I'm making with the rewrite. I'll be through it for the second time in the next couple of days. One or two more passes and I'll be ready to send it to a friend of mine who is a good editor for her to look it over and rip it apart.


So, I've managed to get some stuff done, in spite of this dark mood I've been in lately. I'd say that's a minor victory.

There's no place like home . . .

I got back from my business trip a couple of days ago, safe and sound. And thoroughly reminded of how much I hate to travel.


I did have an alarming moment in my hotel room on Tuesday night. I was wishing I was home and when I closed my eyes and tried to conjure mental images of "home" what came up were images of my apartment back in Savannah. It actually took me a moment to remember what this place here looked like. Sort of freaked me out for a minute.


It's not like I just moved here. I've lived here over three years. But I had to struggle to remember what the living room looked like--I kept envisioning my old living room from before.


Anyway, that was weird.


I was hoping to get a little background work done while I was away, maybe research a couple of things for this TV show idea, and get some work done on that. Did I? Hell, no. I pretty much just vegged out the whole time I wasn't required to do anything. Didn't do a lick of work on any of my own projects.


I did take some pictures of some beautiful flowers at the venue where the event was held. I've started painting one of them now. An associate told me they were Knockout Roses. I guess she would know.


This same associate committed a couple of big time sins when I went to show her the pictures of the flowers I'd taken, by the way--she took the phone I used to take the pics away from me and dropped it (no harm done other than an unwanted adrenaline surge) and then she started flipping through my photo album, even though I asked her not to. Oh, well. She won't be able to unsee some of the things she saw, and she has no-one but herself to blame. She did like the flower pictures, though.


I got home Thursday afternoon, pretty much as tired as I've been in a long time. So tired, in fact, I decided to forego my plan to begin the second pass through my manuscript yesterday. Instead I spent most of the day relaxing as much as I could.


Yeesh. Being around people all flipping day long is exhausting. At the end of the day some of my associates wanted to go out on the town. I wanted to go back to my hotel room, lock the door, and just sit and stare off into space until it was time to go to bed. Which is pretty much what I wound up doing.


Hopefully this will be the last of these things I'll have to do for a while. It'll take me at least a year to finish recovering from this one!

Sunday morning vegging out randomocity

I'm taking some time off from the rewriting, now that I've managed to finish the first pass. Now, I'm going to let it sit for a while.


I have to take a business trip this week and I'm thinking I'll do the next read-through when I get back from that. At that time it will have been a week, which seems to be about the right amount of time to spend away from it.


So, no further updates on The Sorcerer's Daughter other than I've done the first rewrite, and it is now marinating for a while. And yes, I'm still happy with it, overall, though there are some specific areas that I believe need more work.


The trip I mentioned is for my day job--I'm providing support for my co-workers at an Expo out of town. I'll be spending some time on the road and hopefully, since I won't be driving, I'll be able to at least make some notes about this television project that I've been mulling over for a while now. It's time to actually get some words down on the page, I think. At least it's time to plot out the pilot, even if I don't quite have time to write the screenplay.


I'll also be thinking about the show's bible, the central characters, the over-arching story-line, and general thinking about the entire milieu. Specifically, I'll need to develop the politics of the time a little better, because a lot of that will come into play. I've also got to work out some religions that will become important.


This is a bit of a scary time for me, creatively, though--I'm almost done with a project and don't really have another one in mind to start on when I start shopping The Sorcerer's Daughter around to publishers. I don't know why, but it always causes me some anxiety. I've got some ideas for novels but nothing is stepping forward, demanding to be written, at this point.


Which means, once I'm finally done with the rewrites, and had an editor look at it and dealt with the issues that she finds, I'll go back to writing scripts. Which is not a bad thing, considering I enjoy writing scripts, and this TV show idea can eat up an awful lot of my creative time. But I'd kind of like to have an idea for a novel sitting there in my mind, too, just in case I need one.


Oh, well. It's not like I need something right now. Got lots of time yet before it's even a consideration.


I'm watching Apollo 13 on TNT right now, and this movie is a great example of what I try to remind people about--don't consider movies about historical events to be an education about those events. For example, in the movie, Nixon comes across as a total ass. In Jim Lovell's book, Lost Moon, the basis for the movie, Nixon is actually quite sympathetic. Since Lovell was actually there I tend to trust his perception over the folks who wrote the screenplay. While I'm no Nixon defender, there's no point in falsely portraying what he did and said during the events of the movie--the man gave history plenty of material to work with to make himself look like a slime-ball outside of the events of a failed moon mission.


But, if a movie gets you curious about something that actually happened, by all means, go out and educate yourself about it. Even if the movie gets it completely wrong, you would have learned something, and you can amaze and amuse your friends, pointing out exactly where the movie screwed it up!


I try not to do that, myself, but sometimes it's hard to bite my tongue and let a glaring error slide on by . . .