Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Ups and Downs

Maybe the editing gig will be more fun than I expected. Still, never again! I don’t deal well with the guilt of judging a submission to be sub par and rejecting it. I do quite like reading the good entries though; so, I guess it all evens out. Got three months of it ahead of me, the deadline being April 30. Oh well, I suppose it’s good experience.

An experience that I’m finding a bit frustrating is the article for The Braille Monitor. The contact from whom I need a few more details in order to finish the article still hasn’t e-mailed me back. I suppose it’s time to light just a small fire under her. After all, she’s the one who wanted publicity in the first place. I want to get the article finished and sent to the editor before he completely forgets having talked to me about it. Hence the necessity of nudging the contact. Blah! I hate being pushy. But, if that’s what it takes, that’s what it takes. Sigh

By far the biggest problem of the past few days has to do with my high fantasy story, “The Lady of the Stars.” One member of my writers group made the just and reasonable observation that, if the Steorraburg (the palace that is home to the title character) is a place of legend and quest, it needs to be more than three days’ ride away from home. There is, it has always seemed to me, a compelling reason for the journey, especially the journey home, to be as short as possible, a reason that the reader, not having gotten that far yet, couldn’t be aware of. Still, his point is a good one. If I’m going to do this, I ought to do it right. After a few days’ thought, I have come up with a somewhat weak but workable way around the problem of the journey’s length.

But that minor success exposed a major, potentially project-stopping problem. I have nothing, nada, absolutely zipparoony in the way of minor, wayside adventures for my young, would be hero. No fragment, or scrap or shadow of an idea either in the computer or in the dim recesses of my mind. I always thought the violent imagery of racking or cudgeling one’s brains was extreme, hyperbole. I’ve learned better. Never before have both my personal slush pile and my imagination failed me...utterly and completely. I have no notion what to do except maybe to proceed with working on the parts I do have some vague notion about as well as with the swordsmanship research in the hope that inspiration might strike. But, it’s discouraging. I was enthusiastic about this project, and actually dared to voice the hope of finishing it in the foreseeable future. That audacity, that arrogance must have been what caused the problem that has drawn me up short. It’s very upsetting!

Oh well. Better go look at today’s batch of submissions. I meant to do it earlier in the day, but somehow the day got away from me.

2 comments:

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