It sure seems like the population in Florida is going to drop down considerably over the next decade or so. I feel sad for the Floridians that did not vote for this and do not have any means to escape it. What a shit show.
I am currently caught between a number of writing projects, including that college essay I’ve been working on. In the course of a check-in phone call with my Mom last week, she agreed to give my paper a review. She must be pretty bored in her retirement, because she turned that review around in a few hours. The next morning, she gave it another look, and sent me back a second, even more thorough review. Me lacking a cohort, my Mom’s post-retirement boredom is quite the boom.
I’m quite thankful my Mom did give my work a review, because I’m very much in need of the feedback. The feedback provided by the teacher(?) of the course on my first attempt was quite helpful, but I’ve made a lot of changes in my drafts since then. Now I’m working on incorporating both sets of feedback into my work and I keep finding myself stuck in the same half a paragraph and just doing endless rewrites on it. That is not a sustainable process. I’ve got to start looking at other writing techniques. The biggest one I’m both aware of and also not using is The Outline. The course also introduced me to the concept of a “reverse outline”, which I have given a try but don’t think I’ve done correctly. I think I need to take that part of my process more seriously, so maybe that’s something I’ll focus on this week. Or maybe, more likely, I’ll forget and just keep rewriting shit until I give up and roll with the latest version as my second attempt.
I like the idea of an outline and want to use it for my fiction writing, but I gotta be honest… I think I’ve forgotten how to do one. Or maybe I never really knew? I mean, I definitely did this in grade school, and I’m pretty sure I wasn’t bad at it. But these days I’m not entirely sure I know what I’m doing. In anything, really, which is sometimes a bit daunting. Odd as it may seem, I actually feel a bit encouraged when recognizing my vast ignorance.
The outline as a tool was last planted in my brain by a friend that is also interested in science fiction writing. Well, I suppose I’m not entirely sure I can count her as a friend just yet. She’s the sister of a friend, but we’ve chatted a fair bit over the past few years, and she’s shared some of her ideas. They’re fascinating and I’m excited to read what she writes. The outline came up because she’s planning on using one to lay out her story before diving into the writing. I’m not sure I’ve quite captured her plan there, so take my recounted with a grain of salt. Anyway, I wonder if it would be rude to ask her to share how she does her outlines.
Along with her is another friend of mine that I’ve known since high school. He’s a great friend, and also someone whom is interested in writing some science fiction. Oh, I guess I’m not entirely sure that his writing interest is actually in this genre, but I seem to recall him mentioning it. Did he? Hmm… Anyway, he’s a much more serious reader than I, and I was delighted to recently find out that writing and the written word more generally are in his top interests. I’d really like to lean on him for my pursuit of poetry, because outside of a few popular poets, I’m really not sure where to start. He, on the other hand, used to write poetry. And his wife backs up his work, so you know, I’d like to see it. I do mostly want to see his work because he’s my friend and I want to see what my friends are up to. But also, yeah, there is poetry that I have liked and while I’m not sure I’ve got poetry writing in me per say, I do think it would help me in all of my writing. It certainly can’t help but improve the lyrics in my shallow music writing. Maybe that’s a class I should line up next. Can I get through some literature and art appreciation more quickly than I’m getting through this English Comp. stuff? I really hope so. Goddamn, this is all taking so very much time.
I think the three of us have all talked about sharing our work with each other, but I don’t know that we’ve really nailed anything down yet. I have personally promised, at least twice now, that I would clean up a story and share it with them… and I haven’t. Just like the essay, I just keep getting stuck on a very small part of it and spinning my wheels on rewrite after rewrite. I guess I don’t mind that as part of the process, but I also feel like I need to put guard rails up around rewrite sessions. Like I need to use the full tool set, not just gesture at the box while dicking around with the same beat up old hammer.
So I’m committed to wrapping up a draft of that this week as well. I had meant to send it out last week and didn’t… not a great look. So I’m going to spend some time on it tonight and if it’s good enough, ship off a draft to them tomorrow. If it’s not done tonight, then I will put all other projects on hold tomorrow until it’s good enough. Then I’ll send over the first volley, ask for feedback, and encourage them to send me theirs.
Well now, that’s starting to feel like a plan. Okay, then it’s settled, that’s what we’re doing. I’ll report back on how that goes later this… hell, I don’t know when, I guess if and when anything comes of it. They, frankly, have day jobs and might be too busy to entertain my bullshit.
But that’s it for today, one more in the books. I should start working on a sign-off. That would be fun.