07.21.2007
The good news is that I've finished a new story for my growing collection. The bad news is that it's been... geez... a couple of months since I finished my last one.
There are, of course, reasons for this.
The first and most pressing reason is that I've been focusing on earning money. Talk about real rejection, one of my clients has been lax about paying me and now I'm having to fight them for some mucho dolores. And when I'm not doing that, I'm working for people that are actually paying me and they've been keeping me busy.
My usual writing schedule works something like this:
- Wake up
- Lie in bed listening to the radio until my back starts to hurt
- Turn on my computer
- Read the morning's news and check out the morning's porno while still listening to the radio
- Perhaps jerk off
- By now it's usually noon so shower
- Turn down the radio, open my spreadsheet of story ideas and ponder the ones that are the most interesting
- Begin a new story, try to complete an already started one, or distract myself by working on some inane thing in my facts-and-figures sheet
- By now it's usually two, so turn up the radio to listen to To The Point
- If it's about the Middle East, turn it back down and maybe jerk off again
- Return to my story or my distraction
- Do it until 6 or 7 PM then quit and go drinking
This is a very time consuming process. As such, I usually try to earn money for six or eight months and then take six months off so that I can focus on writing. This is how I finished a 117K word novel, wrote a 50K word history book, and wrote about 40K worth of words in short stories. You don't get that kind of output with a day job, baby!
The other thing is that when I'm working, I'm just not really in a frame of mind to write. Writing takes creativity. Programing computers takes problem solving. While they may be related on some basic level, it's not really the same thing and I have difficulty detaching myself from my everyday crap to get into the space to make shit up.
Of course, the other piece of bad news is that this is a new story that will probably be shot down like an Allied bomber over Germany.
So what's it about?
Yeah... that's another reason it took me so long. I'll admit that I can relate to most of my characters. There's always something about them that makes them likable to me and that's usually because of their attitude, beliefs, etc. This one is about an environmentalist which means I have nothing to relate to. At least, not until I found the nut of the story. Then I kind of liked her but found the story much easier to write.
But I digress.
This story is about a woman environmentalist who's buddy has gone off the deep end and is trying to prevent colonization by blowing up the ships that are headed out that way. You know, sort of the "We ruined Earth, so let's not ruin other planets" fringe of the environmental movement. The same kind of people who would have been spiking trees in the forest but now have space to fixate on.
Yeah. Them.
Needless to say, things don't go well for the protagonist once the G-Men get involved and she finds herself trapped. What's a girl to do?
And that's it. That's the plot.
Along the way though, I discovered that I think I want to live in Holbrook, NV someday. They have a Buzzard Gulch Trailer Park. Could anything really be more awesome?
Of course not.
So that makes sixteen complete stories for the set. And hopefully a seventeenth not far behind.