Digging through my notes and books, I suddenly realized I made Eamonn, Brendan's brother, too young by two years. If he's to be at Queens College in the fall of 1968, he has to be about 16 when the story begins. Which isn't that big a deal...except it's one of those little details that can kill a story's believability. I have to be careful about that; I'm not a great detail person.
I've always been that way, creatively. My sketches and paintings fall under the same aegis -- fill it in and adjust it and fill it in and adjust it and fill it in until it becomes something like you want, and try to make your mistakes seem deliberate. And half the time my work comes out nice...but there was also that half that's such crap, all you can do is never let it see the light of day.
It's the same with my scripts and stories -- I keep layering in details to build honest characters, and that seems to work better for me. In fact, the one short story I've written where I deliberately pared it down to the bare minimum is getting zero interest from the magazines I've submitted it to. It's probably too spare, and it doesn't help that wrote it in real time and first person, refusing to use any past tenses except in the dialogue. It may turn out to be nothing but an interesting experiment. We'll see.
I got a short sweet review for HTRASG on a Finnish blog, and the blogger plans to read more. That makes me feel good about my process. In fact, his comments probably sold a few Kindle versions of the book, according to my Amazon sales report. Too bad that doesn't translate into cash.
No word back on LD...and I halfway think some of my lack of focus on POS this last week has been because I'll need to do another draft on it to work in the publishers' notes (meaning I assume I'll get some) and suggestions offered by those I asked to read it, so I can't zero in on Brendan, just yet. All I can do is research and build a solid timeline for his story to take place in.
A guy I know wants me to help him turn his script into a book -- a period novel of his life as a cop in NYC between 1968 and 1973. It's actually intriguing to me...but I have to finish POS first.
Dammit, I'm gonna have to live to be a hundred to get everything done, at this rate.
I've always been that way, creatively. My sketches and paintings fall under the same aegis -- fill it in and adjust it and fill it in and adjust it and fill it in until it becomes something like you want, and try to make your mistakes seem deliberate. And half the time my work comes out nice...but there was also that half that's such crap, all you can do is never let it see the light of day.
It's the same with my scripts and stories -- I keep layering in details to build honest characters, and that seems to work better for me. In fact, the one short story I've written where I deliberately pared it down to the bare minimum is getting zero interest from the magazines I've submitted it to. It's probably too spare, and it doesn't help that wrote it in real time and first person, refusing to use any past tenses except in the dialogue. It may turn out to be nothing but an interesting experiment. We'll see.
I got a short sweet review for HTRASG on a Finnish blog, and the blogger plans to read more. That makes me feel good about my process. In fact, his comments probably sold a few Kindle versions of the book, according to my Amazon sales report. Too bad that doesn't translate into cash.
No word back on LD...and I halfway think some of my lack of focus on POS this last week has been because I'll need to do another draft on it to work in the publishers' notes (meaning I assume I'll get some) and suggestions offered by those I asked to read it, so I can't zero in on Brendan, just yet. All I can do is research and build a solid timeline for his story to take place in.
A guy I know wants me to help him turn his script into a book -- a period novel of his life as a cop in NYC between 1968 and 1973. It's actually intriguing to me...but I have to finish POS first.
Dammit, I'm gonna have to live to be a hundred to get everything done, at this rate.
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