Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Wearing Black Today

I finally got around to updating the web pages today. In doing so I retired 4 stories. One may make a comeback if a suitable anthology ever appears (unlikely but you never know). The others are sci-fi and fantasy stories I wrote back in mid 2007. They were my first fumbling attempts at writing short stories and in trying to find a voice and a genre with which I felt comfortable. I've kept 2 others from that time period which could have joined them, but they are stories I really liked. They need work, so they currently have a status of "on hold" until I find the time and inclination to revamp them.

In clearing out my WIP page, it now looks like I'm less than prolific. I imagine from the outside, I look very much like a Whirling Dervish of sorts - very colourful, full of energy and movement, and tiring to watch, but underneath I'm more like the proverbial tortoise. I'm very slow and methodical, have evolved a hard shell, and enjoy eating and sex.

And I'm fine with that - now. It took a while for me to calm down enough to not try killing myself in churning out work. Reading and diploma work is more than enough at the moment. Add to that reviews, trying to write a novel and trying to work on the occasional short is plenty for me. One thing at a time. And now I may have sports articles to write - more than enough.

Last night I had another look at my current short in progress and began working on the third draft of that. Submissions don't open till the 1st of March so there's plenty of time. I have a bunch of new ideas, a new ending, and new threads running through it adding lots of depth. It's also very Australian which is in line with my writing of Newland. It's taken me a while, but I'm starting to enjoy writing about my own country.

So things are slowly starting to move forward again, but this time with a very measured pace.

We'll see how things go.

Speak soon

BT

5 comments:

  1. I have a feeling I need to do the same thing with some of my older works. Maybe rewrite them and start a collection to send out.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I need to clear out my old stories too. I've retired them unofficially, but with the vague guilty feeling that I ought to dust them off and work on them some more. Some of them are probably worth working on, but I know some of them are just not. And I don't even want to think about my WIP folder, ugh.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Your WIP page is certainly interesting. It gives me an idea to make a private spreadsheet for myself.

    Oh, and although I'm the furthest from patriotic you'll find, I've been finding writing 'locally' quite enjoyable too. I'm mostly tying in iconic locations in Melbourne into my stories.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I am aAussie writer and love science fiction. I think it is a great mind expanding genre. The pc game world is now almost a new art genre bringing people into a fully 3-d sci-fi world they can interact in with other players. There is a great leap of the imagination in every string of code.
    I myself am a sci-fi writer and have a novel called Doom Of The Shem.Doom Of The Shem is a science fiction novel that incorporates the horror of military action with the unavoidable hostilities that occur when an alien species invade a planet in search of food. The barbarity of war is brought to light by the work achieved by the nurses and medical personnel of the planets inhabitants. While a full blown military action story emerges from an ensuing war that involves the whole planet. It is especially centered on a squad of the planets army forces, who fight the alien invaders.
    doomoftheshem.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  5. Okay - enough is enough. This is the second comment L Clarke has left on this blog that amounts to a free ad for their writing. I let the first one slide because new writers need a little help wherever they can find it. This is pushing it.

    So be warned. Any further ad's placed in comments without asking first and I'll delete them.

    ReplyDelete