Yesterday (Saturday,) I attended Paul Word Richmond‘s Word Festival at Gateway City Arts in Holyoke, MA. There was some memoir (Hiya, Rick Paar!) some fiction, some very violent high fantasy, some shamanist stuff, some activist poetry… just a whole lot of different shades of poetry. I read a bunch of American Sentences I’d written as a self-challenge. It was fun and I’m so glad I went.
I have stopped working on The Ghost Story at 15k+. I have been splitting my attentions between it and The Story, and at this point, it’s clear that The Story has to take precedence. At least until I get this scene-by-scene summary of it together, it has to be my whole focus… Except for Wicked Queer. Submissions are open there for next Spring, and there’s also the upcoming Docs fest in October. I have to carve out time for that, now, too.
There’s just no room for the Ghost Story. It will have to wait until something else falls out of the schedule for me to go back to it. That’s fine. I think there’s promise there, but I need for that to be my all-consiming thing, not my third (or even farther down the list) thing. If I tried to finish it now, I’d just try to rush to a probably-wrong ending. Gotta think it through. I love my characters, I think there’s some beautiful tension in it… I just need to not force the characters into something fake. Still shooting for 20K on it, but it might take a few more words to get there.
Also trying to keep the content coming at this .com, but it’s lower on the priority list. I will strive to keep the Events page up-to-date, but there’s honestly not a lot happening, as I’m gearing up for both the Fest and the second draft of The Story.
Submissions: I have a flash fiction piece in queue at The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and I am about to start trying to shop some of these American sentences. Submissions seem to be on the short side now, but The Story is at 120K and The Ghost Story will likely be a little over 20K.
Broadcast From the Brain Radio 