Short stories, poetry, haiku, expository and technical non-fiction. Report Cards and observations on writing. This began as my repository of exercises from the "What If?" self-help writers group at AOL. It has become more and less, since leaving AOL.

Thursday, November 11

Chapters 3 & 4 Reportage

I'm struggling, there's no doubt about it. I'm hung up on quality, as one of my dear compatriots gently pointed out in an obtuse manner. And she's right. I am missing the point of this exercise. It is all about quantity, not quality. And I am thwarting that goal every time I stop to research a fact or sequence of events. I had Chapter 3 whipped out in pretty good time - if you don't count the time I spent researching stuff. What a wonderful way to suck time away - and I have had major, major suckage, on top of my own special skills at procrastination.

I wasn't much better with Chapter 4. I had it half written by the time my wife got home from work yesterday. Wrote the other half today. So, averaging 2000 words a day, I'll just make the deadline with enough words. That's a consolation, but it means cracking my personal whip harder than I am prone to do to myself.

We'll see.

Characterization is starting to fill out. Still have a few more to introduce. I think I'm going to gloss over his time at Annapolis, other than to lay the foundation for his meteoric rise to Lieutenant Commander. There's the folks in the FBI office in Atlanta, and he's got another love interest or two waiting their turns in the spotlight, too. And oh, yeah. Just who is the bastard that put him in the box?

Anyway, that is where I'm at. On a technical note, I think I've fixed it so you can leave comments - I'd checked a box that shouldn't have been checked. Oops!

Toodles. Care packages with lots of chocolate would be appreciated...

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About Me

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Well past (by at least a decade) the half century mark. One foot in the grave, the other on a banana peel at the rim of the abyss and the view from here is disconcerting. I am a former student, pearl diver, cook, truck driver, firefighter, EMT, CEO, Town Fire Warden, mechanic, oiler, marine engineer and computer whiz bang. Mostly I sleep these days in an aluminum tube. And So It Goes... I waste my time reading blogs and kvetching about the weather, playing with our Schipperke sidekick, Ignatz McGraw and waiting hand by foot upon my wife, the Queen of our Hovel, She Who Must Be Obeyed (SWMBO).