In case you didn’t know already. I haven’t listened to the Asch Recordings for awhile and man…

That’s how I feel about the story I’m working on. I read through it last night and started doing some edits and about 1/4 to 1/3 of the way through I realized it needed more kick; I read it over today and realized it’s soft in the middle and needs something more solid in the center in order to end up where it needs to go and still make sense. This entails rewriting about half the story and I’m still not convinced it’s going to be any good.

I realize that I can’t hang onto something until it’s perfect but I also don’t want to be sending stuff out that has glaring flaws. What’s the point in that? I can read the stuff that’s out there right now and I think I can tell stories at least that good; too many of the stories I read don’t seem to have any heft. The problem is making stories that good. Imagining a good story is easy but actually writing one is much, much harder.

I want this one off my plate now, please.

I finished “Ten-Year Reunion” Monday night. It stopped at 5300 words. Tuesday night was the last night of agility class for Ms. Athena so I got nothing done, but tonight I broke out the hammer and tongs and started whittling away at TYR. And the result?

Some of it is good. A lot of it is not. Does the story go where it needs to? I don’t know. I honestly don’t. Is it salvageable? I think so. It’s certainly not the best thing I’ve written, nor is it anything complex or deep really. This is at the point where I need to polish it up one more time and have a couple people look at it. On the first read, it dragged. I think I’ll be cutting it down by at least 1500 words and trying to make it a bit more punchy.

The first 1000 words is pretty good. I think it sets the tone I’m looking for but I can’t let too much of it be just about a woman wandering around an empty house thinking. Actually, about 90% of this story is a woman wandering around an empty house thinking but that’s not very exciting, now is it? It’s funny how much first drafts are about getting to know the characters and their histories. It’s also funny how almost all of it can be whacked down to a key phrase or two if you do it right.

I spent two hours on the editing of this tonight and got about 1/3 of the way through a 5300-word story that’s taken a couple weeks to write. This is not a fast process.

The weekend is a blur. We spent most of the day Saturday working on the basement getting it ready for dry wall, which is next weekend’s big project. This went until late into the afternoon and I barely had time to shower before my best friend from high school, Joe Lacey, arrived. He’s in town from Brazil where he’s been living for the past eight years or so. Moments later, my brother Todd, his wife Stephanie, and their ninety-pound golden retriever Hobbes showed up. Athena was excited about this; Heineken (the cat) was not.

Amy cooked up a remarkable dinner and we talked and laughed and drank wine. Good wine, but a lot of it and I hadn’t eaten all day so I felt it quickly. We broke out Simpson’s Clue and Amy, as Smithers, won the game. For those of you wondering, it was Krusty the Clown, in the Kwik-E-Mart, with the Slingshot.

Everyone left town by 1:00 which gave us some time to decompress and get used to living with 150 lbs. of dog in the house. We’re watching cousin Hobbes while T&S are in Thailand on vacation. I felt groggy and out of sorts all day, but I did manage to crank out 1,700 words on “Ten Year Reunion” tonight.

End result? I can’t stand it. I always get to this point; I start out with an idea I think is good and once I start writing it seems like it might work. I get in a groove and I think it’s going to be a pretty good story but then there’s some sort of road block or detour and the story changes direction on me. I begin to think the story is not so good, the writing is not so good, and the whole thing is a disaster. I originally thought this was going to be a 1K word piece. It currently stands at just under 4800 and the last scene is yet to go. But I think it’ll end quickly. I won’t know how I feel about it until I give a once-over and a twice-over but then I’ll post it to our critique site and see what happens. At least it’s almost done.

Making good progress on a story called “Ten Year Reunion.” One of those stories that flowed and flowed and flowed and it’s getting very close to the time to check to see whether it’s wine that was flowing or…other less attractive liquids. Still, it’s the first post-Clarion story that is close to completion. I’m eager to see how the crit groups reacts because it’s a bit different. We’ll wait to see.

(sigh) The issue of going to graduate school has cropped up yet again. As Amy pointed out, I can’t keep working low-level admin jobs forever just because they give me time to write. I need to be looking down the road at what I really want to do, and what I really want to do is read and write. It’s something that I happen to be good at but there’s not much work unless you’re teaching, and I don’t want to teach high school. Good in theory, tough in practice. I would love to teach at the college level but those jobs are even fewer and farther between–not to mention the small matter of getting into a good school, staying in school for a number years, the prospect of a long and difficult job search. I know I would love going back to school but this dream is laced with a number of very hard realities that make it difficult to get excited about the prospect. Ugh. I would feel better about taking a gamble if I was 21 instead of 31 but I’m not getting any younger, either, and it’s not like my old jobs, even in soccer, really lit a fire under me.(/sigh)

About 25% of “Pavane.” It’s good but I’m not in love with it. I’ve finished the Second Measure and started the Third and noticed how all three have a great deal to do with craftsmanship. The First Measure deals with trains, the Second Measure deals with the art of Signalling the trains, and the Third Measure has to do with printing. Or at least the first five or six pages do. It’ll be interesting to see how, and if, the Measures ever meet up because right now there’s nothing tying them together.

If anyone is interested in online Texas Hold ‘Em, let me know and I’ll pass along a link. If not, then I pray to the Good Lord in Heaven that the bastards who are flooding my email inbox and blog comment moderation panel a) stop trying their silly and fruitless campaign to post messages to random Internet blogs, and b) sent to the lowest realms of hell to rot for eternity. Seriously, can we find the person who wrote the program that finds innocent blogs and posts advertisements as comments and have him shot in every non-lethal part of his body?

In other news, I have come to a complete stop on “Twenty Pound Hammers.” I want to take the same John Henry theme and write a very different story. Like “back to the drawing board” different. This was about another edit away from going back out and I guess it might still. But it’s no longer the story I want it to be. Most of the comments I got from the Clarion crew made the rusty wheels start turning and I realized that the most important things I want to say about the story aren’t shining through. At all, really. It’s also probable that what this critique exercise really just helped me see what I wanted to say to begin with. That’s little consolation at this point. The story has gotten bigger in my mind and in the last week I had no fewer than three completely random people make references to John Henry. Weird.

I’m reading “Pavane,” another alt-history classic. I found the beginning pretty slow and difficult to get into but now that I’m fifty pages in, it’s starting to roll. Keep watching this space. I didn’t want to put it down at lunch yesterday.

My bedtime reading is Bob Dylan’s “Chronicles” and it’s great. His writing is much like his music, which shouldn’t be surprising. Lots of great characterization in just a phrase or two and his sentences and paragraphs seem to ramble and drift but eventually, and inevitably it seems, they wind back around onto themselves and complete a loop, connect a thought, form a new idea. What seemed disparate and diffuse comes together in one abrupt moment. I also have the feeling that this takes virtually no effort for Mr. Dylan. He just writes what he thinks and this is the way things come out. Lucky man.

Our basement reconstruction project is coming along nicely. Walls are up and insulated and most of the electricity is in. I’ve never been good working with my hands and I’m not now but there is a definite feeling of satisfaction that comes with building something substantial, even if I am just helping out. Amy’s dad is remarkably talented when it comes to this kind of stuff and it’s fascinating to watch how things are made. It’s a good learning process both for learning how to do this stuff but, more importantly for me, witnessing how another mind works to solve problems that I barely know exist.

It’s been in the high 40’s and things have turned to slush. Messiness ensues. Dog brings messiness into house. But it’s hard to argue when she’s so happy.