Got the short story posted, or rather, the posting is underway.  First chapter went up yesterday and another will go up every week.  I've gotten a couple good reviews which is a relief.  Mostly I want to make sure what I write is readable...that readers stay in the story and aren't distracted by awkward phrasing or plot holes.  Even over at gayauthors the story won't draw a lot of readership but I'm glad I put it out there.  Now I can finally start something new.  I think I'll do a prompt response tomorrow and start outlining for the fantasy book on Thursday.

This is my first WVU blog entry.

Instead of editing my short story yesterday, I ended up composing a response to a writing prompt.  I read the prompt in the morning and a partially formed story dropped into my head immediately.  I had a 2 hour bike ride planned and spent most of it thinking about the prompt and structuring the story in my head.  I worked it out in the afternoon, about 2 ½ hours of writing.  Not much editing.  Just did a read through and fixed a couple things, then ran spell check.  2200 words.  It’s not perfect and I was starting to go down the road to make it perfect, but I forced myself to go pencils down and hands in the air.  It was starting to become distracting and that’s not the point of writing prompts.  At least, I don’t think it is.  Anyway, I submitted it and since I’m new to the site where I posted it, am waiting to see if it’s approved.  I think I followed the submission guidelines.  They say, however, to keep the submissions a “reasonable length” without defining reasonable.  I define it as something that can be read under an hour.  2200 words should fit the bill for most people.  However,  it is significantly longer than most responses to prompts that I’ve read on the site.  Guess I’ll see how it goes and in any case, it was a fun exercise.  I feel guilty for abandoning my short story on a day when I had the time to turn it, but it was probably good for me to take a break.  I re-worked a major section of the short story on Saturday.  The troublesome part sounds good now.

I have tried to write a few emails now addressed to Mr Hembree telling him that I wasn't aware that my subscription was due and that I was taken aback when I saw that the subscription money for the next year was taken out. I haven't used the WVU for over 7 months, I wasn't interested anymore, as I was not happy with no feedback in the classrooms. So I discontinued my use of the WVU. 

I didn't know that I was automatically registered for a subscription fee to be taken out of my credit card. I feel that an email warning me of the upcoming subscription should have been sent out and I would have cancelled. So many things have happened, I have moved home, and my life circumstances have changed immensely, that I completely forgot about WVU and now I have been debited money from my account that I cannot afford to lose.

As dawn blushes on the new day, I gaze out.  Snow cuddles the world close to its breast. 

A foot and a half of snow.  It sneaked upon us, when the world slept.  On cold, small feet it crept into our fields and climbed the roofs of our houses.  With whispers, it shushed the birds and sang the small creatures to sleep.  

Work has been c.r.a.z.y. lately.  But enough of that.  I managed to finish the first draft of my story.  (Fist pump air!).  I have begun the re-read, fact checking, and taking notes on where to edit and smooth things out.  On the fact checking I looked into a long held medical assumption and discovered, as one often does with assumptions, it was inaccurate.  Unfortunately, the error impacts a premise for Some of the protagonist's actions.  I really thought it would kill the story when I first discovered it, but by the evening I had a solution in place.  Very excited to be at this point in the crafting of my short story.  Wish I didn't need any sleep...or exercise.  If I could give up either of those I'd be writing whenever I'm not working.

I have created two blogs. 

1. http://naturalimprovements.blogspot.com/ This one talks about all sorts of things. It is recent, but I do have a good amount of interesting things there.

I did it! Got Chapter 4 onto paper. I started rewriting this chapter 4 times. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come (e.g. chapter 5 will need 5 attempts, chapter 6 six attempts, etc.) I knew what needed to happen in this chapter. Knew that arc of thinking the characters had to undergo to move the story along, and pretty much had a good setting ready for the action to take place. Really struggled on where to enter the scene. Finally a figured out that I was coming in too early and letting the main character do too much thinking. Too much mulling over. But it took 4 attempts before I got it down satisfactorily. On a reread, the tempo of the narrative and dialogue seems pretty good. There are things to clean up but I can do that when I go in to edit.

On the plus side, I am pretty sure I know how the characters are going to get to The End. I say pretty sure because after I few days of knowing For Sure how they got there, I've started wondering if it's too corny. Too much of an <insert eye roll here> ending. It's a fairy tale so the wildly improbable can be pretty wild. Pretty improbable. I'll probably end it as planned and then maybe sit on it for awhile, see if anything better comes to mind.

I need more of these 3 day weekends.  Great progress on the short story.  Just have the conclusion left to write and then take it through a re-write process.  Also, key it into the computer.  Yes, after promising myself that I would never again write a story longhand, I simply found that for this story, the creativity wouldn't come at the computer.  It's a step backward for me but when it comes to writing backwards is better than a standstill.  Someday, I'll finish getting that novel out of the spiral notebooks and onto the computer.  I still go back and read it sometimes and it's worth fixing up and editing.  I need more of these 3 day weekends.