Thought Patterns

My push to write has ground to a halt. Bits and pieces of flotsam and jetsam have jammed my gears. It is irritating.

Meanwhile, I've read some truly awful books (with poor editing and copy editing, too!) and while I know I can do better than that, I just can't seem to get it going.

I did have some flashes of inspiration and wrote out several two page somethings. One was very very weird. Weirder than my normal weird. I deleted it. The other two I saved. Maybe some day, if you are nice, I might share. Don't hold yer breath though.

I still can't just let myself go and write whatever comes off the tips of my fingers as they bang the keys. The three short stories (more like flash fiction) kinda helped, but I can't seem to do it on the current WIPs. Very frustrating.

I hurt my back today. I bent over. Silly of me, I know. My shoulder is killing me, too. When Fay was giving us the much needed rain, I was drugged to keep the pain at bay or at least to a dull roar. Monster Blue is still at the repair shop. Come to find out, the monkeys in Charlotte had freakin' unplugged everything underneath. They'd opened the battery compartment and unplugged everything. Since I'd had trouble with it before that, I didn't think to actually look. But while Mobility Concepts had the thing, they did some upgrading for safety reasons. I had a busted armrest (damn flimsy plastic on a place where people put their weight to transfer) and was missing both armrest pads (one blew off on the way to Atlanta three years ago). I can go get Blue at any time while they wait for the parts. And I can, now, since Lorna finally got her car on the road and I have My Truck back.

At any rate, there ya go.

It's been a year and a half since BGCFA sold. What have I done since then, writing wise? Diddlysquat.

I am quite motivated recently, though, and have been writing. Cutting and pasteing is a better term for it but writing sounds better. I'm working on BG3 (tentatively called Butch Girls and Stereotypes) and I hope to get it done soon. I totally missed my personal deadline but Real Life had the damn nerve to intrude.

Simple Sarah has been beta read by two intelligent women who, while they say the absolutely loved it, think it ended in a very stupid place. We were supposed to meet for a baseball game and I'd get the manuscript back (they printed it out and used two different colored pens) but, again, Real Life happened.

I wrote an essay for possible submission to an anthology titled Women. Period. (An Anthology of Women Writing for and About Menstruation; Edited by Parneshia Jones, Jo Ruby, Elizabeth Slade and Julia Watts) I like how it turned out and need to show it to Lorna for her okeedokee before I bother to edit it.

I also have an essay of sorts and some recipes (yes, food recipes) that has been accepted for an upcoming book titled Butch Cook Book. THE Lee Lynch is the author/editor/whatever of it. If everything goes as planned, they will also be using some lines from BGCFA, which I think is cool. I don't know the progress of the book and the fer shurness of my inclusion in it. Either way, just to be accepted by THE Lee Lynch (and the other womyn working on the book with her) is a big ego boost.

Whilst out of the realm of the WWW, I did some weally wonderful writing.

At last I mentioned it, I was writing/struggling with BG2. After starting over umpteen times, I dropped it like a hot 'tater. BG2 is back on the shelf. Not even on a back burner.

Instead, I am now working on BG3. While it sits just over 7K words, it is going very well.

BG1–Butch Girls Can Fix Anything–was about Kelly and Grace.

BG2–title unknown–is (was?) about Nikki and Ellen.

BG3–Butch(es) Girls and Stereotypes– is about Harri and Liz.

BG4–Butch Girls Have Many Talents–is about Chaz, Rain's sister, and Sam, Ellen's best friend.

BG5 will be about Rain and Deb, a protagonist from BG1.

BG6 will be about the matriarchs, Annette and Kaye.

Of all the characters, Harri is the butchest. She's also the most unsure of herself, the most underestimated person in the whole series. My goal is to help her come out of her shell. I like this book and always have. I'd like to get it finished by the end of March but, ha, that ain't gonna happen since that means 7K words a day.

I am setting it aside now, letting it stew for a bit. The count came out to 96603. However, I chopped 6293 off the end to make the official THE END so the final count is 90310.

I am happy with it. I think it has a lot of strength to it. There are lots of editing to do. For some reason, my fingers have dyslexia and keep typing the words wrong. Not necessarily misspellings, but different words. bad is bed; the is that; their is they're; weird is wired.

What to do now? I let it sit for a while. I don't know how long. Perhaps a month. Perhaps less. I want to write another BG book so perhaps I will wait for that to be finished first. Decisions, decisions.

(I've already written this post once. Then hit the wrong button and poof! it were gone. [insert appropriate foul language here])

If you've read any science fiction (SF) and/or fantasy (F), you've probably read about evil spores or fungi or flora. Darkover had the flower spores that made everyone go into a mass orgy. Other novels have had fungi that gave consumers magic powers. I believe this theme is, like, way overdone.

So I've got this SF novel that I am working on. It's the one with the sentient planet. I need a way for the planet to observe/feel/communicate with the critters, including the silly humans, that live on its skin. Since a planet has a large amount of skin, I feel there needs to be some other method for it to receive and respond to information.

The novel is about symbiosis vs parasitic. I am considering using critters, and perhaps plants, that have use electricity in some way such as for communication or to attract/catch prey. Since a planet has a magnetic field and, to some degree, an electric field, it would be not too large a leap for the planet to be able to speak and hear via that electricity. We humans are just "ugly bags of mostly water" and electric impulses. There are electric eels, electric rays, electric catfish, and, of course, the mundane lightning bug (aka firefly). Bats and some water mammals use sonar.

What do y'all think of this idea? Is it do-able?

I want the planet itself to be sentient, not some large mushroom spore. I want the planet to be aware of the critters that live on its skin.

Note:
I found a way cool site (via Wikipedia) for animalia research: Animal Diversity Web

My horoscope for this week, a very special week indeed, says:

"Sometimes it's not how good you are but how bad you want it," read the t-shirt of a guy buying a lottery ticket at the convenience store. While I don't think he was making the best use of that philosophy–playing a game of chance heavily weighted against his success–I do think it's a principle worth meditation on, especially for you right now, Leo. Your skill and understanding are certainly not irrelevant as you push to the next level of your quest, but they are less important than the intensity of your longing.

Lorna read that to me from the Mountain Xpress as we sat inside Blue Mountain Pizza in Weaverville. At first, I didn't get it (I don't do well with verbal information). So she cut it down to the essentials for me:

Your skill and understanding are certainly not irrelevant as you push toward a goal, but they are less important than how bad you want to reach that goal.

Now that I understood.

How bad do I want to be a writer? How bad do I want to get the edits for BGCFA done so it can go to the 2nd editor then to layout? How bad do I want to get back to the rest of my projects? Or would I rather play another round of Alpha Centauri? Which do I want more?

That got me to thinking. I need to prioritize things in my life. Not having a schedule doesn't help any, that's for sure. I want to be a professional writer, not a professional PC gamer. I do. I want to be a writer bad enough that I realize I need to set the games aside and get to work.

Sophia says to do a short story 'cause that's what she's doing.

Lorna says to work on the BG books.

I poked around some on the first of the Trilogy.

I also poked around on the ghost story tentatively called Vortex.

Neither really insisted on more poking.