The alphabet is a powerful thing:
When written, the only thing separating the image on the left from the image on the right is one “P.”I know this, but in something I recently posted, I left out that one little “P,” and what was supposed to be a little boy using “snippers” to cut a wire became a little boy with a pair of “snipers” in his hand.
(It’s now fixed, but that’s beside the oint.)
A couple of weeks ago, while fighting the type of cold that allows one to do little more than watch television and sleep, I had the good fortune to run across a Planet of the Apes marathon. It was just the thing to keep me entertained between medication and naps.
The original movie still holds up well, and as far as great story lines go, I think it’s fantastic. I also love Charlton Heston as Taylor, but it’s not my favorite role of his. When I think of Charlton Heston, my first thought isn’t of Ben Hur, nor is it of Soylent Green. Both cross my mind, but for me, Charlton Heston is The Omega Man, and given my love of Vincent Price, that’s saying something.
No one ever seems to know what movie I’m talking about when I mention The Omega Man. I’ve even tried to ring bells by referencing The Last Man on Earth, but I always get the same blank stares. Now that I Am Legend is out there, I hope that will change, but I’m not going to hold my breath.
The last time I was at Starbuck’s, the trivia question was “Who wrote I Am Legend?” Shockingly, no one had come up with the correct answer before me, and the barista was impressed but not shocked I knew the answer. (I’ve had a bit of a run at Starbuck’s when it comes to trivia, and soon I shall need to stop letting them grab items from my brain while I sleep.)
I rifled off some of the other stuff Richard Matheson has written to see if I could ring bells with any of the baristas, but nothing really worked. Actually, all it did was secure my oddity in their eyes, but in a good way. I think.
Here’s the thing about Richard Matheson: he’s written a ton of material that is absolutely dear to me. I know. I know. Who among us can’t say that about our favorite authors, right? Well this is different because the works I’m talking about have come over the course of the last thirty years of my life, and until about a year ago, I had no idea one guy’s brain was responsible for all that stuff.
I’m a huge fan of The Twilight Zone, and when the attempt was made in the 80’s to bring back the magic of the original series, there was one episode that stuck with me: “Button, Button.” It is the kind of story I’ve always wanted to write.
The original series also featured a tale that is better known for William Shatner’s being in it than for Matheson’s writing: “Nightmare at 20,000 Feet.” In addition to that episode, Matheson wrote The Twilight Zone episodes “A World of His Own,” “Nick of Time” (another episode with Shatner), “The Invaders” (which stars a lineless Agnes Moorehead), and about ten others.
During the early eighties, I saw a movie that struck me in the same way as “Button, Button”: the story was so fantastic, I wanted to grow up and write like that. It’s called Somewhere in Time.
I also grew up watching Star Trek, and one of the best episodes—aside from “The Trouble with Tribbles”—was written by Matheson: “The Enemy Within.” Kirk is split in two during a transporter malfunction, and one of him is good while the other of him is evil. The story goes on to explore how each of us needs both good and bad to survive and to be who we are. (Reread that last part—to. . .be. . .who. . .we. . .are—in your best Kirk voice.)
There’s a ton of other stuff this guy has done that most people know of: The Incredible Shrinking Man, A Stir of Echoes, and What Dreams May Come are some of the biggies, yet I’m willing to bet that for as many people as there are who have heard of one or more of his bigger works, almost none of them know the man’s name.
I find this sad. I’m just happy to know he’s out there writing the kinds of things that make me rethink the world, take another look out of the corner of my eye, and dream of someday writing something like that.
Oh, and did I mention that “Button, Button” is being filmed? The title is The Box, and I can’t wait to see it.
Albert Beiman had dreamed of being a super hero all of his life. Like many young boys, he collected comic books containing tales of superpower-wielding men performing amazing acts of courage. He hid the comic from his father who was a practical man upon whom fictional feats of strength and courage were wasted.
Albie’s dad was a firm believer in hard work, and when Albie had expressed early interest in comic books and super heroes, his father had lifted the small boy up, set him on his workbench, and explained that real heroes were the men and women who got up each morning, worked hard at their jobs, and looked after their family members. Flying, ex-ray vision, and super-strength were merely whims of fancy and not worthy of one’s time.
When Albie’s father finished, he noticed his son was on the verge of tears. The man hadn’t intended to upset his son. He’d simply wanted to instill a work ethic in the boy, and he feared an over-active imagination would lead to a path of laziness. He, like any father, wanted the best for his boy. He wanted Albie to surpass him in whatever he undertook in his life.
“I’ll make you a deal, Albie.”
The young boy looked up while continuing to fight off tears.
“I’ll share a little secret with you if you promise not to tell anyone.”
The boy’s eyes narrowed as he considered what his father had said. His young brain was processing whether or not his dad was teasing him or was about to reveal something worthwhile. The boy settled on the thing being worthwhile and nodded his head vigorously.
Albie’s father looked carefully to his left and then to his right. He made a show of peering over his shoulder, putting a finger over his lips to instruct the child to remain silent, and then he leaned in close to Albie.
“The truth is, I have a secret power of my own, and if you want, I’ll pass it along to you.”
Albie’s eyes narrowed again, and he crossed his arms over his chest. He knew a gyp when he heard one.
“You’re lying, and lying isn’t right.” The indignance in the boy’s voice was punctuated by the firm nod he tacked on to the end of his sentence.
Albie’s father shrugged his shoulders, grabbed the boy under the arms, and hoisted him up slightly so that he might place him back on solid ground. “Well, then. Off you go, I suppose.”
The boy watched as his father turned away from him and began tinkering with something on his bench. It shocked Albie that this father wasn’t even going to try to convince him of his supposed power. It shocked the boy even more that his father had simply dismissed the entire thing so abruptly and returned to whatever it was he he’d been working on.
Albie didn’t want to bite—he was sure his father was only ignoring him to get the boy to pursue whatever it was he was going to say he could do—but the silent treatment his father had dished out was making it very hard for Albie to resist pursuing the issue.
The boy stood behind his father while mentally ordering himself to turn and leave, but his orders were those of a child, and even in his child’s mind, they held little weight.
“Okay, tell me, then,” Albie blurted out.
His father stopped what he was doing and made a show of turning around and looking down at him.
“You’re still here? I thought you’d gone off somewhere. Now, what was it you wanted?”
Albie took in a dramatic breath, rolled his eyes at his father, and replied, “tell me your secret power.”
It was the father’s turn to narrow his eyes.
“Can I trust you to keep my secret?”
The boy was getting frustrated, but he obediently nodded his head. As an afterthought, he made an “X” over his heart with the index finger of his right hand.
Albie’s father reached down for the boy and placed him back up on the workbench. He didn’t look around or remind the boy to be quiet this time, but he did lean in close to him before saying in a whispered voice,
“We Beiman’s keep the world on course. We’re not ordinary electricians.”
Albie’s disappointment covered his face.
“C’mon, Dad. Being an electrician’s not a superpower.”
The father raised an eyebrow, “Oh, no?” he asked his boy. “If I don’t have a superpower, how can I do this?”
As he spoke the word “this,” Albie’s father made a gesture with his right arm and hand in the direction of the garage door opener, and as if on cue, the door slowly ground to life and began to open.
“Wow! How’d you do that?” Albie exclaimed.
His father began to answer when Mrs. Beiman pulled into the driveway.
Albie was too disappointed to notice the surprise on his father’s face. The boy waved at his mother and grumbled out a request for his father to put him down. Mr. Beiman did as the boy asked and didn’t pursue the super-power issue with the boy who stalked off toward the station wagon in search of whatever treasures his mother had brought home from the grocery store.
* * *
“Why so glum, Albie?”
Albie’s response to his mother was a half-hearted shrug of his shoulders. He wasn’t in the mood to admit to his mom that his father had suckered him into a fleeting belief in a familial superpower. His mother was about to pursue her son’s mood when the phone rang.
“Hello? Yes, he is. Just a moment.”
Albie’s mother cupped one hand over the bottom of the telephone receiver, looked down at her son, and asked him to go out to the garage and tell his father the phone was for him. Before Albie could move, his father walked in and stepped toward the receiver his wife was holding.
“I’m on my way Mick. Be there in ten minutes.”
Albie’s father hung up the receiver, looked at his wife who nodded as if she knew exactly what was going on, and then he spoke to his son.
“Want to come along and see what your ol’ dad can do?”
Albie couldn’t think of a single time his father had asked him to tag along on a job, and this fact put the boy’s mind on edge. On the one hand, he wanted desperately to refuse simply because his father had asked him, but on the other, the opportunity to tag along with his father was too cool to pass up.
“Okay, I guess.” Albie tried his best to sound bored when he answered.
“Peter, it’s not safe.”
Albie’s father looked at Albie’s mother, and the boy saw a moment of doubt cross his father’s face, but before Albie could issue a plea in his defense, his father replied.
“It’s time he learns, Vi.”
Albie’s mother gave her husband the slightest of nods and moved toward her son who she grabbed and pulled into her and from whom she collected both a kiss and a hug before releasing him.
“You two be careful,” she said as she blew an air kiss to each of them.
* * *
To Albie, the drive seemed to take forever, but in truth, it took the pair just under ten minutes to arrive at their destination—a destination that was hundreds of miles from their home. It would be weeks before Albie put all of the pieces together: the fact that his father had known there was a call for him; the way his dad answered the caller without so much as hearing the voice on the other end of the telephone line; how his father had simply climbed into the van and driven to a location without being told where to go. All Albie knew at the moment they arrived at their destination was wherever they were, it wasn’t anywhere near his house. In fact, they seemed to be in the middle of nowhere.
“C’mon, son.” Albie’s father had climbed out of the van and was motioning for the boy to follow him. As Albie got out, he noticed there was nothing in any direction as far as he could see, save for an old, beat up truck next to which stood a man.
“Where’s she at, Mick?”
Mick’s head ticked slightly, indicating the thing was behind him and to his right. Mick also managed to shoot a long, hard stare at Albie.
“What’s with the kid, Peter?” The man’s head ticked again, only this time his motion was directed at Albie.
“There’s nothing to worry about. This here’s my son, Albie.” As his father spoke, the boy saw him look in his direction, and there was something in the look his father gave him that made Albie understand he needed to be on his best behavior.
“Pleasure to meet you, sir.” Albie took a step towards Mick and extended a hand as he spoke. Mick didn’t return the gesture. Instead, he spat a used up wad of chewing tobacco into the dirt at the boy’s feet, climbed into the bed of his truck, started up the engine, and drove away.
Albie watched the truck’s disappearing dusty path, and looked back at his father who motioned for him to follow. A few hundred feet from where they had met up with Mick was what they were after.
“There she is.” Albie’s father pointed to a tangle of wires sticking up out of the ground.
“What is it?” Albie asked his father.
“That, son, is a reset device.”
“What’s a ‘reset device’?”
Albie’s father took a step toward the wires and produced a pair of cutters from one of his back pockets.
“A reset device is just what it sounds like: if it’s activated, everything gets reset. That means the world goes back to the way it was at the beginning.”
Albie looked at his father, and his earlier anger began to resurface. He didn’t like his dad teasing him.
Albie’s father saw the look on his son’s face, and while it disappointed him his son didn’t believe him, he recalled having had a similar reaction when his own father had passed along the gift.
“I’ll tell you what, Albie. How about I let you cut the wire, okay?”
Albie didn’t mean to do it, but a snicker escaped him. It wasn’t that he believed his father, but he hadn’t meant to be disrespectful, either.
His father’s face wrinkled in what was clearly angry disappointment, and Albie found himself divided: part of him was glad he’d hurt his father, but the other part of him felt a bit of shame. He steeled himself with a reminder that this had all started because his dad couldn’t accept his reading comic books and admiring superpowers. Albie assured himself his father deserved a certain amount of disrespect for pretending he could control energy, and for mocking a young boy’s imagination.
“Hey, are you listening to me?”
Albie looked down at his father who was bent over the tangle of wires. The boy hadn’t heard a thing his father said.
“I said I could prove our powers to you, boy. Pay attention!”
Albie was shocked at the tone and level of his father’s voice, and he focused on what his dad was doing.
“You’ve got to look at the wires closely. The green wire disables the device. The yellow one pauses things. The red wires activate it, and that means resetting the world, and that’s not a good thing.”
Albie looked at the bunch of wires, but they were all red. Even when he crinkled up his nose while squinting the sun away, all he saw was a gob of red.
“Are the green and yellow wires buried?”
The man looked up at his son, and then back down at the wires.
“You don’t see them?”
Albie shook his head, and for a moment, the look on his father’s face went completely blank. During that moment, a sense of dread spread over Albie, and he grew very afraid.
His father’s eyes met his own, and he opened his mouth as if to ask the boy another question, but instead of releasing words, his lips spread into a smile, and with his father’s smile, the boy’s sense of dread disappeared.
“Try now.”
Albie’s father handed the boy the wire cutters he’d been holding, and as soon as the boy had them in his fist, the green and yellow wires appeared in the tangle of red ones.
“Cool! How’d you do that?”
Albie still didn’t believe his father had superpowers, but whatever he’d done with the wires and the cutters was a great trick, and Albie had already begun to count the ways he could use the trick to his advantage with the guys back home.
“There’s no trick, kiddo. It’s just what we Bieman’s do. We make sure the world doesn’t get reset.”
Albie’s father could tell his son was impressed, but he also saw clearly the boy’s excitement was not because he was taking his father seriously.
“I’ll show you. Take the snippers and clip the yellow wire.”
Albie did as his father told him, but nothing happened. At least that’s what Albie believed until he looked back at his father and noticed the five o’clock shadow on his father’s face and the receding sunlight.
Before the boy could pepper his father with more questions, the man looked at his watch and then back at his son.
“Cut the green one, Albie. The time’s almost up.”
“Time?”
“Once the unit’s located and dug up, it’s got to be deactivated within ten hours, or it goes off, and. . .”
“And the world gets reset, right, Dad?”
Albie’s father grinned at the boy who looked back at the tangle of wires, reached out, and clipped the green one.
Nothing discernible happened, but Albie understood this meant things had gone well. He smiled up at his father, handed over the wire cutters, and proudly followed his dad back to the van.
I mentioned in my first post of this year that I had discovered two productivity tools near the end of 2007 that I tried, liked, and used to formulate much of my 2008 writing schedule.
Each is a book, but both are designed to be more than reading matter: they are tools to assist in adjusting one’s attitude and time management with the end goal of producing more work that is higher quality.
The Way of the Cheetah, by Lynn Viehl, is a recipe for productivity with a real kick: read what Viehl accomplishes in a day, and you will sit down at a keyboard and get to work. (Well, you will if you really want to be a Writer.)
The Way of the Cheetah covers every inch of ground a writer traverses: the physical, mental, and emotional stuff; the office and equipment stuff; and the outside world stuff, and it’s all good advice. (Some of it can be put to work immediately, but some of it will have to wait, and that’s part of what I love about this book: it challenges one’s perseverance and patience, and I love a challenge.)
There is much to The Way of the Cheetah that is applicable to life in general—and I mean this in a practical not a touchy-feely way. There is no magic packet of dissolve-it-in-water motivation tucked inside nor is there a ready-mix determination-drink included, but if you bring these things to the table, The Way of the Cheetah can help you to make yourself more focused and more productive.
The Way of the Cheetah is also a joy to read: the information is honest—even when honesty is painful—and there’s just enough humor and sarcasm to keep you on your toes.
How to Find Your Writing Discipline, by Holly Lisle, is one of the best time management plans I’ve run across. This book is aimed at writers, but it would do anyone in need of a productivity-makeover good, and it wouldn’t take much effort to apply the tips Lisle provides to other areas of one’s life.
Ironically, I have used many of the general concepts in this text in my composition courses which led me to two conclusions: a person really can only be taught what he or she is willing to learn, and I’m giving my students good advice—even though it too often goes ignored!
I have always been a lister and a planner, so the basic premise of How to Find Your Writing Discipline was both familiar and comforting for me. For some, the idea is going to be a bit more of a challenge, but to those who feel that way I say give it a try—you might be surprised. (If you’ve never examined where your day goes, Lisle’s book will be a real eye-opener.)
If I were to pull out one element of How to Find Your Writing Discipline that is helping me the most, I’d have to choose the productivity board. Having my plans right in front of me and watching things move (literally) along is a real plus.
* * *
What sets these books apart from the many other writing books I have read over the years is the honesty and practicality of each. Neither claims to be The Answer. Both admit every writer is different and must take what she can from any source and toss aside the rest. Each writer readily admits that working as a Writer is a Sisyphean task not to be embraced by the faint-of-heart.
Best of all, both Lynn Viehl and Holly Lisle are full-time, in-the-trenches writers who give a whole bunch to the rest of us—for free, so spending my hard-earned money on their work gives me the warm fuzzies.
I know what you’re thinking: it is often both dark and stormy at night, and you are quite correct. In fact, this is especially true in the winter, but last night I got an extra dose of dark: by the time the sun set, I’d been without power for several hours, and in my neighborhood, dark is dark.
We have no streetlights, and when there’s a blanket of clouds over everything and the power goes out, it’s the kind of blackness in which you really cannot see your hand in front of your face.
I write this on my backup PDA using a portable keyboard. I am conserving all of my laptop power as well as the power on my primary PDA (which is also my cell phone) for fear this loss of power will last a few days.
It’s now almost nine o’clock, so the outage is nearing hour eighteen.
Other than it being cold in the house—it’s dropped to 52 degrees—the outage has been an adventure.
I have plenty of candles, a gas stove, and a gas water heater, so I can have hot food and beverages, and later today, I can even take a hot shower. (Watch the hair, though, no blow dryer!)
I spent several hours last night reading and writing by candle light, and unless this outage continues through the weekend and a significant snowstorm, I’ll count this as an enjoyable respite from modern life.
During those thrilling days of yesteryear, when I was an undergraduate, I began to marvel at the means by which people who lived in the periods before me had “managed.” Because I was an English major, much of my wonder came from the hours I spent reading novels and writing papers about them: the time it took to do those things often took me into the wee hours of the morning, and things like electricity and technology got me though.
I often thought about the writers whose works I held in my hands: writers who didn’t have the luxury of electric typewriters and heaters and light switches.
It made me really appreciate the effort it took to put words on pages: working by hand and by candlelight without the luxury of the things I took for granted.
I have students who have never used a typewriter, so they have no concept of just how “easy” they have it with computers and the internet at their fingertips.
I was fortunate enough to move from hand-written essays to typed essays to word-processed essays, so not only did I learn how to draft and rewrite and edit, but also I appreciate the technology I have today in a manner most younger people probably do not.
I am extraordinarily thankful for the Internet, and the technology that makes my writing life easier, but I wouldn’t trade having grown up in a time during which the following things were the “technological” standards:
Of course, for the time being, I am enjoying the old-world feel of my day, and I am looking lovingly at several of my bookshelves really appreciating what writers before me managed to accomplish.
Never make a sucker bet with a woman on the verge of an abyss. And when I say sucker bet, I don’t mean you think she’s such a sucker that betting her will line your sorry-ass pockets with whatever your personal poison happens to be. I mean don’t find yourself looking back on the moment you made the mistake of thinking her a sucker.
If you find yourself there, you’ll be the sucker, and you’ll realize you’ve landed yourself in a very dark, very lonely place.
I know. The reason I know should be obvious, but I’ll spell it out for you—in case you’re one of those guys who thinks his woman is one of those suckers.
(If that’s you, you need the picture on the box to put together the puzzle, so here goes.)
The reason I know is my old man pitched me the grand-slam-home-run of sucker bets last Saturday night, and right about now, he’s doing that look-back thing. He’s realizing the error of his ways. He’s found his quiet place, but it is much darker and lonelier than he ever imagined. He is going to have a few more hours to consider who the sucker is before it’s all over.
***
Mr. do-it-yourself-and-save decided we needed an underground safe a few weeks back. He made this genius decision after watching an infomercial while allowing the alcohol from most of a six pack to travel from his lips to his brain cells. (We have no need for a safe—underground or otherwise—but that didn’t matter.)
He did not consult me about his decision. When I asked Mr. DIYAS—which conveniently sounds like dumb ass when you run the letters together—whether or not he thought it was appropriate to tear up our back porch to build a safe we didn’t need, to spend money we didn’t have, and to get everything grimy with dirt and concrete dust, he belched “Betcha Bitch” like he was a high school kid burping the alphabet.
With the echo from his burp still fresh in the air, he demanded dinner. I cooked because I was hungry. Luckily for him, two TV dinners are about as easy to cook as one, so I fed the bastard. He’d barely finished complaining about the food he’d devoured when he bolted up from his easy chair, grabbed the keys to his work shed, and headed out back to play DIYAS.
That was the routine for the rest of the week: Mr. DIYAS would drink, complain, eat, and build a bit more of his concrete-lined-guaranteed-to keep-everyone-out-no-one-will-know-it’s-there safe. By the end of the day, he’d pass out from effort and beer.
Last Saturday night, I got tired of all the digging and pounding and cursing, so I asked him when he thought he might be done with the safe so he could rebuild the porch.
“Well, now. I’ll tell ya what. I’ll bet I get done with this here project before you can make-up that face of yours so it ain’t so hard for me to look at.”
There it was: a high, slow, lob of a sucker’s bet tossed right at me by that good-for-nothing-boozing-bastard. My daddy may have run out on us, but he taught all the kids—even us girls—how to hit a baseball before he took off. It was the bottom of the ninth, the score was tied, the bases were loaded, and I was winding up for the cut of a lifetime.
“You’ve got one week to finish. If you don’t finish this up in the next week, I’m calling my brother out here to fix things.”
Mr. DIYAS snorted, grabbed another can of beer, and turned back to his mess.
My brother is a passive man, and he doesn’t think much of his brother-in-law. My brother is also a kind man, so he’s never expressed to me his disappointment in who I married, but I can sometimes feel it—even when he does his best to hide it. I think, like me, my brother sometimes wonders where I might be now if things were different. That isn’t judgment: it’s love.
Today marked a week from the point at which I’d given Mr. DIYAS the ultimatum. Initially, he’d made progress, but after a flurry during the first two days, he was back to getting nowhere quickly: we had porch to the left and porch to the right, but below the back door was nothing but a three-foot drop to the twice-as-big-as-it-needed-to-be-concrete-lined- everything-proof safe.
When Mr. DIYAS finished dinner, he slammed another beer and stumbled his way to the back of the house. The thought of my brother showing up to save the day grated on him, and I knew it.
“I got ‘till midnight, and I’ll finish. You’ll see. But your face, well, we both know nothing’s gonna fix. . .”
His voice trailed off in a repercussion of noise that sounded as if he was back to pounding boards. Then, there was an oddly deafening silence even though he was at least three beers and two hours shy of his usual pass-out time.
I finished the dishes and got a hot bath ready. For a moment, it crossed my mind to lock him out for the evening, but I knew that would only lead to his yelling and screaming and waking me up when his buzz wore off. (We were five miles from the closest neighbor, so I’d be the only one he’d disturb, and that was enough for me.)
I went out to the back to wake him before his stupor got too thick, but when I got there, all I saw were his legs poking out from the hole in the porch.
In my defense, before I stuffed him all the way down, I did try to pull him up and out of the hole. I just couldn’t do it—I wasn’t strong enough. It didn’t take too much straining to begin to hear his nasty voice complaining about my face, and when that happened, my pulling turned to pushing, and before too long, his whole body was stuffed into that concrete safe: it turns out it was just the right size after all.
I organized the things he’d bought for his project, and after I spread them out on the table, I read the plans, took a few measurements, and I sealed that safe up for good. Nothing gets in—nothing gets out. I replaced the rest of the boards for the porch, and as soon as Mr. DIYAS runs out of air, I know the muffled screams will stop, and I’ll be able to settle into a nice, hot bath.
I’ve noticed a number of people have begun shying away from resolutions citing their failure to follow through with them, and while I see the point of avoiding unnecessary frustration, I don’t see the point of failing to embrace possibility—and that’s the way I view resolutions.What’s wrong with dreaming big at the beginning of a new year? I love having the opportunity to start fresh each January 1st with nothing but a blank sheet of paper and my imagination to guide me.
I suppose it might have something to do with having taught for so long: each semester is a fresh start, and each preparatory period before each new semester is a time to reflect and plan all the ways this semester is going to be the one during which teaching and learning collide head-on.
It might also have to do with my being a writer: if I weren’t a dreamer, I wouldn’t (and couldn’t) be a writer.
I suppose it also is a statement that reflects my age: I am still young enough to believe there is an infinite a lengthy amount of time at my disposal, and because I am in a good mood, I’m not going to dwell on reality where this point is concerned. (I’m thinking of you, Mike.)
I’m happy to have discovered several (new-to-me) writers in 2007, and there’s more to say about that later; however, for now, I’ll just say that I “discovered” two wonderful productivity tools that I test drove at the end of last year, and much of my 2008 is going to be based on those tools.
Let the embracing of possibilities begin:
WRITING GOALS 2008/2009
ON LEARNING THE CRAFT
- Take the Gotham Writers’ Workshop Level I Fiction Writing Class
- Mid to Late 2008
- Take the Gotham Writers’ Workshop Level I [Genre] Writing Class
- Early to Mid 2009
- Bird by Bird
- Writing Down the Bones
ON PRODUCTIVITY
1. Review and Revise Plan Monthly
WORK TO COMPLETE
- The 2YN – Year 1 (Unearthed)
- Test Case
- Submit by 04/15/08
- “The Cure”
- Submit by 06/15/08
- “The Well”
- Submit by 09/15/08
- Unearthed
- Submit by 12/31/08
- Scribbled Stories, Volume I
- Writing Completed by 10/01/08
- Printing Completed by 11/01/08
- Contest #1
- Contest #2
- Contest #3
- Contest #4
- Contest #5
- Contest #6
GENERALLY SPEAKING
1. Write at least 5 days each week.
2. Never miss a post at SHdN.
3. Post at least two Scribbled Stories each month.
4. Podcast at least two Scribbled Stories each month.
5. Enter SIX contests in 2008.
6. Complete the 2008 NaNoWriMo.
7. Get Scribbled Stories up at iTunes.
8. Get Scribbled Stories up at Podiobooks.
Wishing you and yours the best this holidy season!
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