Curbed Enthusiasm

I spent the two weeks off from school doing very little writing.  Why?  I had a great opportunity to write in the evenings that were homework free.  But I didn't.  Well, first I had several home improvement/basement finishing jobs that needed to be done.  Alas, they took priority.  Second, I actually finished compiling my poetry book.  I just need to actually do the hard thing of putting up for publishing somewhere.  And third, I really kind of enjoyed NOT being on a computer every night. 

Thus, my writing has not progressed.  But don't worry.  It hasn't been forgotten.

This is the Novel Mage saying *POOF*

Booking it!

So I haven't really written much lately.  I blame the end of the semester and a slight desire to NOT be on the computer after work in rebellion.  But at the prompting of several people at LTUE and a neighbor or two, I'm compiling my book of poetry.  I've decided that a big book of poetry could be overkill (and self-publishing makes it expensive).  The biggest problem with that is I have to pick and choose what to include.  Trying to make a 50-ish page poetry book when you have roughly 129 poems and you can only fit one per page in most cases is tough.  What to put in?  Poetry comes from the soul and in many cases (for me) it holds a personal memory or instance with it.  Which memories do I share?  Which shouldn't I share?

I see the attraction to fiction.  Truth is veiled in a story accepted as not true.  A lot of my poetry is truth colored as I felt it.  Rejecting my story is one thing, but having your soul and life rejected.... well I better start working on that thick skin the LTUE authors recommended.  At my current pace, it will be eBook ready in about a week.

This is the Novel Mage saying *POOF*

Clubbing

I attended writing club last night for the first time in just about forever. This school thing is killing me. But it was a good meeting. We went over our notes from LTUE for those who couldn't go and shared ideas and thoughts. Our fearless leader asked for suggestions on how we could better organize. Good discussion followed. I did leave more inspired to write. Now I just need to find time.

Current projects include: The Oak Wand, Sword and the Stone, Poetry book, and Burning (the Phoenix Chronicles). Who has time for life??

This is the Novel Mage saying *POOF*

Code and Prose

I had this odd thought last night as I was working on code for class and I remembered something I heard somewhere, I'm not sure if it was at work or school. But the comment was made that code can be written so it's functional but not as efficient or as clean as it could be. After learning more about writing, I realized that prose is the same way. I guess poetry is too.

I can write prose that gets the point across and tells a story but two paragraphs in my reader has fallen asleep or gotten confused. Unless my reader is my daughter who loves everything I write. But good prose, like good code, cleans up the boring parts and has better description to let you know what is going on as the plot/program moves along.

So a software developer is a lot like a novelist, just with a different syntax.

This is the Novel Mage saying *POOF*