Sheldon Lee Compton's Blog, page 4

July 24, 2016

27 Update – The Last Four Days of Writing

DAY 48 – (July 21, 2016) – Offered without comment: Total words: 0.


DAY 49 – (July 22, 2016) – Offered without comment: Total words: 0.


DAY 50 – (July 23, 2016) – Offered without comment: Total words: 0.


DAY 51 – (July 24, 2016) – A few sentences. But oh my what sentences. Here they are:


“Let’s take a moment to consider the dripping gutters. Rain has always been my safe place, my golden fleece, if you will. Rain, that beautiful and solemn act that blots out the sun no matter when it occurs. Rain, the exact expression of my own soaked heart. Rain, the only planetary event that can match my overly romantic notion of a doomed civilization, a doomed universe. Rain, my constant wife and companion, which, when not before my eyes, pummels the world in my head, breaks off the edges of mountains and chokes streams and turns great shining rivers into muddy veins ready to burst and slice the heart of all things alive. A dripping gutter has helped me through more lonely evenings than the best of any so called friends have ever come close. A porch and a swing and a gutter dripping, pouring, gushing, dripping, stream plop, stream plop, stream plop. Water falling from battling clouds across a summer sky so thick with humidity the very act of breathing was a chore; water dropped in a spray at dusk on a dying day in October; water forming miraculously from a winter wind, so cold it hits the skin like shards of glass. Oh I have let those shards of ice break apart on my skin, hoping they might break, instead, my spirit, let loose the blood of my marrow-lust, splinter my beautiful and ugly hope and loneliness and the sting and rip of this eternity. Oh I have prayed to my ownself that the waters hammering down in summer might not ease the burden of a pressing heat more muscular than Hell itself. Oh I have wished and I have prayed and I have given over to the kingly truth that all thing are hard and hard forever.”


Total word count: 299.


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Published on July 24, 2016 19:00

July 20, 2016

27 Update – Back from the Dead

DAY 47 – (July 20, 2016) – And just like that, back from the dead. Probably because I’m having some fun with sections I’m writing now. Maybe too much fun. The book has multiple characters and moves in and out of their points of view, and I’ve been with the same character, Irick, for the last fifteen or twenty pages. I’m feeling an instinct that it’s time to shift scenes, but I’m having too much fun. Irick just met a minor character based on Canadian serial killer Peter Woodcock. Tomorrow I probably need to jump ahead to another section or fall back and work some on earlier sections. Puts the page count at 224. Total word count: 3,587.


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Published on July 20, 2016 16:39

July 19, 2016

27 Update – Cheerio!

DAY 45 – (July 18, 2016) – Nothing again today. Not sure what’s going on, but I don’t feel like it’s going to let up anytime soon. Having difficulty finding my reasons. Having difficulty in general. Total: 0.


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Published on July 19, 2016 17:29

July 16, 2016

27 Update – I don’t even know what opus really means

DAY 43 – (July 16, 2016) – A month and a half. Or roughly. A month and a half I’ve been writing on this book, this book that is being written for myself only. I knew it was for myself when I started back writing on it forty-three days ago. It’s probably why I’ve been able to write on it as much as I have. I’ve been thinking I might put it back for my kids to read years and years down the road. My opus, as it were in whatever way it might be, is something that should be handed down, I think. I’ve had three books published and that’s probably enough for me. It’s not bad for a hillbilly who’s been poor his whole life and pretty much taught himself how to write (no offense college folk, but I kind of didn’t learn much with you all). I learned by reading continuously for the last thirty years. Oh, yeah, and by writing a million or so words. Anyway, maybe the book will be good and maybe it will be published but I’m just not on that page right now. I’m on some other page. Total words: 542.


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Published on July 16, 2016 19:00

July 13, 2016

27 Update – Revisiting Irick, the murderer of children

DAY 40 – (July 13, 2016) – Even more tired today than I was yesterday. Pretty much every one of these entries should just begin with that sentence. I did some good work today, though. Difficult (in both the writing and the bit of research I conducted during the writing) because I’m back to the character Irick, who is, among other things, a murderer of children. Crazy touchy spot for me, but it’s working for the book, as Irick will become a critical part of the overall story…I think. With so far to go I really can’t say how anything is going to turn out. But a decent day of writing. Total word count: 839.


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Published on July 13, 2016 17:41

July 10, 2016

27 Update – The book I’m likely writing just for fun

DAY 37 – (July 10, 2016) – Spent a lazy Sunday mostly hanging out watching television. It’s bedtime now (8:30 p.m. for those of us who get up at 3:30 a.m. for work) and I just finished the word count. A disturbing thought rose to the surface for me today: What if I write this big insane book and it’s beyond bad when I’m done? Just this real stinker of a book. That would be a lot of work for nothing. I think what I’ll do to keep this thought at bay is to continue writing for my own entertainment, for fun. I like writing stories, so why should I really expect or desire anything in addition to that result? Total word count: 965.


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Published on July 10, 2016 18:15

27 Update – The section about the wood witch

DAY 36 – (July 9, 2016) – Finished a fun-to-write section about a wood witch today. Wood witch vs. a small township. How’s it turn out? Ahhh, I’m not telling. Total word count: 773.


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Published on July 10, 2016 09:00

July 7, 2016

27 – Almost at 200 pages. Only 1,000 more to go.

DAY 34 (July 7, 2016) – I’m beginning to see how a few things connect, which is kind of a relief since I’m on page 192 of the manuscript. Maybe some of this will make it to final cut, if I cut anything. I may decide to make no choices at all and just throw everything in and see what happens. I am eleven months from deadline, after all. It’s untelling what could happen. Total word count: 809.


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Published on July 07, 2016 17:09

27 – Almost at 200. Only 1,000 more to go.

DAY 34 (July 7, 2016) – I’m beginning to see how a few things connect, which is kind of a relief since I’m on page 192 of the manuscript. Maybe some of this will make it to final cut, if I cut anything. I may decide to make no choices at all and just throw everything in and see what happens. I am eleven months from deadline, after all. It’s untelling what could happen. Total word count: 809.


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Published on July 07, 2016 17:09

July 6, 2016

27 – A Paragraph Excerpt and Today’s Count

DAY 33 (July 6, 2016) – The writing was good today. Fun and interesting. Some creepy difficult stuff to write, but interesting. I had a particular paragraph that hit the mark for me, helped me remember why I’m still writing at all, considering I don’t expect this book to published. I’d like to share that bit of exposition with you:


“He stepped inside pretty as you please, shut the front door behind him, and I waited, listening to the shoop clud of blood rushing across my temples and on to the lycanthropic parts of my brain. On the doorstep I could still smell the evening sun baked onto his skin, how it mixed with his sweat to create a musk he would have carried with him throughout life, the odor his wife would have found familiar after a time as it clinged to bed sheets and followed him around the house in the summer. The scent of him, his essence, a life force scent just fragile enough to disappear as quickly as it first formed in the womb. I took in this scent deeply and my blood rushed again shoooop CLUD shoooooop CLUD clud.”


I may have been able to write a few more paragraphs, maybe another page today, but I wanted to leave off at a spot where I could pick right back up tomorrow. The old Hemingway trick. I think it was Hemingway. Maybe not. Total word count: 885.


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Published on July 06, 2016 16:32