Focus
*Tap tap tap* Is this thing on? It is? Oh, good.
Has it really been two weeks since I posted something? I’d like to say that it’s because I’ve been fantastically productive, but that would be a big ol’ lie. (I did have an idea for a story this morning, though, that I might work on later, after I’ve done all the other things that are on the list before it.)
About that list…. I have eleventy million things to do in the next couple weeks and not nearly enough time to do them all. For starters, there’s the reading at Left Bank Books next week, and I need to decide which part of The Unwanted I’m going to read. I’m thinking chapter one and then a bloody bit from the middle, which will make no one ever want to go down into a school basement ever again. (Of course, Buffy the Vampire Slayer already did that for me.)
And then, after that, I start leading a YA workshop in the continuing education program at St. Louis Community College’s Meramec campus, which as you can imagine has me nervous as well. I’m working on my lesson plan at the moment and putting in order all the things I want to talk about, the writing prompts I’m planning to use, and the exercises I’m going to assign. I’m also reading a lot more YA, obviously. I just started reading Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, and next on deck is My Most Excellent Year.
And then (because, yes, there’s more) I’ve got the GRNW meetup in Seattle followed by a reading at Orca Books in Olympia, which means my parents will get to hear me read for the first time. Luckily, I think I’ll be able to read the same excerpt from The Unwanted at that event as I do at Left Bank.
For someone who’s still “funemployed!”®, I sure seem to have a lot on my plate. I’d say I’m taking October off, but then I’ll be leading a short story workshop at the community college. No rest for the wicked.
And that’s all in addition to, you guessed it, the next book, which is a sequel to The Unwanted. (Well, there is an idea for yet another novel, but that’s completely different.) Instead of flying by the seat of my pants, which is my usual mode of operation when I write, I’m actually planning out the scenes I’m going to write from more or less the beginning. I have a few thousand words written already, but that’s mostly been me writing my way into the story. I’ve also started rereading The Odyssey (I say “reread” though I can’t be sure if I’ve ever read it before, actually; I know I read The Iliad in middle school or high school, but so far The Odyssey is sounding familiar only in so much as everyone knows what the story is about), mainly because I’m picturing this one from the beginning as a journey, though the destination, unlike in Odysseus’s case, may not be clear from the outset.
And that’s what I’m working on. How are you?
