Claudia has been off at San Japan this weekend, so I have the house
to myself. I would love to say that I've been frantically pounding
away at something the whole time, but I suspect my nose might knock a
hole through my monitor. What I've been doing is wasting time
playing Wow and watching some old movies that I appreciate seeing
once in a while.
Bittermint is creeping along. I never realized how something gets
set in my head until now. Doing a partial rewrite on a story or even
on Roja wasn't this hard. I had the initial idea for it, and that
idea stayed the focus until I had to change it to give the adventure
a little more zing. Now it's like any time I have it in front of me
and my fingers are about to press the keys to change some of the
words, the me from all those months ago opens a time-portal right
behind me and screams, 'What are you doing? Leave it alone!'
Because when I write something, I will pound on it until I think it's
pretty good. Then I think about all the stories that I really like,
the ones that I re-read once every couple of years. Then I take a
long, honest look at this thing that I've created. More often than
not, I quietly close the web browser window where I was about to
submit what I had written, then start ripping it apart again. It's
hard to do that, so I don't stop until I can read the whole thing and
not say to myself, 'Maybe it could be better there.' Not once.
That's not just a matter of principle. It's to keep myself sane. If
I send something out, unless it's to one of the VERY few places that
will give you a yes or no within a day or two, I have to sit and
wait. I get up in the morning, go to work, and have a few hours
after work before going to bed. The whole time, there's this little
voice in the back of my head that's whispering, 'Did you fix that one
comma? Sure, you thought about fixing it, but did you ever really
get around to it? Also, now that you've had time to consider it,
wouldn't that one scene sound better from the other guy's point of
view? It wouldn't take long to fix it and send it in again. I'm
sure they wouldn't mind.'
You get my point. When I send it, it's my brave little story, and
it's ready to go out into the big mean world. I don't want to be one
of those parents who hover, and then turn on the TV years later to
hear all about how my little baby has driven a bus full of nuns into
a wood chipper.
It could happen, I'm sure of it.
So that's how Bittermint Tea and Ironlace Orchids is shaping. Some
point in the near future, I'll finish it, it will hopefully come out,
and if I get it right, I'll be inspiring some of the same kind of
hate that I felt for all the folks at TSR who wrote those AD&D
modules when my character overlooked something that was staring me in
the face the whole time.
Oh, the title of this post? One of the harsher facts about living in
Houston is that we have quite a few folks down here who don't have a
roof over their heads. Drive pretty much anywhere in this town and
you'll see them standing by the side of the road, asking for money.
We also have some people who stand there asking for money who wear
clean clothes, who don't have a bag or bundle of their possessions
tucked nearby, and who might be unshaven but never have that built up
coating of sweat and dirt that you get when all you have to wash
yourself with is some water and a cloth. These people are the ones
who usually have a sign that contains the phrase 'God Bless.' Seeing
a guy with one of those signs today, the same place I've seen him
before, I got a seriously warped idea for a commercial. A picture
would open with one of those guys walking up and down a line of cars
waiting at a stop light. He holds up his sign, and then a man in an
all-black suit with a blood red tie steps in to view, speaking right
to us. He says, “Seems everyone who's down on their luck these
days is a devout follower of you-know-who. But you never see anyone
begging with a sign that says, 'Hail Satan,' do you? Have you ever
wondered what we've got that the other guy doesn't? Why don't you
stop by some time, and we'll talk.” He walks up to the first man,
puts his arm around his shoulder, and they walk off. Fade out.
If you laughed at that, you're going to hell. Don't worry, I'll hold
the door open for you.
Still writing.
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