ROW80 Update, April 4

A Round of Words In 80 Days - First Update

This weekend ended up a wash. A simple act to help a friend get to a bank turned into a three day saga, but we got 'er done. Also, Monday turned out to be migraine day -- which is techincally a 24 hour period of grogginess and light-sensitivity, so it it continued well into Tuesday, and I'm exceedingly cranky.

So things did not get off to an auspicious start.

(Based on relative popularity of things I do, I'm seriously considering giving up fiction writing and just collecting my comments made on other blogs, and selling those instead.)

Monday Day 1 - 1 session, 12 minutes. Restarting is hard. My head, already groggy, isn't warmed up or into it. I pushed out a morning session to get it going, but I never had a chance to let the thoughts grow, so I just ended up dropping it.

Tuesday Day 2 - 0 anything. It took until late in the day for the migraine grogginess to clear up. However I realize that the problem here is prep work....

Prep Work - and This Week

For microburst writing to work, you need to have the story active in your mind. That's what was going on last quarter: I was putting the emphasis on the brainstorming and such.

Well, I didn't shift it into gear this weekend, so I didn't have the fuel to make the burst work. So I've got to make up for that. Therefore, for this week, my three sessions will be brainstorming sessions -- getting my head back into the story.

One thing I did do, was some very good brainwork on the next story, but that is too early in development to write yet. I've got some exploratory scenes I could do, however, if I find I just have to switch to a new project for a while.

In the meantime, I am reading Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy, and I think I will talk about that for Friday Favorites. It's a kind of continuation on the discussion of Hitchcock. I want to talk a little about a technique I call the literary Tableau Vivant. And that will lead to talking about filmmaker Wes Anderson later on.

See you in the funny papers.