Monday, 03 June 2002

I returned to my new gene engineering story. (Let's call it the virus story, to distinguish it from the old gene engineering story, especially since this one isn't so new any more. I have a different working title for it, but that name gives away a major plot point.) I did just a bit of work on it tonight, reworking the opening paragraphs, but I'll do more tomorrow.

After Clarion classmates Karina and Jason both sold stories to The-Phone-Book.com, and Marissa said she'd submitted one, I started feeling left out. So, I've written two micro-stories (less than 50 words). I'd like to write a short micro story (less than 150 characters, including spaces, punctuation, and the title) and a mini-story (100-150 words), just to cover the range of what they'll buy.

While Barbara was here, we watched "The Muse". I'm always looking for new movies with accurate depections of the writing life, and I thought this might be one. Now that I've seen it, I'm kind of dubious. It was a funny movie, though.

Clarion 2001 started one year ago today. I can hardly believe it.

I've mentioned a couple of times that I'm having novelish thoughts. I'll no doubt continue to have them, and will probably start work on a novel in the not-to-distant future. But part of my urge toward novels was just a sense of frustration with the short fiction I've been working on.

I've written a lot since Clarion, but most of my post-Clarion fiction remains not-quite-finished. I've gotten several stories ready to be critiqued (one got rewritten and then critiqued again). But (except for a couple of of small pieces) none of them have felt ready to market yet.

In the meantime, most of my Clarion stories have been most of the top markets without getting bought.

But after getting almost no writing done for about ten days, I find that I really, really want to work on my short stories.

No doubt novelish feelings will return. But, for now, short stories it is.