Don't forget 52 Stitches begins its year long run today with I'm Keeping it Light by Mercedes M Yardley. I can't wait for it to go live. I've pressed refresh a gazillion times.
I'm relieved the holidays are over. I loved the break. I loved lounging around watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer on DVD and watching old episodes of The Outer Limits on cable, but it's also good to be back at the computer. I'm hard at work (ahem! well almost) working on the second draft of 'Theatre of Curious Acts' and I am about to move onto part two: Paper Dragons. At the moment I'm averaging about 1,400 words a day - I think that's respectable.
I hope to add about 7,000 words by week-end to Theatre and I also want to write a dark short story so that I can submit to 'Necrotic Tissue' this month. I know I said I'd only do one short story a month, but I figure as long as I'm working on the long stuff and doing a resonable amount of wordage that I can play with the shorts too. Got to keep the writer happy.
Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: Paper Dragons, Most Recent at Top [Help]
Results 1 - 2 of 2
By: Catherine J Gardner,
on 1/4/2009
Blog: The Poisoned Apple (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Flash Fiction, 52 Stitches, Theatre of Curious Acts, Paper Dragons, The Outer Limits, Add a tag
By: Catherine J Gardner,
on 11/9/2008
Blog: The Poisoned Apple (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: NaNoWriMo, Soldiers, Theatre of Curious Acts, Daniel Cole, Swan Ecklund, Paper Dragons, World War One, Add a tag
A coincidental and fitting day to post the next extract from my NaNoWriMo novel as it is Remembrance Sunday and almost 90 years since the end of World War One.
Part Two: PAPER DRAGONS
(i)
The Show
1918
Silence.
Ever since the guns had ceased their tirade across the western front, Daniel Cole had sought solace in silence. He would wake in the early hours, the night ink blank, the stars concealed behind the weight of clouds that refused to release the ghosts from the earth, and he would sit on the worn chair in the corner of his bedroom, look out at the emptied world, and remember all the lost men.
Their ghosts brushed past him when he entered the bakers where Eddie Tarpey dusted loaves and dreamed of Mabel Normand; when he rode his bicycle past Newsham School where Norman Bulmer instructed children in physical education; and down by the lake where the twins spent their summers fishing. In this very room, where prior to 1914 Walter James Cole had wept, snored and dreamed of glory in the bed next to his.
Sometimes, in the silence of three a.m., he heard his dead brother snore. Sometimes he remembered Walter had been as young as the century. Fifteen when an enemy shell found his heart. When its shrapnel crossed the channel, embedded in the walls of their old terrace, and stole their parents.
Sometimes the silence broke him.
His uniform hung on a wire hanger over the back of the door. It formed ghost of its own in the dark, and one month since quiet had fallen over blood red fields its shoulders slumped, its legs baggy over emaciated thighs, its collar bent beneath the weight of a bowed head. He had that morning decided he would never put it on again. He wondered if Swan, George, Ken and Harvey would wear theirs when they met the following day at the White Horse Inn.
Swan Ecklund would, of that Daniel had no doubt.
The curtains dragged along the yellowing wire as he pulled them open and looked out at what he considered a ghost town. The cobbled streets glistened with rain. Gas lamps washed the streets with pools of light. He lifted the sash window. The gas lamp located outside his terraced house hissed, in his darkest hours Daniel imagined that hiss was for him alone.
I'm doing the exact opposite of you this year. I'm going to be amping up my short stories while I work on and revise my second novel, because I just got another short story acceptance letter. I think submitting more stories that are accepted will give me more confidence going into the monotony of the longer writing.
1,400 words a day is a scorching pace. You're going to wear out a chair and a keyboard. I committed to 500 words; now that's respectable.
Congrats on the sale, Wendy.
I'm never going to be able to keep 1,400 up - but I can dream.
I push myself to do 750 words a day. If I can get more I do. good luck with your drafts.
Same here...it was a nice break, but it feels good to be back in the saddle herding all those pesky adverbs and adjectives...let 'em start nesting, and it's all over...
1400 is a good goal...I'd love to hit that. I usually aim for 1000, but unless I'm writing a lengthy dialogue, I'm usually lucky to break 700. Last night I got into an Ayn-Rand-ish speech and blew through 2000 words in a few hours, but I'll probably go back and knock it back to about half the size (remembering that it was during one those speeches that I put down Atlas Shrugged).
1,400 words a day is great! That's better than I've been doing. I'm kinda sorta looking forward to getting back in the regular swing of things again too--although I do love not having to set the alarm when I go to bed.
Hooray for a regular schedule.
I can't believe I'm looking forward to spending my weekdays with drooling teenagers again...but I am.
...now, if they would only drool about literature...that would be nice.
1400 words is also my average. But I'm itching to get back to the short stories and might sneak one in this month, though I swore them off for awhile.
Happy 09
I was so not surprised to see that you were the first comment left, and that it was something supportive. ROCK ON! You're chilling AND gracious, such a nice combo.
It seems I need to post a question: I'll do it here and on my blog.
First some background...
When I sit down to write, I'm disappointed if I leave before I hit 2-2500 words. I guess I average maybe two or three writing sessions a week (although a bit better than that recently with the holidays), so I guess I get out around 5K a week - this equates to around the first draft of two chapters each week.
When my study starts up again, this will drop back to 2-3K a week if I'm lucky.
Here's the question (yep, there is one, it just took a while getting here): How many of you have a full time job?
I know many of you work from home, and I definitely include looking after kids and managing significant others as part of the full time job market, but being at home would tend to lend itself to having more opportunity to write in my distorted view of things.
I would love to swap with my wife and become a home-dad. I've done it for short intervals in the past, the longest being a couple of months, and enjoyed it.
Unfortunately money requirements no longer allow it, and the time restraints impact hugely on my writing.
So am I just wrong in my view of being home more results in more writing time?
Inquiring minds want to know - well this one does...
The holidays tend to wear thin after a while ; ) I was happy to come home!
BT: great question, I'll pop over to your blog to post my response. I'm very curious to hear from the rest of the folks, too...
Jamie - And you're looking after your little boy, so cool.
Jeremy - I was really happy that 'normal life' had returned until my alarm woke me at 5:20.
KC - Alarm clocks :shiver:
Aaron - You must be mad.
Bobbie - they're addictive little blighters.
Mercedes - Good to see the story getting so many fantastic comments.
BT - I'll head over to your blog to answer your question, but yep - I have to work too. Boo.
Welcome back, Natalie.
It says something to me that you consider 1400 words to be respectable. Now I understand how you produced such a fabulous amount of work last year! :)
Cate, is one of your stories in that issue of Postcripts that you are reading?
Nope, not yet. I wish.
My first one is due in December 09, and the other the following spring.