….YOU CANNOT ACHIEVE SUCCESS. This is the lesson that Steve McCraw, head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, needs to learn. He made the statement that although the DPS “made some mistakes” the agency as a whole “did not fail” the parents of children killed at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde. “Did not fail” Read More…
Tag: life beyond writing
And the Beat Goes On
The final buffing and polishing (final is an indefinite word since there’s always One More Tyop to find) is now done. So yesterday morning, bright and early, Book II poked its head up out of the debris left over from Book I and said “So let’s get started.” And I said “I need to clean Read More…
Of Purple Paint & Short Stories
Yesterday and today were spent, in part, with cans of Krylon ™ spray paint in the color designated by TX Parks & Wildlife as “NO HUNTING PURPLE”. The idea is that instead of posting “No Hunting” signs (where they inevitably get stolen, shot up, mysteriously blown away) , you simply paint the top of your Read More…
Closer and Closer…
Progress is still coming and the book is still GROWING. I didn’t ask it to grow past 150K, I swear. But it swore back that I need another chapter of this, and two more chapters of that, and by the way I’d left an entire Very Important POV dangling. So. Still growing. New Stuff is Read More…
New Beginning In
NewBook’s new beginning has now been approved by two different first-readers (and many thanks to both of them!!!) so Chapter 1 is now anchoring one end of the book and the Good Ending (which has no chapter number as yet because things are still fluid in the last third and I need *uninterrupted* working sessions Read More…
Second Revision Draft
Second revision draft is now on chapter 22. This book, thanks to the years of not writing and brain foggy stuff, may take more than one run through the “Construction Phase” to get things right, but every thing so far is willing to be nudged in the right direction. My metaphors for the problems are Read More…
First Revision Draft
Done. But not dusted. The miserable tooth abscess slowed me down and tomorrow will be all dental work with two different dentists. It’s complicated. You do not want to hear about it. The book however runs like a fox across country…and surprised ME with its ending, which is logical, crisp, definite, and yet…makes it clear Read More…
156,300+ Is Not The End
It is, however, *this* end. The last day in which what I’m doing could be called “first draft* rather than *revision*. Somewhere between three and four in the morning, I finally got my heroes out of the low passage out into the air and light–battered, filthy, stinking, exhausted beyond exhaustion, half their original companions dead, Read More…
150,000+ And Fireworks
This afternoon, a particular sentence pushed the NewBook length to the approximate, estimated length for a Paksworld book, and I went seriously giddy, made a pan of brownies, and asked R- to go get us fried chicken for supper, and ice cream to go with the brownies. Snippet here: ……………………………………………………………………………………………… “By dark, he had achieved, Read More…
A Family Note: overlapping memories
In 1944, during WWII, when I was conceived around the time of the D-Day invasion, both my parents worked in defense industries near or in Chicago. Both were engineers, and I believe (not for sure in my father’s case) they were both liaison engineers for the Army Air Corps in aircraft factories. They had been Read More…