The Basement Office

After a maudlin evening, I’m dusting myself off and coming up swinging.  It’s been a very full week and I’m psyching myself up for a massive session of writing tonight.

But first, a pause for cuteness (and inspiration for me):

Ain’t she cute?  A budding artist for sure.  I don’t even mind that it ain’t writing.  There’s time.  She’s not two yet.

So, this week:

• We had another writing group meeting that was very beneficial for me.  I got great crits which I’ve gone back and used for edits.  My first chapter of Revenant is much stronger now.   The group is going strong.   It’s a good thing.  We might even have a new member soon.
• This week marked the last workshop session at TMI and this makes me sad.  Stay tuned for a more effusive blog entry on this.
• I’m committing to submit an entry to the 2012 CBC Quebec Writing Competition.  I’ve got an idea.  We’ll see where that gets me.  I’ve got 15 bucks to lose and everything to gain.
• I got to meet the very lovely Ms Beverly Akerman at last Thursday’s workshop session.  She was kind enough to come and do a reading from her new book “The Meaning of Children” and talk about her writing life.  It was educational and gave me enough of a kick in the butt to get myself in gear and out of this funk I’ve been struggling with.  She gave me some very good advice and pointed out that I could submit to Onspec (which I realize now, most of my writing friends knew about, but I sure as hell didn’t!) as a possible market for genre short stories.  Her talk also has led me to investigate the other workshops available at the Quebec Writer’s Federation.
• I’ve decided my relaxed attitude to writing Revenant isn’t going to cut it.  Once again, the prodigious output of a close friend is deeply inspiring and I think she’s got the right idea.  Sure, I can write 1 chapter a month, but that means I won’t finish Revenant til 2013 or 2014!  Not acceptable.  I’m working on a more reasonable timeline and planning to have a 3K word day today.

That’s all I got for updates.

Never surrender, never say die…time to get some word count baby.