Let the voices in your head be your guide...

I gave in and took another break from TF so I could put down on paper what was going on in my head with the new mainstream fiction project. I literally couldn't sleep at night because the plot was threatening to do me in if I didn't let it out. ;) Really, I couldn't sleep at night, and this thing does seem to have a life of its own, but it's not that ugly.

I wrote about 15 pages in one night, nearly to the end of the first plot point. I need to write up another five or six pages and then I can return to my regularly scheduled TF programming. I will finish!

I've decided I must choose now whether to attend the writer's conference in La Jolla, or a writer's retreat in Michigan. I am leaning toward the retreat, because it's small (maybe 50 folks) and two writers on my most-admired-author list are on the staff (Jacquelyn Mitchard and Jane Hamilton). I would love to "sit under their tutelage", if only for an hour or two, but also the opportunity to be in a small, relaxed setting. It's at a retreat center, so people eat camp food together and hang out for an entire casual weekend. In an obscure spot on her website, Jacquelyn Mitchard says this is an annual event she doesn't miss no matter where in the world she is. That's good enough for me!

I've also got a good plot for a short story called "Odds." I need to be writing small pieces to send out for publication or contests, because the word on the street is if you are already published in some form or fashion, you're more likely to get the "big stuff" published. Maybe I'll work on that later this evening for a little while.

A Lyric for the Day
(which has inspired the working title for my new manuscript)

If I'm always here to catch you,
then you're only going to fall again,
but if you fall right through the bottom,
then I'm always going to feel the blame.

Wrong to try to fix you,
and wrong to turn away.
I'm guilty,
guilty either way.

From"Guilty Either Way" on Underneath by David Wilcox