What's going on

I’m putting Street Glass on hold because I’ve found an online course I think will help with the plot, but the course doesn’t start until February. I strongly feel I need a more experienced hand to guide me.

My plot problems, I believe, arise from Neal not having a strong enough goal at the start of the story. I may need to intensify things before he even meets Sandy. Readers have to care about Neal and sympathize with him very early on, or the chance to leave the gang won’t mean much.

But I’ll still play around with scenes as they catch my interest. Moving to the forefront is an idea I’m turning into a short story, with an eye toward making it the first of a series of shorts. I aim to submit the first story to some as-yet-unfound contests. This will keep me writing, and will help with the all-important skill of reducing my words. You may have noticed I like to talk J

This story is a fantasy, set in a medieval sort of era. It concerns the rediscovery of magic. Be assured it will not be a clichéd piece! Using this magic has definite physical consequences, unpleasant ones. This magic cannot do everything though it has certain attractions. I’m still filling in some of the details, but it’s already quite a bit of fun.

One of the members of my local writers’ group gave me a copy of yWriter5 to try. I’ve just started playing with it. It looks like it could be helpful for keeping people, places, and plots straight. Sure, you could use a spreadsheet, but yWriter lets you keep the lists and the story in one program. Okay, you could make lists in Word too. In fact I do that for Street Glass and I have two spreadsheets that I use less often. I’ll let you know what I think of the program in another week or two.

Speaking of lists, the discography for Sylvyr Star has been completed. You’ll find it on a separate page, here. It starts with the band’s first release in 1980 and goes up to 1991. I had to work hard to convince them to tell me the whole catalog; I think they had copyright concerns ;) I assured them that there’s nothing to worry about.

Neal tells me that at some point after he’s become comfortable playing rhythm guitar, he does some CCR covers with Star. He’s gotten so wrapped up in the project that when I listen to CCR, I can hear Star’s versions playing just underneath. It’s a weird effect, let me tell you. Just when I get a handle on the character voices in my head, I get fictional music playing along with the real stuff (insert googly-eyed smiley here!)