Back From The Retreat
I spent the weekend holed-up in Keystone State Park sharing a couple of cabins with writing buddies, trying minimize real-life distractions and get some actual writing done. And maybe play a game or two.

We've been doing this twice a year for three years now, and it's a good time. The anthology has been sucking up most of my writerly energies, and I was glad to give myself an excuse to focus on my own work.

I strongly considered bringing an existing broken-but-promising piece to see if I could figure a way around the plot issues that are inflating it to an unsaleable wordcount that doesn't really justify itself, but then decided: fuckit. Squonk stories are fun, and if I can produce them more regularly than I have been, I could see myself making one hell of a strong case to a prospective agent considering me as a client. So, Squonk it is!

Just one problem: I didn't have any bloody idea what the story would be about. I do have a few long-term ideas for Squonk and Wendel and Mrs. Tweedle-Chirp and Slowfingers (a character I keep liking more the more I write for him), but none of the story ideas seemed right for the fourth* story. So I decided to force myself to write something, dammit. If it was crap, toss it; and if it's good, or could be massaged into something good with more work, win!

Long story short: I didn't wind up with a complete Squonk story, or anything close to it. I did, however, wind up with an idea and a few pages that I'm very fond of -- spurred by fireside chats at the retreat. I'm posting this one solidly in the "win" column. I'd like to let a few key plot points percolate in my brain a bit before pouring them into my word processor, but I'm very optimistic.

I also wound up working on a much more mature SF piece about virtual reality, identity, intimacy, and sex. I've been kicking it around in my head for a while, but didn't think I was ready to write it yet. I wrote about 24 pages, so I was obviously wrong. I'm probably going to have to cut about half of them; the emphasis is all wrong. The characters are completely disposable outside of the two primaries, and even they need some work if they're going to carry the story. I need to do some work ... let's forget "exploring" their personalities and focus on "giving them" personalities to begin with, shall we? Oh, and I need to buckle-down and do some research, lest one critical theme be born into the world with "FAIL" tattooed across its forehead. But I like the core idea (which traces itself to, of all things, a friend's story about a snake astronaut) and I'm quite pleased with the plot I've come up with. I really think it will compliment the story's concepts and themes very effectively.

So yeah. Good weekend.

And when I got home, zombies.

* -- Yes, I'm on story four. Story three has been written and sent to Escape Pod, but I haven't heard anything back on it. I presume I'll eventually hear something just as soon as editor Steve Eley returns from whatever alternate dimension has gobbled him up.