In This Weather, Probably a Hot Mess

Last week I revised the dreadful story, which I think turned out quite non-dreadful. I'm waiting for some feedback on it right this very minute, not that I'm counting the minutes or anything. I'm not. Really. I also asked randomly for a friend's opinion on a story I wrote some months ago and about which I haven't really been sure since then. It pivots on a long sex scene, but I don't think it's exactly erotica, or at least not only erotica, and it was nice to hear from my friend that she didn't think so either. (Although Matt does think so. Which means I need a tiebreaker. Anyone want to read a dirty story for me?)

We started in on writing exercises in my creative writing class and on The Sound and the Fury in my literature class. I couldn't really say about the former, because my exercise didn't get workshopped on Monday and the professor hasn't gotten back to me either, and on the latter...oh, mother of mercy. I loved it when I read it last year, I loved it when I read it last weekend, I loved talking about it in class, I overflowed with it at dinner last night, I could talk about this book forever.

Aw, c'mon, yes it does

My exercise, though. We had to create something that had a bunch of different methods of narrative all jammed together and jumbled up, i.e. scene --> summary --> gap --> summary --> pause --> stretch --> pause and so forth. In trying to put this together, I gave up on narrative coherence and wrote a weird collage about a day at the Santa Monica Pier. I wasn't sure if it came out a cool mess or a hot mess, but I guess I'll find out on Wednesday. If they like it, maybe I'll post it here next week, if I'm still as much out of ideas for stuff to write about then as I am now. Ha ha. Ha. Ehhhh.

Actually, I've been working pretty busily on the next couple of posts to follow my last one, about submitting work. I'm surprised at how much I have to say about it and how helpful I'm fooling myself into thinking I am. I figure I'll post them on Fridays until I run out of material. But that's really business, not craft, and I prefer writing about craft. Or really about how I interpret craft, and hurdles I meet therein, and how my own work has been informative on my journey into craft improvement. But for any of that to be bloggable, I'd have to be writing. Exercises are close to that, but they are not that.

I've been looking for an excuse to use this picture for a long time. CRAFT, see?

Fall isn't here yet. It's hot as a leather-covered crotch here in the San Fernando Valley. I'm not complaining, because I moved here specifically to trade long summers for long winters, but I'm definitely feeling kind of "next slide, please," about high-nineties days.

Okay, talking about the weather. Time to vamoose.