Like a Chicken with its Head Cut Off

It’s been awhile since last post but it has been a hectic week. Busy with school-both kids went to the RCMP Musical Ride and I attended as a parent volunteer. Busy with the house-some indoor chores here, a little lawn cutting there. But especially busy with writing…

Throughout this week it been writing a rather exciting short story called The Witch. It is another story that takes place in the fictitious village of Mitchell’s Landing. My previous Mitchell’s Landing story was called Small Town Secrets and is currently on submission at The New Yorker.

I’ve also been querying agents this week. With the Loremaster manuscript completed and sent into DAW books for consideration I felt that it was time to send out feelers for representation of the novel.

Last weekend was very busy as well. On Saturday it was the 40^th anniversary of my old high school, Grey Highlands Secondary School. The weekend was packed with activities but the kids’ schedules didn’t allow for anything except a brief visit and tour of the old high school. During the brief visit I ran into some good old friends and had a nostalgic walk around. Everything really does seem smaller when you go back to the schools of your youth. The school was changed over the years. A new wing was added sometime in the not too distant past but it was comforting to see that the old Geography room on the second floor hasn’t changed a bit. In fact, I’m pretty sure that the desk I used to sit in (second row from the door, four seats back from the teacher’s desk) is the same desk that is there today. An interesting thing to note was that also on the second floor across from the Home Economics room there now stands just a regular classroom. I explained to the children that when I went to school that room was filled with typewriters. My five year old son looked up at me and said, “Hey, Dad, what’s a typewriter?”… Enough said.

The other event this weekend was the Elora Writers Festival. After securing a babysitter for the afternoon, my wife and I took the long leisurely 4 minute drive from Fergus to Elora to attend this year’s readings. The writers included Giller prize finalist, Edeet Ravel, travel writer Laurie Gough, comedian Diane Flacks, poet Jacob McArther Mooney (really good, but his “spoken word” style of delivery doesn’t do his poetry justice – bought his book and I’m delighted), Helen Humphreys and Rio Youers. Youers’ novel End Time is about a heroin addict who cuts off his own fingers – not exactly family fun but then again I don’t know your family…

The Festival itself was great but the meal following was out of this world. Last year the readings and meal were at the same venue – The Drew House in Elora. This year the readings were at the Keating Lounge followed again by a meal at the Drew House. Last year my wife and I attended only the readings but throughout we were distracted by the wonderful aroma wafting from the adjacent kitchen. We vowed to stay for the meal and weren’t disappointed. Before the meals many of the attendees and all of the authors gathered in the garden for cocktails. I was rubbing shoulders with such local personalities as Chris Wiggins and Colin Fox when a server came by with the best damn sausage rolls I’ve ever had. There were perfectly prepared and had some sort of buttery glaze on the pastry that made me wonder whose mom I would need to kill for another – but they just kept coming. The meal that followed was an amplification of that heavenly appetizer. It was a buffet feast of masterfully prepared meat, salads and vegetables and the desert was an absolute slice of chocolate bliss.

Coming up next week I’ll give an update on how my Story A Week thing is going as well as some direction on where my novel length fiction is heading.

Loremaster Revisited

So maybe a story week was a little ambitious considering my current project.…

But, I am happy to say that my current project is now my finished project! Yesterday afternoon, at about 3:45 PM, I put the finishing touches on my Loremaster manuscript. About another half hour was spent fiddling with fonts and type sizes. I ended up settling on the standard Times New Roman and reduced it from a 12 to 11 pt font. By changing it to 11 pt I was able to reduce the overall length of the manuscript from 618 pages to a much more manageable, and more cheaply posted, 513 pages. I also spent some time, actually about 45 minutes, finding and replacing all those words that are different in British spelling than American spelling. I’m talking about words like “honour” and “armour” and changing them to “honor” and “armor”. In a fantasy novel where one of the major characters is the personification of knightly conduct, there were a lot of changes to be made. At the end of it all I figure there were about ¾ of a page of “u” s that vanished from the U.S. version of the manuscript.

Yesterday, around 4:45 PM, with disk in hand, I walked into one of our local printers. This morning I returned to pick up the manuscript. There’s something profoundly weighty about 513 pages that you have painstakingly written and revised and revised again. The manuscript sits here at my side waiting only for a cover letter and a synopsis before being bundled up and sent screaming into the world. That's it in the photo up there...

Now that Loremaster has been effectively put to bed it is time for me to move on to other projects. One of these projects is to get started on my short-story-a-week program. This week’s story will be set in a little village I’ve created called Mitchell’s Crossing and center around a former ballerina with a wooden leg. Guess what her first name is...

I’m also going to get started on either the flesh-out of Patriot or The Platinum Ticket or I’ll start working again on a novel length piece of fiction I started last year called, Nothing’s Made To Last.

There are a few things of note going on in my little town this week that I’d like to pass along. The Elora Writers Festival takes place this Sunday. I understand there are still tickets available and you can follow the link to the web site for more info. My wife and I went last year and it was a great experience. If you find yourself in the neighbourhood this weekend, plan on attending.

Also going on in my township of Center Wellington is the annual general meeting of the Outdoor Writers of Canada. The membership are meeting here from Thursday till Saturday in a variety of venues. It’s nice to see our little town snagged a convention usually reserved for places like Montreal or Victoria.

There’s a lot more going on that I’ll cover in the next post but for now that dancer with the prosthetic limb wants to shake a leg…

A story a week...

Ambitious? Yes, but something I can do. In addition to finishing the Loremaster edit, fleshing out Patriot and The Platinum Ticket and putting together a couple of rough outlines for a few other novel length projects I have decided on a goal of one short story a week - written, edited and submitted to market. To this end I have blown the dust off a couple of books in the basement.

One - none too dusty actually - is Fiction Writer's Workshop by Josip Novakovich. In his book, Novakovich presents a complete Fiction Workshop with a good number of story assignments. Taking my recent successes from the Fiction Workshop I attended earlier this year, I can see the value of a creative springboard.

The second book is much older and has a touch of sentimental value. It is called Writing with a Purpose by John M. Bassett and Donald G. Rutledge. This particular copy of the book was published in 1958. It was presented to me in grade seven by my teacher, Mr. Ian Morrison. Mr. Morrison is also the guy who tried - and failed - to teach me how to play a musical instrument. My most vivid memory of Ian Morrison is an errant stick of chalk hurled in anger that nailed the girl sitting next to me. No - the chalk wasn't intended for little Dave Beynon - he was actually trying for the kid behind the girl but his aim was rather awful. But I digress...
Writing with a Purpose is a great all-round primer for any sort of writing you might choose to do. Essays and letters comprise a good deal of the material but there are some real creative writing gems scattered throughout.

Why a story a week? Well - I need to get some publishing credits and I need them sooner than later. In Issac Asimov's compilation, Gold, he reprinted a number of essays from the magazine that bore his name. In one of the essays he speaks about cover letters and getting published. One thing he talks about are how self-doubting most fiction editors are, himself included. He said that when an editor sees previous writing credits cited in the cover letter it makes him or her far more likely to give the story serious consideration. Those previous publishing credits tell the editor that other editors have found this author's work salable. Of course, the writing still needs to be good, but those publishing credit are priceless.

I already have five short stories making the rounds. With additional stories entering the world each week my chances increase that much more and once I can add publishing credits to the cover letters...well, the sky's the limit. Publishing credits also come in handy in finding agents and publishers for novel length fiction.

Speaking of writing, I need to edit some more Loremaster... next time I plan on talking about having fun...