Thoughts on Perfection

I just posted the latest Grumpy Old Vampires.  You can read the start of it below, and then follow the link to finish it.  Before I get to that, though, I wanted to jot down some thoughts I’ve been having today on my writing.  This week’s Vampires episode isn’t my best.  I realize that, and I’m posting it anyway.  This is actually kind of a big step for me.  I don’t like people seeing things that I’m not totally happy with.  This is probably one reason why I’m such a bad manuscript submitter.  I have to be really confident of a piece to let it go, and that’s unrealistic.

Actually, what it reminds me of is the comics section in the newspaper, believe it or not.  You know how sometimes you read them, and they’re just not funny?  Not even remotely?  I think a large part of that is probably the pressure of having to come up with a new thing on demand, week in and week out.  Making the first Grumpy Old Vampires episode was fun and enjoyable, because I had a good idea for it.  Making some of the later ones . . . not so much.  Why do I keep on doing it?  Because I think it’s good for me to get practice writing things no matter what my mood–just persisting anyway.

I’m a very goal-oriented person.  It’s how I get big projects done.  When I set a goal to write a GOV episode every week, I did so conscious of the fact that I’m not very good at short fiction.  But I’m doing it anyway, and I think in the long run, I’ll be happy I have.  If nothing else, it’s got me thinking about these characters, and I have some ideas for a longer story kicking around in the back of my head.

Anyway–enough random thoughts that don’t seem to lead anywhere.  Here’s the start of this week’s episode.  Enjoy.

Step One Continued: Still Finding a Bank

One of the main reasons I wanted a Rascal was to free me from the burdens of public transportation. Do you realize that buses just don’t come on a regular basis at 2 in the morning? And have you ever tried getting a driver’s license with a Bavarian birth certificate that was issued back when witches were still being burned at the stake?

So I was stuck relying on the whims of the bus system. And since I didn’t want to be seen briefcasing the bank, I went out at night. Late night. As in, the bus only comes once every two hours night.

The bank I had picked was the one nearest the bus stop downtown, because if I had to rob a bank, at least I wasn’t going to have to walk far to do it. By the time I got there, it was one in the morning, and the streets were empty.

I tottered up to the window and put my hands up to peer in without a reflection from the streetlights. It looked remarkably like a bank. I tried the door.

Locked. Go figure.

Of course, the door was made out of glass, so I was pretty sure I could have broken it, but then there would be the problem of the alarm, and of getting into the vault. If I were current on my blood intake, I could just go and melt into mist or something and sneak into the vault that way. That’s what a vampire would do in the movies. Come to think of it, why didn’t more movies have vampires as heroes? If you ignored the whole blood sucking thing–something most of us didn’t get to do anyway–we had a lot of super powers. Spiderman would have been much better if Peter Parker were a vampire, that was for sure.

I sighed and stepped back from the door. Who was I kidding? All I had done was taken a bus to a place where I’d have to wait another two hours to take a bus home. The whole evening would have been a complete waste, but then a light came on inside the bank.

A light. In the bank. At one in the morning.

And someone was coming to the door. Well, teetering to the door. He came up and shouted through the glass, “Ve’re closed. Go avay!”

 continued

Grumpy Old Vampires

I just posted episode six of Grumpy Old Vampires, the new hit web series that no one knows about.  Can you resist clicking on the link?  Well, I know you can resist–but why would you want to?

In other news, I’m now over 46,000 words on Ichabod, and it’s still going well.  There have been a couple of instances where I’ve forgotten to include something key in my outline, so I’ve been having to go back and rewrite a tad here and there, but nothing major.  This is definitely the most pain free experience I’ve had writing so far, with the possible exception of Barboy (my seventh book).  But even with Barboy, I had to just sort of make connections on the fly to things that had been mentioned before, as far as the plot went.  With Ichabod, I’ve been able to actually foreshadow things and realize what I was doing when I foreshadowed them, if that makes sense.  Writing group was going to read the first chapter this week, but I have to attend a funeral, so it’ll have to wait another week.  Such is life.

Victor Comes Up with a Plan

The latest Grumpy Old Vampires has been posted.  In this week’s episode, Victor expounds on the legal system and vampires, and he comes up with a plan to get the money he needs to buy his Rascal.  If you’re looking for something short and diverting to waste about four minutes of your life in an enjoyable fashion, please consider reading it.

Can I just say how much Mondays are getting on my nerves?  There’s always just so much to do.  Sigh.  On the plus side, I took a couple of hours this morning to look for more jobs, and I’ve found another seven or so that I qualify for easily and are in areas I’d like to live.  Maybe I’ll put off actually applying to them until tomorrow, though.  I still have the laundry to finish, my writing to do, my homework to finish, Family Home Evening to plan and do . . . Tomorrow is looking pretty good.

Oh–and I haven’t given an Ichabod or revising update in a while, so I might as well tell you how those are going.  I’m trying to work on both.  At first I’d thought I’d set aside Ichabod while I worked on the Lesana revision, but things were going so well with Ichabod (I’ll pass the 40,000 word mark today) that I didn’t want to lose my momentum.  So I still do my 1,000 words, and then once I’m through with that, I turn to the revision.  Right now I’m about halfway through summarizing the book, chapter by chapter.  It’s a real pain, honestly, but once I get it done, I’ll be able to see the plot as a whole and retool it more easily.  In theory.  I hope to have the summary done by tomorrow or Wednesday, depending on how much time I have for it.  All things considered, I’m really happy with how well I’ve been doing on my writing–and this is even at the end of the semester, when school’s going crazy.

Yay me.

The Black Market

New Grumpy Old Vampire post is up.  This week’s focuses on the desire of every aging vampire: a Rascal 625.  The first of what will likely prove to be an actual plot, carried out over the next few weeks’ episodes.  Short.  Funny.  Read it.

I’d post more now, but I have a bad headache (which might mean that this week’s episode is a bit off, since I just finished writing it).  So . . . more when I don’t feel nauseous from pain anymore.

Welcome to Wal-mart

In

raisinfish

‘s new story that we’re workshopping, she has a teen vampire go hide in Wal-mart, which seemed ingenious to me.  But what if the Wal-mart greeter were a vampire?  That’s the premise of this week’s episode of Grumpy Old Vampires.  It’s short–go check it out.

And while I’m posting, I’d like to wish my wife a public happy birthday–it was yesterday, but I didn’t post then, so I think this still counts.  We celebrated by going up to Salt Lake to eat dinner with my family, and then had a small party on arriving home.  What did I get her?  Two movies (The Philadelphia Story and Forrest Gump) and some baking pans.  She has some other presents that Amazon has been lax in delivering.  Not too romantic, I guess–but that’s what she wanted.

I assume most of you have already seen Forrest Gump, but if you haven’t seen The Philadelphia Story, then you should stop reading right now–well, after you’ve finished reading my blog–and go get it and watch it.  Cary Grant.  Katharine Hepburn.  Jimmy Stewart.  Directed by George Cukor (who also directed My Fair Lady, Born Yesterday, Adam’s Rib and Gaslight).  Romantic Comedy.  Sure, this might not be persuading you men out there, but trust me–this is a great movie that your wife/girlfriend will love and you will actually enjoy.  Then, all you need to do is pretend that it was a sacrifice for you to watch it, and you’ll get double brownie points.  Actually, maybe I’ll write a more thorough review after we’ve watched it again soon.

Anyway–I’m off to work on my #@%* school work.