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