Today we celebrated a birthday in my house. Birthdays are always great fun and one of the very times that everybody likes to get up early. We open presents before school, before work, and when the tea kettle takes too long, before coffee too. There was the usual collection of cool stuff, books, and checks but for anyone looking to find the perfect Christmas gift for a Nerf junkie I need to tell you – the “Nerf Zombie Collection” is very, very cool. The shot gun variant is semi-steampunk and fires 3 darts at once. Hint, hint.
The other big news today is that I won the 5 minute fiction contest this week. Thank you for voting, and an extra special thank you if you voted for me. If you have never experienced an adrenaline rush while writing, I recommend you try this contest at least twice - the first so you get used to the panic and figure out just how much time everything really takes - and the second so you get to actually enjoy the stress of competing.
The November issue of Apocrypha and Abstractions is out but they spread the content out over a month of postings so my story won't appear until 11/21. I'll post the link then too. I'm still going great guns with nano - no burn out to date - and have had a couple of +2k word days. It seems that many of the other folks buying groceries with non-writing jobs are backing off on their blogs to focus on the novel project this month. I will not be doing that.
However, today I will not be writing about TV like I usually do because I haven't seen anything new to comment on or anything new in the few shows I have watched to highlight. Well, there is one thing. When you are writing dialogue for a script rather than a novel, less is definitely more. Let the actors and setting show so you don’t have to tell. Three lines in a book might only take three words in a script. Trust the actors. Trust the director. Trust the snake voiced by Winnie the Pooh.
And the winner is...JON! Three cheers for you! And you did it without my vote because I didn't even vote. I read your entry, but I didn't want to read the others, and it seemed rather dishonest to vote for yours without giving the others a chance. :)
ReplyDeleteThank you. And I must say, that was very sportsmanlike of you. I'm relieved to know that I won with integrity.
DeleteCongrats on the 5 minute fiction win. I was sure that people were being toasted and so relieved that the victims were books -- but still concerned. Some high school library banned Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughter House Five" a few years ago. The Kurt Vonnegut Library in Kurt's hometown of Indianapolis, Indiana responded by offering a free copy of the book to any high school student who wrote in to request one.
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