Thursday, January 28, 2010

Templeton, English 102. Storm of Century coming.

I feel the desire to write something decent, after being forced to rush a business letter in class today. Pushed the deadline, working with three other people. Barely made it. All of Templeton's stuff is in-class projects. I always feel so dirty afterward, like a house-broken dog that is forced to crap all over the floor. "I can do better than this," I say, sadly, disgustedly, shaking my head.
Nonetheless, it is a little fun. Being in the computer lab, rushing towards a deadline, winter storm imminant, working with my friends. I just don't feel much sense of accomplishment, is all.
Other news, reading two fantastic books, Grann's The Lost City of Z, and Steyngart's Absurdistan. I got Canaan's Tongue, by Wray, and Frostbite, by Wellington, lined up. I'm ready for some genre fiction, man!

That's all I got, really. Need to make plans. Need to write. Am writing a little, still, but my in-class writings totally shouldn't count as anything productive.

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Current project

My newest story is an alt-history type thing about a group of Muslims attempting to establish a research colony in tenth-century Greenland. I want to inject mystical, mythological elements along w/ serious scientific scrutiny thereof. So far it's...eh. About three pages in and I'm feeling like a hack. I'll call it a first draft and try to keep my head up for the rewrites. I'm proud of myself, though, for thus far keeping solid on my resolution. I may publish a bit of the story on here when I'm done wid it. But until then, it's chili time!

Monday, January 4, 2010

Hi.

After dealing with some rather inferior blog sites for the last couple weeks, I've finally arrived here. We'll see how it works out. This blog is intended to serve mainly as a place to exercise my writing skills (which are dubious at best,) in accordance with my latest NY's resolution. Said resolution being to write for at least an hour each day. (Note bien, would be critics, not all of my daily writings will be blog posts; rather few of them will, I'm thinking.)

While I'm here I would also like to network with other writers, and maybe even pick the brains of a few who do their thing professionally for advice and such. Hopefully there still exist such creatures...

Anyway. About me. The riveting part? There is none. I'm a community college student in a small town in southwest Missouri. I have no major, except hopefully journalism, at a later time.

Ugh.

It's snowy here, if anyone's interested in the weather in SW Mo. This has kept children out of school on what was supposed to be the first day of the semester. And there was much rejoicing, believe you me.

For myself, when I haven't been playing chauffeur for my little sister, I've been really into Naomi Klein's No Logo. Finally, yes, I know. I'm about halfway through, and I would highly recommend it. It's so refreshing to see what may be considered a screed by some to be so well and thoroughly researched.

So that's my intro. I'll try to post fairly often. Various meditations, as well as perhaps some pieces from my fiction exercises (mostly from Brian Kiteley's excellent 3 A.M Epiphany, a book all struggling writers should look into.)