700 Words Is The Mental Equivilant Of A Sneeze

Sorry it's been quiet over here, but I told you that might happen.

So just what have I been up to since the very busy start to last week?

Homework.

I'm not complaining though, it's a good sort of homework to have. I read books and write.

On Wednesday I started Small Steps by Louis Sachar. On Thursday I finished it. You may know him as the author of Holes. Small Steps is the follow up book. Armpit and X-ray get into a mess and it resolves itself in a way that for me, was satisfying, simply because it didn't end in the known happy ending sort of way. To me, it seemed to resolve in a real life kind of way. A little of this, a little of that, a little bittersweet, nothing too solid. Just like life. Situations have a way of working themselves out, even if you know it's a just for the moment sort of ending and that more life is indeed coming your way.

I have another stack of books sitting here to read. That pulls in a certain amount of my time, between kids and chores and all that other stuff. Again, though, it's very enjoyable.

The next part of my homework is the writing part. This first assignment is already proving to be a challenge for me. Of course, before I began, it seemed pretty straight forward and simple. That is the way of learning though, it seemed easy enough before I began it.

They provided me with a series of pictures. My job was to choose one, somehow use some part or all of that picture to start a story. Then write a short story. Short meaning 500 to 700 words.

You all know, by now, that I am wordy. So this is almost like a punishment for me.

I chose my picture, made about 12 starts that I scrapped and then got rolling on the real story. Great right? Right. My story is about 700 pages, not 700 words. To give you an idea of my challenge, I broke it up and decided to just use a scene from the story as my short story for the assignment. Deadlines loom after all. Well, here's the thing. Even my "edited" version was 2000 words.

That means I've spent the last day or so ignoring the fact that I have to go do some serious chopping to this scene to make it clean and well, short.

In the end, though, even with it being hard and sort of like cutting off your own hair in the mirror, I'm liking it. The scene will be great when it's done, and I'm thrilled to have such a full story idea going, even if it is a million words long.

Let's just wait to see how much I'm still enjoying all these books, deadlines and edits by the end of 2 years. Yeah, this is a 2 year course. I agreed to take the long version. Crazy.

So that's where I've been. It's where I'm going to be. But I'll be here too. Life just gives me way too much to be all that quiet for all that long.