In Today’s Journal
* Quote of the Day
* The Bradbury Challenge Report
* Update on the Recast
* High School
* Of Interest
Quote of the Day
“My life has been a quest for knowledge and understanding, and I am nowhere near having achieved that. And it doesn’t bother me in the least.” Alex Trebek
The Bradbury Challenge Report
Participating in any challenge is a great way to have fun and grow as a writer.
The requirement is to write at least one short story per week, then let me know the title, word count, and genre per the format below. During the past week, the following writers wrote these new stories:
- Vanessa V. Kilmer “Read, Wight & Blew” 3179 Dystopian
- Christopher Ridge “Slimeball” horror 500
- Christopher Ridge “Much Less Splattery” horror 1354
- Christopher Ridge “You Know. I Don’t Like You” working class realism 1452
- Christopher Ridge “Chronic pain” working class realism 2065
- Christopher Ridge “The Caretaker” working class realism
- Christopher Ridge “Meeting Day” working class realism 1234
- Christopher Ridge “The Man Who Hated Sundays” working class realism 1374
- KC Riggs “Amos in the Rain” 1302 words Psychological
- Dave Taylor “Ma’s Honor” 1,565 Magical Realism/Western
- Glynn Young “A Baseball Promise and a Press Conference” 2736 General
Congratulations to all of these writers for doing the work and having fun.
Update on the Recast
After I got the first book of the recast back from my primary first reader and made his recommended changes, the recast really started.
As I made my first reader’s changes I noticed a few other things that didn’t sit right with my current skill level, so I decided to read through the whole thing again myself.
After I copied and pasted what will become book 2 into the master document, I went all the way back to the beginning of the story and started cycling through it again.
Despite the fact that I’m what Stephen King calls a “putter-inner” vs. a “taker-outer,” I found myself deleting a lot of unnecessary phrases and even whole passages that I wrote back in 2015 without a second thought.
As a result, the presentation of the story is much tighter and cleaner now. Mostly because I’m seeing things now that I never would have seen even only a year ago.
The overall story—basically the life story of one man from about age 16 through old age—will remain the same, but it will be a lot better reading experience.
As I’ve already mentioned, the whole saga will be tighter and cleaner with almost nonstop action. Plus most of the thousands of stories that make up the chapters (that make up the books that make up the saga) will be more complete, too. So each story will be ‘fuller,’ in a way.
The saga will also be filled to the brim with new stories that weren’t in the original. Those are stories that Wes and his friends and enemies didn’t even convey to me on the first time through.
That’s already happened a few times, and I’m only about 8% of the way through the saga. It’s a great journey and a ton of exhilarating fun. And of course, I’m thrilled to be riding a good horse in a just cause alongside my old buddy Wes Crowley again.
High School
In Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week post (see Of Interest), he asks “What Did You Learn About Life in High School?”
In a personal observation based on the quotes he included, it’s almost spooky how comforting I find being an exception.
For me, high school was nothing like my ensuing life except that I was breathing then and am still breathing now.
In high school I was the small, frightened, emotionally numb kid whose job (for the school district) was to sell small cartons of milk in the hallways between classes. I was ashamed, silent, and bullied by derision.
Today I’ve Been a Marine Corps veteran of 21 years as well as a former police officer, oil field and landscaping laborer, rodeo bull rider, and adjunct college instructor.
Today I Am an accomplished prolific novelist and short story writer who enjoys helping others cut their own various learning curves in those endeavors, most often free of charge.
All of those are achievements I never so much as dared dream of in high school.
For me, the high school experience was only an opportunity that showed me what humanity could be and offered me a choice: grow or stagnate. I chose the former.
The more important lessons I learned in high school weren’t on the syllabus. Those several lessons informed growth vs. stagnation and are why my own high school experience did not either continue or repeat.
- I am responsible only for my own actions and reactions.
- I am the only human I can absolutely count on,
- Even seemingly reasonable expectations of others aren’t,
- Never having been a member of any single-minded caste, my sense of self-worth doesn’t require such a membership,
- It’s perfectly all right that others’ mileage will almost certainly vary, and finally
- Whether others’ biases or opinions matters (in my life) is solely up to me.
I wish the same for all of you.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
Ask Mister Language Person Dave Barry’s substack. (Thanks to Gary V for pointing me to this.)
How Playwright Aaron Sorkin Crafts “Musical” Dialogue
Dr. Mardy’s Quotes of the Week: High School