The Journal of Michael Merriam

Another week of poor writing metrics. I am hopeful things are turning around now that I've figured out why I had stalled. I didn't get as much writing done as I would have liked over the holiday weekend, but sometimes that's just the way life goes.

1. Wrote about 1700 words.
2. Untangled a plot knot.
3. Made a realization about one of my characters.
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Ghosts Of the Places We Live

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Originally posted at michaelmerriam.net. You can comment here or there.

I managed to get some pretty good writing done this week, most of it in coffee shops while waiting to be at other events. I spent a lot of my week dealing with my previous post about Convergence, but at least the conversation about the convention was civil. I also had the pleasure to moderate the panel "Adapting Fiction for Stage," for the Minnesota Speculative Fiction Writers.

1. Wrote about 2200 words on the novel
2. Did some research in books and online
3. Posted a question to the Oney Facebook Community, got several good answers
4. Realized I may have a plot problem. Started working to resolve it.
5. Reread everything I've written so far.
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Ghosts Of the Places We Live

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Originally posted at michaelmerriam.net. You can comment here or there.

While the word count this week isn’t large, I still made strong forward progress with all the outlining and brainstorming and research. That I began the writing in the 1929 section at all is a win for me this week, since I am working with an almost entirely new cast of characters.

Most of this week’s new words were written at Butter Bakery and Café while hanging out with of writers. The hardest thing has been finding the right voice for this section. At the moment it seems to want to be written in a remote, almost dream-like style of prose. Whatever works.

I may not have anything to post next week, unfortunately. Life is being life and sometimes you have to deal with those life distractions and obligations even when all you want to do is write.

1. Wrote 1,015 new words
2. Researched clothing and living in late 1920s rural Oklahoma
3. Made more outline notes for the 1929 section
4. Studied more of my Oney: A Community History book
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Ghosts Of the Places We Live

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Originally posted at michaelmerriam.net. You can comment here or there.

First Draft of the 1979 Section is complete.

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Ghosts Of the Places We Live

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Originally posted at michaelmerriam.net. You can comment here or there.

I almost didn't post this update because, well, I wrote almost nothing last week (330 words). It was kind of a perfect storm disaster of post-Paganicon exhaustion, dealing with being ill while making up my hours at work, and trying to catch up on everything else in life I have fallen behind on. Still, I had hopeful that this week will be better.

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Ghosts Of the Places We Live

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Originally posted at michaelmerriam.net. You can comment here or there.

I like creating titles. I do. But I usually don't bother creating titles for chapters in my novels. I just number them, as in the case of Old Blood's Fate or in Last Car to Annwn Station I use a day and date as a countdown. My three completed unpublished novels have followed this format.

But Ghosts of the Places We Live wants something more vibrant. It wants each chapter to have its own title and its own distinct personality. I'm going to tease you a little bit with the tentative chapter titles, even though I still haven't actually written any prose to go with them (don't worry, I have scenes and such for each chapter in my head and plan to start outlining them this week). Some of these many never be used. I may create new titles once the prose is written. But for now, these are the ones I'm working on.

Here, have a taste of what is to come.

"All the Prairie Knows Her Name"
"And None Knew Her to Cry"
"Apparitions of Faded Glory"
"Bereft of Kith, Bound by Kin"
"Dust Bowl Druids of Judgment Day"
"In Hands Softer Than Cotton, We Hold Our Yesterdays"
"Move Along Home, Wandering Son"
"Offerings in Blood and Dust"
"Sleep the Whole Summer Long"
"Sons and Daughters of the Grassy Plains"
"Spectral Letters from a Brass Combination Box"
"The Boy Who Became a Story"
"The Ghostly Dispatch"
"The Girl with the Red-Clay Heart"
"The Heart of the Keystone"
"The Intimacy of Books"
"The King of Crops and the Queen of Dirt"
"The Waitress of the Lake"
"Under Stone We Bury Things Most Dear"
"Waking the Bones of the School"
"Where the Rivers Run Red"

How do you handle chapter titles and headings?

Ghosts Of the Places We Live

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Originally posted at michaelmerriam.net. You can comment here or there.

And tomorrow will be a better day.

It was rough sledding at Merriam Manor today.

careswen had a terrible migraine last night after class, so she stumbled in and simply tossed her contacts, knowing we had just received a new shipment of contact lens a few days ago. Except I had ordered the wrong prescription, getting "+" contacts instead of "–" contacts. Her glasses are way out-of-date, and she has a final exam tonight. Fortunately, we were able to get her a sample pair of contacts in her strength and brand. New contacts are on order, as are new glasses.

Speaking of careswen having a final tonight, we are not at 4th Street Fantasy Convention. Yet. We had planned to go to the work party and play reading tonight, but that was before we knew when her final was scheduled. We will probably arrive tomorrow sometime around opening ceremonies.

If you are at the convention, please come up and say hello. I'm the six foot, two inch, 270 pound blind guy with a 58 inch white cane. I may or may not be wearing a patch over my right eye, which is having issues at the moment. I'll be with the cute graduate student.

In other news, Reverend Selena is clingy and full of hairballs. Yeah.

Spent the morning out pounding the pavement, trying to find part-time employment. Had three good possibilities, all within a mile for the house, for positions as a sales broker, bank teller, and storage clerk. I also applied for a full-time position as a less-than-load and small package traffic manager for a major company. I really only want part-time, but the salary and benefits of this one are simply too enticing to pass up, and I am utterly qualified for the position.

Received my final exam for my short story class. Care to guess what I'll be doing on Monday?

Started preparing for gaming this weekend. I'm stating to get the feel for this setting and my players. It's time to ramp it up a notch or two.

The Reverend Selena remains the fuzziest of the fuzzy, and her bald patches are starting to grow back now that the move and all the attendant chaos it caused are over. However, she's still one of the least graceful cats I've ever met. She attempted the small leap from the table to the window sill, something I've seen her do at least a half-dozen times, and she missed.

Instead she hung by her front claws on the sill for a moment, and then dropped down to the carpet. She gave me that, "I meant to do that" look, then walked away, tail high and swishing. Right now she's repeatedly stalking and killing one of the yarn-mice. Pounce, chew, claw, fling, pounce chew, claw, fling...

All that is left to wrap up my Analyzing Short Stories class is to take the final. I can't request it until I receive my grade for my last submission, which I sent in about ten days ago. It typically takes about 21 days for my submissions to get back to me, which will leave me a little over three weeks to request and complete the final.

I thought I might start reviewing the stories, just to get ahead a little, but once I began, I realized that every one of these stories had stuck with me to the point that I may not really need to review that much. All of these stories - whether I enjoyed them, hated them, or just felt meh about them - have stuck with me, which was the point.

I am also finding myself nodding and going, "Yes, yes indeed, I get what the writer was trying to say/do/show," and while I may not have enjoyed certain stories, I admire each of them, and I am the better as both a reader and writer for having taken this class. What's more, stories that I did not enjoy - or completely understand at the initial reading - I am now looking back on with fondness and understanding. Several of these stories forced me way outside of my comfort zone, which was exactly what I needed.

For those keeping score at home, of the 135 stories in the anthology (The Story and Its Writer: An Introduction to Short Fiction: Ann Charters, editor), I read these 45. At some point I plan to read the rest.

Achebe, Chinua: "Civil Peace"
Allende, Isabel: "And of Clay Are We Are Created"
Anderson, Sherwood: "Death in the Woods"
Anderson, Sherwood: "Hands"
Anonymous: "The Beginning of Wisdom: An Ashanti Folk-Tale"
Atwood, Margaret: "Happy Endings"
Atwood, Margaret: "Rape Fantasies"
Baldwin, James: "Sonny's Blues"
Bambara, Toni Cade: "The Lesson"
Barth, John: "Lost in the Funhouse"
Bierce, Ambrose: "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge"
Borges, Jorge Luis: "The End of the Duel"
Carter, Angela: "The Company of Wolves"
Carver, Raymond: "A Small, Good Thing"
Chopin, Kate: "The Story of an Hour"
Crane, Stephan: "The Open Boat"
Danticat, Edwidge: "Night Women"
Erdrich, Louis: "The Red Convertible"
Faulkner, William: "A Rose for Emily"
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins: "The Yellow Wallpaper"
Hawthorne, Nathaniel: "Young Goodman Brown"
Head, Bessie: "Woman from America"
Hemingway, Ernest: "Hills Like White Elephants"
Hurston, Zora Neale: "Spunk"
Jackson, Shirley: "The Lottery"
Jewett, Sarah Orne: "A White Heron"
Johnson, Charles R.: "Menagerie: A Child's Fable"
Kincaid, Jamaica: "Girl"
LeGuin, Ursula K.: "The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas"
Mason, Bobbie Ann: "Shiloh"
Melville, Herman: "Bartleby, the Scrivener"
Mukherjee, Bharati: "The Management of Grief"
O'Brien, Tim: "The Things They Carried"
O'Conner, Flannery: "Everything That Rises Must Converge"
O'Conner, Frank: "Guests of the Nation"
Ozick, Cynthia: "The Shawl"
Paley, Grace: "A Conversation with My Father"
Paz, Octavio: "My Life with the Wave"
Silko, Leslie Marmon, "Yellow Woman"
Sontag, Susan: "The Way We Live Now"
Tan, Amy: "Two Kinds"
Toomer, Jean: "Blood-Burning Moon"
Welty, Eudora: "A Worn Path"
Wright, Richard: "The Man Who Was Almost a Man"
Yamamoto, Hisaye: "Wilshire Bus"

Loved some. Hated others. Each made an impression. Each taught me something about how story works. It was a good class.

In Peace,
Michael

hilarymoonmurph talks here about putting together a themed reading for next year's Wiscon. I'm one of those nuts who thinks it's never too early to start thinking about those kinds of things, especially since next year will be my first Wiscon. If you are interested in participating, comment to hilarymoonmurph.

You know you want to.

I am nearing the finish line with my current WiP, which is technically called "Untitled #37" but is "The Dirt-Crawl Story" in my head. A real title will hopefully present itself soon. I suspect another 500 to 1000 words should do it, making the story come in at around 3000 total.

My Independent Distance Learning class is in limbo. The Prof is ill and cannot continue, and The College of Continuing Education sent out an email telling everyone in her IDL classes to stop sending in finished lesson units until they decide what to do. I only have three more lesson units (three quizzes and three short compare and contrast papers) and the final paper to complete, but until they make a decision, I'm loath to continue on.

If nothing else I got a cool anthology of short stories out of this class.

In Peace,
Michael