Ramblings of a Samurai and his Duct Tape

Breakin through the block

Now I'm finally getting on that Novel. I've been stuck on a small spot, the transition point where Anthony finds he's in the Dream realm. I tried writing it two different ways, but I was having trouble describing what was happening. How it was happening. I finally broke through that point by deciding to jump ahead a little to the point where he's just falling. I got on a roll, and I found that all the necessary parts that I was trying to force into the scene in the other ways I created it, fit right in it in other ways now. And a few things that I thought were needed, well, they just don't matter now.





So now I've gotten the story to a point where I'm ready to integrate previous things I've written into the story with the concept as I've developed it. Yeah, that just means I'm ready to rewrite an early exploratory scene into the story.





Now that I've crossed that hurdle, I can see a natural point where I would cut this off to be a short story that I could submit to that Writers of the Future contest I mentioned a few weeks back. It'll be completely ignoring the other half of the storyline, the Laura and Kain section. Though Laura does gain a mention in the opening chapter... I may have to edit that down a bit to make the opening story all about Anthony. It works good as it is for the full version, but may have some things that might be confusing for the short.





Speaking about Laura and Kain, I revisited them for a bit for a recent "The Writer's Cramp - Poetry Week"  entry. The five senses have a lot to do with Kain's motivation, and I decided to jump ahead and experiment with revealing it one way in "Invalid Item" 





I'm not sure if this is the way I'm going to do it in the Novel, if I'm going to reveal it in a different way, or use foreshadowing to complement this short, but it was a refreshing exercise that I'm quite proud of. The judge rated it a 4.5, but gave the win to two other entries in a tie. I read both of them, and think my entry is superior to the taste one that won. Someone else who read it emailed me, wondering if I got disqualified for not following the prompt correctly because I didn't win. I can only guess at why I didn't win, though there's no accounting for taste. The judges choice is the only one that matters, and I can only surmise that mine seemed like it didn't have a 'proper' ending, or she thought I'd written it beforehand or she just didn't like the fantasy aspect, or whatever else. I have bigger plans for these characters in the end though, and while it would have been a nice ego boost to be called a winner with them in the cramp, I know I'll be winning with them in other ways down the road!