Saturday, January 12, 2013

Sign and Damn

This is going to be another tough year. I feel it in my bones. I'm not going to get all personal here, but monumental changes are ahead.

On the writing front. I lost steam on that Pride and Prejudice pastiche, mainly because I formatted my way into a logistical hole that defeated me. I've heard from the book publisher that I contracted with that they can now format the book the way I want it formatted, so now I must shove my ass in gear and recontact them to get it up and out there. I'm very, VERY bad at the back end of the publishing front, and this is largely about confronting and dealing with minutia. I fail at minutia.

On the writing front: I am pounding out what I think will be an alternative take on a mystery. It's typically me. Snarky, funny, and little bitchy, and not too challenging mentally. I'm constantly torn between doing something that I can pound out and yet feeling that I could, if I really wanted to,  actually produce something big. Is this self-delusion at it's most delusional form? Perhaps. But. I honestly believe I'm capable of a bigger book. But bigger books take time. And much more effort. I have very little time. Working full-time is really sucky, but also this job now requires tons of editing and dredging up anything that is half-intelligent sounding at the end of a day editing engineering is almost impossible. Some of the stuff I edit I think, wow, this guy could get a Noble Prize. It's THAT sort of material. Which leaves me brain dead. And yet. I think I could write a bigger book.

Baby steps. (1) get Austen pastiche self-published; (2) get bitchy alternative mystery published; and (3) Think. Think. Think.