I thought the Character Clinic (CC101) Joely hosted over the weekend was fabulous! Even though I didn't win anything, I learned a ton about how to build characters and what I like about them - among many other things. And it's the "other things" that, for some reason, are really churning around in the ol' brain right now. Two interesting things occurred as a strangely direct result of CC101. One, I'm not prepared to discuss yet. It's still churning, and it ain't turned to butter yet... The other is the big one for me (a big pain in the ass, that is...): theme. Stories have themes. They just do. Any good story worth the paper or pixels it's printed on, anyway, has a theme, an overriding, overarching thread of wisdom that guides the ultimate outcome. That's how I define it for myself, anyway. I flat-out SUCK at theme in my own writing. There are reasons for this. First of all, I blame the fact that as a reader, I don't like to analyze. ...
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I'm anxious to see if I'll actually be able to manage it this year, what with all that's going on in the background this time. I think it will depend a lot on what's up with Ms. Baby's head... If the doc says something terrifying next week, it may just grind to a screeching halt.
If I actually win in spite of everything, however, I'll have no more excuses for not writing every day. Guess that's what I'm out to prove to myself this time...