So I have this Science Fiction writer’s list, and I’ve had it for years, its generally been a great little place in my internet, and it’s grown to be quite popular; but because I haven’t been able to pay very much attention to it of late, and I’ve been up to other things, it’s been slow.

In an attempt to remedy this I’ve started posting a couple of questions and a sort of weekly review every Sunday night to give it a kick in the pants. I thought you might be interested.

Enjoy!

Hey folks--

I’m actually going to remember our little (well, my little, but whose counting) tradition of doing a little review of the week for the list.

I once again, didn’t get a great deal of work done, but I do have a doctors note: I got my wisdom teeth out on thursday, and I’m finally starting to come out of it. My face is actually a little bruised (on the outside!), but healing in commencing, and I’m getting something done even if it isn’t fiction writing per-se.

I read the piece I talked about in my post “reviving old material,” and I was shocked to see how little it resembled what I thought was in the piece. The good thing is that I liked both what I remembered and what I wrote so that means I have a couple of good stories to work on.

I realized that my definition of a novel (100k words) is actually a bunch longer than what goes for a novel these days (60-70k words). That’s fine, it just means that my internal outliner needs an adjustment. I also think needing to aim for less means that stories can be more concise/crisp, and also, finish-able. So maybe I’ll try that again. > Ok, in other news: >

  • I finished James Tiptree, Jr.’s `Brightness Falls from the Air <http://www.amazon.com/Brightness-Falls-Air-James-Tiptree/dp/0312854072>`_ which was amazing and well written, and sort of exactly what you want SF to be. There were good characters, meaningful ideas, and all the right hard/sociological elements.
  • I started a new blog it’s just me, more informal: sort of a notebook, and I think it’ll be a good practice. My hope is that by moving a lot of my personal blogging away from the main TealArt, my notion of it as a “blog magazine” I think will begin to work a little better.
  • I reorganized the way the writer’s documentation works at station keeping, which I think will help us as we progress with the series.
  • I think I finished a Station Keeping story early in the week. I’m getting better at these I think, but I still don’t want to be doing them all by myself. I need to do more, that’s on the list.
  • I got a job working in a library/archives. That’ll be cool, and it’s good for the temperament. Also, good to stay close to academia, that might give me the push it’ll take to get to work on grad school projects.

I spent a few hours in an irish pub listening to some great music and sketching out some ideas for this revived story. I do a lot of good outlining there, but it’s good stuff.

What have you all done this week? Also, what do you think about the novel lenght and the “reviving old material,” stuff?

Cheers, tycho