Sunday, June 25, 2000

Day Fifteen

Five stories started today and all of them fizzled to a non-start after about 500 words each. I need a new challenge. The second story I wrote here was one written to formula and I had nothing invested in it. I didn't care about the story and it showed. I am struggling to find another character conflict that I can honestly care about. Thus far... nothing.

June 25, Day Fifteen

I went shopping with the group for the Clarion barbeque, went back and made more false starts with nice descriptions of places but no real story, and then went to the Clarion barbecue/orgy. I'll leave it to the other members to discuss the details of the Clarion orgy. We did manage to clean up the place very nicely before leaving. No evidence remains except the breast-sized champagne glasses. I am now struggling to find another story. In the meantime, I've come to the realization that while quail are not affected by eating hemlock seeds, anyone eating the quail that ate the seeds would exhibit the symptoms of hemlock poisoning.

Update: It's now 2336 hours and I just finished a story of which I am not proud. OTOH, it's written without a single word of dialogue and in five different viewpoints within 1,400 words. Bizarre and not terribly imaginative but it works. That's either nine, nine-and-a-half, or ten depending upon whether or not and how I count that trivial little short-short.

The spark and energy that I felt the first several days is not back but I'm determined to write anyway. This wasn't great literature... but it was a little fun. I also found out a few things about poison in the process of researching this. I may never feel safe again.

Did you know DSMO will open up the pores? And if you pour that and some cyanide into a person's shampoo, it should poison the user. I'm not absolutely certain about this. I have no desire to conduct an experiment.

Linda

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