A Lazy Day, Then Back To Fiction

I have a distinct suspicion that I'm not gonna get much done today. I am burnt out from my recent bout of productivity and it's Saturday and I've been in this mood lately.

The missus is going away this afternoon and there's no band practice tonight. But my music buddy is going to a pinball expo with a mutual pal and I may tag along. I have the iPod that was left here on Thursday so I will be seeing him.

I'm anxious to get back to the fiction. I've got the start of one story for New Voices in Fiction. That one may or may not fly -- I'm conducting an experiment in writing something based on the virtues of olde school cyberpunk -- how dense? how fast? I'm getting a kick out of taking the exposition that I normally try and avoid and making it the core of the work. And in a weird way it's a Hunter S. Thompson tribute -- honestly, I read his stuff as heroic fantasy or adventure fiction anyway.

It may well wind up unreadable, though. In which case I've got other options, like the short story I need to edit.

The main job I've got ahead of me is restarting the novel. The last submission I made to the writer's group was received with great sorrow. The consensus was that the narrative flow which had been running from the start evaporated.

Of course I hadn't been in prime fettle when I wrote that material but it still bums me out to hit this bump. In previous drafts I had this happen all the time but this one was moving along just fine until now.

I have realized that the section in front of me needs a different kind of treatment than I'd given it. It's actually going to be a story inside the bigger story and it is more along the lines of traditional adventure stuff than I've had so far in the book. It's Western-flavored with a taste of post-apocolyptic mutant future novels like Heiro's Journey by Sterling Lanier. I need to take a breath and think it through before I start.

Also, there's a speculative component to it that I'm thinking of posting about. It's a fantasy but it's influenced by science fiction and because of that the element of speculative evolution has come into play...

Anyway. It's seven-thirty so the missus ought to be up. Y'all have as nice a day as possible under the circumstances.