Archive for the ‘Writing Process’ Category

To Rewrite or Not to Rewrite? That is the Flowchart.

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I recently received a rewrite request for a story I had sub­mit­ted.  Over my time as a writer, I’ve received rewrite requests that I’ve accepted, and rewrite requests I have turned down–for a lot of dif­fer­ent rea­sons.  I real­ized that my think­ing that goes into the deci­sion of whether or not to do so is some­what com­plex, and I got to won­der­ing if it was some­thing that a flow­chart could describe.  After a lit­tle bit of play­ing around this morn­ing, I have cre­ated just such a flowchart.

rewriteflowchart

Click on the thumb­nail image to view the full size chart.  Did I miss any steps that you would have con­sid­ered?  Do you think I am insane for draw­ing up a flow­chart for some­thing like this?  Share your thoughts in the comments.


Writing: Your Subconscious and You

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I have a very rocky rela­tion­ship with my subconscious.

On the one hand, my sub­con­scious is the font of my best ideas.  Even when I writ­ing some­thing that has come mostly from ego-​​brain think­ing, it inserts cool things, catches ideas that I missed the first time around.  It’s some­times like hav­ing a bet­ter writer sit­ting on your shoul­der catch­ing your missed opportunities.

On the other hand,  my subconscious’s inter­ests are not always mar­ketable inter­ests.  My sub­con­scious feeds me sto­ries about Kansas about once a week.  The state needs to start writ­ing me checks for the PR.  Lord knows they need a pos­i­tive face what with all the wackos that pop­u­late my home state.  So I write a lot of sto­ries about Kansas or set in Kansas. I’ve yet to find a mar­ket for that stuff, and I doubt any­one wants to read about it.  And yet my sub­con­scious per­sists.  I’m wrestling with Potatohead (that’s what I call my sub­con­scious) right now about a story that involves mole men and Kansas.    Excited to read that one? Yeah, didn’t think so. I keep telling him, we need postsin­gu­lar­ity sto­ries that use the entire galaxy as their set­ting.  We need fan­tasy sto­ries that take place in the New York sub­way sys­tem.  What does he feed me?   A story about a woman whose abu­sive dead hus­band comes back made out of pota­toes after being buried int he garden.

Yeah, I actu­ally wrote that one.  The rejec­tion Nick gave it at Clarkesworld was enough to put me off writ­ing for a year.  Not one you’ll prob­a­bly ever read. There are a lot of these.

On rare occa­sions, one of us presents an  idea that the other finds just as fas­ci­nat­ing.  My story “The Yeti Behind Me”  is a good exam­ple.  The idea of ghosts of extinct ani­mals popped up in con­ver­sa­tion.  I felt the indi­ca­tion of Potatohead’s inter­est in the form of an explo­sion just behind my right eye.  Potatohead is not sub­tle.   But if we agree on some­thing straight away, I know it’s got legs.

Problem has been, lately, I have stopped trust­ing Potatohead.  He’s fix­ated on the same things much of the time.  He’s not giv­ing me ideas that I can get excited about.  And vice versa.  I spend all day think­ing of story ideas and ask­ing “Hey, Potatohead, what do you think of this one?”  His response is gen­er­ally a resound­ing “meh.”

I feel like the two parts of my brain are at war lately  Each one knows some­thing use­ful about writ­ing, but they are not agree­ing on things nearly often enough for me to feel like I’m mov­ing for­ward with my “career.”  I can write sto­ries based pri­mar­ily on the input of one half, but those sto­ries are flat, and aren’t going to take me anywhere.

There’s one other, unre­lated thing about Potatohead that ticks me off.  When I’m asleep, peo­ple can talk directly to Potatohead.  I have had long and var­ied con­ver­sa­tions in my sleep that I con­ciously have no rec­ol­lec­tion of.  The thing that gets me into trou­ble is, Potatohead doesn’t know that I/​we are married.

Sarah has come to bed late on sev­eral occa­sions, only to see me shoot upright in bed and demand “Who is that?”

“It’s me,” she says.

“Me WHO?” Potatohead asks.

“Sarah,” she says, begin­ning to be a bit more exasperated.

“Sarah WHO?”

And that’s the last straw.  “Your WIFE,” she snaps.  “Go back to sleep.”

“Oh.  Okay,” says Potatohead and down he goes back to where he came.  And the only indi­ca­tor I have that this con­ver­sa­tion ever hap­pened is that my wife is pissed at me all morn­ing for no appar­ent reason.

How does one force his or her two minds to sit down and come to some kind of ami­ca­ble agree­ment?  We have crap that needs to get worked out if we are going to con­tinue to make a career of work­ing together.  This part­ner­ship is turn­ing sour, and I need to straighten things out quickly.  I also need to get it through Potatohead’s half-​​brain that ask­ing “Sarah WHO?” is not a good thing for either of us.  If any­one has any sug­ges­tions, I’d love to hear them.

On Richness

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Lately, I’ve been try­ing to iden­tify where my writ­ing really dif­fers from the stuff that’s great, great writ­ing. There are a hell of a lot of places, but I’ve fix­ated for a while now on this con­cept of richness.

The sto­ries that *really* blow me away exude infor­ma­tion and con­fi­dence. They are full of a rich­ness of detail that is bog­gling. Telling details show up in nearly every sen­tence. The entire story works to con­vince you of this place, these char­ac­ters, these events.

A great exam­ple of a story with amaz­ing rich­ness was David Moles’ “Finnisterra.” I think China Mieville’s nov­els demon­strate it pretty well too. I see it in many of the sto­ries I have read by Gord Sellar as well. Basically, I see rich­ness as one of the defin­ing qual­i­ties of award-​​winning writing.

The rich telling details are rarely fab­ri­cated whole cloth. They’re believ­able because they draw from some real world knowl­edge. David uses mul­ti­ple lan­guages and cul­tures effort­lessly because he knows them inti­mately. China writes about cities because he dwells in them com­pletely. London is not so dif­fer­ent from his fan­tas­ti­cal cities. And Gord is so immersed in Korean cul­ture it can’t help but ooze onto the page in a totally engag­ing way.

I strug­gle with rich­ness in par­tic­u­lar because I’m not sure there’s any way to learn rich­ness other than to immerse your­self in a sub­ject like they do. I think the rea­son many new writ­ers work fall flat for me is because the only thing they are immers­ing them­selves in is writ­ing and SF/​F. The mark of some­one who really wants to get out there seems to be some­one who takes pas­sion for some­thing else and really dri­ves that home in a story.

There may be veins of rich­ness to tap into from my life, but I’m not sure. It leaves me wish­ing I could pack up and do some for­eign travel for six months all while read­ing trav­el­ogues and his­tory books. I feel like I just don’t have enough packed into my brain that isn’t about com­put­ers and web design that can be used to enrich my work.

So that’s the next big thing I’m work­ing on in improv­ing my writ­ing. What’s yours?

The Dancing Guy Stands For All That We Do

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

There’s a video mak­ing the rounds.  It’s not shot very well, and it might even make you a lit­tle motion sick, but if you can make it through it, I think it’s really worth it.   Try to get at least halfway through.  Here’s the video.  More after you watch it.

Here’s my expe­ri­ence of watch­ing this in a nut shell:

For me at least, the guy looked like a fool!  What a crazy way of danc­ing, and danc­ing all by your­self like that?  How embarass­ing!  I could never do tha–oh wow, some­one joined in. Hey,  here comes another.  Holy Shit.

I felt a shiver run down my spine when I real­ized what I was watch­ing.  Then I started to grin.  And I’m still grin­ning about it.  This is one of the more uplift­ing things I have seen in a long time.  I’ve been pon­der­ing why that is.

It feels like a metaphor for every cre­ative endeav­our.   Writing espe­cially, or blog­ging.  You’re on your own at first.  Dancing all by your­self in front of an indif­fer­ent crowd.   It’s harder than hell to get over the feel­ing that what you’re doing could be just a lit­tle ridicu­lous.  You keep doing it though, because it feels good.

Then some­one starts pay­ing atten­tion.  Your friends, maybe.  Then their friends.  You accrete fans, or fol­low­ers, or read­ers, what­ever.  The next thing you know, you’ve started that.  It’s a brave damned thing to do, and it’s never struck me until watch­ing this just now.

I hope this moti­vates you like it has me.  Keep danc­ing.  Just keep danc­ing,  no mat­ter what.

Expedition Update

Wow, I have some amaz­ing friends.  We’ve raised $160 towards my pho­to­graphic expe­di­tion to Yellowstone.  Proving that I am the AntiChrist or some­thing, I now only need to raise $666.   Please con­sider throw­ing a few bucks in the pot. The pic­tures are SO going to be worth it.

Charles Tan: Leveraging Book Review Blogs and Interviews for Promotion

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Charles Tan  has posted a great essay on using book review blogs for pro­mo­tion. This is really well thought-​​out and rea­soned.  For example:

People in gen­eral (unless they’re your die-​​hard fans or you’re Oprah) don’t value your opin­ions about your own work. That’s why writ­ing a review of your own book is frowned upon. Or why the opin­ions of a hun­dred strangers in Amazon have more bear­ing than your own, no mat­ter how tal­ented or knowl­edge­able you might be com­pared to them. Or sim­ply why blurbs are used in pro­mo­tion, and why they don’t come from your­self or your mom.

This gen­er­al­iza­tion is what fuels book reviews and inter­views (whether print or online). It’s one thing to be fea­tured in your own site, it’s another to be fea­tured else­where. This also pre­vents most authors from con­duct­ing inter­views with them­selves (it’s not quite taboo and some have actu­ally done it but for the most part, it’s not practiced).

If you’re a nov­el­ist with a book you’re try­ing to pro­mote, I heartily sug­gest you give this arti­cle a read.

A Writing Observation from the Glee Pilot

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

Hulu has the pilot up for a new tele­vi­sion show, Glee, that I noticed some buzz about on Twitter. This past week, Sarah and I gave it a watch and really enjoyed it. Despite the fact that I’m not that inter­ested in musi­cals usu­ally, the show man­aged to grab me with its really unusual cast of characters.

Nearly every char­ac­ter has some­thing weird and unlik­able about them. No every­men or women in this show. Our teacher who restarts the Glee Club, osten­si­bly our main pro­tag­o­nist, is in a ter­ri­ble mar­riage, longs for the days when he was in Glee Club in high school, and in order to con­vince a teen to join the club, plants drugs in his locker and pre­tends to bust him, offer­ing him a choice of deten­tion or Glee Club. All of the teach­ers are sim­i­larly flawed, but with lik­able traits as well.

Some of the stu­dent cast are fairly two dimen­sional, but the two teen lead char­ac­ters are very mixed as well. The girl is lit­er­ally insane, but sym­pa­thetic for being picked on so badly by her class­mates (despite hav­ing accused the for­mer Glee Club teacher of being gay because he didn’t give her the part she wanted). The boy is a jock who par­tic­i­pates in tor­tur­ing the teens lower on the social hier­ar­chy of high school, includ­ing the other kids in the Glee Club.

As I watched the show, com­pletely riv­eted, I asked myself what was it about the show that had my atten­tion, and I decided it had to be these will­ing­ness to make its lead char­ac­ter com­plete ass­holes. Most sit­coms would never dare to make char­ac­ters so bor­der­line unlik­able. The last TV show I can remem­ber doing this well was Arrested Development. What is it about Fox that they’re will­ing to do this? Say what you will about these guys, but they gen­er­ally are will­ing to take risks on shows that none of the other net­works will?

I think it’s pos­si­ble that sim­ply unlik­able char­ac­ters would not be enough to get my atten­tion. It’s that com­bi­na­tion of sit­com with unlik­able char­ac­ters that seems to work here. The show plays with your expec­ta­tions about sit­com char­ac­ters, and while it’s obvi­ously not the first to do so, I thought it was inter­est­ing, and that I would share it with you all.

What do you think about this tech­nique? It seems like it would be much harder to pull off in a short story, where the pres­sure to have a sym­pa­thetic pro­tag­o­nist right away is fairly high. Do you know of any sto­ries or nov­els that suceeded with this tac­tic for you? Mentioning your own sto­ries if they’re pub­lished is cool too. I’d like to study the idea more.

I’ll be talk­ing quite a bit about writ­ing for the screen this week. Up later (no pun intended) will be some lessons about writ­ing that I’ve gleaned from watch­ing Pixar films, includ­ing the lat­est, er, Up. I con­sider Pixar to be some of the best sto­ry­tellers work­ing in any medium, and I think they have a lot to teach us about telling broadly acces­si­ble sto­ries.  If you’re won­der­ing if you should go see Up, and you liked ear­lier films, don’t even hes­i­tate.  See the next show you can make time for.  It’s that good.

Writers Should Not Blog About Writing

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

We’re writ­ers, so we should write about every­thing, right? Not if we care about main­tain­ing an audi­ence, we shouldn’t.  Despite our deep-​​seated belief that every thing that hap­pens to us and every thought we have is inter­est­ing to oth­ers, some things writ­ers like to blog about are just plain bor­ing or, worse, por­tray them in a neg­a­tive light.  I’ve learned most of these because I’ve done them and dri­ven off read­ers with them, so don’t think I’m set­ting these down as reminders for oth­ers.  They apply to me dou­bly so.  They include:

  • Your rejec­tion let­ters.  You can use them to illus­trate a point, but blog­ging “rejected by F&SF, 8 days” isn’t very inter­est­ing.  Also, it makes you look kinda like a schlub when your blog is full of rejec­tion let­ters.  Your read­ers only need to know when you have new work com­ing out. They don’t care how many agents turned you down, or how many rejec­tions you gath­ered along the way before the sale.
  • Your word count for the day.  Good for you, seri­ously.  I know some peo­ple use this as a kind of social rein­force­ment, but per­son­ally, I can’t stand look­ing at a blog and see­ing noth­ing but a long list of short posts talk­ing about what you wrote that day.
  • Your favorite snip­pet from your work-​​in-​​progress.  Out of con­text, it isn’t nearly as neat or inter­est­ing as you think it is.  Publish the story and we’ll bask in the glow of your genius then.
  • Grammar.  Snore.
  • In gen­eral, the craft and daily tra­vails of being a writer.

I firmly believe that writ­ers should be inter­est­ing for some­thing other than being a writer.  It’s a rare indi­vid­ual who can be scin­til­lat­ing to the gen­eral pub­lic while talk­ing about the sausage-​​making of writ­ing.*     If you’re a writer, surely you’re pas­sion­ate about some­thing other than writ­ing.  Blog about what­ever that is.

Look at it this way–who is your tar­get audi­ence?  The sub­ject of writ­ing is inter­est­ing to other writ­ers and aspir­ing writ­ers.  They are not nec­es­sar­ily the read­ers you want, because there are not very many of them.  If your goal is to col­lect a fol­low­ing greater than a few hun­dred peo­ple, then you need a sub­ject of broader interest–even just the genre that you write in is more inter­est­ing than the act of writ­ing itself.

Clearly I am not fol­low­ing the advice of the last point here. I write about writ­ing for a good rea­son, and that’s because my free­lance busi­ness caters to writ­ers.   Writers are my tar­get audi­ence for these posts, so I am com­fort­able with it.  As I com­plete my busi­ness web­site, these kinds of advice posts will tran­si­tion to that site, and my per­sonal blog will become more, well, personal.

*Exempt from this advice are writ­ers with stag­ger­ing read­er­ships, such as  Neil Gaiman and John Scalzi.

ETA:

Nick Mamatas has this to say in the com­ments, and it’s a strong point:

The sub­ject of writ­ing is inter­est­ing to other writ­ers and aspir­ing writ­ers. They are not nec­es­sar­ily the read­ers you want, because there are not very many of them.

Crazy talk. There are mil­lions of aspir­ing writ­ers, and thus an indus­try to ser­vice them—several monthly mag­a­zines, a plethora of how-​​to books, sem­i­nars and con­fer­ences, over 100 degree-​​granting pro­grams in the sub­ject, etc.

Aspiring writ­ers also tend to read more widely (and deeply) than non-​​aspirants. Aspiring writ­ers are cer­tainly a large audi­ence worth cultivating.

So I  took this advice much fur­ther than I should have.  And I should point out that my advice was aimed squarely not at writ­ers who blog as a kind of per­sonal jour­nal.  I aim it at peo­ple who are look­ing to delib­er­ately and method­i­cally grow an audi­ence.  If you’re writ­ing a per­sonal jour­nal style blog, but want to use your blog to grow an audi­ence, I thnk you need to think about tran­si­tion­ing the kind of con­tent you post.

How to Build a Good Critique Group

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

So, to con­tinue the theme of writ­ing advice, we move on to another ques­tion from Monday’s thread, this time from the LJ mir­ror by alaneer:

Here’s a prob­lem: how does one go about find­ing a small crit group whose mem­ber have to give crits in less than 2–3 weeks? Or form­ing a crit group like that.

This is a good ques­tion.  I  have no idea how any­one man­aged to learn sto­rycraft  in the age before the inter­net.  SF writ­ers were prob­a­bly spread over as much geog­ra­phy as they are today, so how did they cri­tique each other?  Postal mail?  In-​​person work­shops?    They’d have to meet some­how in the first place.  Ah, so they went to cons?  Those cost time and money.  Luckily,  we were born at a time where we could take advan­tage of nearly free, instan­ta­neous global com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and that means find­ing peo­ple will­ing to be in a cri­tique group is the least of your prob­lems.  Finding the right peo­ple is much more dif­fi­cult.    Here are some tech­niques that have helped me.

Join one of the larger estab­lished work­shop groups such as the Online Writer’s Workshop or Critters.    Personally, I’m an alum­nus of the OWW.  So is Sarah Prineas, Elizabeth Bear, Charles Coleman Finlay, and many oth­ers.  There’s lit­tle doubt in my mind that the expe­ri­ence of putting your work tho­rugh the OWW will improve it.    Will it get you a book deal or a pro sale?  Maybe.  You’re doing most of the work, but if you lis­ten to what peo­ple have to say, I think you will come closer sooner than you would have on your own.

When you first join these work­shops, you’re just throw­ing stuff at the wall and see­ing what sticks.  You have no idea who is going to read your story and pro­vide a cri­tique, at least in the case of the OWW.  While you’re wait­ing, you should go find work that you think is at least at your level of skill, if not sev­eral lev­els higher.  Provide a thought­ful cri­tique.  They won’t always return it, but some­times they will see some­thing they like in your work as well, and this is how you start build­ing ind­vid­i­ual relationships.

I no longer use the OWW, but I have kept in touch with many of the writ­ers from that work­shop for the pur­poses of cri­tiquing and of course due to the fact that they’re my friends.   In any large group work­shop, I think tal­ent has a way of find­ing like tal­ent.  Groups are formed within, and they can be exported eas­ily from the larger work­shop.  You will out­grow together the lower-​​level issues that work­shops address par­tic­u­larly well.

Another option is to just ask authors who you admire if you could trade cri­tiques with them.    This is how Jay Lake and I ended up trad­ing com­ments on each other’s stories.

Jay taught me a very valu­able notion, which was par­tic­u­larly help­ful when I was writ­ing a story a week or more and still look­ing for feed­back.  That was to build a list of first readers/​critiquers, but make sure they know you don’t expect them to read every­thing you send out.  And vice versa.  Sometimes peo­ple have time, some­times they don’t.  In an ideal sit­u­a­tion, you’ll have enough peo­ple on your list that each piece of writ­ing you send out will get you sev­eral solid cri­tiques that will help you revise or deter­mine whether to send the story out at all.

I don’t really believe in form­ing groups per­say anymore–although I have been part of them from time to time, and I sus­pect groups like Blue Heaven are really great for what they do.  For the way I write, I just pre­fer to build indi­vid­ual, one-​​on-​​one rela­tion­ships.  Any time you get more than four writ­ers in a group, you will have pol­i­tics, and I have lit­tle tol­er­ance for that myself.  Maybe you like it? If so, form a group, set up a list-​​serve for email and go to town.

Any of the meth­ods above will help you with your ulti­mate goal, which is find­ing peo­ple with which to col­lab­o­ra­tively improve your work.   Also, you’ll prob­a­bly make good friends.  But I should point out, a good cri­ti­quer is not nec­es­sar­ily a good friend, and the oppo­site is often even less pos­si­ble.  Depending on how you react to the crit­i­cism, you end up hat­ing your best cri­ti­quers, but in a broc­coli kind of way.

Good luck.  Anyone who is inter­ested in trad­ing cri­tiques with me need only drop me a line.  I can’t agree to do so with every­one who asks, but I try to do so. I have a lot less time to cri­tique now that I am edit­ing Escape Pod.

Diamonds in the Sky: Free Hard SF Anthology

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

The anthol­ogy of astron­omy sto­ries I’ve been work­ing on for the last year or two, off and on, is finally com­pleted and avail­able: Diamonds in the Sky.

The anthol­ogy is free and you can go there now and read the sto­ries, most of which are orig­i­nal but a few of which are reprints from Analog or Asimov’s. Contributors include Hugo and Nebula award win­ning authors. Each story focuses on one or two key ideas from astron­omy and should have some edu­ca­tional value, but are hope­fully first and fore­most sim­ply enter­tain­ing and good qual­ity sto­ries. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation as a pub­lic edu­ca­tion and out­reach effort, and I’d like to reach as many read­ers as pos­si­ble so please spread the word!

via Mike Brotherton: SF Writer.

I did the web­site for Diamonds over a year ago.  This one has been a long time in the works, but it’s now finally live!

Weighing My Interests

Posted on: by Jeremiah Tolbert

I had a very long week at work this past week, so most of my week­end was devoted to very low energy pur­suits.   I read a lit­tle, watched some TV, saw Quantum of Solace (okay, but not as good as the last one) and played the demo of Left 4 Dead, Valve’s new Zombie Survival Co-​​op game (fan­tas­tic so far and I can’t wait to play the full game).  More than half of today was devoted to mak­ing a prop for tomorrow’s Roundbottom photo, and then shoot­ing.   The newest post should be pretty amus­ing, even if it’s not the most meaty thing I’ve writ­ten lately.  After this, I’m tak­ing a 2 week hia­tus to attempt to build up some mate­r­ial and think about what I really want out of this project.

Lately, I have felt like I have to make a choice between writ­ing and photography–that I only have enough time out­side of my job to really mas­ter one of these two pur­suits.  It’s prob­a­bly not true, but I know that I split my ener­gies among too many things.  I was feel­ing okay about maybe dip­ping my toe back into the writ­ing waters, espe­cially after see­ing a great review of the Seeds of Change antholo­gies.  And then I saw some com­ments on a site about some of my work that was pretty bru­tal, and I lost what lit­tle moti­va­tion I had.

Until I can find a rea­son to write that can stand up to the whims of Joe Random Internet Commenter, then it’s best that I not do any writ­ing.   This is one of the things I like about pho­tog­ra­phy.  If peo­ple don’t like your pho­tog­ra­phy, they rarely say any­thing.  If they like it, they do.  But when it comes to fic­tion, peo­ple seem to be com­pelled to tell you at length just how much you suck. It prob­a­bly has some­thing to do with the time invest­ment it takes to con­sume a story vs look at a photo.

Sometimes I think that my pho­tog­ra­phy would get bet­ter if it was cri­tiqued to the same degree my fic­tion has been, but then, neg­a­tive comments–comments of any sort–don’t really count as cri­tique.  And maybe some of the fun of pho­tog­ra­phy would be drained if I took it that seriously?

Earlier, I went for a pho­towalk down by the river to clear my head and just be in the now.  Lately, I am too busy think­ing and the nature of my work doesn’t allow for me to get into the now very often.  By “the now” I mean, the groove,  the flow, what­ever.  A state of being and doing, where time is mean­ing­less and the ego slips beneath the sur­face.  I took a few decent shots, and stum­bled upon a bunch of beaver chews.  I walked up and down the area look­ing for the dam, but I couldn’t find it.  I will prob­a­bly go back the next time I want to take a walk and see if I can spot it.  It was very nice.

When I think about how plea­sur­able it is to go on a pho­towalk or take pic­tures in gen­eral, I won­der why I can’t have that much fun writ­ing any­more.  At some point, it stopped being about fun and started being some­thing else.  God knows I value my leisure time like it’s made out of dia­monds since my Dad died, so maybe I take writ­ing so seri­ously because I don’t want to waste anyone’s leisure time with crap writ­ing.  Ahem.  Which I sup­pose I am kind of doing right now.  I com­mand you not to read this unless you are steal­ing time from your employer!

There, I feel better.

One day I am going to look back at all the time I have spent ago­niz­ing over all this and I’m going to be angry at myself for not just shut­ting up and doing some­thing.  I used to tell peo­ple that the key to writ­ing was to “shut up and write” but I’ve got­ten awful at fol­low­ing that par­tic­u­lar advice.  But not tonight–I’m too tired to be angry with myself about it.