Not much to add to last night, except more words...

The Details
WiP: Bear-baiting (Ew, I know) short story
New Words: 393
Total Words: 1528/15000ish

Calling this a victory. I didn't want to, but I did it anyway, and I got more than 250 words. 

First you have to write, and then you have to finish

With apologies to the eloquent Neil Gaiman for butchering one of his lovely quotes on being a writer....

In that way that the human brain is very strange, a short story roared to life today while I was reading a non-fiction book over lunch at a sketchy, local, fast-food Mexican place. A passage on bear-baiting in London in the 1600s, and I was suddenly wishing I had a pen that wrote well on pulpy napkins so I could take enough notes to keep it fresh until I got to someplace where I could start getting ideas down in a more formal medium.

Lacking a suitable pen or a notebook with which I could get started, I headed home and put fingers to keyboard to start roughing this idea out. I won't say that I set a personal best for words produced, but it was a respectable day of writing.

Now, to keep this ball rolling tomorrow!

The Details
WiP: Bear-baiting (Ew, I know) short story
New Words:  1135
Total Words:  1135/15000ish

Review: Tenth of December

Tenth of December by George Saunders

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



I picked this up after reading George Saunders commencement speech about the biggest regrets in his life were the failures of kindness from his past, when he could have reached out to someone and did not. I also remembered that radical empathic Cheryl Strayed spoke warmly about Saunders at a talk of hers that I attended.

These short stories are technically excellent, and I enjoyed them, but my hope and expectation was that the philosophy of the commencement speech might shine through the other work, and I couldn't find it anywhere. I would recommend this collection as displaying technically superior short story work, but if you're looking for more things like Congratulations, by the way: Some Thoughts on Kindness, it isn't this.





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Review: Fangirl

Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell

My rating: 3 of 5 stars




I think I would have liked to have read a book like this before I left for college. It would have made some of the challenges of my freshman year a little more comprehensible.

This book is all right. It's smaller in scope and stakes than what I tend to read, and it might be...75ish pages too long. It started stronger than it finished, and as a result ended up feeling pretty uneven.

For anyone interested, this is set in Nebraska, in both Lincoln and Omaha, and it felt like I would have enjoyed the book more if I had been able to recognize the places she referenced.



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