I have an apartment! For the last two days I couldn't get anything written; I got home exhausted and everything I thought about writing all I could focus on was wanting to sleep. But I'll probably write a story while at work today, if I can find the ability to do so.

I'm going to be moving most of my big stuff over the weekend, and anything heavy that I can get moved. Until then, I'm going to have to focus a lot of energy cleaning up my present place, throwing away excess stuff, and packing things away. So it'll be a challenge to get anything written this week, but I'm going to fait mon mieux.

Win some, lose some

I ended up looking for apartments during much of the time I would've spent organizing my old writing, so my friends don't have anything in hand yet. Soon as I get an apartment, I'll put something together. Hopefully I won't have to wait until the last week of the month to have a confirmed apartment; if so, I won't be giving my friends any writing for about a month.

There is a silver lining today, however: Over the weekend in my usual writing time I managed to finish the first draft of a story I've been working on since I started writing again, and write two very short stories. I'm reading fairy tales right now, and find their concise character to be very appealing--sort of like minimalist poetry in a way.

I also discovered there is an organization for Science Fiction Poetry writers. I always thought I was the only one, so I was very excited to see it. So excited I sent out three of my poems for consideration. In the next two weeks I plan to send out all my other good speculative poems, whenever I have a minute or two to do so. Now that I know there's some small market for them, maybe I'll write some more . . .. I always did like writing them more than anything else.

I also have decided on a goal for myself: I want to get my writing strong enough to attend next summer's Odyssey 6-week intensive writing workshop. I'll have to be careful that I don't stress out about this goal and ruin my writing, but I think just having the goal should add some extra motivation for when things get sticky.

Too many Smileys

In lieu of a better place to put this:

I met a man with the last name of Smilovitch. His nickname is Smiley. His brother's nickname is Smiley. Their father and grandfather had the same nicknames.

It must get confusing at parties. But not so confusing at family reunions, I'd hope.

I wonder if I can somehow make files for these random snippets on this blog. Anyone know a way to do that?

Organization

When I started writing for the first time I hoped that lovely prose and poetry would just spill out, and people would read it and they'd love it and I'd never have to work again. Something like vomiting gold.

Fast-forward many years, and now I'm coming back with a vengeance. I know there's going to be piles of work and very little in the way of epiphanies, but all of that's fine because it's work with a lot of purpose to it.

So just like any other job I need to be organized. Here's a list of tasks to complete over the next month:

-Make up a 'care-packet' for my friends and family. A number of my big-hearted friends have agreed to read and comment on whatever writing I want to send them, and I feel they might appreciate reading my most successful earlier works, as a 'thank-you' but mostly to provide them context for the works to come.

-Start and keep up:

• a list of quotes
• a list of descriptions
• a list of character portraits
• a list of story ideas
• a list of miscellaneous brick-a-brack. Stuff in its elemental form, ye ken.
  

-Type in all of the stories and poems I've only written in longhand (I write longhand first for most things--Computers often make me think 'academic writing').

-Edit all newly-typed works


This is pretty much in order of importance, and all of it comes after the 1000 or so words I'm writing six days of the week.

Later on I'll start studying the fiction market again, learning what magazines might purchase my stuff, then reading each of them thoroughly. But I need to get an organized structure to how I relate to my craft before I can even think about publishing. By the time I'm fully organized, in six months or so, I might have the first new stories ready to send out.


Regarding the lists: I'm not yet sure where to put them, or how to keep them updated. I don't want to find that I spend all of my writing time updating my lists (or blogging about my writing). I want lists that I can easily update, easily add to, and easily garnish from. Tall order, eh? It's surprising there's so many good creative arts programmes for making art, but so few for brainstorming and embellishing . . ..

Welcome!

My name is Richard Baldwin, and I'm a young writer living in Montreal. A few days ago I decided it was time to bite the bullet and really put all of my extra energy into becoming a professional fantasy writer. This blog is going to be all about what's going on in the background of my writing. It will contain bits and pieces of info from my life, snippets of dialogue, story ideas I might develop--Whatever I feel might help me become a better writer.

Writing for me is about taking the personal out into the world, and first I have to find what I can show you--So I'll be spending a lot of my time here trying to map out what I have to say in my stories. I hope that, as I learn my trade and map out my tales, those of you with the interest will learn something by my side. For the rest of you I'll try to do my best to make my own mental journeys interesting, informative, or both.