WIP Before Wednesday - HC SVNT DRACONES

Last week I was in Germany presenting on various technical topics, so my Writer's Crusade posts were all I could manage. Now, back in Shaker Heights, Ohio with the sun shining in the window and trying (unsuccessfully) to convince me it is warm out there, I am back to my WIP.

My wife is an excellent proof reader with a real eye for misused grammar, typos and repeated words, but I have never really let her (or begged her to) read my rough drafts before. She usually sees a story long after my writing partners have picked it apart. This time, I decided to ask her to read it in its rough form. Partly, I think I wanted her to know how much polishing goes into it before she usually sees it.

Given my wife's intelligence and sheer competence, it should not surprise me that she could immediately identify a structural issue with my troll story.

"You need a map," she said. "Oh, and a timeline."

I hemmed and hawed, but of course she is right. I have an entire adventure with only the haziest idea of location or time. I have virtually no sense of perspective, but even a rough map with woods over here and the river over there, Mount Dreadful in the distance and the all-important HC SVNT DRACONES labeled could only serve to make the progress of our fearless (when not trembling) trolls. (I can't tell you how happy it makes me that the HC SVNT DRACONES, Here be dragons, is really on my map.)

With two books of adventures written, I know some geographical issues that need to work for the second book even though they aren't important for the first. Unfortunately, I have forests where there need to be rocky plains, a stream where one couldn't be. In short, I have a mess.

If you are looking for me this bright, sunny and miserably cold Tuesday, you will probably find me holed up in my office, trying to figure out how to move a river or make it flow uphill. With any luck, I can tackle the time line later this afternoon.

WIP Before Wednesday - a new Tuesday feature

While most of my writing here on My Comfy Chair is focused on the wonderful, amazing and fabulous books written by other authors, I decided to spend one day a week focusing on my own adventures in writing.

While I wrote stories as a young boy, I didn't really pick up writing again until 2008, when I joined the writing community at Writing.com. I started writing poetry and flash fiction, with occasional longer stories, and for almost two years, I was satisfied with writing within and for that community.

In October 2009, I heard about a private group within Writing.com called Let's Publish!, and decided to take the plunge. It was and is a great group of critique and support partners, focused on getting stories and poems published. With the helpful, and sometimes scathing, advice of that group, I started submitting poems, and then stories.

I admit it. I went wild. I submitted like crazy, and eventually got the hang of finding more prestigious places and places that paid and so forth. One full year of maniacal submissions, rejections and acceptances.