Yes, I did write yesterday, all day. I was only revising ten pages for a critique at a SCBWI conference but I was transposing old verbiage into my current style. Probably would have been easier to rewrite from scratch but then I would have had to do the scrub down again. I thank the muse that I do keep improving every year except in 2008 when I drafted my tween novel during NANWRIMO (national novel writing month), I was scrambling for my 50,000 words and still very inexperienced even with a writing degree. The book is an alternate world reality story which I originally brainstormed with my son Peter – giving me the name for that genre of M. P. Stojak. That works for me. 

My literary (adult) novel came back recently and I’m anxious to get back to it for revisions that will take the quality of the book up a notch.  I had an idea this weekend about how to handle the point of view which was long over due! Still, for revision sake, immersion in the genre I’m working on at the time helps keep me on track. I’ve been reading YA and middle grade. The best so far is the Hunger Games. I was completely overwhelmed by how Collins pulls the reader through the story and glad to see that a best seller was so well written. It’s been a while since I’ve been so impressed. I was even thankful for the Kindle app which allowed me to pull down the last two books when I couldn’t get to a book store. Last summer I did read George R.R. Martin’s books (fantasy) since I remembered when he won the Omni short story contest so well. That’s been some time ago when I was single and living in Chicago. My sister’s first husband let me borrow his copy of Omni. (I was very poor!) He was (is?) a voracious reader but was more interested because George was his Northwestern roommate. With his success on HBO, I was curious about the books.  Quite a wonderful, complex world he’s created but honestly, those thousand page books should be edited down, don’t you think? 

The first two dreadful books that I wrote before I went to Hopkins were mysteries. My mom liked them but others thought they needed a lot of work but I did come close to getting one accepted by a small publisher and had a read-thru by a larger publisher. Some day, I may revise them and put them out into the electronic world for those voracious mystery readers. I was hoping that I would be done with the tween book and have early fall for my revisions to Infidelity because I want to work on a mystery during NANOWRIMO. I started one last year and just couldn’t focus because of my mom. May not be able to drag myself away from Infidelity (first drafted in 2007). We’ll see.

This is a very me-me-me post! Just remembered that I still haven’t responded to one of my students about her story and that is well over a month ago- ouch! I’ll do that tomorrow. (Today, I’m off to play with one of my musical groups at Fort McHenry for the 1812 celebration)  I had two reasons for this post – first, one of my new followers commented that he would like to know what I write. (My published works are short stories and poetry in literary mags and anthologies.)

The second reason was because of an article I read in the Guardian this morning. It’s an article about economics and made me think very Margaret Atwood-ish. Infidelity does gently question the American Dream. I have thought for some time that I would like to write a sharper-edged story – not so far in the future as some of Ms Atwood’s books and not about technology. More about how much is enough. That will be an epic I imagine so best not to work on until I’m retired and also not subject to rules about writing about the government!   http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/jun/15/how-much-skidelsky-money-sandel?CMP=twt_gu   Take a look!