May 2010 Archives

Writing is on hold for this week as I run the Code Breakers Club sessions at the International Children's Festival in St. Albert. I dropped by the site today to set up my space, and it looks like I'll be hopping all week with school bookings. There's a public performance on Friday night and several on Saturday afternoon. It should be a lot of fun.

On another news front, I received the Community Builder Award from the Asian Canadian Writers' Workshop this weekend. The ACWW recognized me for my work in theatre, TV, radio and kids' fiction. I'm a bit nervous that the award means I'm getting darned close to a death bed. I'm healthy. Honest. No life-threatening illnesses here... or maybe I should get myself to a doctor.

Great news. I'm on track to reach 35,000 words by the end of this week, which will put me around halfway to being finished my new y/a book. I want to get to them mid point before I head off to the Northern Alberta Children's Festival to do some code breaking workshops related to the novel. I'm feeling upbeat about the progress and I'm even going back to add bits that I felt were necessary. I may not want them in later, but easier to cut than to invent.

While I hope that there are keen budding writers reading my reports of writing breakthroughs and set backs, I'm starting to think that this blog has become the parachute pants of the digital era. I could retool the blog to become some kind of one-stop station for all info on kids writing and theatre, but that sounds too much like unpaid work. I'm trying to figure out what to do with this blog. Maybe it'll just become a diary for me and the lurkers who want to peek at my boring life. I'll give it the summer to figure out what to do with the blog. In the meantime, I'll probably post less frequently. If you're a follower of my blogs, thanks so much for spending the time with me.

Sigh. I don't know if you ever do this, but sometimes I buy lottery tickets for the bigger jackpots. I was thrilled a few days ago to learn that the $41 million jackpot was won in Edmonton and no one had stepped forward to claim it. My wife and I had a ticket that we didn't check, and I was hoping, wishing, obsessing that we had the winner. Every day, I imagined what I'd do with the winnings. I was hoping to string the fantasy until this weekend when I would check the numbers. But I just saw a news item reporting the winner was going to step forward today. Oh well, I guess there's no early retirement.

I'm still plugging away at the manuscript. Today, I've been trying to push my way through some important exposition, and I've been trying to relax about the length of the chapter. Unlike the mystery novels, this one isn't aimed at reluctant readers who are slightly older, so I can afford to spend more time with character and description. The code stuff has been making my brain spin. In some ways, I think I need illustrations for this book to help show the codes. Otherwise, it's going to be a mass of confusion. Let me see if I can keep the code descriptions simple and easy to visualize, but without being so obvious a reader can solve them at a glance.