Not a lot happened

Today I began the second self-edit run through of my book. Since the mail doesn't come to my apartment until five or six at night I won't be able to dicuss my manuscript with Matt Davis until Monday. The up side to this is that I will have more time to look through his comments before talking with him. I spent a lot of time reading as well. I also went through a boook lent to me by my teacher titled Wild Mind by Natalie Goldberg. I didn't really do much other then that.

Twice canceled

The last two days were slow and a little disappointing. Yesterday I spent most of the morning reading and thinking about the meeting that I expected to have with Matt at 12:30. Since storytelling is not limited to "normal" books I read the graphic novel Sunny Side Down (I forget the author's name) most of the morning instead of Inkspell (125 pages to go! In about two weeks I'm almost done). I also read another one that I can't remember the title of but it was written by the creator of Goodbye Chunky Rice (my absolute favorite American comic book). His name is Craig ... something, it starts with a T. So I ended up at the coffee shop where I was going to meet with Matt about 10 minutes early. He wasn't there yet so I had a quick lunch while I waited (chicken sandwich and chai, yum). I waited... and I waited... and I waited. It wasn't until it was already 1pm that I finally received a call from Matt saying that he would have to cancel because he was running late at his accountant's and probably not going to get away until 2pm. SO we set up our meeting for Thursday. I spent the rest of the day at home with more reading and some writing. Today started off similarly. I read and then I finished up with the first run through of editing in my book (yes, I finally got through it all). Then, just as I was preparing to leave for my meeting with Matt, I received another call. This time his excuse was that he was busy trying to get a book out by the end of the week and wasn't able to make it again. That makes three days in a row (Tuesday, which was our original meeting day, Wednesday, and Thursday) that meeting with him were canceled. However today he did promise that he would send me my edited manuscript to me via priority mail and once I get it tomorrow that I should review it and then call so that we could go through it together. Thus afternoon was spent reading Frederick Douglass' autobiography My Bondage and My Freedom and visiting with my friends at school along with picking up a writing book from my Humanities teacher Rachel.

Almost all reading

I spent very little time on my book today. I did manage to break into the 97th page, but only by a few lines. Most of today was spent in the way of reading Inkspell and working on the little story that I started yesterday in the first person (though I'm not entirely sure where I'm going with it). Today I interviewed John Balkcom, the second of the two writers that I decided to interview to help me attempt to answer the quiding questions to my expedition (he is also the dad of my Humanities teacher). I have to admit that he was an interesting man to talk to and couldn't help thinking that he was one of the coolest men over 50 that I have ever met/talked to over the phone since they live out of state (not that I have met many men in that age group, and yes I know that I'm lame). Tomorrow I'm meeting with Matt Davis, the editor from Ghoust Road Press who offered to help me edit my manuscript (he is also the step-dad of one of my classmates). I don't really have much more to say right now. The words used to flow more easily then this and it concerns me a bit. It's probably just a slight bit of fatigue and I should get over it soon.

A very productive day

Today was very relaxed. I started out by just reading Inkspell for about an hour. I just can't put it down. Like other books in its genre (FANTASY!!!!!) I am completely hooked, but it doesn't always start out that way. There are times when I find it to be really hard to start a book, even if I picked it and it is in a genre that I enjoy. For some reason it doesn't grab my attention and reading it ends up being like trying to swallow a pill that is just too darn big; I have to do it but I just don't wanna. Usually the book ends up sinking its claws into me in later chapters, but there are those rare books that never really got a good hold on me (like Life of Pi, over all good book but a little bit of a boring read. At least in my opinion). After reading I re-edited the chapters that I had gone through at the end of last week, I managed to extend my book from the 94 pages that it had become last week to 96 pages today (two more pages, just from editing! Whoo hoo! New Editing Record!). This took me about three hours. The rest of the day was spent with more reading and the beginning of a story in the first person narrative (as a little experiment with the style).

Two in One

Thursday and Friday were much more productive then the rest of the week (even with my turning 18 on Friday). During those two days I managed to get through several chapters of my book, so many that I am almost at the end (though I do admit I could have done a better job at editing so I may need to go through them a second time like I did with my first chapter). I also read a lot more of Inkspell,which I believe I gave a little too much time to. Unfortunately, though I got quite a bit of work done, I still manged to be distracted my my mother's two cats (mostly the nine month old kitten) when I should have been focusing on my work. My sister also watched some TV which just served to distract me even more from my book; even though they are the stupidest things in the world, and I think that they serve no real purpose, I find myself struggling to resist watching shows where people yell at each other and there are so many bleeps you would think the producer is just doing so to make the show more interesting (I mean they are literally like "You *bleep* mother *bleep* *bleep*! I hate *bleep* *bleep* *bleeeeeeeep*'s like you!" Who curses like that? Really?). On Thursday I interviewed writer Rob Wilder and asked him questions like "When did you know you wanted to be a writer?" and "What sort of traits does a writer need to have?". My favorite thing he told me was (this has to do with the second question that I mentioned above) was "Put your ass in the chair and write". My sister in playing Joy Division right now. This past week I actually thought a bit about music, and how it also tells stories. I mostly thought about this when I listened to Martin Carthy. Three of his songs that I have of his seem to old folk tales that were adapted into songs. Because of this I have come to think that stories are very flexible: they can be put into so many different forms (songs, books, poems, etc) which only makes them more accessible to more people.