Meanwhile…

I nearly forgot, but tomorrow marks the Writer’s Ink Story Every Day contest. We started this last year after my own fool-hearted attempt at something similar on my own. Now all the cool kids are doing it. Every day for two weeks we’ll all attempt to churn out a piece of flash fiction of at least 500 words.

So keep an eye on this space for terrible, hastily-written exercises for the next couple of weeks. I usually get about 9-12 pieces done. With a little luck one or two might be worth polishing up.

Just playing around with Chuck Chaykin and his pal a little bit more, I came up with this fun scenario. Mostly I just wanted to write Chuck fighting some space shark pirates.

Something that I haven’t really had to worry about before is how to handle character development and description for characters who I’ve already written about (and, hopefully, published). It’s something I’ll have to start thinking about if I keep writing about these two particular characters. I can’t assume that people have read a previous Chuck Chaykin story, so some basic retreading will be required. But at the same time, I won’t want to bore returning readers (hah!) with the same exposition every time.

I’m getting ahead of myself, of course. But it’s fun to imagine that someday that might be an issue.

I’ll need to finish polishing up “Telepath’s Lament” and get that submitted before really working on anything else, but this might make a fun flash piece some time. About 300 words so far, currently untitled. The last line is silly, so I apologize in advance.

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So last night I finally saw Charlie Kaufman’s Synecdoche, New York.

I’m a big fan of Kaufman’s other films. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Adaptation, and Being John Malkovich are all brilliant works. Adaptation in particular spoke to me as a writer on multiple levels, and I think it’s one of those films all artists should see.

Thar be spoilers ahead, if you care.

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I hate it when people use onomonopea in titles. Oh well.

It was a good weekend for librarians here at Meanwhile…not one but two stories accepted. You may or may not recall that some time back I wrote a story about a robot librarian, “The Overdue Protocols.” I’ve received word that it’s been accepted over at The Future Fire. It should be out in their August issue.

It may seem like it was planned, but I actually wrote “The Overdue Protocols” last year sometime. Complete coincidence!

Sadly, neither of my librarians is a hot librarian with the glasses or the pinned-up hair. My apologies. I’ll get on that one next.

Oh, also, a huge huge huge grats to KC, who nabbed third place over at no less prestigious a contest than The Writers of the Motherfucking Future (that’s their new title, just so you know).