Hello, my friends and the occasional relative!

So nice to see you! I blog therefore I am. You read (and like) and therefore you are? I have no idea. But I’d like to hope you are real: an audience of bots and AI scraping around for usable data that isn’t already AI generated would be a little disappointing. I’m sure there’s a tool to check for an audience’s humanity score. Tick the pictures with a motorbike in it, please.

I have work to do, and boy am I tired and unsure if I’ll get to it. I’m trying to push through, one item at a time, don’t think about the other items on the list, not yet. I need to cook. I enjoy cooking – the results are workmanlike, so don’t ever be excited if I invite you around for dinner. This is not an invite. But still, I enjoy it, and sometimes I really like what I make – but I don’t write down what I’m doing so it is always guess work. If in doubt, and onion and garlic powder. See? I’m a total heathen. I use frozen onion too. And pureed garlic from a tube.

But even with all those garlic and onion related shortcuts, cooking still takes time. I hear the call of the pressure cooker – dump stuff in, add some broth, seal and be done. I use that a lot – when I want tasty but textureless food for the next week. User error – I always overcook stuff in the pressure cooker. It’s like nuking the site from orbit: I just like to be sure!

But cooking, while enjoyable, and useful to my continued existence and work day lunch supply, does not write books. It steals from that time. Unless I have ideas while cooking. Which I do. I’m writing a whole book loosely centered around an elaborate multi-course meal. Peafowl tongue three ways as hors d’oeuvres. So the guests can mix and match, you understand.

Of course, when you are writing one book (and avoiding cooking by going for a walk, which is also not writing), you often have ideas for others. Much to my delight yesterday and today when on the just mentioned walks, I came up with some ideas for modern day fairy tales, each possessed of all the subtlety of a large gold brick wrapped in a twist of lemon. Sweet. I have plans for these, a little side project that will not detract from the book writing at all. That last sentence was actually serious. It won’t. Honest. The idea has been percolating for quite a while and then I came up with 4-5 stories all at once. Or one long episodic one with a couple of shorter buddies. Purely for fun. For now. Also a serious last sentence.

Anyway, I’m all over the place today. I’m going to publish this to let you know the story progresses, despite distractions. Speaking of distractions, but this is Useful Writerly Learning (UWL), I’m also almost exactly halfway through The Story Grid, but only 70 pages from the beginning of the very lengthy analysis of The Silence of the Lambs, so I suspect I’m most of the way through the shared new information, but seeing that information in action will be very instructive and help cement some of the ideas shared in my mind, and more importantly, illustrate how to use them, and perhaps how to play with or against them. My current story does not fit clearly into the presented story categories, though it has elements enough for me to gain benefit. I do have some anti-plotness (if you know, you know, if you don’t: I just had to choose an awkward story structure this time, hey ho.), but there are also elements of mini and arch plot too. I suspect in editing I’ll be told to straighten up and fly right, or the equivalent. We’ll see, as I will employ an editor to do that exact thing.

My friends, I do not currently write for profit, or make a profit. This blog, and my approach, are not to be emulated. If you are in fact there, and not a bot or AI scraping my deathless prose to add to your vast lexicon of predictiveness. AI guests are not welcome. I am not paranoid. That is not a fish. (Is there a doctor in the fish?)

And this is the end of my randomly worked in references to things blog. Don’t go looking for them. There’s only three I meant to put in, so it isn’t complex. If there are more, that would be, to quote Mr. Spock, fascinating.

So four. Ciao, my friends. Make this next week count, and learn how to time things properly in a pressure cooker. I hate releasing the valve is my problem – the jet of steam is just too over-stimulating!

P.S. Since writing the first draft of this, I have done the pressure cooker thing. I should go check on it now. (Just did – it needed more herbs. I’ve been trying this subtlety thing, with fewer ingredients to let each one shine, but sometimes maximalism has to rule!) The final product here is draft 1.5. It (this) really isn’t deathless prose. Love ya!