Thursday, January 18, 2007

Just Stuff

Life does not like to cooperate. It screws with me every chance it gets! Last night was a madhouse of running about and scrambling, just after I made my lovely SCWWE post. However, I was not to be undone! I still managed to get in the Walk and Writing time yesterday. We wound up going out for dinner while on the run (which we've been doing far too much lately!) Tonight should be calmer. There's noting to disrupt my plan . . . yet!

So, here's an interesting twist on my writing career that I never expected: The Boy has taken to reading my novels. He came to me last week and asked if it would be alright if he read "Clans" (failing to mention that he was already halfway through the damn thing by that point!) I was surprised by the interest, but told him to go ahead. Well, he read the whole thing and -surprisingly- he seemed to like it. Now, he's buggging me to write the next book in the series so he can find out what happens to the characters. He's pumping me for info about what's gonna happen in the next book. I'm not even published and I have a pushy fan! How funny is that?

It's actually pretty cool that he read it. The idea that he's reading my stuff is a great motivator to keep writing. Even better, he's going to help me out by writing up a list of good/bad points about the book for me to look over when I go into edits on it. Strangely, his criticism doesn't bother me. When The Wife looks at my stuff we wind up in arguments. Wonder why that is? There's a clue to my twisted psyche in ther somewhere, I'm sure . . . I just don't know what it it. There's your writing tip for the day: give your WIP to your kids. they'll badger you into finishing the damn thing!

On a completely different note: at dinner last night The Boy blurts out that he wants to go to church so that he can see what it's all about. He says his friends all have religions and such and he's never been exposed to it directly and is curious. He also pointed out that most of his family are Roman Catholic and the only time he's been inside a church was for a baptism. I thought his reasoning was sound so I thought about it carefully and gave him a reasonable answer:

"Get your mother to take you, I'm not going to any damn church!"

Mature, eh? Actually, I wasn't that bad . . . but I did explain that I have a whole lot of personal issues with churches and religions and why that is. I told him that if he really wants to look into religion that's fine with me and we (meaning: his mother!) will help him out with that. I have faith in The Boy's common sense. Even just in a casual conversation with some friends about God and morality he was getting pretty pissed off at their narrow-minded answers. I've never really gotten him to buy into the whole: "Because I said so!" argument when I use it. Telling him some invisible dude in the clouds "said so" ain't gonna wash either.

Later!

3 comments:

Spilling Ink said...

Hi, Jim. I like your SCWWE plan. We all need a plan, don't we?

Yeesh, the boy asked about church? I'm not sure what I'd do if that happened over here. I guess we all have our 'stuff', huh?

Anonymous said...

"I'm not going to any DAMN church."

I love it! paradoxical yet true.

J.A. Coppinger said...

Church . . . (shudder) What WAS the boy thinking????

Lynn - Plans are good . . . ya know: if we actually stick to them! I ain't got the best track record there!

Later!