2025-W26 EOW Report
Anti-Goal Cycling
- Finished the first draft prj:WAITE and submitted to Cat Rambo on Sunday. Got feedback on our monthly call on Friday. Not a ton of feedback. Sent it to MRK as well with a call booked for mid-July. I think there are a few things I personally want to fix before I start submitting it. I don’t think the final review and emotional arc is as subtle/nuanced/literary as I want it to be. It’s not exactly a Hallmark movie right now, but it’s also not an emotional epiphany that hits you in a way that makes it feel transcendent and not just sentimental. Cat told me to sit on it for a week before I review it again.
- So this week, I reviewed all the feedback from Cat’s Advanced Short Story Workshop for prj:MUSIC. I don’t think there are a ton of edits required here either, but I did spend the week thinking through the MECH for the PROT more… along with ways in which the MECH could be expressed. I was also doubting some of the feedback because one of the readers was definitely from the Kindle mass market crowd and this is one of my struggles right now. Do I just ignore making stuff super blunt, hit-you-over-the-head obvious because I think those books are boring? I asked Cat this even though I’m sure I know my answer already… which is just do what you want to do and ignore what I perceive the mass market audience wants. Like, literally, be an artist. I know I want the plot to be clear and easy enough for anyone to understand, but leave a lot of the theme, message, easter eggs, references, and language subtle.
- Still plugging away at Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (1978) by Peter Burke. Honestly, I’ve been surprised – even thought I shouldn’t be – how effective it is to just put in twenty minutes a day. It’s crazy how effective a daily habit is. Just one of those obvious things that few people do but is known to work. Literally 20 minutes a day.
Four Thousand Weeks
| Wks Lft | HP |
|---|---|
| 1688/4000 | 42.200% |
- A lot of stuff this past week. Eldest graduated on Wednesday night at the Orpheum. Middle one was on a camping trip in Newcastle island. Wife had a birthday on Tuesday. Saturday night, dinner with parents and in-laws in celebration of their first grandson to graduate high school.
- Uh oh. Bought more Mcfarlane DC Multiverse toys. Got my local EB Games to hunt me down a Hawkgirl and Power Girl. Pre-ordered Deahtstorm and read the first issue.
- Feeling fairly good about my ability to tell a story finally. Let me put a few more arcs on paper and I’ll feel stronger. But it’s been a relief. Eighteen months. Eighteen months since I took MRK’s short story cohort. I would count the beginning of 2024 as when this journey really started. I made declaration in March 2023, and I dug into Writing Excuses and stuff in late 2023 along with attending SIWC… but I don’t think I can count anything until I actually started writing stories. So 18 months. That’s how long it took for me to finally “get” stories in a way I feel somewhat confident about, enough to have a foothold. It’s been a journey.
Story Introspection
- Total failure on reading fiction. I started a few pages of To the Lighthouse (1927), but didn’t touch 2034 (2021) like I thought I would. Also didn’t read any short fiction either. And really didn’t read all that comics until late in the week either. A lot of it had to do with the timing of the credit card payment, which we put off until the last minute, because… hey, it’s our cash, we want the interest, and we’re going to pay you as late as possible. So there. So I didn’t hit the LCS until Friday afternoon. This week’s pulls was quite hefty though, with nine issues and Mark Waid’s Birthright (2003) in DC Compact Form.
- I did however get started on the 1300+ page phonebook of a compendium, JSA Vol. 1. The first nine or ten issues was the JSA team broken up into separate teams, and heh, I picked up on what they were doing because I read the Golden Age stuff earlier this year. Very clever. One of those great “cool if you knew what they’re doing, and NBD if you didn’t and the story still works”. Just got into the actual proper run on Friday night after all the WW2 stuff.
- Started Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow (2021) because one, the McFarlane action figure I want but can’t get without paying over $70 for but will probably eventually cave and get, and two, the film adaptation that will happen in 2026 starring Milly Alcock. Four issues in, definitely lives up to the hype, and my god… Bilquis Evely’s art. It’s like a European comic style. Moebius maybe. Band name!
Archive of all EOW reports here