Day 35: Some Epiphanies

It’s working.  It’s really working!

Writing every day has helped me to recognize and begin to conquer three things: not writing every day, flat passive voice, and quality over volume.

The first and most obvious of these three is that I am writing every day.  The proof is right here, but I am also writing more elsewhere.  And that is good too.  Though the tie I write on my work blog drains time I could devote to this specific venue.

What I am calling flat passive voice or sneaky passive is getting pruned.  Ha Ha.  No doubt it has a real name, but that’s what I’ll call it for now.  I’d go ahead and define and demonstrate if I could just think of a concrete example.  Since I can’t I’ll just roll on to the next one and leave you with the fact that I think I am overcoming this one.

Yesterday I glimpsed the leading edge of my hang up on quality over progress.  I reffered to it as volume above, but that is not correct.  What I mean to convey is that I have begun to push my writing forward even when I know it’s sucking a bit as it trails behind my keystrokes.  I still slide back for the occasional typo correction or word replacement, but I don’t wholesale rework a line.  I need that.

Good day.

Day 34: The Solex Guy

While Gane’s bimonthly trips to the ah’Taconscienteen spike kept him lean of body and broad of billfold, they rolled tidal on his spirit. No hres he instantiated scoped his fluctuating emotions. Gane was certain the problem lay with the nature of his visits not the frequency or timing. One month wasn’t down and the next up. One trip wasn’t down and the next up. He could handle that. Hres or even just alcohol could handle that. His problem was that scoped out to the extremes multiple time each trip. The best he could tell was that it matter where the solex was that he was blessing.

Higher up the spike things were brighter, bluer. Lower down he had to intone the blessing with greater ferocity to get the same effect. Lower down it smelled. Brine. Refuse–human and other. Lower down it was brown.

His visits were never timed to start at one end and work to the other. That might have helped. He wasn’t sure if top to bottom or the reverse would be more pleasing. He did think that gradual was the way to go. On this visit he’d been able to force a few of the appointments to different times. He’d wanted to go bottom to top, but even before he’d gotten the calendaring girl to swap a few around they were trending downward.

Day 33: The Solex Guy

Yesterday’s review felt a little like cheating. I haven’t established any rules about what content makes it into these little sessions. To be sure that review was significantly more meaty than all of the first week of effort.

It feels unfair because it is meta-writing–even if it’s original for me. I wont be cutting those out entirely. I recognize that one of the things I do poorly is review things. My reviews need to get better because I like to review things. Can’t get better without trying.

But they’ll be fewer in number than the creative pieces.

Let me be creative…

I was thinking that I would do a second description of the ah’Taconschientee. Maybe I’ll do several.

Gane stood back from the clearcrete wall and the nerve-vibrating edge of oblivion. He was on deck for the next slide over to the ah’Taconschienteen spike. He had purposefully fasted since early the day before yesterday. His hunger drown out any nausea and focused his attention enough to stave off the worst of his vertigo. Chabe, a long dead technomonk, taught him that particular hres within a month of Gane taking vows. Gane had never been to ah’Taconschientee well fed.

His proper title was Solexcorp Technician – Prim. But the Tacons, and everyone else, just called him “The Solex Guy”.