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You can read The Creepy Little Mailbox Man here:
http://everydayweirdness.com/e/20090322/

The Brain Trust at Fox always shows the Treehouse of Terror episodes on the Sunday after Halloween, so I guess it should be no surprise that they did an episode in Ireland today. What was surprising was the writing on this episode. There were a lot of very un-Simpson-like gags. There was still a lot of funny stuff, but I felt uncomfortable with some of the total misses. I hope it doesn't continue.

What the hell did I do today? Nothing, I think. I did catch up on a lot of missed sleep. Over the past week I had about four nights with only two or three hours of sleep. I slept a lot today and would have slept more if it weren't for my few tiny obligations.

I'm reading flash fiction for the next Fiction Crawler as per Church's suggestion. In some cases I may talk about individual stories, in others just the flash sites themselves.

I just saw what's supposed to be the final episode of Flight of the Conchords. I'll miss the show. I wonder what they'll work on next?

Next thing I'm working on has a working title of The Italian Federation. I conceived of the idea for John Joseph Adams' Federations anthology, but I hadn't even cobbled together a decent first draft by the time the deadline hit. This is the one I said I drove off a cliff a month or two back. I've got parts of a not very good story at the moment. If I can tie some of the elements together and add something really weird that I'm still trying to work out, I think it could be a great story. Yesterday I sat and stared at the points I had to bring together and I wasn't getting anywhere. That's when I realized I had to write another draft. Even though I have no idea how it's going to come together, that's the best way forward. Things come to you during the moment when you're writing. The fun, smarter part of your brain throws stuff in there and things get better. When Tolkien got stuck during the writing of The Lord of the Rings, he would start writing the book from the beginning again. That's part of the reason it took twenty years and part of the reason it's such a well-realized work. So I'm going to rewrite and see what happens.

If you're stuck, you should as well.

The Italian Federation Goes Off A Cliff

I know I said I wouldn't talk about what I was working on, but it might not matter in this case. The story was to be a submission for John Joseph Adams' Federations anthology, but that deadline was up weeks ago. I thought I'd try outlining it, which is something I never do, but I like to change things up and see what happens. After I outlined and plugged in the few pages I had, I sent it to the AlphaSmart and worked at it on my lunch breaks at work. I wrote it like I wrote Maisy's Many Souls, which is to say . . . to be honest I don't know how to explain it. You could say I let the characters take over. That sort of writing is the exact opposite of outlining. I know, but that's okay. Anyway . . .

You know how some writers say they wrote themselves into a corner? Well I wrote myself off a cliff. Yesterday, maybe halfway through the story, my protagonist had a revelation which makes the second half of the story pointless. I wrote it and turned my AlphaSmart off. I'll look in on it again in a couple of weeks, see what I can do with it. The story has to be fundamentally different now to be a story. Ah well, these things happen. The story is called "The Italian Federation." I say this so that if I bring it up again you'll know what I'm talking about.

The next thing I'm going to work on is--

Nope. Cant tell you.

Anyway, it's been a day leaning toward crappy. I've been sick, as I said. I got a few important things done around the house, but I got a feeling to which I shall now refer as "The Empties." It's what I felt before I used to go into a depression. I try not to do that anymore, but The Empties are still there. I'll be over it tomorrow, I imagine.

Back at it.

Tooth and nail.

Sunshiney day.