BORING STUFF

This update is going up much later than planned – also, it’s more boring. My two excellent excuses are: 1.) the internet at the public library was down this morning, and 2.) that even with the extra allotted time from the internet fail, I still didn’t manage to finish the short story I’ve been wanting to complete and post since March.

(Blog tip #5,491: Always start with your justifications, and never offer any apologies. In other news, I’m sorry about this.)

I wasted some time scouring through my old homework from college, but I just cannot convince myself that any of the old short story assignments I have are worth posting. They’re okay, but they’re just not good enough. This collection is meant to showcase the writing I actually want to share with people. As it turns out, I really have gotten better since University. Annoying, but a comfort in its own way.

Still, what I’d really like to do is finish up the many short stories in my head; partly so that I’ll have something to show off and put to use on my nefarious marketing scheme website, partly because it would be a relief to remove them from my head where they’re taking up the space I should be using for newer (and potentially more lucrative) projects. Unfortunately, I have a very bad habit of stretching out short stories into semi-long ones, and though that allows me to create serial pieces, it also means it takes that much more time to complete them. I waste a lot of time trying to think around my desire to flesh out my ideas as fully as I’d like. Which will never work and, honestly, if I just wrote instead of thinking about getting around to it eventually, I’d have a lot more to show for it. Ah well. One of the things I’m working on this summer.

Jumping ship from that topic (transitions are hard), I’d like to take this opportunity to throw up (gross) a shout-out and related thank you to Mary Moerbe at “Meet, Write, & Salutary.” She’s a Lutheran wife and mother whose own time for writing has shrunk (that whole mother thing does it, I think), and so has taken it on as her mission to use her blog to encourage other Lutheran writers (or perhaps writers who happen to be Lutheran, as is more my case) instead. She wrote an awesome post about “The Hatastrophe” as well as “Small Town Super Nobody,” which you can read here:

The Hatastrophe

I also took the opportunity to work on my art portfolio. I’ve created galleries for several projects, and if you would like to admire all of the illustrations for “The Hatastrophe” you may do so at your pleasure, by hopping over here to my “Art Portfolio” page. The print copy of the picture book has a border frame around each illustration (as well as, you know, words), but these are the graphics on their own. I meant to put together a “For Sale” tab this afternoon as well – as a place to gather everything I’m selling (only two projects so far, but I should have a couple more by time the summer is over) – but I’ll have to do that another day. It took me two hours just to organize the art portfolio tab into something worth looking at, and I’m officially late for dinner at my brother and sister-in-law’s house. On my way, guys!