Make Sure You Tell Them

Friday morning here at Rancho Beeko and the population is moving slowly. It's beautifully sunny and the temperature is mild. At the moment maybe 65 degrees. Supposed to top out at about 75. That sounds good to me.

There was a message on the box from Senor Truett regarding the erection of the Gazebo of Lights in honor of the elder God Euphrasnia. He proposes the opening ceremonies occur on Monday, I called back and left a message saying that we will fatten a calf or open a tin of baloney in honor of his attendance.

In the meantime, it is my firm intention to put a finish to the ICU story today, hopefully by cutting a bunch of it out. I'm not sure what I learned from it. It was more of an exercise in learning not to take off on stories like that. There are a few nice parts but it fails as an exercise in which I can practice the things that go into a short story.

I need to set the scene and get to the story faster. At least I need to set the scene as I unravel the story. Right now when I write it's like part A, then Part B, then the punchline. Part A is completely preamble and boring. IT's like arriving at the theater to see a play and find out you have to watch them build the set first. It doesn't move and so it dooms the whole process from the start.

All of this brings me back to the need for knowing what the story is before I write it. I seem to be a seat of the pants writer not a plotter or outliner. If that's true and I can't change it, then I'm going to have to learn to cut the description to the bare minimum at all times.

So maybe it's time to back and do a few smaller exercises to make scene fast. How about one right now?

The scene is a boat tied to dock.

He carefully stepped from the dock over the sideboard and onto the narrow deck of the boat. The boat was about 40 feet long and maybe 18 feet across at its widest. It was dark blue with a small grey cabin rising from the just forward of the center. The cabin had large windows on all sides and a door on the back side that looked like it belonged on a country cottage. A mast containing antennas and radar dishes rose from the deck just beside the door in back. The deck was uncluttered except for coiled rope and closed built-in containers hold the necessary gear. The bow rose with high sides just the way a boat should and the name on the side of the bow read, "Sarah-Lynn"

That seemed OK.

More later,