The nitty gritty.

Ruminating on putting down Chant for a while in a more specific capacity (I haven't worked on it since I got home three weeks ago, but the binder is sitting on my bed) in favor of research. Both research for some of the in-story subjects (part of the goal is to establish a somewhat different medical and scientific climate than present day for the early part of the story, but I do need to be a little more up on the technical matters at hand) and of the market in which I'd like to have this published (eventually. I'm not close, now - the novel needs massive revisions before we even get into the polishing and fine tuning phase). It's high time I got behind learning more about the process. I also need to spend some time reading in the genre and thinking hard about my audience so I can actually go at selling my book with some degree of a strategy in mind, when the time comes. The marketing aspect of being a new writer is a little daunting.

The more immediate goal that I hope will help me take an initial and more manageable step into all the things I need to learn is the publication of a short story I've been working on for the last couple of years. I'm going to go sit down with Unbroken Thread for a couple of hours this morning and see if I can't make a final decision about the last (potential) new segment, tracking the time line for the reader, and the damn epilogue. I still want to have that sent to a market or two before the year is out. I won't feel like a total failure if it doesn't get picked up this year, but my goal is to at least send it. Somewhere. I need to get the ball rolling, however slowly, if I intend to be in a position where I can realistically hope to have this novel published when it's done cooking.

Also: WordPress, Halflit, and other projects.

Is anyone out there a WordPress wizard, or able to at least point me to a good and fairly concise resource for learning more about the system? My knowledge of handling all this website business is somewhat minimal, but I'm not starting cold.

Secondly, I'm back to the drawing board a little bit about the writing community, Halflit, that I've sort of started. It's not gathering particular momentum, my thinking is because social networking like MySpace and Facebook and whatever else serve general needs more powerfully than I can hope to (or would want to). I still, however, have some ideas that I'd like to explore for making Halflit a resource for people selling their creative work. At this point, it's probably going to be a much broader scope than writing - I think there are a lot of ways in which all of us crafters, artists, musicians, writers etc. are in the same boat. What would happen if we were all helping each other out? I am, among other things, very and generally interested in multi-media collaboration opportunities.

Ok, off I go. My poor brain needs some coffee and carbs to get me shaken into enough energy for my workday. It's been a long week and I'm looking forward to fewer days staying so late at the store.