Well, it's been a week since my last post. So what's been keeping my busy hands busy? Well, not much writing, unfortunately, though I have been working hard on my one science-heavy story in my head.
But there have been some serious writing projects going on - just not involving actual writing. First off, I've completely migrated to Google. For the reasons I mentioned in my earlier post, I'm way happier now than when I used Microsoft's garbage. Also, the latest word is that Writely may reopen in just a few weeks. I'll keep you posted when that happens, and what I think of it.
There are some bigger writer issues going on, though. As I've mentioned before, I manage a pretty large writing group. A few days ago, the local Barnes & Noble caught wind of it, and has asked to "adopt" us. They want us to hold our meetings there because we bring attention and customers to B&N, and in return they give us publicity. It's good all around, but it also means the group must be public, whereas it's been private up until now.
I'll be talking it over with the group next week, but I'm inclined to think that what I will really do is start a new, public, spectulative fiction organization for any writer of spec fic in the city. It's been something I've wanted to do for a long time, and I find myself surprisingly well positioned to make it happen. On the Asimov's web forum, there was talk a while back about what people can do to raise the appreciation of SF in the public, and this kind of organization is exactly the thing to do it. It'll take time, perhaps a year to get up to full speed; effort, because I'll be managing a professional, fee-based organization, in addition to my current writing group (though I expect and pray that there will be enough overlap that it will not be a true doubling of my current workload); and god knows what else it will take.
It's daunting, but it's what I want to happen. Of course, part of me is scared that I'll have even less time to write than I do now, but my group is a great motivator, and they won't let me slack.
And as if all that wasn't enough (along with all the usual strain of American suburban living), I'm teaching myself Dreamweaver, Fireworks, and Bryce. I have limited web skills, picked up purely by the seat of my pants over the years, and now for the first time, I'm really concentrating on learning web development. One, because it's another creative thing that I just love doing, but two, because I'm redesigning my writing group's web site so it's a more interactive beast that will free me up from a lot of the annoying chores necessary to keeping a writing group going. The redesign of this blog is part of my learning efforts, and expect my main page to change before the end of summer as well.
So all of this is keeping me terribly busy. But that's no excuse for not writing (never!).
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