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I’ve been struggling with a short story for the past two weeks. Writing the first draft earlier this year was arduous. A plot that looked good in outline seemed improbable while I wrote, and led to an unsatisfying ending. I hoped that revision would be easier. It hasn’t been. How I’ve struggled with that plot! [...]

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Today is an unpaid furlough day for me and Sweetie burned a paid day off to hang out with me. We also leveraged the long weekend into ten straight days off by scheduling vacation days for the rest of next week. Too bad we can’t really afford to do anything spectacular. I’ll write, of course, [...]

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Yet again, I’ve let weeks go by without an update. When I get busy, I tend not to notice time passing. And I’ve been busy. Here’s what I’ve been doing since I last posted. I added quite a bit to “Big Little Blonde,” but got stuck and put it aside to get some distance. Oddly, [...]

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At one time, I aspired to be a decent chess player and asked a friend who played well to help improve my game. We played a few games so he could judge my skill level. Then he made me play dozens of games without my rooks. In those diagnostic games he had noticed that, like [...]

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A commenter on one of my earlier posts asks, “Is there a protagonist in the modern short story?” My unqualified short answer is, “Yes, always.” Now I’ll qualify it: I can imagine an experimental, literary short story with no protagonist. Perhaps a tale told through multiple viewpoints, none of which dominates, might work. But I [...]

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