Readings and Writings

I'm just back from listening to readings by local YA authors Kirsten Krauth and Ellie Marney, as well as Simone Howell spruiking her latest novel, the very funny(at least from the chapters we heard)  Girl Defective,  at the local writers' centre. It was good to spend time in the company of other scribes, even if most of them are hard core litfic types who pause, try to politely hide their embarrassment (and sometimes terror?) and then awkwardly flounder for something suitably nice to say if one happens to mention that one writes *gasp* science fiction with the occasional side trip into horror and fantasy. That's all right. They're good people. They're just not comfortable with some forms of writing.

In fact last year, I was playing with the idea of using the centre's resources to put out feelers to find out whether there there were any local writers interested in setting up a purely SF&F writing group, but then I was felled by illness, so I put it off until this year. However, since this year looks to be something of a repeat of last year, maybe I'll give it a shot in 2014. It'd be nice to have a band of like-minded people to just chat with at these get-togethers, and not feel that one has to constantly defend a whole genre.

I almost didn't go at all because, in between the obligatory Wednesday reading and napping sessions, I was writing up a wonderful storm here at home. My brain has gone into overdrive these past two weeks, possibly because of the recent, inspiring sales of unusual tales that I wasn't sure would ever see print, possibly because it's anticipating the fast-approaching hospital crap on my horizon and wants to get in as much work as it can before pain-killers kick in and switch off my creative synapses again. Whatever. Go for it, brain, I say, and by golly it's obliging me. So I almost finished a hopefully hilarious story today (it just needs a short linking scene, which shouldn't cause any real writerly angst) that stalled about six months ago when I couldn't for the life of me figure out an earnest but silly central quest for my two characters. Today the solution was as obvious as the keyboard beneath my fingers, and as easy as eating ice cream to write. Sometimes you just have to let stuff sit until it's ready to co-operate.