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This blog keeps me in touch with WDC. Jamesdillingham.com keeps me in touch elsewhere. |
| I like to stay in touch with WDC, even when I'm not contributing on a daily basis. My main blog is at jamesdillingham.blogspot.com |
| It is 7:00 pm tonight in Budapest on the 5th of November. I will spend tomorrow traveling back to California. |
| I am in Budapest today but I did vote by mail a couple of weeks ago. I will be glad when this is over. We need to get on with things. The Dialogue 500 contest is coming to an end. Bill Wilcox ran the contest. I looked forward to getting his positive reviews. His contest will be missed. As far as I can tell, he will remain with WDC so he can continue to work on his writing. SoCalScribe gave me a bunch of loot from his contest 2008 Short Story Contest. He is very generous and very much like Bill Wilcox in that his reviews are always positive and uplifting. I am so happy to have found WDC and I really enjoy getting to know many of the people on this site. You know who you are! J |
| I am in Biatorbagy, Hungary where my wife lives. Today we work in the yard and go to my mother-in-law's for lunch. It is dark here by 4:30 in the afternoon so that will be it. I am looking forward to next week when the elections will be on television. Like everyone, I am ready for it all to be over. On November 6th I travel back to the states. To Texas for a few days on the 10th. After that I have a couple more weeks in Texas to finish a project and then home till Christmas. I return to Hungary on Christmas afternoon after spending the morning with my kids (youngest is 15 and their mom lives nearby). I return from Hungary on January 10th and have no idea what I will be doing after that. My business seems unaffected by the economic slowdown. If anything, I seem to be very busy. J |
| Right now I have three contest entries out there. Short shots: My attempt at a scary story following a photo promt 55 Words: A quick halloween tale Flash Fiction: Story about trick or treating |
| I just got back from three days in the Chec Republic. I love coming to Europe; everything is old. Now I am back at my home-away-from-home in Biatorbagy, Hungary. I have work to do for a project ongoing in the United States. I also submitted Flash Fiction number 99! One more to go. I hope I can make it a good one. Jim |
| I just arrived in Hungary to see my wife. I checked in at WDC and so many people had read so many of my things I am a bit overwhelmed. I need to do family stuff for a couple of days, probably through the weekend. After that I will get busy returning the favors. Thanks again to everyone. Jim |
| I am just checking in. I just entered my 97th story into Daily Flash Fiction Challenge. I love that contest although I haven't decided what priority I need to give it with respect to my book. Should I enter DFF before or after I work on my book? I hope to finish Chapter 2 today. I am roughly following the original story line but I am trying to write better sentences and paragraphs. A goal is to have every paragraph be worth reading rather than just a tool to move the story along. I head off to Budapest tomorrow for a couple of weeks. j |
| I am writing on my book which take away from my Daily Flash Fiction. My deal with myself is 500 well written words on the book daily. After that, I can write all the flash fiction and dialogue that I want. I keep myself to 500 words a day max on the book for two reasons. First, I don't want to write myself dry. If I do that, I will come back the next day with nothing more to say. Secondly, I want to focus on quality. When I simply tell a story, the words flow out but the story is less interesting; it lacks "bite". If I pay closer attention, I can say the same thing with fewer, more impactful sentences. I have been on WDC for just over six months now. My portfolio has 166 items in it and my items have been read a total of 6,588 times. This is amazing to me. I try to read as many items as I write although I admit I am a little behind on that particular goal. I am off to Budapest next week for 2 weeks. Time to see the wife. I return to California in time for the high school wrestling season. I am an assistant coach and this will be my youngest son's first season. I hope he likes it. J |
| I have restarted my book and I can see a difference from the original draft right away. I am very excited about getting back after this project. One big change will be the length of the chapters. I originally went with about 5,000 words per chapter. I think I will cut it down to about half that. |
| I wrote a quickie for Flash Fiction called the Stapler. The story is okay, not great, not bad. However, there is something about the narrative that felt very fun and easy to write. It came out unforced. Some of you reading this may know what I mean. Sometimes I struggle to write something that is good and it ends up bad. Other times, it flows effortlessly. I truly didn't know what the next word would be until I wrote it. I didn't know where the story would go or how it would end. It's like the personal force fields in Dune. A bullet cannot get through because it is to fast. A sword can get through because it is slow. Sometimes easy is the path to take. I bring this up as a way of looking in on myself to find the Key ... that one thing that lets me write with an effortless flow. j |
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