It just got real, yo...
Greetings, all. For those of you who frequent this site, you’ll notice I’ve made a few changes. For starters, I’ve deleted the information regarding the four books in the AARDVARK-! series. I know, you’re all crushed. I can tell.
Now for the news portion of the “News” page. I just returned from the 2006 Pacific Northwest Writer’s Association conference. I had a blast. At least, I think I did. We were all pretty drunk.
For those of you that have never attended a writer’s conference, it’s just like any other conference, except the participants spend their time discussing the relative merits of plot outlining and the metaphysical differences between Literary and Mainstream Fiction. I, of course, spent my time trying to figure out where I fit into the greater literary world. For about a day I felt like a fraud, a misplaced hack who’d wandered into someone else’s party.
By day two I’d come to the conclusion that I wasn’t a hack. More of an amateur with a cool hobby putting words to paper.
The conference ended on day three, and I found myself surrounded by others who’d made the same journey. Of course, some of them flew, so maybe the journeys weren’t completely the same.
I’d like to thank the two agents and the editor I met and spoke to about my current book, Hunting Aardvarks. I’m not going to name them, mostly because I know that I’d hate to find my name on someone else’s website in a professional capacity. Let’s just say that all three of them gave me some excellent insights into my work and what I can do to make it more “publishable”. I appreciate their candor and I look forward to sending them my work when it’s ready. I can only hope they feel the same way.
I met a number of fellow writers at different stages in their writing lives. Finding others who share my fondness for spending long periods of time in solitary mental confinement, fighting our own demons to get our stories into a form that others can share, gave me a sense of community I hadn’t known before as novelist.
In short, I’m glad I went.
As for what you can expect from me (and this fetid hole of a website), I plan to spend the next few months editing and massaging Hunting Aardvarks until it shines. Anyone who wants to help me with this endeavor, believe me when I say your help will be greatly appreciated. Please, please, please send me a note if you want to lend a fella a hand. Once I get the next draft ready, I’ll need some additional eyes to go over my work and point out that I can’t spell.
After that, I’m going to write the novel I should have written all along: Richard Hunt’s very first adventure with the ARDVARCs and the man known as the Generalissimo. I don’t have a plot, I don’t have a basic story, I don’t even have more than five characters and a time period. But I’ve started with less.
And to all who’ve made it this far in my ramblings, thanks.
Jul 18, 2006