Wrattered from Writing

I'm taking a summer vacation from writing. Other than this blog, I'm not starting any new projects for awhile. My brain is battered and my wrists are wrattered. "Wrattered" isn't a word, but don't you think it should be? "Wrattered" is an adjective meaning the pain in your wrists or other body parts caused by writing too much.

2013 has been a wrattering year so far. In January,  I was well into the first draft of my science fiction novel, 2112 Lawyer, which is currently titled A Million Dead Lawyers. I am one dying lawyer, considering how many times, I've gone back and revised it.

I also have a modern western called Navajo Repo. I had originally written it, several years ago, but we decided to publish Rattlesnake Wedding instead, because I still wanted to do additional research on Native American culture. When I went back to the Repo manuscript, I had to do some repo of my own. For some reason, half of the quotation marks are the straight quotes and not smart quotes. I had to go back and change each one.

While I was at it, I also had to make sure that the manuscript is consistent with Rattlesnake Wedding, as it is supposed to happen a few years earlier. To make things even more complicated, Marlow the main character in Navajo Repo, is also the main character in A Million Dead Lawyers. Also some of the other characters in the western, appear in the science fiction book. Don't ask.

I had to go back and make sure that everything was consistent with not one, but two manuscripts. I even wrote some witty dialogue in the earlier book that will echo in the later book. When people will ask me if I planned it that way, I will just smile.

Then there's Legal Lapdances, or is it Laws and Loves? I have entered the Southwest Writing contest with both titles. I won in 2006 and took second last year. The two works have had a shotgun wedding and now comprise of twenty years of non-fiction stories --88,000 word collection. Some of those stories were composed in computer languages that no longer exist. I've gone back and fixed quotations, spacing, as well bad writing. Twenty years ago, I made jokes that I don't get.

Who the hell is Craig Killborn and why was he hosting the Daily Show?

So I think it's time for a break . . . I'm wrattered!