When it Rains, it Pours

Some weeks are like that, both metaphorically and physically. It's rained a lot today and caused flooding through quite a bit of Utah, which matches the rest of my week.

Monday to Thursday I spent 42 hours at work. we've got a project underway that needs extra attention, so it's eating a lot of my time. I'm several hours behind a coworker for the week. This is what software people refer to as crunch time.

Michael Darling

Tonight, I got to introduce Michael Darling who came to tell our Herriman chapter of the League of Utah Writers all about "Top Ten Cliches, Mistakes, and Shortcuts to Make You a Better Writer!" It was a tongue-in-cheek list of things to (NOT) do to be successful. We had a great Q&A session after, and then spent 40 minutes or so in critique groups to review writing from some of our attendees. The writing ranged from story to back cover teaser to song lyrics. It's fun to pick out the principles that apply universally across such wildly different material.

Michael is the author of several short stories (and is in the anthology It Came from the Great Salt Lake with me) as well as the new novel Got Luck. I have a signed copy from this spring's FanX con in Salt Lake City.

Friday and Saturday, I'll be at the League of Utah Writers fall conference where I have a presentation "Analysis of Writing: Numbers can Tell You Cool Stuff About Words" and a panel "Do's and Dont's of Presenting Yourself as an Author" to help with, and a bunch of sessions to attend. There's a writer's gathering Friday night at a nearby pizza joint, and there's an awards banquet Saturday night where I find out if my poetry, novel chapter 1, and flash fiction were good enough for a mention on the League contests.

There's a good chance I'll do a post-conference post on the panels I attended.

Add to that the real estate company my wife works with having an open house on Saturday, and yeah, my week's a bit full. It's good to have weeks like this from time to time, but I look forward to taking a little down time to just hang with the family for a while. Sunday has regular church meetings and nothing else planned. Yet.