The past few days, I’ve been chugging away at revision. That’s scene cards for my novel, and a little good ol’ fashioned cut-and-past (uhm, scotch tape) for a longer short story I’m working on. Revision has a way of making my desk look like a grade-school art room. Yes, I really do need to tape together long strips of paper to figure out where I am in the thing. No, I don’t know why, but I did get a twenty-five page short story down to seven and a half pages. (Using the scotch tape, that is. I didn’t actually cut any words. I coulda made it even shorter, but it was already getting silly.)

I haven’t gotten as many new words as usual. Which is probably fine on the short-story front. I mean, I have a backlog going on. It’s not quite as good on the novel-writing end of things. I’m at about 7000 words, and going nowhere. I think the problem is that I added too many children to the story. Or… not enough grownups… or maybe not enough penguins. I’m really not sure. The proportions are off. It’s definitely never going to be a children’s story (what with all the brain-eating worms, and cadavers) so I guess I’ll add more grownups. I’m just not sure where to put them.

So, I’ve got to figure out what kind of characters I need, and how they fit in with what I already have.

Sure. No problem.

Three adults, two children, and a parasitic brain worm walk into a bar…