#5 out of 40 — Streaking and Flashing, As the World Turns

A lot of big-ticket news items today, with probably one of the most talked about in these parts being the striking down of DOMA. 

And plenty of grief lately too, with the recent deaths of Ray Harryhausen (June 29, 1920 – May 7, 2013), Jack Vance (August 28, 1916 – May 26, 2013), Iain Banks (16 February, 1954 – 9 June 2013), and now Richard Matheson (February 20, 1926 – June 23, 2013).

I did what I tend do during such times, which is try to bury my head in the sand and focus on continuing to take one step after another.


Today, this entailed:

• Finishing Lois Lowry's The Giver. As I mentioned yesterday, I had really enjoyed the first 100 pages. The goods news is that the remaining 80 didn't disappoint, no small feat considering the quality of what came before. I won't spend a lot of time discussing the ending of this much-beloved YA novel, but I will say that one of the things I particularly liked about it was its restraint. Implication wins over explication, every time. Something I'd do well to remember.

• Nice 5-mile sunset run.

• Long edits on a long short story I finished on 6/19. This started at 9,100 words and by the end of today sits at 7,900. Received some great feedback on it that enabled me to fix many things, small and large. I think all the basics are now solid, and with today's excisions it's actually starting to be somewhat readable. Needs a couple of more rounds of edits before being subbed, though.

• Continued adding (only a couple hundred words, but it counts!) to the story I started on 6/24. This is significant in that way that arbitrary milestones are significant because it marks day 20 of my writing streak. I mean, I feel like I can actually, legitimately call it a streak now. A recent comment I made to my girlfriend about a new piece of flash fiction I'm working on elicited an unfortunate juxtaposition of both these terms...hence the title of today's post.

Oh, and before I forget: for any Malzberg fans out there who might have seen my recent review of his The Very Best Of, Dave Truesdale pointed me to a fascinating discussion that was published around the same time as Breakfast in the Ruins in F&SF.