The first draft of anything is always shit

So I've decided on two texts to work on (thanks Mr Urban Army) for the workshop in San Diego I'm aiming for in the summer of 2010. I know I probably won't get in, since over 200 people apply and there's only room for 18 or 20 students, but I have to try.

The texts are “Security” and “And then there was the word”. The opening paragraphs of both texts are posted below. Please tell me what you think. And if anyone's interested in reading and giving feedback on the whole thing, let me know and I can send it once it's done.

SECURITY

The alarm by her door woke Reuben up. The motion sensors hidden in the apple trees along the garden path, roosting like white plastic birds. He would have to find another way to position them in two months, when the leaves started falling.
Yawning so hard his jaw creaked, he sat up on his folding cot and rubbed his face. Sometimes, staring at the monitors, he wondered if he ever really slept anymore, or if he existed in some no man’s land, where sleep was no longer a physical thing, but a state of mind.
He walked over to his desk. The monitors, waiting, the images there better known to him than even his own apartment. He sat down in his Steelcase Leap, and focused on the top left monitor. A carefully smoothed down piece of packing tape across the bottom. “Front door” stenciled in precise black letters.
She stood there, digging around in her black imitation alligator purse, looking for keys. Reuben carefully noted the date and time in his log, under Arrivals, without taking his eyes from the monitor. She was later than usual, but not enough to be worth further comment. With time, he had learned what mattered and what didn’t.
After a few moments she found her keys and opened the front door. As she walked into the hallway and shut the door behind her, Reuben’s gaze slid over to the next monitor. “Hallway”. High ceiling, black and white photographs of kite surfers at Mui Ne on the walls. A coat rack in one corner, the brainchild of a team of black-clad Swedish designers. Sweeping lines of birch wood, reminiscent of birds’ wings.
Reuben watched as she took her coat off and walked into the open area that was both living room and kitchen. The hallway camera covered some of that area as well. Kitchen appliances gleamed there, unused, untouched. In three weeks, he had never seen her cook. Nine restaurants on speed dial.
Reaching under the desk, Reuben pulled a bottle of water from the fridge and took a long pull. She only drank Perrier, and wine, occasionally. Now she walked over towards her fridge, a squat cream Smeg, depositing her purse on the kitchen table. His eyes moving to the monitor one row down. “Kitchen”.

AND THEN THERE WAS THE WORD

Ishmael finds himself on his knees, face down on a hard, cold surface. Gravel bites into his shins and cheeks. He is naked. A sense of otherness envelops him. The hairs on his arms stand on end, and there's a roaring in his ears. He slowly pushes himself up from the ground, and lifts his face up to see.
Words hang in the air in front of his face, on all sides of him, above him. A cage of words woven around him. A barrier that seems as impenetrable as stone. Stunned, he reaches out and lets his fingertips brush them. And howls in pain as their power tears into him, into his fingers, down his arm, into his body, into his soul. Falling back to the ground, his face strikes the ground hard.
Someone speaks on the other side of the barrier of words. A staccato chatter of sounds that are completely meaningless to him. He looks up again, slowly, cradling his aching arm. The words spoken tumble around him, like broken pieces of some arcane puzzle. Instinctively, he pulls pieces out of the air, assembles them and tastes the result, amazed that it's touch does not burn him as the others did. It tastes like a derivative of things he already knows, of things he has read about in ancient tomes. Of myth and of dust.

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters

I haven't written here in a month. No real reason, it just kind of happened. Inspiration has been running low, and I have been focusing on other things. My fiction writing has been suffering as well, though I have managed to come up with two embryos for stories for the workshop I hope to be part of next summer (one about time travel and JFK, and one about angels, kind of).

One of them was conceived and written today, aboard the train, using Laban, my new-ish laptop. Yes, of course laptops need names, don't be silly. The other one's called Lelle. He's in love with Mah Girl's laptop Lina. We were expecting a flock of little Palm Pilots or something, but alas, they're either saving themselves for marriage, suffering from reproductive problems or practicing safe sex. If they've gone religious on me, we'll be having us a laptop skeet shoot any day now. Just as long as they don't have an STD (Serial port Transmitted Disease).

Life has been a roller coaster ride of ups and downs lately. Tuesday was one of the worst working days I've had, ever. Actually, maybe top ten or twenty crap days ever, regardless of work or other circumstances. The Friday before was also epically bad. Just horror show bad.

Then Friday, three days ago, I began three days of bliss. Barbecue on Friday with good friends and then a visit from Mah Girl's best friend over the weekend, which included beer, drinks, steaks, movies (some good, some disappointing, some sooo bad), pizza, more beer and Wovenhand live. Excellent.

Some kind of balance has been reached, then. I'm hoping the universe won't read this and decide to pummel me again.

I should go to bed. And I will, soon. I intend to write more often than once a month from now on. Here's hoping I will.

To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan, and not quite enough time

I've never been much for planning ahead. This is where everyone I know go “Liar!” but we're talking about two different things. When it comes to my day to day life, meeting up with friends, etc, I do plan ahead. A lot. In fact, I'm a real control freak. If I leave the office for lunch and don't have at least an idea of where I'll be eating, I become a nuisance. A pain in the ass. A never ending tirade of questions about where, when, how, why.

When I say I don't plan ahead, I'm instead referring to life. To the bigger issues. Work, for example. I never planned on being where I am today, as product manager at Sweden's second largest telecom company. It's all circumstances that have brought me here, circumstances and knowing the right people at the right time.

I don't really have a goal when it comes to my working life. And long-term, I usually don't have goals when it comes to other aspects of my life either. I'm very much a go with the flow kind of guy, in that respect.

And so it is with writing as well. On some level I have aspirations of being published, but I think I never really considered it as a viable option, until a guy in my writing class got a book deal a year and a half ago (I think it was). However, work and life in general has, as many of you know, been getting in the way of my writing, and I haven't taken any significant steps forward in a long time.

This is about to change. I now have a very specific goal with my writing. On February 20th 2010, I need to have two freakin' perfect short stories, of 2500 – 6000 words each, ready and polished and tweaked. I am applying to a six week long writing sci fi/horror/fantasy writing workshop in the US, and need them for the application.

To put this in perspective, the longest story I've completed and feel content with, is 683 words... I do have longer things written, but not finished and certainly not good enough to send away.

So. I have a goal. And my work cut out for me.