Sunday, March 25, 2018

Epigraphical.

I like to stick little epigraphs at the beginnings of chapters. I've done it on a few books so far. I suspect going forward that it will be more common.

Epigraphs are easy for me to write and sometimes I think they're rather clever. They can import information, or mood, or contrast the happenings in the story.

To me, they are often short, short stories, with a beginning, middle, and end.

The reason they are so easy to write, I think, is that they are a lot like blog entries. I've written on this blog now almost every day for 12 years (hard to believe.) So I've had some practice, but even from the beginning I tended to construct my entries as little stories as much as I could.

Anyway, even though I've finished the first draft of "Shadows Over Summer House," I still have about 12 epigraphs to write (out of 37 needed.)

Not rushing them. I'm letting them come to me. Then I have to decide in what order to insert them

The funny thing is, taken as a whole, and read in order, they are like a little separate short story running parallel to the book.

Very fun to write.

I got a weird idea, that probably won't pan out, of trying to think of a theme for a story, a premise, and then writing a little blog entry each day telling the story. Just a little side project. I'm not sure why that wouldn't work, since I always have this little bit of nervous creative energy in the morning.

Not sure it will be readable, but that's why it's an experiment.

I'm thinking I might revive my "Ye Old Time-travel Shop" idea. Pretend I'm in the store and my customers are aliens.

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