Like I’ve stated before, things are going slow around here, but I managed to finish that painting, which I titled, Sprout. It seemed appropriate at the time. I usually title things right when I finish them and forget about it from there on after, kind of like the title of this blog post.

This one only took forever, but at least it’s done and looks the way I want it to (mostly). Nothing ever looks exactly the way you picture it in your mind. Not for me anyway. I know a successful painting when it’s close enough with a few happy surprises.

I’ve already started on the next–a small 12 x 12-inch panel. There’s no real paint on it yet, just the collage pieces.

The next step with something like this is to take it into Photoshop and play around with it, like the bottom pic. This is not paint, which might be obvious (I don’t know). I figure out how I want the rest of the composition to look, more or less. This is basically it, but I don’t know what I’ll actually be writing yet. It will be stream-of-consciousness.

At least you get the gist. Or not. Whatever.

Maybe after this one is done I’ll get back to the watercolor, but I can’t promise myself anything since I thought I was going to finish that a long time ago, but there it still sits, mocking me.

I guess I’m not feeling it like I thought I would. That doesn’t mean I can’t turn it into something I won’t like, but at this point in time, it just hasn’t been going in a direction I am happy with. I will have to point it into a place I like, that’s all. Easier said than done.

So, what’s happening on the writing front? I’m asking you. No, wait. I’m asking me. What’s going on there? I started to feel “blah” about it. I got a short story published, then I read it on the site and felt like it wasn’t as good as I thought it was. Then, I got some good feedback, which made me feel a little better about it. Now I feel okay about it. Not thrilled, but better. I still may change it before sticking it into my book of short stories.

I was also tripping out on how many short stories I have to complete before I can produce a whole book of them, but now I’m not as worried about that–thanks to talking to some good writer friends. I can do whatever the hell I want, right? Right. It will still be about 30,000 words or so, give or take. This morning I came up with a title. I’ll sit with it for a bit and see if it sticks.

I also want to work on Queer as Mud, but I don’t know if that will actually be novel-length. I guess it really doesn’t matter how long it turns out since I found out there’s such thing as a novelette, which is 7500 to 17,500 words. A novella can be around the same and up to 40,000 words, so I may end up with one of those. We’ll see how it goes. The first rough draft was almost 28,000 words, but when I got to really editing it, it became much less and I pulled some things out of it to make them short stories.

In any case, at least I’m looking forward to getting back into the writing thing again, right? Right.