Friday Done List November 14

Here is the big, big news from this week: I have an eight-year-old family member who attends a movie club after school one day a week. After his day of third grade. As a result, he now knows what Freytag's Pyramid is. You know, the pyramid that describes plot structure? Movie club covered that.

This is a writing thing

He had a chart he'd drawn himself, which was better than this one I made, because it had more labels. I can't recall if he used the terms "rising action" and "resolution," but he sure knew what they were.

Just to be sure you're clear on what I'm talking about, he is eight-years-old and in third grade. I didn't learn about Freytag's Pyramid in college, even though I took at least four writing classes. Don't try to tell me it didn't exist when I was in college. Gustav Freytag was a nineteenth century writer. Of course, it existed when I was in college.

I didn't learn about Freytag's Pyramid until after I'd had at least a couple of books published by a traditional publisher. 

Now, there is a positive way to look at this and a negative way to look at this. 

• The positive way is that children are getting a really good education these days, aren't they? At least in movie club. 
• The negative way is that I had a really lame-ass writing education, and it is a freaking miracle that I got as far as I did.

And now on to the rest of my writing week.

Goal 1. Write and Publish Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Finished reworking the ADHD reading posts into an essay.
• Submitted the ADHD essay.
• I've been working on revising a humor piece into a short story. I kicked that up a notch this week, hoping to have it done for a themed submission.
• Received a rejection on a humor piece. That piece is somewhat essay-like, which means it can't be submitted to just any humor site. Some of them won't accept anything they perceive as an essay. Decided to send that to the lit journal that's made a call for humor pieces, instead of the one I mentioned before. Yes, I am making thinking and decision-making part of my done list.
• Submitted that rejected humor piece just this morning.
• Oh, yeah. I received another rejection. Gotta file that somewhere. 

Goal 2. Build Community/Market Work/Brand Myself and My Work

• Attended an Author's Guild zoom talk on copyright. Not sure that that is an objective toward this particular goal, but I want credit, so I've got to put it somewhere.
• Came up with a new blog post idea. I haven't written it. Hope I don't forget it.