Greetings from Charlotte, NC. I’m sitting in a pretty swank hotel room wondering what the hell I’m gonna do for the rest of the evening. The plan had been to meet up with co-workers for dinner. Said co-workers didn’t begin to show until close to seven, and before then, I was entirely too hungry to wait. Oh well. Then I was going to plop on the not uncomfortable couch and watch the Capitals and Lightning on the big ass flat screen TV. Except that the hotel cable, inexplicably, doesn’t carry Vs. What the fuck. I suppose I could roam around for a sports bar, but that’s not my style. Not solo anyway. So, I thought I’d be clever and at least listen to the game on NHL.com, but no, you have to subscribe and it ain’t free. Fuck it. So I’m here instead. Shortly, I will take a steamy hot shower to clean out my sinuses and get back to writing and/or reading.
I finished the National Poetry Writing Month project on Friday with a total of 40 poems. 30 are part of the “planned” project (working title Oneiric Orienteering); 10 are written by/from the POV of a fictional character and comprise a separate manuscript. I have vague ideas of how the two will mesh, but I have no intention of looking at any of them for at least one month, possibly more. I’m not sure how pleased I am with the poems. There are those I know I liked from the start and those I wasn’t so sure of. But that’s the way these tend to go anyway. I’ll deal with them when I get around to editing and putting them together. I do know for sure, though, that I will not be putting them simply in the order they were written. I want to take a little more time with this bunch than that. But this is me, so any plans I make now will be invalid in ten minutes.
Now that the poems are out of the way, I’ve gotten back into Jack’s last story. Last week, I hacked off about half of what I had written. It felt wrong. It felt too much like I was forcing it to follow the same direction as the five year old story that started the whole mess. And it can’t be. So I found the spot where things began to rot, chopped and wrote fresh. Only two scenes, but I am much, much happier with them and the story’s direction. This may mean that a character I thought was integral to the story is completely unnecessary, his role taken over by another character who became more important as Jack evolved. Eh. I don’t know. I’m on the right track with it now, so I’m just gonna write and whatever happens, happens.
The Thoughtful Trickster 
I love to hear that you’re writing more about Jack, even though you’re so mean to him that I dread what will happen to him.
Congrats on the poetry. During Poetry Month, I discovered that I am not at all a poet.
I’m not all that surprised of the lack of Vs in your hotel. From everything I’ve heard Charlotte likes to pretend that the Hurricanes, and by extension hockey in general, doesn’t exist. Maybe it’s payback for the Triangle’s lack of interest in the Bobcats?