Last night I was attempting to write in Van Hoosen and I perhaps stayed a little bit too late. A lady came through and locked all the doors, but I figured that she would have mentioned something if I was going to be trapped in the building. Bad assumption. I gathered up my computer and backpack and exited into the courtyard, but the double doors that would have led me towards Owen were locked. I thought to myself, “No big deal, I’ll sleep in the critique room”. Wrong, the doors that led back into the building had locked behind me. I considered calling Liz, but I realized that my phone was out of batteries. The far end of the courtyard is closed off by a barbed wire fence, but I’m up to date on my tetanus shots so I decided to scale the fence. After a night in the hospital, I was good as new. Just kidding, the gate in the fence was unlocked (and I was spared from having to sleep on the wet grass).

Man, I am so tired of my story. It’s been stalled in the same place for two days. In critique today Michael said something about having to be willing to hurt our characters. I normally don’t have any problem with that, but I’m going to rewrite the last two scenes (minor rewrites) to have a few more disasters happen. I’m still not sure how this is going to result in a better ending, but I realized that I needed to take away my character’s wife because I like her alot and my tendency is always to have her solve the main character’s problems (and he really needs to do it himself, dammit). After I’m done with my rewrites I’m going to revise it and get it turned in by tomorrow morning. I will take my licks with the critique circle, maybe they’ll have a way to fix things.

I’m really impressed with Michael’s critiques. He goes through the stories page by page and really analyzes how to make it work. He throws out tons of suggestions and is just generally very informative. This has only strengthened my desire to get a story in front of him by the end of the week.