I'm now blogging into my third year and I find it odd I've never once mentioned my crack-whore-esque addiction to English Premier League Footbal -- that's soccer to most of us here in the States, of course. Almost from the first year it could be viewed here, I was on board like a rat. 

Some complain that soccer is a slow game. Trust me I've seen slow soccer and it IS a wrist-slashing venture; however, anyone who would say that the sport is slow across the board hasn't a clue at what level the English game is played.

A high school game in America can be slow. College, the same. Men's National Team is a step better. The MLS -- United States' Major League Soccer -- is another. The interest continues to improve with the Women's National Team, believe it or not.

Beyond these, the game -- that's now called Futbol or Football, depending upon where you're talking about -- gets truly interesting with the various second-teir international professional leagues, like Australia, Asia, Scotland or Turkey.

Then, once you get to the big boy leagues: Germany, Italy, Span, France, Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, etc. With these, you're hard-pressed not to find something astounding in each and every game. Commonly, even games announcers label as "disappointing" or "slow" is anything but. They're just spoiled because their expectations are so ridiculously high.

But the grand poobah of all Football in the world, again, is the English Premier League. On average, the teams are stronger than any others in the world. Tournaments that pit all top clubs in Europe find English teams consistently at the very top. Only a small handful of club teams -- and only those from the very strong leagues -- can compete with those from England.

Simply stated, the league's management "got it" before any others did. Back in '92, they found the formula that worked. I don't pretend to know what exactly that formula is or was but from that date, English soccer left the world in its rear view mirror. As a result, the league, now in its 18th season (as of this posting) boasts the highest payrolls, the best players and, if I'm not mistaken, the highest consistent ticket sales.

You may not understood any of that so here it is in a nutshell. Let's use the NFL as an example. Pretend for a moment that at the end of the Football season, the bottom 3 teams don't get rewarded by earning first pick in next year's draft. Instead, they get kicked out of the NFL entirely because they suck. That gap is filled by the BEST three teams from the next league down.

What this accomplishes is two-fold. Not only do the bottom teams fight viciously to "stay up" in the NFL, making even the games between the crappiest teams interesting to watch, the teams in the next league down also are fighting with equal ardour to be "promoted" into the NFL. 

Now that might all sound like the interesting games are only at the bottom where the crappy teams reside. It would be true if that's where the planning stopped. 

Now imagine that the rest of the world gave a crap for American style football. (They don't, by the way) At the end of the season, not only is the Champion crowned in the Super Bowl, the top FOUR teams in the season win the right to compete against the top three or four teams from all the rest of the world's best league teams.

So the seasons for these excellent teams are filled not only with inter-leage games, but international games as well. It's a terrific system that works well to add interest to an already amazing game.

The next major argument against soccer is that there are ties. I can understand that, from the outside, it sounds like a tie would be a let down. In a sense it is a let down in exactly the way its thought to be but that disappointment is countered by the points system.

The Premier League champion is decided by points over the whole season. A team earns 3 points for a win but BOTH teams are awarded 1 point for a tie. So, feasibility, a team that ties in every game could do quite well by the end of the season. A tie is worth fighting for. Even a scoreless tie is worth fighting for because a singe goal means the difference between 1 and 3 points and that's huge.

The points system nearly guarantees the best team is the champion. In the NFL, one slip-up in the playoffs and a  lesser team is crowned.

So, bottom line: My hope is that if you don't have Fox Soccer Channel or can't find a game on Pay-Per-View, you'll head to your local Lion & Rose or check out the highlights on YouTube. Give "The Beautiful Game" a chance in whatever form you can, but try your damnedest to watch the English Premier League.

My novel-in-the-works has undergone plot, character and title changes so many times I would be hard pressed to piece together a remotely accurate history. Now, too late, do I understand the use of a writing diary.

I can't say I truly embrace the necessity of it as others have written but see how it could track the odd process of a novel's creation. In one way, it's similar to the behind-the-scenes video so much a necessity in creating a film. What I don't fully get is the way a writing diary  is supposed to keep a writer on track or to get difficulties with a work out in the open. I tried it for the better part of a year and, for all the good it did for me now and then, it proved more just another thing to do in my already over-busy schedule.

I stopped keeping up with it when I realized everything I was supposed to be gaining from a writing diary I was getting from this blog. Blogging is public, so I'm confident I'm less candid in my journaling than if I knew no one would ever see my notes. That's a huge difference. But I also find that -- and maybe it's because I'm Irish -- when I journal, I go on and on and dwell in the negative. In this public forum, I steer away from those doldrums.

So, if I'm journaling, I should get to the story.

Here's the basic idea of my head-on-a-stump story
An Ojibwe man in the Great Lakes area before contact with white men kills off his lifelong rival. His punishment is years of penance spent as a disembodied head on the stump of a mystical tree. Escape from his imprisonment, if it is at all possible, must come from inside himself, all that remains. 

Obviously, I suppose, by referring to my story as "The head-on-a-stump story" whenever it's mentioned, it's clear I am having difficulty titling the work.

It's been called "The Letter From William Waiklin." That fell by the wayside when I decided not to include William Waiklin in the story. In fact I cut out the letter. That's for a second story. There's an outside chance he and the letter will be included as a second part too. Whether or not they do will hinge on the length of the section I'm working on now. Day to day, my estimation of the novel's length changes. One day, i see it going to 250 pages; the next I see it barely reaching novella length.

It's been called "Felled." I liked the feel of it. It was direct and looked good on a mock cover I created. But the more I tested the title, the more it sounded like bad grammar. Maybe I'm succumbing to the idea that Americans are less literate than they once were. I go back to this title more often than any other, though, so I suppose there's something to it.

It's been called something like "Fraxus cryptica." I thought that title -- which means Mysterious Oak in scientific speak -- would be totally lost on people. It was short-lived.

It's been called "The Beating Heart Tree." That was what the old Ojibwe I had relate the mythology of the tree called it. I scrapped that one pretty quickly too. I read an article in the November - December issue of Writers Weekly which mentioned men won't buy anything with "Heart" in the title. 

Right now it's called "Hatred Oak." I think, like Felled, it has some directness. Like Fraxus cryptica, it refers to a fictional type of tree without mystifying the reader. It's not clear whether the title refers to a tree or a place, though, but I'm not sure how much, if at all, that matters.

This is probably all a waste of time anyway. I've read that authors, even experienced, published authors, don't choose the names of their novels. Before it's all said and done, it'll probably end up titled "The Head On a Stump."

The first stage of the NYC Midnight 2010 Short Story Challenge came to an end at 11:59 pm edt on Saturday. I turned in my story well early and am more than half pleased with it. I decided to go humorously blue with it. My wife urged me not to, but I figured what better way to test where the edges are than to push, right?

The story dealt with a lead character who went by a shortened version of his last name Cochran and who boasted a "inordinately large" male presence. The action ensues when he is out at a bar and the first of the English impressment gangs enter to forcibly recruit (press) drunks and the homeless into service in the Royal Navy. Press gangs were a real and unwelcome entity from 1665 to the day Napoleon was defeated in the early 19th century. The gangs most commonly consisted of sailors themselves, so that's the route I went in telling the story.

Cochran has built up a reputation for bedding nearly all the women in town. In so doing, he has become a skilled escape artist, able to extract himself from the stickiest escapes from the townswomen's husbands, brothers and fathers. So when the press gang comes knocking, he's the only one to make it out of the bar.

He's nearly caught when the townswomen themselves, pleased with his presence (see above) in town, join together to insure Cochran's escape is successful.

In the spirit of the time and subject matter, I've added the highly disturbing video you see below. It is a forced animation on a vintage still photo of a woman. She is reciting an old Irish poem about the threat of the press gangs. Enjoy if that's possible:

For the writing contest, entrants had eight days to complete the first stage and will have only one for the second leg in March. I'm looking forward to getting the feedback on this first story than I am in engaging in the second phase, to be honest.

For those who have not attempted a short-term contest like those held regularly by NYC Midnight, I'd suggest trying it. For me, entering the occasional contest is good for keeping my writing fresh. I dedicate some small or large time to writing every day and I find that trudging through the same long work day after day can get a little old. I can afford to take 24 hours out every now and then to visit characters and setting far removed from those with whom I spend so much time. 

I thought it might be a good idea to blog in the middle of a contest, especially given the first stage is a full week. That is unusual. Most of the time contests are single story events and most of the time in that type of event writers are given either weeks to develop their story or 24 hours. Having no more and no less than a week is a strange luxury for me. I'm not sure how to proceed without a ticking bomb in my ear.

This is another NYC Midnight event (the 2010 Short Story Challenge) so the way it works is similar to other contests of theirs I've entered. Entrants are divided into smaller, more manageable groups. Each group is given a genre and a "thing" to revolve the plot around. My group was given Comedy as the genre and A Gang as its thing. There are about 660 of us starting out in 30 groups so there's no lack of competition.

With each contest, my confidence grows and my nervousness diminishes. After last year's 4-stage contest, a two-stager with a soft first stage seems like child's play. That is not to say I'm not taking it seriously, only I know better what the judges are looking for a little better and I"m familiar with their preferred formatting and submission process.

So what about the story itself? Comedy. A Gang.

As soon as I saw Comedy, I breathed a sigh of relief. Comedy is a genre I have to intentionally avoid if I'm working on a serious piece so being allowed to run with it in this case should be a real relief. A Gang being the thing we're plotting around was not as satisfying.

As I saw it, I had two pretty obvious choices:

• An urban gang, something we white folks probably think we know a lot more about than we actually do. Going in that direction felt like an easy trap to fall into;
• Other criminal organizations; or, 

But I didn't want to go with the obvious, so I dug into the deepest recesses of my memory to pull out less-than-obvious ways I could comply with A Gang.

I came up with:

• Gang of Four, the leftist Chinese faction during the Cultural Revolution, which I knew too little about to choose; 
• A chain gang, which could really have some hilarious potential.
• Various takes on gang bangs, which for reasons of taste and propriety, I chose to avoid; 
• Our Gang (aka The Little Rascals) which I counted out as already comedic fiction; or, 
• the one I decided to choose, a Press Gang.

A Press Gang, for those unfamiliar with the phenomenon, was a group of government officials or sailors or others authorized to do so, who forceably recruited able-bodied men between the ages of 15 and 45 into service in the Royal Navy from 1664, begun during the reign of Elizabeth I, to 1812 following the defeat of Napoleon. The gangs were a hated lot that, at the time, were a humorless lot. Now, however, thinking about their trickery, fooling or abducting drunkards and the homeless into service, there is only stuff to laugh at.

And two days into the stage, I've written some and have a good idea of where the story is going, but I'll wait until I've fleshed out more of if before sharing. Let it suffice to say, even after I've written the whole story, there will only be some that I'll be able to share here. There is a definite off-color element to it that might not be appropriate -- okay, will undoubtedly be  inappropriate -- for younger or more sensitive eyes.

I'll keep you posted.

Toward the end of 2009, I resolved to make Wednesdays my submission days. I had done little submission throughout the year and that needed to change if I wanted to move forward. Wednesday, January 6th was my first opportunity of the new year to put my plan in motion.

As a first step I decided to reevaluate my submission process to-date and straighten out what was not working. Here were the previous shortcomings. 

The problem: Discipline
Submission is no fun. It is akin to preparing resumes, a job in itself. Each employer (publication or agent) asks for different formatting (guidelines). They have specific contact people (submission emails). And each is looking for the just the right employee to fit their needs (story). Its a lot of thankless work. One may not find out the result of his work for months. In some cases he may never find out. Wouldn't one rather write?

The solution: Just do it.
Simply put, submission is a necessary evil. It's an unavoidable task if one wants to get published. No sense having my finished works lying around collecting dust. There are no other options.

Despite there being a good deal of transferring info into the new format, what I ended up with was something far more useful to me given the way I think.

And I addressed the process I had found so frustrating last year. Instead of finding one publication then putting together all my materials for it, I took the advice of other writers. They suggested I take one submission day and either only gather publisher/agent info or only submit to publications/agents for which I had info. Don't try to combine the two tasks on the same day. They're different tasks and are best separated. Shifting gears over and over slows progress.

By the end of my Jan 6th session, I gave into temptation and submitted to a publication instead of only gathering company info. But the publication seemed perfect for a certain story I had been sitting on, so I made an exception. In this case, the publication's submission guidelines were particularly lax and that translated into a submission that didn't require much outside of sending the short story. If the same situation arises again, I'll probably do the same thing since there was little shifting gears necessary.

I'm already confident my new approach is the correct one because, unlike every moment I thought about it in 2009, I am not dreading my next submission date in four days.

I've already covered my Wednesday commitment to submit. Doing so feels good. Doing so also leaves me wondering what else I can do to make 2010 a better writing year. The first question is what improvements need to be made in my writing career.

1. Write faster.
   Run through the first draft. Make changes to subsequent drafts more efficiently.
2. Improve my writing-related organization.
   Set aside a time for writing. Presently, I write a good bit but the time is scattered throughout the day.
3. Submit more.
   I basically don't submit so the bar is low. My goal is to improve on the amount of submission I was supposed to be doing. I suppose, in large part, that goes back to #2: organization.
4. Read more quality fiction that will improve my own work.
   To be clear, I'm not talking about reading something and ripping it off substantively or stylistically. I'm talking about allowing the influence of well-crafted words to change my writing for the better.
5. Read more about the craft of writing and the writing lifestyle.
   One can never hear the same good advice too many times. And in the course of reading that same advice, one regularly stumbles onto one of three things:
   1. The same advice is phrased in such a way you haven't heard before, allowing it to hit home
   2. The same advice finally hits you at the right time in your writing evolution
   3. You might actually pick up something new, unlikely as that may seem to more seasoned writers.
6. Attend more writing-related events.
   There are appearances, conferences, seminars, etc., all of which reinvigorate a writer's occasionally-flagging flame. There are handshakes to be shared and opportunities to be jumped on. There are new lessons to be learned. I have done little of this in my career so far and that must be improved upon.
7. Improve my writing space.
   I nearly wrote a posting on this one alone, but decided to include all the above items because my current inefficiency doesn't come down to my work space alone. That said, this could be my biggest obstacle. I need comfort and quiet without distraction. I am committed to read more about how to make that happen then...make that happen.

So here is my plan. Do all those things.

Okay, it's not a plan, but there is something to be said for getting it all out there in black and white. Admitting we have a problem is the first step to making change, right?

So, do the same! Make a list of all the ways you can improve upon your writing in 2010. Even if you improve in one category (and don't fall back in another) that's an improvement.

Ring image courtesy of CrazyAboutCrafting