In December 2011 Toma and I set up 1008 Productions as a sole proprietorship, independent publishing company. A sole proprietorship has a sole proprietor (get it?) and such a company automatically dissolves upon the death of said sole proprietor. That left Toma with no legal ownership of the company but it was the least expensive method to start with. We’ll change that soon so she ends up with all the copyrights to MY original fiction when I go to that great word processor in the sky.

(This isn’t about any health concerns or anything. It just…well, there’s a lot of busses out there and one of them just might have my name on its bumper.)

Back to the plan. 1008 was supposed to act as the umbrella for all the pen names and different genres of the stories we’d publish. I’ve talked about this before. I also recently said I was dropping all those pen names and putting everything under the granddaddy of my pen names, D. C. Chester.

I’d owned the internet domain name dcchester.com for a long time but never set up a separate website. I also owned tomalee.com and some others, but I’ve let everything expire except dcchester.com.

I’ve just finished transferring dcchester.com to my hosting service and I went through the steps to have www.dcchester.com point to 1008productions.com.

Now everyone, (and by everyone I mean the four people who read this blog) can use dcchester.com to navigate to my website. The site is still named 1008 Productions because 1008 has been with me longer than D. C. Chester. Even though it used to be The PJ 1008 Film Company. (I’ve explained the 1008 part, but I still can’t remember what the PJ part was. If I’m ever involved with making another film I might just have to re-register The PJ 1008 Film Company moniker. It just brings back so many memories.)

Here’s the problem. Typing dcchester, dcchester.com, or www.dcchester.com into the Google search bar takes you to a list of sites that are not me. Typing any of the above into the Google ADDRESS bar works just fine.

But the world uses the Google SEARCH BAR, and no one uses the ADDRESS BAR.

I’ve spent two days trying to correct this problem and the tech geeks I’ve talked to can’t explain why this is happening. These are the guys in control of the entire planet. Oh well, for now.

But the real reason I’m writing, today…(I can hear everyone slapping their foreheads and shouting, “Get to the point.”)

The next novella just went back to the editor for a revision “spit-polish”. I swear that’s the term she used after the first draft edit.

Fire Dust should be out as a Kindle book in the first part of April. Which is pretty disgusting. It shows how much writing time I’ve lost with my freakin’ day job. Fire Dust should have been published in January or February but some things are just out of my control.  By the way, Fire Dust is a working title, so don’t hold me to it.

And what’s it about, you ask? It’s teenagers on a camping trip that goes awry. And that’s all I’m going to say about that. Wait, I’ll say one more thing. It’s a thriller so maybe we should replace ‘awry’ with something more evil.

I’ll ponder that and get back to you.

Now all I have to do is figure out an image for the left side of this page, because I haven’t decided on a Fire Dust cover, yet.

-  Chester

 My tiny home office is filled with cork and dry erase boards. The four cork boards hang on walls and all but one of them are covered with notes, story ideas, partial movie scripts, random scenes, and bits of dialog for upcoming projects. The fourth cork board is marked off for screenplay development. Note cards of descriptions are tacked to sections that read, Act I, Act II Part 1 & Act II Part 2, Act III, and Denouement.

Next are two dry erase boards free floating around the room. The small one, about 18” X 24”, is sort of a day planner. It’s labeled ‘Speed’ and it identifies upcoming work, and that work’s order of importance. (That’s the ‘speed’ part.) This board has two categories, Writing and Nuts & Bolts.

The Writing category, as should be obvious, is creating new stories. But it also includes revising, or detailed re-writing. (I have very few detailed re-writing tasks planned. If a project needs massive re-writing it’s probably a good idea to burn the damn thing over hot charcoal and move on. Revising, or tightening, or clarifying, well, that’s not so bad.)

Nuts & Bolts is the business of writing and the non-writing part of writing. Things like formatting for publication, cover design, and marketing. Both sides of the day planner dry erase board are full.

It’s the BIG dry erase board that scares me. It stands four feet tall, three feet wide, and it leans against the far wall like a hoodlum, smoking cigarettes, and thinking about stealing the car parked across the street.

The Big Board is sectioned off into 62 separate lines of activity. As I write this post I’m snatching glimpses of the stuff on the Big Board off to my left. (I never stare at it directly. Too dangerous.) I count fifteen short stories waiting for publication in a series of collections I’ve created called Dissymmetry. Those are just the stores that are done. (Two file cabinets – one metal, one electronic - house all the unfinished stories.) Some of the fifteen on the Big Board might need a little polishing, but it’s mostly Nuts & Bolts stuff holding things up here.

Also on the BB are the working titles of twenty one novels on the To Do list. The really scary part? Three are completed first drafts. Four are half done. The rest are plotted with some chapters already finished. Lots of work just waiting for time.

Waiting for time. Which brings me to Ten Minutes.

Earlier today I pulled a paperback from our home library. The Coffee Break Screenwriter by Pilar Alessandra. I bought the book some time ago but never invested any quality time with it because I was writing about eight hours a day and didn’t think I needed it. (I bought it before I had oodles of hours available to write.) Pilar’s premise is writing in ten minute blocks. Not because it’s the best way, but because it might be the only way what with day jobs and the other responsibilities of life.

I never thought I could write in short time blocks. Thought I needed a running start, like a freight train, where I could build up steam and then plow through until the early morning hours. And that’s how I used to do it. Today that doesn’t work. (Damn day job keeps getting in the way.)

So, I tried a Pilar Experiment. I got out my timer, set it for ten minutes, and wrote off the cuff as the timer ticked off seconds. Just wrote randomly, making it up as I went.

When the chime chimed I perused my Ten Minute Exercise. Keep in mind I didn’t backspace to correct typos. Didn’t restructure any sentences. Didn’t ponder any great literary meanings. (Well, I never ponder any great literary meanings, but you get my point.)

What I saw on the laptop screen was 426 words of a brand new short story that didn’t exist ten minutes earlier. So maybe I can write in ten minute blocks. That would be a good thing because ten minute blocks of free time are mostly what I have left.

Now I’m curious about what could I do in ten minutes with a plot already deigned? With a chapter or scene already in my head?

Of course, now, my day planner cork boards have to be adjusted. Have to add another short story to the “To Do” list. Working title…“Ten Minutes”. Yeah, the one I just did during my ten minute Pilar experiment. Because that story might just turn out to be something I could put my pen name on.

Plus I have to really read Pilar’s book. Might be some more gems in there. Thanks a lot Pilar, you just made my days busier. Geez.

-         Chester