Going back to school

I met with the Creative Writing class at a local high school this morning to talk about writing. It’s a fairly small group, about a dozen or so. Some were poets, some were short story writers or novelists, one guy wants to write screenplays, some just want to write and aren’t locked into one form or another. Their teacher had given them two of my short stories to read, “Harming Obsession” and “One of Those Weeks.” I probably talked too much, which isn’t usually a problem with me as I’m generally taciturn. Whenever there was a lull and the students weren’t forthcoming with a comment or question, I launched into something else, so at least there wasn’t any dead air. They seemed interested. At least they weren’t listening to iPods or text messaging their friends during the 50 minutes I was with them.

I finished Chapter 2 of the new novel this morning and wrote the opening paragraphs of Chapter 3, along with some rough notes about the content of the next several scenes in order.

I read today that Law & Order: Criminal Intent is being pushed back until early 2009. It was supposed to launch next week with Jeff Goldblum stepping in to take Chris Noth’s place, but apparently USA wants to air the full set of sixteen episodes in a single block instead of breaking them into two like they did last year. Martin Mull plays a convincing conspiracy theorist on this week’s Law & Order: SVU. You won’t silence me, he shrieks as they haul him off to prison.

Criminal Minds riffed on the Angel Maturino Resendiz (Railroad Killer) case last night. He was big news around here during his spree, responsible for the deaths of a number of people including a minister and his wife about a decade ago.