Weeks 7-8: Gears

The Skinny

This week I continue to plot, with special focus on ensuring that one plot point logically leads to another. I have forty scenes planned so far.

The News

• I finished reading Gorky Park and am halfway through Tatiana. These novels by Martin Cruz Smith follow Arkady Renko, Moscow's Chief Investigator, which places them in competition with my book.
• I am focused on the main plot for the moment, and will continue the effort next week. Sub-plots will be the next focus.
• I submitted my short story Victorious Tobin to several literary magazines. Fingers crossed!

Russian Joke of the Week

This joke comes from Secondhand Time, my favorite work from Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich. In it she relates the first-hand accounts of Russians who suffered under Stalin, who felt lost when the Soviet Union collapsed, or who are comfortable with the New Russia. The book is must-read for anyone interested in understanding the spirit of the modern Russian.In one of the interviews, Alexievich learns that a student was sent to prison for telling this joke:"A portrait of Stalin hangs on the wall. The lector reads a report on Stalin, then the choir sings a song about Stalin, and finally, an actor declaims a poem about Stalin. What's the occasion? An evening commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Pushkin's death."