Category Archives: LJ

1000 more words on that Chinese-flavored fairy tale I started. Fork stuck in. It’s done. Or at least the zero draft is. I’m going to have Matthew do a once over on it, and then use my MPC to bump it up to Critters next week. ‘Course that’s probably a questionable use of my MPC since as soon as I do the rewrite on that, I’ll officially be bottlenecked. I’ve already got a new submission at Cricket that (if all goes well) I won’t hear anything from for around three months. So I won’t be able to send this one out for months, plus the story after it in the queue is another juvenile audience oriented fairy tale. So that’s at least a six month log jam right there. Dammit. I wish there were more top-paying youngster-fiction markets.

Matthew had to go to a homeowner’s association meeting tonight, so it’s just me and Hobkin for a few hours. At first, I thought Hobkin was going to run amok and I’d have to go chasing him around the house. He gave every sign of being frisky as he lunged at Matthew’s shoes, stomped at both of us several times, and generally freaked out when the garage door opened, but apparently that was a lot of excitement for him. I picked him up when I sat down at the computer and he’s completely crashed out now. Yup. He’s a lap skunk.

We lost an hour into the aether today. Hate it when that happens. For the last several government-mandated time fluxes, I’ve been awake for the switchover, and this one was no exception. Many cups of coffee to tickle the fancy of my writing muse kept me awake past my usual bedtime.

But usually on Saturday PM in the past we’d have people over for Matthew’s tabletop role-playing game, and those tended to run late into the night. Hence the awake for daylight savings. But we haven’t had a gaming group since we moved to Georgia.

Makes me nostalgic and maudlin. I miss the people we used to game with, and I miss Matthew’s RPG. He ran that for over ten years straight, weekly gaming sessions with a core, dedicated group with only some small changes in personnel over that period of time. We got into a very comfortable role-playing zone where we had a good idea of the style and gaming proclivities of each other as players. I miss it.

Writing stats:
Not even enough to put away behind an LJ cut. Just shy of 1000 words on a Chinese-flavored fairy tale. Did a lot of research on obscure Chinese traditions and customs. Confucius was a misogynistic pig. But then, at that time period, who wasn’t?

Met britzkrieg and her s.o., Jaime, for dinner at a little Indian restaurant that’s just a hop, skip, and scamper away from us. Greatly enjoyed our discussion and hope to repeat the experience again soon.

But while we were sitting at the table gabbing, post food, Thomas, my yoga instructor came over to say hello as he was coincidentally also there for dinner. It’s strange having different spheres of my world overlap. For a second when he appeared at our table, it didn’t register who he was because I wasn’t expecting him out of the yoga studio. Introductions around were conducted, which was weird too. Matthew and I do nearly everything together, and so we tend to meet and socially interact with people as a couple. It was odd introducing a person who I’ve interacted a lot with to Matthew who hadn’t ever set eyes upon him before. That just doesn’t happen very often.

I was also horribly wracked by guilt as I’ve blown off the last two yoga classes. But Thomas elicited a promise from me that I would be back to class next Monday, and jauntily strolled off to have his meal.

The season of yellow pollen hath begun. There’s nothing like this back in Illinois. For people unfamiliar with this phenomenon, for a month or so in Georgia (does it happen elsewhere in the South?) the whole landscape is coated by a dusting of this yellow powder. Fortunately, I don’t appear to be allergic to it, but it’s still a physical irritation. I tend to have problems with my eyes, being unable to wear my rigid contact lenses and having to switch to soft (which I can’t see as well with). And yellow isn’t my favorite color.

Got my issue of Speculations the other day and read the Bruce Holland Rogers and Holly Arrow article with some interest. It was on writerly engage v flow where “engage” is more the work of writing, forcing yourself to pound out the pages, hammering out sentence after sentence with focused intent, and “flow” is that transcendental state where the words pour out and you are but the vessel that captures them with your fingers flying over the keyboard. They speculated that whether one is primarily a flow or an engage writer is based upon many things, including one’s personality proclivities. The psychology of writing. Oooo.

Anyway, they went on to say that most writers experience both engage and flow, although to differing degrees. Personally, I think I tend to start out writing engaged, and if I get into whatever zone my muse hovers in, I enter flow and hours can fly by as I rack up the word count. But if I can’t hit that flow zone for whatever reason, then I flounder in engage mode, forcing sentences out by sheer willpower. I think the quality of my work is fairly similar, whatever mode I’m in, but one way is easy, and the other is grueling. Wish I had a flow pill I could take that would take me to that state of consciousness where the words just come when I want them to.

Anyway, I couldn’t hit either engage or flow the other day, so instead I did ten critiques on Critters as I’m out of MPCs. That’s sort of like being productive. But I started reading through the novella to get back into the groove, and I couldn’t stand it. So I put it aside. I’ve got another story outlined and ready to go, but I couldn’t bring myself to start on that as it’s going to be a fairly challenging undertaking. What I want to write is another fairy/folk tale.

I think 2003 is going to be the year of the very short story. It’s all about the flash-length piece, and juvenile fiction-length works. There’s this instant gratification of being able to complete something in one or two sittings that’s so very seductive.

Received in the mail today: the check from Eggplant Literary Productions for my excerpt of “Troubadour and the Moon.” Gotta love markets that pay on acceptance!

Here & Now updated its website. I’ve now got a “fiction from” credit for issue #5, although the editor has pushed back the expected publication of that issue from August to September. Z’okay. A month difference doesn’t mean much one way or another in the publishing world.

Also got the zero draft of my new fairy tale re-written to first draft status and tossed it up to Critters. And I also completed the 6600-word short story that I’ve been working on that just up and died about 500 words shy of the finish. Slammed some coffee and forced those 500 words out. Finally. It’s rough, even for a zero draft, but I’ll subject Matthew to it and see what he thinks. I’m thinking that it’s more important to finish something and then smooth as needed, then to fret over how rough it is and leave it hanging. Also completed another 2000-word fairy tale. Sort of. I’m not quite prepared to call it zero draft yet, as the ending needs another sentence or two to pull everything together, but its done enough to call it cooked.

Wow. Three finished works of fiction this week. Neat.

Now I just gotta roll up my sleeves and get cracking on that stupid (and utterly unpublishable) novella.

Hurray, the revised and corrected contract for the In the Outposts of Beyond anthology came today! Signed and sent off.

Except the editor again spelled my name incorrectly in his salutation even though it was, once again, spelled right everywhere else. This time I brought it to his attention. Told him he could call me whatever he wanted to in our correspondences, as long as my name was spelled right in print. Heh.

And I just heard that the new U.K. SF magazine,3SF, just went under due to insolvency of Big Engine (their parent company). Dang. Another pro-market bites the big one.

2000 words into a new children’s fairy tale. Started it today, and zero draft finished today. Gotta love it when the words flow like that. I had Matthew do first reader duties and will give it a re-write tomorrow based upon his suggestions. Then up into the Critters queue it goes.

Glad to have finished something. The novella is floundering and the short story that I’m within spitting distance of finishing just will not sing to me. Feeling my muse fragment has been frustrating. But something got finished. Whew.

Got the contract from the In the Outposts of Beyond anthology today via email. There was a typo in it (involving the pay rate, so it was rather important), so I queried the editor about fixing it. Haven’t heard back yet. And he spelled my name wrong in his initial salutation to me, but spelled it right everywhere else. Urg. Makes me nervous whenever I see my name misspelled. I mean, one of the big things I’m going for here is seeing my name in print. It would be terribly depressing if the damn thing weren’t spelled right.

Where did the spring weather go? Brr. Okay, yah, I’m getting spoiled and soft with the Georgia climate, but I like it that way.

Went to the Shakespeare Tavern last night to see Julius Caesar. As always, an excellent performance. But Julius Caesar just isn’t my favorite play. There were a lot of first-time-to-the-Tavern actors, and they were all excellent, but I think there was too much grump interpreted in this version. Some of the conflict scenes dragged. Like the scene where Brutus and Cassius have a falling out in Act Three felt overlong, which is unusual for the Tavern where they understand the virtue of good pacing. But I quite liked the mob=Greek Chorus effect they were going for in Act Two. And the war drums were excellent. Overall, an enjoyable production. Except we were seated in the very front row, right up against the stage, and my neck has a crick in it from craning up.

Next month is two non-Shakespeare plays at the Tavern: Murder in the Cathedral by T.S. Eliot and Salome by Oscar Wilde. Salome is one of my favorite Oscar Wilde works so I’m quite excited about it.

In other news, I got jittery and queried the editor of In the Outposts of Beyond about the status of the project and he assured me that things were going fine and that the anthology should be going to print in August. Excellent.

We went to H&R Block to have our taxes done yesterday, and it was shocking, stunning, jaw-droppingly good news. The amount we’re getting back is nothing short of a windfall. Apparently, between the interest we’re paying on our house, and the substantial loss that we took on our mutual fund last year (mutual fund tanked so badly they closed it out), we way over-withheld on our taxes.

To celebrate, Matthew and I ordered sushi delivery and discussed what we’re going to do with the money. The overwhelming consensus was that we’re going to put most of it into savings, but we’re also going to spend a little of it on ourselves as “fun” money to let us have those little things that we wanted to buy but denied ourselves because we’ve been trying to be frugal. The rest we’re going to put into the house. There’s a few things around here that’ve always been not-quite-right that need a professional to look at. And we need to hire a lawn guy to mow and fix up our landscape area. We suck at it, and I think our neighbors are beginning to hate us.

I also paid taxes again on my writing. Last year was looking rather chancy on that part until Phobos, but with that single sale, I got nudged into owing on schedule C. I’m officially a self-employed, professional writer in the eyes of the IRS, and definitely not a hobbyist. Hurray!