Ganked from various folks:
10 things I would tell to my 12-year-old self:
1. DON’T take Russian in high school. Take Latin! Take LATIN!! Or, French. But by God and all that is holy, don’t take Russian! You’ll never use it and forever lament that you don’t have a solid background in Latin. You can take French, but you’ll do it in college as an easy A, so it can wait.
2. You’re intelligent and beautiful. Don’t listen to the asshats who call themselves your friends who are trying to convince you otherwise. If you do, it’ll take you years to get over their dysfunctional, passive-aggressive mind games.
3. Take the damn PSAT, you fool. You rawk at standardized tests. Is there a reason you want to throw away the opportunity for college scholarship money? And also, while we’re talking standardized tests, do a little prep for the ACT and SAT. When we prepped for the GRE, we totally blew it away. Think about how much better you’ll score if you’d just cracked a book or two.
4. When you decide in a year or so that it’d be fun to color your hair blue, don’t. Or, if you’re really intent upon blue hair, don’t let your friend who’s going through beauty school do it. Down that path lies tragedy and tears. Well, maybe not tragedy . . . or tears. But a lot of blue on everything.
5. There’s nothing you can do about your mother. Sorry. Deal with her as best as you can. But on the positive side, she becomes a non-issue as soon as you leave for college in four years. On a related note, when your mother finds out your dad is helping out with your college tuition, don’t let her go after him with her lawyers to fulfill his child support debt, because as soon as she starts legal proceedings, he’ll disappear again, and his monthly checks will too. And even though she caused your academic financial dire straits, she won’t do anything to get you out of them.
6. Quit worrying so much about what other people are thinking about you. They’re not. They’re too preoccupied worrying about what other people are thinking about them. And the ones that are spending their time judging you? They’re shallow losers who will end up as college drop-outs working pizza delivery jobs or secretaries clinging to the past in a smoky haze.
7. Revel in your health. It’s not going to last. Your body’s going to fall apart pretty quickly, so enjoy it while you can.
8. Don’t let the next four years derail your dream of being a writer. If you do, it’ll be over a decade before you pick it up again. You’ll lose years when you could have been polishing your craft, taking creative writing classes, and getting published.
9. The guy you’re going to fall in love with in the next few months? He’s a jerk. In fact, most of the guys you hook up with in the next couple years are going to be total losers. Have fun with them, but don’t take them too seriously. And y’know the guy you’ve had a crush on since first grade? He’s not for you. He’s going to grow up to be just like his parents, and you know what they’re like. Your true love is someone you don’t know yet. You’ll meet him in college. Trust me.
10. You’re a wonderful person. You’ll come to see that in time, but it would really cause a lot less heartache if you’d just accept that now.
Writing Stuff
Heard back from the editor of
Apex Digest. He approved of my rewrite and wants to publish “Oranges, Lemons, and Thou Beside Me” in their Winter 2005 issue, #4. Hurray!
Also saw a review from Bluejack in the July IROSF of “The Life and Times of Penguin” (in the current issue of Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine) that made me grin. It’s a wry grin, but a grin nonetheless:
“Of all of the stories, only Eugie Foster’s The Life and Times of Penguin really managed to stick in my craw. But I managed to get it out, and my craw is doing fine now, thanks. (Foster trots out the usual objections to any sort of loving God, and shoots down the usual straw men. You’re either going to agree wholeheartedly, or, if you’re to my way of thinking, you’ll pound the table grumbling “That’s not the point.” But if you’ve ever talked religion with anyone, this will be nothing new. And the story’s fine.)”
Now, that makes me wonder, has Bluejack not read Candide by Voltaire? “Penguin” is as high an homage I can make to that amusing work, not to mention my salute to a balloon animal a sweet old man made me. Ah well. I am sort of disappointed, overall, with the caliber of Bluejack’s reviews in IROSF. A lot of it is how sketchy his coverage is. He only touches upon one or two of the stories in each issue of any ‘zine he reviews. I suppose it’s because of the bulk of material he has to cover, but I’ve been published in several issues that he’s “reviewed” and received nothing but a dismissive synopsis. And the one tale of mine that he does deign to give more than passing attention to, he objects to on religious principle. I end up with a dismissive “the story’s fine.” Well fooie.
New Words: 600
On a new folktale.
Club 100 For Writers
28
500/day
60
