Category Archives: Blog

Matthew did first reader duties on my 6000+ word fantasy and my 2000 word Chinese-flavored fairy tale. From his comments, I think it makes more sense to polish the fairy tale and throw it up on Critters this week with my MPC instead of the fantasy. The rewrite on the fantasy piece is going to be a substantial undertaking–something I plan to get cracking on today. From his suggestions, I’m thinking of knocking off a third of it with at least that much needed in new prose. The story’s going to need to go in a completely new direction, which is good, as I wasn’t happy with the Macro at all. But I’m a little daunted by the magnitude of the rewrite.

Saw the Ophthalmologist on Thursday. I haven’t been able to wear my gas perm lenses for weeks without them hurting me. My eyes are very, very dry. He says I probably don’t blink enough since I work in front of a computer day in and day out, and when I’m not doing that, I’m reading. Glarg. So he gave me a prescription for a new eye-drop product which is supposed to be some sort of breakthrough on the dry eye front. Sigh. So yesterday I learned how to put drops in my eyes. Until now, Matthew’s always helped me if I needed to put drops in my eyes, but if I need to do it a couple times a day, it’s too silly for me not to learn how myself. So I did. And it was messy, wet, and cold. But I did it. I’m a big girl now.

Why is it that early morning insomnia always hits on the weekends? Dagnabit. Woke up at 5:30 totally alert and awake, and now I can’t get back to sleep. Hobkin woke up to keep me company (actually he woke up to go tearing around the house) so I fed him an early breakfast.

What is it about homeowners associations that they’re full of busy-bodies who don’t have anything better to do than to fret about what their neighbors are doing with their own homes? The president of our HOA was very upset because her neighbor was painting his fence white. Freaking white! It’s not like he wanted to paint zebra stripes or rainbow polka dots on his fence (and, personally, I’d be amused to see that), he wanted to paint his fence white!

And they’re upset about the state of our lawn. Okay, our lawn is pretty haggard, as is the lawn of a couple other people in our subdivision, so we’re not alone, but is it really worth all that much dwelling upon? Sheesh.

These people massively need to get a life. I hate that we have an association. Matthew has been a mitigating influence on some of their truly anal and intrusive proclivities, but his term of office ends in October. I shudder to think what sort of nazi committee we’ll end up with after that.

Damn neighborhood fascists.

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.