Okay, my people, I'm headed off for my glorious week-long vacation in...lovely Wichita. Although I have other obligations, my goal is to turn this into a writing vacation. Or, failing, that, a lying around doing nothing vacation.
Okay, my people, I'm headed off for my glorious week-long vacation in...lovely Wichita. Although I have other obligations, my goal is to turn this into a writing vacation. Or, failing, that, a lying around doing nothing vacation.
Some stuff:
My street is a wildlife sanctuary now, with baby buns and squirrels running up and down, chasing each other around the medians. This is cute but alarming, because the street isn't going to be closed forever. This is a whole generation of critters failing to learn that the street is a Dangerous Place.
I thought the German secretary talked a lot. Now with the reshuffling, though, we've got three other departments down on our floor. Verdict: History secretary talks a lot more than German secretary. In fact, History secretary has not shut up since she got here this morning.
Dude riding your motorcycle without a helmet. At first, I thought you were just an idiot, but then I noticed that you were wearing one of those really nice, padded, Motocross jackets. That's so thoughtful of you, so that when you're in a wreck, even though your brain will be splattered all over the pavement, your kidneys and liver and other internal organs will be protected from damage. Thanks for thinking of all those people waiting on the transplant lists.
I like getting requests for manuscripts in the mail. Makes me feel like I didn't waste the stamp on my SASE.
I hate getting e-mail rejections. It's like the final frontier of disappointment. Oh, and agents who reject by e-mail when I've queried by snail mail, what are they doing with my stamps? Bastards.
I'm feeling a little guilty, because all the crazy weather that trashed Manhattan and flooded Iowa, well, it's really delivered some lovely spring-like weather to Lawrence. Normally, summer would already be heating up here, but that last two days have been delightfully sunny and cool. Sorry about that.
On my errand to the post office, I had a near disgruntled encounter. The postal clerk was so pissed off, she was pacing up and down in her little cubicle, muttering to herself. She glared up at the line of people and snarled, "Next!" I said, "I'll come back later." When I did, she wasn't there. I bought my stamps and got the hell out. That's all I need, getting shot on a Tuesday.
These two lovely women, who have been together for more than 50 years, finally got married today. I don't care where you are on the political spectrum, if that doesn't warm the cockles of your heart, you don't have one. I almost cried listening to this story on the radio this morning, because I had this sudden, completely uncontrollable feeling of hope. I don't get that a lot, but this morning, it seemed like maybe someday, we really will have equal rights for everyone in this country.
Or it feels like I'm being rewarded for my screwed up approach to life.
This morning, when I went to put my Netflix movie out for the postman, I realized that I had never checked the mail yesterday. After a night of thunderstorms, it was a bit humid, but I didn't mind. Along with my various junk mail and bills was...another short story acceptance. Guess who feels like hot stuff today? Me.
And yes, eventually, I'll post some links where you can read/buy the various stories that I've got coming out or that are already out.
Well, you've had to hear me whimper about bad news on the publishing front, so I suppose I should share a little bit of good news. Yesterday was set to be a rejection day--got a short story rejection first thing in the AM--but then lo! Came home from work and had a short story acceptance. So, that's two this year, which is nice.
In other writing news, I did something that at first seemed "constructive" and now strikes me as a big mistake. I made a little note card for each novel I'm working on. Posted them up on the closet door of my office, so I could track when I'm working on each one and how far I'm getting. See? That looks constructive, doesn't it? Except when I got to note card seven, I realized: "Oh, I'm working on seven different novels in various stages of completion."
Sick sick sick. Sure, some are closer than others. One is more than half done, while two are just in embryonic research stages. Still, it can't possibly be a good thing that I have that many ideas jockeying for space in my brain.
Failure is inevitable... Show us some failure.
Submitted by Connie.
The funny thing about failure: it's usually indistinguishable from success until the last possible moment. All those sports success stories--just a heartbeat away from failure. It's the cruel thing about failure, too. You're ready to succeed, right up until the moment you're staring failure in the face. Writing is no different. There's every chance someone will want to publish your story/buy your book/offer you representation/give you an award, right up until they don't. As proof, I offer my current submission roster, as tracked on Duotrope.com.
Some days it's hard to stare that list down, and not necessarily because of the "Rejection, Form" entries. Often the "Pending Response" listings are harder to take. Success or failure waiting to happen.
I don't know why people feel like they have the right to question me about my wardrobe, but they do. At least once a month I have to field a question from someone I barely know about why I mostly wear black clothes, as though there were a single reason for anything I do. So, here are some highlights.
1. I like black.
2. Black is slenderizing.
3. It reflects the darkness of my soul. (Really, that's what people want to hear.)
4. I'm a writer, not a fountain pen technician. Not infrequently, refilling my Pelikan is messy. Sometimes even writing with my Pelikan is messy.
5. Every day there's a funeral, I never know when I might need to go to one.
6. Black hides mistakes. Except for mistakes made with chlorine bleach.
7. I'm somewhat clumsy.
8. I work around office equipment that produces icky black things like toner.
9. Sippy, who likes to use me as her own personal nap spot/scratching post/scent marker.
10. Flanny, who is a dirty dirty dirty little cat.
Sometimes you get a rejection that makes you erase the play board and start over.
I drank too much coffee yesterday and was awake too late, thereby putting myself at risk of the dreaded unexpected late-night e-mail rejection. It was one of those rejections that's hard to set aside, because it was personalized and it came from a place I'm already familiar with: obvious writing talent and not a commercially viable project.
I know this about the book I've been querying. It's too big, too convoluted, a bit too smart to be straight genre, but I love the book. I want people to read the book, but I'm not without a certain amount of pragmatism. After eleven rejections, knowing what I know, I'm putting this one on indefinite hiatus. It's time to move on.
The next book I'm querying is distinctly more commercial, so at least I don't have that hurdle, but that whole issue is weighing on me pretty heavily as I try to decide what project to work on next. I always have about half a dozen things waiting in the wings, but as I work on a decision, I thought I'd ask my Voxy neighbors what kind of things you're interested in reading these days. What sorts of stories, issues, people are you interested in?
It's not just the case in knickknack stores--it's true about writing, too. Thanks to a timely reading by the esteemed Val, I've concluded that the first chapter of my aforementioned fantasy novel is busted. I broke it, probably with too much revising, editing and a little over-vigorous "polishing." I've always known this about my rather pathetic attempts at poetry. My first and second drafts are usually pretty good, but never really good. My third and fourth drafts are usually crap. I don't know why, that's just how it is. It has not ever been that way with my fiction, but perhaps that's only because my fiction is sturdier, more able to stand up to 20 or 30 drafts before it crumbles under the sheer weight of my tinkering. Now I know.
As of today, I've got about a week to go back and unbreak that first chapter in time to query the book on March 11.
Luckily, the boss is away for the rest of the week, so I'm in the clear for a couple of 8-hour writing days.
Cortez is reported to have burned his ships in order to destroy in the minds of his crew the possibility of retreat. (Historians still debate whether he burned them, scuttled them, or simply ran them aground.) Whether he did or didn't, Cortez didn't invent the idea of burning your ships. In the 3rd Century BC, Chinese general Xiang Yu burned his ships at the River Yangtze. He took it one step further. He destroyed his troops' cooking pots, as well, as a motivator for conquering their enemies. There was no way back and they had to win to survive. You might expect mutiny after something like that, but Xiang's ploy worked.
A professor in behavioral economics at MIT recently conducted an experiment in decision-making that mirrors the aspect of burning ships. Participants in the experiment played a video game in which they could earn real money by being willing to destroy other opportunities for earning money. The problem was that most participants in the study couldn't bring themselves to destroy those opportunities, even if it diminished their returns. They couldn't burn their ships.
What does that have to do with writing? Today I'm convinced it has quite a lot to do with writing. Yesterday, in keeping with the theme of the week, I received another rejection on a short story. Looking at the rejection, however, I didn't feel my usual set of frustration and sadness. Instead, I had a little epiphany. The story, honestly, wasn't one of my better ones, but I'd gone on putting the energy into submitting it, because I couldn't let it go. It was downright silly to waste any more time on it, when I didn't think it was that good. I just had some sort of sentimental attachment to it, because I wrote it. So, I simply pulled it off my submission roster. I felt better immediately and I can put that energy into preparing to submit a different story.
At the risk of sounding like I believe in this sort of thing, I'll note that shortly after I made that decision, I got an acceptance for another story in the mail. I don't believe the two are related, but I do believe that sometimes you have to burn a manuscript to move forward.
]]>