1) I confess that I don't read a lot of writer's blogs anymore. It has nothing to do with their published work, and I'm sure they're all a nice, intelligent lot with many incredible insights into all aspects of life on this planet. However, the repetition gets overwhelming and exhausting - one person makes a post about some minute part of the writing/publishing world, and it gets picked up by five other writers, and suddenly there's an explosion of commentary on something I didn't need more than one post about. I don't need to read 27 separate diatribes about the current state of the genre short story market, for example. :) I also don't like how many of the posts tend to become "pronouncements" - as in, "I am Teh Writer, therefore This Is The Definitive Statement on X, Y or Z", followed by 1000 comments that read: "Bravo!", "Applause!", "Hugs", or "You are so brave." I get burned out by that type of posting and commenting. It seems smug and false to me. Again - not talking about specific people, just about blogs in general, and the so-called online "writing culture". I'm not interested in starting fights. Then again, no one ever links to my shit (thank GOD!), so I don't think you 3.7 readers will suddenly bolt in the onslaught of "fuck you, wannabe" comments. You 3.7 readers are so brave. ::applause!::

FYI, the blogs I like best are by writers who tend to have an even mix of posts about writing and other subjects.

2) I confess that I'd rather subscribe to magazines other than the ones I submit my short stories to. Not that I don't take submission research seriously: I've bought single issues for probably around 25-30 different sf/f/h markets. But there's no way I could take out 25-30 subscriptions. I've come to believe it's more important for me to subscribe to magazines that publish content that might come in handy for my own writing someday. Like, National Geographic and Scientific American. I have subscriptions to both of these markets. I also read Harpers, The New Yorker, and Seed. Yeah, I read Vogue and Vanity Fair occasionally - but for the articles! I swear! :P

3) I confess that I get tired of writing, and sometimes I go for weeks at a time without putting a single word on paper. AND I DON'T FEEL GUILTY. You know, theatres are dark every Monday, to give the actors and crews a chance to rest up and recharge. I think everyone who does something creative with their life needs to "go dark" once in a while, whether it's a day or a month or a couple of years. And you shouldn't have to justify or apologize for it. Everyone needs a fucking break, right? I've been writing pretty much non-stop since the start of Clarion, so that's well over a year now - a year of writing about life, but not really living it. When I head off to Europe next week, I'm planning on not writing. I'm going to stare at buildings and trees, and eat and drink all manner of bad things, and stare off into space and take afternoon naps, and not write one fucking word. There'll be plenty of time left in the year to write my sooper blockbuster novel when I get back home.

Well, it finally happened - I received a rejection, but with the comment that if it were extensively rewritten, then they'd be happy to look at it again. The market in question is Goblin Fruit, and the submission is one of my prose poems, "Silver Night Train", that's been making the rounds. After reading the editors' comments, and reading the poem again, I've come to realize that what they're saying can be applied to all of my poems, and a good percentage of my shorter fiction: the poetry gets in the way of the narrative. Too much wallowing about in pretty images, too little forward movement of the plot.

Unfortunately, it's a bit tricky when your poetry gets in the way of, er, your poetry. :) I know the old saying "kill your darlings" is quite true, but it gets difficult when the work in question is composed of almost 100% darlings. It's going to be something of a challenge to take a 100-line poem and essentially slash 50 lines out of it while pumping up the narrative, especially when I'm still at the "oh, but they're all wonderful lines!" stage. On the other hand, this is a great opportunity to learn something about writing poems, which is clearly a different process than writing fiction. I can see why many writers might take this opportunity to quietly shelve the work in question, or send it somewhere else, but I think I'd be stupid not to do what the editors are suggesting. They're giving me a second chance to submit the work, and a first chance to learn how to write a publishable poem.

So, my darlings: farewell. We'll meet again, in another story or poem. Nothing ever disappears completely. That's why it's called "inventory".

::snip snip snip::

Labels: "Silver Night Train", poetry, rewrites

That's what I'm going to start calling short stories now: eensy projects. Because everything I write tends to be about a bajillion words long, so when I actually get something under 8,000 words, it's practically a miniature by comparison. Right now I'm close to finishing up four eensy projects I started at the beginning of the year. One's a rewrite, but I've been writing on the other three steadily since January - a sentence here, a paragraph there, not pushing anything, but just letting the ideas and words come when they did. Maybe it's not the best way to write an eensy, but the payoff is that all of a sudden, I'll have four complete drafts in one month. It's something of a windfall for me, since starting in September, I'll be working exclusively on the novel for the rest of the year.

So, here's a short description of each of the eensy's. Not that I think any of my 3.7 readers are so utterly fascinated by what I'm writing, and I know that reading about other people's WIP's can be painful - think of this only as filler until I get something better to blog about. :)

1) Her Deepness
This is a complete rewrite of a 2500 word dark fantasy I wrote early last year. It's got some nice images, but frankly there's no plot or character arc. All poetry and no emotional narrative makes it kind of dull. So, after much hemming and hawing, I simply chucked everything and started over. I've kept the setting - the Tacoma Mall - and the basic plot - a woman covets a statue of the god Cernnunos in a strange little store, and her acquisition of the piece sets off a chain of events that lead to a violent and erotic encounter with the real god in a sort of alternate version of the mall.

However, I'm doing something a bit odd. I read (on Catherynne M. Valente's Livejournal) that the Journal of Mythic Arts Fall Issue will have the theme of Fantastic Geographies. The journal is invite-only, and I won't be invited, of course. But I'm going to write the story as if I had been invited - I'm using the theme to address my protagonist's issue with the "fantastic geography" of her own body, the unnatural imposed geography of malls versus the natural geography of the non-human world, and the hidden geography of desire and consumption that permeate everything in our consumer-based society. Ok, I might fail. But it'll be a spectacular failure - and a much better story than the first version.

2) Pureland
This is the strangest story I've ever written. It's about transformations and evolutions of all kinds: male into female, young girl into older woman, human into alien, life into death, death into something else. The setting is a sprawling campus in the middle of an oceanside megalopolis - not an Earth setting. This is one of those stories where I have the beginning, and I've always had the ending, but I have no idea what's happening in the middle. That's not a problem, though. I've always trusted that if I have the ending, I'll somehow be able to find my way to it. I write a sentence or two every day, and let the protagonist and very alien setting lead me to the conclusion. I have to say, I love what I've written so far - so much so that I can see taking this character (an older student from another planet studying forensic medicine) and setting her loose in a novel-length work. I have no idea where I'll send this piece when it's finished. I may "crash" an invite-only anthology I've heard of recently, and see if I can get the editor to take a look at it.

FYI, the title and subtitles for each section are taken from origami folds - such as "water bomb base", "mountain fold", "closed unsink" ("pureland" is a simplistic and pared-down style of origami). If I had the money, I'd commission an origami artist to create a piece and sell me the actual instructions, which I'd insert into the text as the subtitles. Then, you could actually use the subtitle instructions to make something. It would be a paper girl, transforming into something vast and strange and beautiful...

3) When We Get On the Inside
This is the slightly feminist social-science fiction story I started a week or so back, for the mundane SF issue of Interzone, and it's coming along in fits and starts. Right now I have a good sense of the protagonist and her journey, but I'm struggling to make sure the issues don't overshadow her story. Essentially the plot is mothers with children vs. women without children - who is more entitled to call themselves a woman depending on if they've pulled a human being out of their vagina or not, and who is therefore more entitled to goods and services and basic rights in this slightly-in-the-future society. Unfortunately, that sounds very boring, and more than a little strident and angry - which is not what I want. I want to write a story, not a diatribe. I may miss the deadline on this one, but I'm not going to fret about it. I can always submit it at a later date, to one of the regular Interzone issues. The important thing is to get it right.

4) Shang Hai
Last December I dashed off a terrible, terrible 2000 word story for an erotic anthology. Thank the gods above it was rejected - it was truly horrific. I completely threw it away - deleted the files, shredded the pages. It doesn't exist anymore. This version has the same title and setting, and it's still erotica, but it's completely new. I'm now writing the story from the POV of a man - a first for me. It's about the leader of a press gang in late 1800's Tacoma, a young con man who kidnaps loggers and gamblers, getting them dead-drunk, stripping them of cash and clothes, then transporting them through the underground tunnels of the waterfront to Orient-bound ships, where they're sold as galley-slaves. Of course the tables turn on him - that'll be no shock to any reader, but it's how the tables are turned that's going to be a bit unique.

My only problem with this story is that the young man is racist and misogynistic, as were many men in Tacoma toward the Chinese during this period in history, and I've been worried that my protagonist's atrocious attitudes and behavior to women and minorities will somehow be seen by readers as my own personal ignorance/racism. People may not be willing to read to the end to see him get his comeuppance. I'll finish the story, but I may end up trunking it. Or it'll go in some erotic collection someday, when I'm well-known enough to get one published. Yeah, right. :P

Labels: short stories