A Writer's Paradise

How This Book Became YA and Other Truths

I started writing the Tarot Book when I was thirteen or so. For certain values of "started" and "writing" and "Tarot Book." I began with a map and a handful poems, I never thought I was writing a book, and back then it was called "Arcana: A Journey." I have the original text that interwove the poetry, typed out on my first writing machine (half typewriter, half primitive word processor), in a folder, where I dare not glance at it until I get much further along--like say third rewrite along--on the Tarot Book in its present incarnation.

Admittedly, part of the reason I was writing the book-thing when I was thirteen was because it was license to swipe Mom's tarot cards. That's even the deck that's sitting on my desk right now, to the right of the computer. (The fractious Medieval Scrapini Tarot sits on the left.)

Anyway, I had been Quite Stuck on this book for the last few days, which was okay since Life was interrupting (as life does). But today I resolved that I'd find a way to send a man through the door with a gun (as writers do when things get boring). Of course, in this medievalesque society, there aren't guns. Maybe blunderbusses, but no, not even those. (Weird. I almost wrote "thoughs" instead of "those." That's a new one.)

I took Donald Maas's Breakout Novel Workbook to work today intending to force some inspiration and brainstorm a turning point if it killed me, but before I even pulled the book out of my bag, I realized exactly what the proper next turning point is--how and where I needed to raise the stakes. It was blindingly obvious once I thought of it, in fact. So, I scribbled down some notes and came home.

And then I pulled out Rachel Pollack's Seventy-Eight Degrees of Wisdom, which just so happened to be the other thing I swiped from my mom all those (eighteen! man I'm old!) years ago for the sake of "Arcana" and started reading up on wands.

I stumbled across this sentence: "Surprise, wonder, enchantment, trouble, and fear." And I thought: "That exactly describes being thirteen." (It also describes the Two of Wands, FYI.) When I think back to the planning stages of "Arcana" and reading the Pollack books and swiping Mom's cards to write, nightly, with one of them stuck upright above the number keys of my keyboard, and all the little moments of beauty (and enchantment and trouble and fear) where I thought "This! This I can use in the story"--from the first time I put on silk longjohns on a cold winter's night and noted the decadent feel of the fabric on my legs, to the night I bunked down before the woodstove with my dog at my aunt's house, to the moment I stepped out of a hotel room into a wall of orange fog (orange from the sodalights in the parking lot), to the first time I noticed cloud cover so low I felt like I could reach up and touch it... Every moment was fodder for the brain cows.

I've decided to write this book six or seven times since then--including the once grand ambition where I thought I'd draw my own tarot card and write the accompanying story-piece about it and put them up on the web weekly or daily or some mad thing--and each time, the characters aged with me. But when I sat down to the computer on January 1st this year, I knew that the character was thirteen, and that the story was really for me, that old me, that me from when I was thirteen, and that is, indeed, how this book became YA--or returned to YA.

My main goal at this point (besides finishing the book) is to scrape away my veneers of calmness and wisdom and jadedness and ironicality and skepticism to get to the grain of the thirteen-year-old girl I once was... where everything is "surprise, wonder, enchantment, trouble, and fear." And write the truest book I can.

Random Thought

...of course I'm wordy. I'm in love with words, my own and others'. It's at the core of why I became a writer. If you look at my chromosomes, you'll find the marker for wordiness, right next to the marker for storytelling.

Early Fortnightly Book Report

I wanted to write about the most recent two books read whilst they are fresh in my mind. So, maybe this will be a little more frequent than fortnightly (though not by much)... as my trend is, largely, to finish up several books at once periodically.

Today, I finished two books:

(3) The Thirteenth House by Sharon Shinn [fantasy]

Sequel to Mystic and Rider, which was an unabashed love story of a fantasy; I rather though that this one was going down a similar road, but I think it was actually a coming-of-age story instead. There's a love affair in here too, but it was of the sort that was making me increasingly angry throughout the book... and without spoiling the book, I can't really go on in any detail, but suffice it to say, I was happier than not with the ending.

The sentence level writing in this book was better than in the first (and who knows, it may've just been that people didn't spend paragraphs smiling at each other that made this perception), but I felt that the plot wandered a bit. I think we're in The Hard Middle that creeps into many a fantasy series. The series-level plot arc isn't actually going to advance here... so it's The Hard Middle. In point of fact, I didn't perceive that any of the series-levels stakes were even raised in this book; they were raised continually throughout the first book, and pretty much held steady here.

Hm. It makes it sound like I didn't like this, because I *did* like it, well enough; Shinn is an author I trust to do things that suprise me, and happily so. (Full disclosure: have not read the angel series at all.) This book did nothing to tarnish that.

(4) Lisey's Story by Stephen King [fantasy]

Horror schmorror. This was fantasy to my way of thinking, can openers and all. (I do not buy the review that says it's a romance or a supernatural thriller.) I really loved this; like Misery, it's a book about writing, but unlike Misery, it's a book about the writer's impact on his family and the family's impact on the writer. (You could widen that to any artist, to be honest...) In any case, it was just lovely. Not quite the shivers of reading an early Dark Tower book or anything, but possessing a transcendent quality all it's own. Rather than rehash the plot, I'll just say that I think this book takes a page from Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

Slowly, I wax cats

I am slowly creating order out of chaos. Slowly. Insert typographical indications of slowness here (extra spaces are nice).

This is part and parcel of my usual cat-waxing: I get to a stalled point in a story and tell myself little fables. "I can't write in here because it's too cluttered." "If I give my brain time off by filing, I'll make that plot break-through." These are all lies, of course. I managed to write for 17 straight days in this clutter (and maybe that's why my brain stalled), and I've filed myself into two new papercuts with no plot developments.

I look from shelf of library items checked out to sheaf of notes to be transcribed to the rather paltry, not-updated-last-night word-count on my novel to the short story I have to finish by January 31st or I'll not be able to look myself in the mirror.

I wonder: how in Hades' gravy did I manage to get so fragmented in my interests? I have so many hobbies that I forget I have them. Today I stumbled across my oil paints, cross-stitch and photography books. About a month ago, I resolved to get rid of my fabrics and notions and extraneous trims so that my clutter would at least no longer support the illusion that I intend to ever sew again.

Of course, I had more time for all of that before I decided to write like I meant it.

Tonight, the cats will just have to get stubbly. I need to write.

Restraint at the Office Supply Store

I'm not sure what it is about the scent (and feel and look) of fresh clean paper that turns me into a consumerist predator, but that scent (and feel and look) is the reason I do not go gentle into that good office supply store on a regular basis.

Not that long ago, 3M (or someone) had hired students to stand out on the Diag and to distribute samples of this new product: magical note-cards with stick-'em on the back, and the wonder of it is that the stick-'em sticks to 'em but not to each other. So you can notecard your whole novel on the wall of your bedroom, and then take all the cards and shuffle them. I took three samples, and toyed desultorily with them, knowing that 9 cards (three to a sample pack) were not enough to do any real damage notecarding.

And then last week I ran out of hanging file folders.

While I can live without many things for long periods of times, I cannot live for long without hanging file folders. I have a filing habit to support. (As a child, my dream was to own a file cabinet. I now have two. I'm thinking of branching out into a third. Though my second cabinet--which was really my first, and the one I picked up for $10 at a garage sale, and to which I had to install the brackets that made it support hanging folders, and is now really just used to store college notebooks, and is only 12 or maybe 18 inches deep--is only two drawers high, and also the drawers stick, so I don't know how I can rightfully claim that it is a file cabinet, let alone one of two file cabinets which I own.)

I held out as long as I could on that new batch of hanging file folders, but I had recently come across the disturbing fact that I don't have a ROME folder, and egads, a girl like me needs a ROME folder. Not for the TV show. For the Roman Empire. I have a ROME notebook. I have a ROME bookshelf. How could I have failed to have a ROME folder?

So, I went to Office Max tonight. And I was pretty restrained. Having recently come into a glut of calendars (there was an unexpected late Christmas gift of a calendar, which put me into extraneous calendar territory), I did not purchase any calendars. Not even a shiny laminated dry-erase calendar that displays the whole year, to which I could have stuck little Post-it flags saying "FINISH NOVEL" and stuck to a date. (It was hard to pass by, but I have nowhere to hang it.) I did not purchase any notebooks. I stayed away from envelopes. I had to turn the other direction and walk away when I saw they now make a rainbow pack of Sharpie markers with little keychain attachments (I could have strung them together into a Sharpie necklace, I just realized, and walked around the office like a... freak). I was sooooo good.

I only bought 50 new hanging file folders.

And only 540 sticky notecards. (Three packs of each color, and only the one size. RESTRAINED. I am not even testing if I would notecard better in 4 by 6 versus 3 by 5.)

And we all know that 540 notecards is probably not even two novels worth of notecards.

I am a model of self-discipline.

Back from ConFusion

I have returned from ConFusion, where most of my time was spent hanging in the bar with my friends and chatting with whoever came by. For the most part, "who came by" was limited to people who knew Dave Klecha--Toby Buckell (and Toby's wife, Emily) and John Scalzi, for starters, and also, I met Stephen Buchheit. (At some point, I'm going to have to take the bull by the horns and start introducing myself to people.)

But mostly, I'm back home, refreshed and invigorated, and eager from my two no, three four days off writing to restart the whole process.

Dave and I are actually getting this whole writing workshop/retreat thing worked out. He came up with a vision on his drive home, which is good, since I was sans vision. As I noted during the Con, I have a cottage, not a vision. Or rather, my vision is so broad as to be unhelpful (writers writing around a table). Dave has come up with some good ideas, however, and it fits with my vision. I am holding myself to us being able to send out invites by early next week.

I have also made the big decision on what my extracurricular activity shall be. While I'm writing the Tarot Book, I have made it sort of a goal to not exceed my goal wordcounts by more than a few hundred, so as to not write ahead of my, uh, head. So, I think that I will make an extracurricular goal of writing my never-to-be-sent-to-Baen book, as I have long felt strongly about it, and it is the polar opposite to the Tarot Book. I am, for now, excited about this. We'll see how I feel when it explodes in my face (or whatever it is that might realistically happen.)

Books 1&2, Writing Report

Well past two weeks into January, and I have not made my first fortnightly book report!

I am reading at the slow-and-steady-wins-the-race pace of about a book a week. I read:

(1) Firethorn by Sarah Micklem [fantasy]

I liked this. I admit I picked it up because I saw the words "gritty, feminist fantasy" on the cover and thought, "Yeah. I want some gritty, feminist" fantasy. Though there are flaws (I kept feeling like the book was walking around with it's scalp missing. It was like the top wasn't there, the thing that kept the book from jumping out like snakes-in-a-can), it had many fine attributes as well.

The book was an interesting mix of familiar tropes and unfamiliar twists on them. Herbalist? Check. Knight? Check. Camp follower? COOL. Knight is married already, doesn't take her virginity, the abuse/rape in her past is low-key and humiliating but not devasting forever and ever and there is no magical healing penis in the story? Realistic! There is no fairy tale in this book. I deeply appreciate that.

For a while, I was semi-convinced the magic was merely a belief system with a whole lot of superstition and coincidence to back it up, but I think it really is meant to be a magic system. I liked it better the first way, I guess. There's a lot to this book, though I was disappointed to learn that it's the start of a (sigh) trilogy, not a standalone.

(2) Sex with Kings: 500 Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry, and Revenge by Eleanor Herman [non-fiction]

Well, I was looking for a light non-fiction something before delving into some serious research for upcoming books, and I got some light non-fiction here. And there's nothing that bugs me about the actual scholarship here, and that's a pleasant thing. Organization, however? Oof. It jumps all over the place, in time and geography, often revisiting the same kings and mistresses several times in different chapters before you can fathom the whole story. Madame de Pompadour's story would have been much better if it had been told all at once, for example... The other thing I didn't really like was the purple prose of speculation in some places. I'd excerpt some of it, but I left the book at my aunt's... and it just wouldn't be sporting, as this was otherwise a very fine book.

Writing--

I'm around 500 words on the pirate story, and loving every minute of it. No projected total in mind, other than "not over 5000 words". Still no title, either.

Tarot Book

17,289 / 78,000 (21.0%)

Excerpt in the extended entry.

"I understand that I was wrong, that my memory is wrong: I am a princess."

"You are not a princess," the Queen said, and she did not say it kindly.

"Oh, but I am! I'm quite certain that Sir Garet and Lady Kadri speak the truth, and there is a spell on me--"

"No. That's not what I mean. You are not a princess because God has chosen you to be a princess or even because you were born to a King and a Queen, nor is it because you are innately good or beautiful. You are not a princess because you are locked in a tower and beloved by a prince, and you are not a princess because you can sleep on twelve mattresses and wake with bruises from the pea beneath them. We treat the Divine Right of Kings with the same contempt as we do fairy tales in Arcana. In Arcana, the lowliest stablegirl can become the Empress in due time, with the right training and will, and no one in this country will blink twice. The high become low and the low become high because of who they are, because of their character, because of the way they face off against the lions in their lives. You can request asylum, and we will grant it because we will always need a bargaining chip against the Oestrians, no matter who rules their country, but we will collect no taxes for you to dress in silks and sleep in feathers. We will even call you princess, if that is what you wish--but to none of us will you be a princess."

This is not bad news.

Writing is the craft that defies craftsmanship: craftsmanship alone will not make a novel great. This is hard for young writers... to grasp at first. A skilled cabinet-maker will make good cabinets, and a skilled cobbler will mend your shoes, but skilled writers very rarely write good books and almost never write great ones. There is a rogue element somewhere - for convenience's sake we'll call it the self, although, in less metaphysically challenged times, the "soul" would have done just as well. In our public literary conversations we are squeamish about the connection between selves and novels. We are repelled by the idea that writing fiction might be, among other things, a question of character...

From Fail Better by Zadie Smith.

As far as I'm concerned, it damn well better be about soul, self and/or character.

Interference

Two days--Friday and Saturday--I didn't make goal. Saturday I did at least set down about a hundred words of the Tarot Book and 200 of a short story that makes me giggle, it's so insane.

So, tonight, I figure I've got three hours to make it all come together. And even if it doesn't happen, I'll at least have written for three hours, which will indubitably improve my happiness... right?

One of the reasons I took Friday (and is also the reason behind most of Saturday) off is that I went to see my aunt for late Christmas celebrations and general visiting purposes as well. Among the many joys of the visit (venison lasagna being a highlight) was the chance to look over my great-uncle's reports as a gunner for the Air Force during WWII... they're pretty amazing. Terse, but powerful for all of that. He flew 53 missions altogether.

I also scored a formal family portrait taken mid-WWII, with the aforementioned great-uncle in his uniform, my grandfather standing next to him (Gramps in his late 30s), my namesake standing on the end in a sharp pin-striped suit, the various other great-aunts and -uncles flanking Gramps and the great-uncle and my great-grandparents. It's a really nice picture from a branch of the family that never really seemed to care about taking nice pictures. And my great-uncle looks a heckuva lot like Matthew Macfadyen, which is just... weird. I'm used to thinking that my grandfather was the handsomest guy in his family, but now I'm not so sure. :) And the funny thing is, I sort of named the character in the Tarot Book after him (his real name, not his nickname).

My aunt is talking about she and I going up to visit said great-uncle and pick his brain a bit about his life and his family... he's our last direct link to that family, as he's the last one of the people in this portrait still alive. There's something a bit melancholy in that.

On to the writing. No time for the melancholy to interfere.

Ridiculous Fun

I had a ridiculously good time writing tonight. I couldn't even really tell you why. It wasn't flow. It wasn't that I adore what I wrote (I like it okay, but adore would be a bit much.) It wasn't even that the words were coming at exactly the right rate (not too fast to be crap, not to slow to make hate). No. Really. I just don't know.

Or maybe I do...

Maybe because everything was going *exactly the way I wanted*.

I'm bossy like that.

Here's the thing.

...if I had realized how easy it now was to get 1,000 words down every night, I probably would have gotten off of back onto my ass a long time ago.

Sure, a lot of it is probably the public accountability at novel_in_90, but at least some of it is the fact that I've been ready to write this book for a while now.

Actually... there are probably many factors at play here.

-Yes, I'm mentally ready to write this book. By which I mean, I've thought my thoughts about it for many years now, and have reached that critical mass point where I probably won't run out of ideas before the whole thing starts moving under its own power. This is not something I knew books needed until I finished one and made about six other false starts with things that hadn't fully incubated. Is this something I'm going to have to do always? No idea. Hope not. But it's apparently what I need to do now.

-The aforementioned public accountability. Will probably keep the butt in the chair for several days after the despair sets in.

-My new planner. I got the perfect planner that has the days written out in just the way I like them. It was a long hunt that I did not think would ever bear fruit. But there's something about keeping track of the goals in a way that cannot disappear off my desktop or get folded over or closed that really helps.

-It's a damn huge relief not to be rewriting short stories with 25 rejections. (Not that I have anything with 25 rejections. If I did, I'd have a lot more total rejections, y'know?)

-It's a damn huge relief not to be writing short stories, where every word counts triple and there is no space for fun tangents.

-I no longer fear writing an imperfect draft. (Because...)

-I no longer fear rewriting.

It's like the perfect storm...

Words...

I managed another 1,000-plus words today, and that was a small miracle because I really didn't know *why* they were going to get thrown to the lions, I just knew it needed to happen. But it turns out, Ordeal by Lion sounds perfectly plausible when you think about it, and beyond that... well... let's let Ree tell it:

"There is a simple ordeal that we use to see if people are telling the heart's truth," the Queen said. "Tomorrow, you may each beard a lion and we will all learn who is right and who is ensorceled."

"Forgive me, Your Majesty," Sir Garet said. "But this sounds like a rather dangerous way of solving the problem--if indeed it solves anything. Trial by ordeal was outlawed in the Kingdom of Oestria long ago--"

"And yet the Kingdom of Oestria no longer exists," the Queen said. She reached to pet the black cat thoughtfully. "Don't worry, Sir Knight; we feed the lions well beforehand."

Garet bowed stiffly. Kadri took this opportunity to drop yet another curtsy. "If your steward could direct us to a place to sleep for the night--?"

"There's floorspace in the hall," the Queen said, and then ordered someone to bring us food. I was too hungry to consider running away at that point.

Not certain about a lot of things, as I write--I don't like the name "Oestria" for the kingdom, for starters--but I do enjoy the notion of having an Ordeal by Lion.

In other words, I'm working on the Strength card tomorrow. I'm trying to balance between a literalist interpretation of certain cards' pictures and a symbolic interpretation of all cards, and still tell a story. It's a challenge...

In other news, rejection from Lone Star Stories today. I am semi-officially pulling this story for rewrite. I think I lost something in the last draft. Something rather important.

And, oh, yes, I realized that the novel_in_90 community isn't trying to get to 90k words, they're trying to get to 67,500. So, in other words, I'm fine with my current plan and pace. In fact, with 11,689 written and 78,000 as a goal, I can write 771 a day for the next 86 days and be just fine with both my goals. Though, my personal goal is still 78k in 78.

Progress. Actual progress!

The Tarot Book has passed 10,000 words, and I wrote 5,000 of them this week--which is technically short of my goal of writing 1,000 words a day, but that's why we didn't start at 0--I'm 3k ahead this way, see!?

Anyway, I'm just happy to have done something more than I've been doing. And not having that something to have been a deep and painful struggle. There was some struggle, don't get me wrong, but there's more room to screw up in a novel than in a short story, and that's just a bit liberating.

I have written just a smidge out of order, so far. Basically, as things occurred to me. I'm already afraid of some big choice I've made--the amnesia thing, for starters--and at what point the reveal comes in... but then I tell myself: it's not about the amnesia being part of the reveal. It's about deliberately trying to suppress parts of yourself and then having to quest to get those parts back. Soul retrieval, as the shamans call it. So. I hope that will be clear to me as I write. Already, this book threatens to spill out of my headspace.

I joined the novel_in_90 community on LJ, even though it occurs to me that, you know, I only planned on this novel being 78,000 words long (1,000 words or so for each tarot card, plus this is nominally YA). I'm thinking that when March 21st gets here and I have 78,000 words--or something near/around then) I'll just have to keep going with something else, but in the meantime, it's too good of an opportunity to pass up. There's nothing quite like public accountability.

Now, to get in that hour of editing The Bitter Road I've also set as a weekly goal, and maybe 15 minutes of filing, and I'll feel pretty accomplished!

The Roman and the Regency is up!

The Roman and the Regency is live at Quantum Kiss! Huzzah for there being a speculative fiction romance market!

The Slog

You finish a story. You get it critiqued. You briefly lose all hope. You fix it anyway.

You polish the story. You send it out. F&SF first, because there's no better intersection of turn-around time and pay rate.

You wait a week. You tell yourself it won't even get past JJA. You tell yourself GVG will publish it. You can't decide. You know it's good. You just don't know if it fits in with the F&SF psychology.

You get the letter. You know what's inside before you open it. Acceptances don't come in slim SASE's. You open it anyway. Got to enter those initials into your accounting... It's a JJA. It didn't grab him. You look back over the MS. So, he didn't read past about page 5, maybe earlier? Hm. Does it still look any good?

You send it to Asimov's or Realms of Fantasy or Cicada, whichever is most appropriate. You wait a long time. Rejection, when it comes, may be personal or form, yellow or blue, but it comes.

You send it to Strange Horizons next because it's really an SH kind of story, you were just hoping to maybe have a nice print copy, to break another barrier. You wait a month. You hope you'll wait two. Two is a good sign, from them. But in thirty days, you get a rejection. One editor liked it, but two editors didn't. You sigh. The psychology is right, but everything else is wrong. You probably got some advice in this rejection. You consider it from every angle. Pull for rewrite?

It's only been to three markets, but it's been on the road for almost five months. Five months is a long time in terms of your increasing writing ability, but it's not as much of a dent in your rewriting ability. You carry on. For one thing, one comment is not worth a rewrite. For another, you have other projects, and all you should be giving this story is a push out the door on a regular basis.

You select another market. One of the newer pro-rate markets that's not SFWA eligible, perhaps, or a SFWA-eligible market that's a long shot. Rejection. You try Writers of the Future, because, hey, you're still eligible, and it's a guaranteed three months you won't have to think about this one. Rejection: quarter-finalist. You spend an hour on Ralan, Duotrope, Story Pilot, trying to find an anthology or a market you've missed. You make a list. You eliminate half of them because the story is too long, or the market has not quite the right sensibility--too light, too horrific.

You gamble on one of the high-prestige, low-rate publications, like Electric Velocipede or Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet. The story languishes past the expected turn-around-time. You dither on querying. Eventually, rejection comes. You got close. Just not close enough.

You figure maybe the problem is the story. You take it off to a workshop. You change it a bit. You send it out again. You get rejection after rejection--fewer successful rejections than your first go round. Did your original, flawed story work better than this one that's been ironed out? How is that possible?

Three great markets are closed to submissions indefinitely. You'd like to try one or all of these next, but you can't. You poke around the semi-pros, which you're almost out of. You poke around the paying markets. You've read some, or even most, of these publications, at some point, but it's been a while. You don't know what it's like to work with any of them, though, not even on a rejection level. You may as well close your eyes and point.

You pick something that has published a friend, or at least someone you've heard of. You wait. Rejection. Have you tried--? Yes, you have.

You pick a market back up in the pros, one you've heard iffy things about. Astonishingly, they are fantastic, supportive, and almost buy the thing. Your faith is renewed. You glean any hint of a high-paying or high-prestige market that you've never tried, and continue shopping. Fourteen markets, fifteen markets, sixteen markets. It's really not that many, is it, but now the story is two and a half years old and has been rewritten once, and you're beginning to wonder how so many people could almost love something and never actually love it. You make up tortuous clichés about courtesans who are passed around--and stop immediately. Bad clichés.

Some of the markets you first sent this story to are now gone. Folded up and run away in the night. Kaput.

Another hour is given to checking up on markets, between Duotrope and Ralan. It reminds you of that part of Farmer Boy where the kids go down into the cellar to look at the sugar barrel and say, "There's some sugar left. If we scrape the sides--".

There's a very low-paying market that has published a lot of people you like, but you have no idea what the general sense of prestige to this place is. The other option is to wait until that indefinitely-closed market opens back up. At this point, it's either wait indefinitely or start settling for a lower pay rate. A dilemma. A definite dilemma.

What do you do? Wait or sub?

Tarot Lyric of the Moment

So. I'm writing this new book, see, and have been since January 1st. (Well, I started it before then, but this time I'm actually writing it.) The Tarot Book, the one with the terribly bad working title...

One of the things I'm doing concurrently is making a tarot playlist. Though I'm working on the Fool chapter, I am now enamored of "Karma Slave" by Splashdown, which is the most perfect Wheel of Fortune song ever:

Today I'll be spinning on a Wheel
I'm a slave to a Wheel
And there isn't any stopping
What mistake(s) could I have made?
I'm a slave serving time for a life that I've forgotten.

I'm a slave of Karma
Spin the Wheel and I'm a King reborn
I'm a slave to Karma
I'm coming back, yeah, I'll be coming back
But for the last time.

This won't be a frequent type of update, don't worry, but it was in my head.

Reject Away, My Friends... You'll Only Make Me Stronger

Second rejection of the year, and it's only January 4th! Yep, Lady Churchill finally owned up to having my submission. The rejection letter basically states, "We dithered. It was good, see, but not great" (massive paraphrase all mine).

Okay then. Onward. Though onward is getting a smidge tough with this story. Though onward would be easier if Farthing opened back up to subs and Interzone opened back up to e-subs...

But, there is good news! Rich Horton reviewed Farthing, and mentioned me by name. When and if a link is produced, we'll go from there, and I'll share the love in detail. Of course, when I say he mentioned me, I mean that he mentioned me: "Also, stories by Paul E. Martens, Bruce Golden, Merrie Haskell, and Marsheila Rockwell are worth mentioning." Right? See? Mentioned.

Other news: I've managed to write to goal all year so far! And ConFusion is right around the corner!

Writing Year in Review, Part Two

I realized I'd done the publishing side, but not the actual, y'know, productivity side. Borrowing a few meme-like questions from Julie Winningham, I'll take anyone who dares to care on a tour of 2006.

Finished stories:
"Unanswered Letters" (about 4k)
"Wedding Dress Tea Parties of 2443" (about 15k)
"Rampion in the Belltower" (about 8k)
"Almanac for the Alien Invaders" (about 6k)

Looking back, did you write more than you thought you would this year, less, or about what you'd predicted?

Annnnd... that's it. That's all I finished, the whole year.

Suddenly, some things make sense to me now--frustration-wise, treading-water wise. I wrote a fair amount. But almost none of it was towards the completion, of, well, anything. Four stories? Is a disastrously tiny amount of completed work. And I'm not near done on much of anything else, least of all the novels I was scattershotting and the short stories I was rewriting.

Hm.

I probably wrote about 75% of the words that I would have predicted. It's just surprising that about that I wrote "THE END" about 20 times less than I should've.

My favorite story this year (of my own):

Oh, I love "Wedding Dress." I wrote it for me because it was fun. I mean, I wrote the other three stories for me, too, but this, this... is a screwball comedy of manners set in the far distant future. I can't even begin to guess who else on earth this story would be for but for me.

My best story this year:
Probably "Rampion in the Belltower," but y'know, I'm really not a good judge of "best" in this sort of thing.

Most fun story:
Definitely "Wedding."

Hardest story to write:
All of them?

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?
If only "not finishing" was a risk... I mean it is, but not in a good way. Anyway, yes. I did. I wrote solely for my own pleasure. Not that I'd know how to write to a market anyway, but seriously, I look at the four stories I finished and I think, "Yep, those were for me to love, and I have no idea if anyone will want to publish them, evar." I learned that I like doing that...

I'm not saying that I've conformed to some other plan in other years, but I have held myself back from writing Regency-esque, 15k, probably unsellable things...

Do you have any goals for the New Year?
Besides finishing things... get back to writing in a daze. I wrote "Huntswoman" and "Reparations" each in a semi-fugue state. I do not think it is coincidental that they are two of my best works. These were two of the few times where things just unfolded in front of me without any real conscious thought. I like those times best.

First Day of the Year

Last year I made a sale on January 1st... this year, I got a rewrite request from Postscripts. The suggestions are good, but I'm not sure it's something I can do write now... this story has been buffed and buffeted a bit, and I may just need to let it be.

We'll see, though. Perhaps I'll feel more galvanized after I make a running start at jumping back into writing.

From the Randomness Department:
I think I need one of those nifty envelope sorters with the dates on them. I'm not exactly sure why, but perhaps its usefulness would be clearer if I had one.