Today’s word count: 3065! Right on target.Total word count: 62,880 of 90,000.Percent completion: 70%. Beautiful things: A crisp checked shirt. Corn pudding (maybe it is not beautiful, but I am hungry). Horrible things: Home truths. Coughing. Someone is watching “Cheers”. Reason for stopping: I need to wash the dishes. Fetishes: new yoga pants, Badger lip balm. Sustenance: corn chips, grilled cheese, Picholine olives, hibiscus-jasmine tea. Playlist highlights: Richard Thompson, “Pharaoh”; Red Hot Chili Peppers, “Pretty Little Ditty”; Wilco, “Reservations”. Bonus: the cats really like the new cat tree, and they stayed on it all day instead of messing with my desk! The laptop was only bitten once. […]
Public Accountability: The Novel Enduro Begins
Today begins a two-week writing marathon. My (rather ambitious) goal is to finish my novel-in-progress. Here’s a screen shot of my current stats (from Scrivener): 30,000 words to go; 10 business days to do it in. That means 3000 words a day. Folks, I’ve never written that much, that fast. But I have another novel lined up behind this one, which I really want to get started on; I’m thirty-seven and not famous yet; I’ve carved out this space from a demanding day job; and the only way out is through. Materials: Scrivener; my trusty Lenovo which I got at the end of last year’s novel enduro; a new pair of yoga pants; typing fingers; playlists. Plus a new cat tree, meant to keep the cats off my desk (wish me luck). Cuing up my playlists… pouring the coffee… wrapping a scarf around my neck… and GO. […]
Story Day!
Item the first: “Bleaker Collegiate Presents an All-Female Production of Waiting for Godot“ is live at Podcastle today, read by Tatiana Gomberg, who does a wonderful job as the voice of the young, jaded and vulnerable Deirdre. I am so delighted by this. Item the second: Congratulations to all of the Nebula nominees. Many of the works on this list I’ve read and loved, and I’m looking forward to catching up on the others. I see this as a very strong year all round and I’m full of joy at the strength, beauty and relevance of our genre, and awe at the, well, awesomeness of the people I know. Item the third: speaking of beautiful and relevant work, Kelly Rose Pflug-Back has a wonderful story at Strange Horizons right now which you should go and read. Item the third-B: the first comment on that story was a hilarious troll complaining about SH publishing too many lesbian stories. (If you are wondering: yes, all of my SH stories feature lesbian or bisexual protagonists. Viva la revolucion! Although SH has plenty of stories without lesbians, also.) (PS: The fun that was had on Twitter today… well, I found a whole bunch of […]
In which I plan to unleash the Pussy Hurricane
The title for this post came to me from a cherished friend who is one of very few people in my life from whom I’d accept large-scale guidance on the direction of my fiction. She’s earned this right by being the only person to have read absolutely everything I’ve written in the last four years. She’s read a few things in draft which you, the world, haven’t seen yet, since I haven’t sold them yet. She says my fiction really comes to life when I write women protagonists, and she asks me to do more of that (the above-mentioned hurricane). This advice comes at an interesting time for me. When I first started writing seriously, in university, I had a hard time writing believable female characters. Partly due to internalized misogyny: it’s only recently that women’s works have become more included in the cultural canon, and the literary education I received as a kid was pretty heavily weighted in favour of the dominance of men’s works and men’s stories, which in turn influenced how I write. More personally, I’m told I’m a pretty atypical woman in some ways. When I tried to write characters like myself, I’d get feedback that […]
In which I apparently did make a New Year’s resolution after all
As you know, Bob, Duotrope began charging authors for its service and content as of Jan 1. I chose not to sign up, even though the amount they’re asking is exactly what I voluntarily paid when paying was optional. Why pay when it wasn’t required? I figured it was worth some amount to a whole bunch of people who would find it a financial burden to contribute, so I chipped in more than what I felt was my share in order to hopefully keep it accessible to everyone. Now that the benefit would accrue only to me, the cost is totally not worth it. I’m extremely happy with this decision now that I’ve gone a couple of weeks without Duotrope. I don’t miss the submission tracking–I have a spreadsheet for that anyway, which is pretty epic, since I am an Excel geek courtesy of years of corporate life. I don’t miss the market listings–I have a market list of my own, on which I’ve ranked the various pro markets according to all kinds of personal factors, and so far, I haven’t submitted outside that list except for anthologies, which I usually find out about through word of mouth anyway. I […]
In which I have a new story
Project Write Faster is showing strong results so far–I began this story during Christmas, scarcely three weeks ago, and the first draft is already complete. May I be this productive all winter! In fact, I wish the same for any of you that write. […]
In which I think about bodies
My colleague has an eight-year-old daughter who worries about having fat thighs. Let’s pause to contemplate this. She’s eight. She’s active–she rides her bike and hikes with her dad–and she’s skinny. And so what if she wasn’t skinny… (a) that would be fine and (b) she’s eight. This kid isn’t a woman yet, won’t be for years, and she’s already dealing with the pernicious body-consciousness that women face. She knows the standard, and she knows she doesn’t measure up. What she doesn’t know yet is that it’s a fucked-up standard, and that no one measures up. The most beautiful women in the world don’t even measure up. Tabloid headlines find imperfections in Jennifer Lawrence, Michelle Obama, Jennifer Lopez. How’s a kid supposed to read that? I really want to fight this standard. I want beauty to not even be a standard. I want beauty to be a grace note, something we can enjoy and celebrate, but not a job we have to do, not a price of entry. How does this tie into writing? I think it goes along with committing to diversity in general. Speculative fiction, like romance, has a lot of examples of princessy female characters whose worth […]
2012 in Review
Some statistics from the writing trenches this year: Rejections nearly tripled vs previous years. Not an accident–submissions also nearly tripled. Acceptances dropped, with no new pro sales in this calendar year–only reprints. Of course I feel less than happy about that, but I see it as a result of a strategic change I made: I focused on my novels in the early part of the year, and didn’t finish any new stories until quite late in the year (and still haven’t finished the final drafts of a couple of them). I now have a nice crop of things that are ready, or almost ready, to submit in the new year. I got to see my work reprinted in not one but two print anthologies, which was pretty exciting–I now have two lovely paperbacks on my desk, between bookends which are optimistically huge and heavy, built to bracket a whole lot more books. I remain less prolific than I would like, and too easily derailed by life events. My goals for 2013 include constructing a writing plan that will hold steady not only in the weeks where everything is golden, but in the weeks where I have a three-day migraine, a […]
twelve twelve twelve
Revising a story. It’s hard, so I made a playlist. Tori Amos, “Night of Hunters”Matt Mays, “Take It On Faith”Handsome Family, “If the World Should End in Fire”Handsome Furs, “Repatriated”Black Keys, “Sinister Kid”Metric, “Clone”Divine Fits, “Salton Sea” and “For Your Heart” (yes, they get two, they’re that good)Lana Del Rey, “Blue Jeans”Whitehorse, “Peterbilt Coalmine”Cat Power, “Ruin”Joel Plaskett Emergency, “Somewhere Else”Neko Case, “Hold On, Hold On”Patti Smith, “Changing of the Guards”Cyndi Lauper, “True Colours” What do these songs have in common? Well… this story, I guess. It’s all so very subjective. I’m on the second-last scene and I think it needs hot chocolate. […]
“looking beyond the embers of bridges glowing behind us”
Revisiting the ending of SCARS OF KINSHIP, because this book has come close to convincing people to represent it, but not close enough, and I finally figured out the way in which it was a copout. If I were a quicker learner, a brighter mind, a more diligent worker, a more serious introvert… but I am what I am, and I have done what I can. And I think it’s pretty fucking awesome. […]