How to be interesting.

abandon scholarship and creativity. Buy toys.

In other news, one of my stories has disappeared owing to the fact that Fiction Warehouse seems to have vaporized at last. "Name your next cat after a forgotten musician or a famous general" was precious and narcissistic, but the title was cool (Dean's title actually), and it did make it to the Story South notables list in 2004, even though it was too short to be eligible. It turns out I no longer have a copy of the story-that's how much faith I have in the web-so I pieced together a version out of rejection notices from Pindeldyboz and Smokelong. That's right, I save rejections, toss stories.

next to normal

xmas with family is good, as long as it's not my family. hung out with friends & their kids yesterday. A highlight? the 12yr old observed: "giant space wasps are homophobic" (we were watching doctor who and eating toffee)

oh, and I'm not usually a whiner about these things, but who sends out rejections on christmas day? lump of coal in my email . . .

revision strategy or superstition?

I rarely do simultaneous submissions. Nothing moral about it, I just can’t keep track. I do send out to a second place if the first place is taking for-fricking-ever to respond, since I can’t recall having something out there for 2/3rds of a year producing an acceptance. Regardless, if I haven’t gotten and answer or I’ve been rejected, I always make some sort of change to the piece before I send it out again. Sometimes this is in response to an editor’s criticism, and the change is substantial. But mostly it’s a little tweak, unnoticeable to anyone but me. For example, in the story I have coming out next, I removed the word “dewy.”

My characters did what?

Just received a rejection from a big deal journal, and the guy writing to me went out of his way to praise my concept before he explained that the story meandered too much. It's a fair cop. He even asked me to send again, which was unexpected. But then he added that he really liked it when my characters cooperated at the end for a righteous purpose.

I was weirded out by his interpretation of my characters' actions. Because they didn't have a righteous purpose at all. They were trying to kill a guy.

blue meanies

so i sent out a story at the advent of mean, weak, and then started sweating it. then, I got a rejection in about 24 hours--a really super sweet rejection that felt like, well, acceptance. now i know why boys get so confused.

rejection beach and stress city

aargh, going away tomorrow, but my work-at-the-beach vacation just went all pear-shaped as my must-get-done list tripled today. now the whole thing is just gonna be tele-work. and yet, I know that if i truly had free time I wouldn't use it to write. with work piling up, just begging to be neglected, I'll feel very creative. We are behind on prepping for travel and final grades though, so i'll be missing the reading at Politics & Prose tonight celebrating the Paycock Press release of Stress City: A Big Fat Book of Fiction by 51 DC Guys, ed. by Richard Peabody. Sorry fellas.

got a big, cold rejection yesterday, but one that occurred at the same time that I received a really swell attaboy from a reader, so the picking-up-and-dusting-off process went very smoothly.