Genius or folly

Today, a couple of changes to the Writing Progress Meters (over there on the right sidebar).

"Pale Roses" has been archived, since it is finished. (Finishing things feels good!)

I've added a new meter for "The Blue Wall," which is a children's story intended for eventual submission to Cricket Magazine (at least for starters). I'd mentioned I was going to shift from WotF Contest short stories to children's, and this kicks off that effort. On my agenda for this week on the short story front was simply to get the story concept cooking. My Muse handed over the title (which has a story smidge/history of sorts attached to it, but that'll come out in the story itself), along with the scent of magnolias, the sound of the ocean, and ghosts. I've fleshed it out a little beyond that, but I haven't started writing it yet, so I'm leaving it right there for now.

Crowmaker has a new meter, too. After much thought about the story itself and my career objectives, as well as the hunch I've had for a few years now that my voice and writing style might lend themselves better to a different genre than category fantasy (much as I love reading it), I made some decisions about Crowmaker and, as you can see, did a fair amount of hacking. (Fear not, the original, much-longer version is safely backed up for the next time I change my mind.) I've wondered from the start if this story might be well-suited to the Middle Grade/Young Adult market. The viewpoint character/protagonist is a teenaged girl. She didn't start out being the protagonist, just a person to tell the story for the real protagonist, the Crowmaker. But then she uh... made herself the protagonist. And thus the story has become as much, if not more, about her personal growth and the things she does as it has about the Crowmaker. And the story itself seems like so much MORE when I cut it back to its original story arc than it had become when I had three times as much word count cluttering it up.

The danger in such moments of indecision and decision, of course, is that my Muse is just fussing with stuff instead of putting forth the effort to come up with new material. It's really hard to know, sometimes, when your reason and your gut instinct are telling you things you should listen to, or when you're just trying to chase your tail instead of putting in the real work you should be. I honestly, at this moment, believe this is the right choice for this story. If tomorrow I change my mind, I have my old notes and ms backed up. The only thing I have to lose is a little time while I feel my way through what I'm doing.

And thus justifying my hack and slash of a perfectly good ms, I move forward!

The Muse comes through again

Finally, a painting for my mother. I'll leave it up for a few days in case any fixes or tweaks feel like reaching out and grabbing me when I walk past it, but it is done and I am pleased with it overall.

A quickie snapshot taken under completely unprofessional conditions:



And just in the nick of time, too, because the Muse has begun making noises about spending more time on Crowmaker again.

Good news?

The good news is, I'm perfectly normal!

For a writer.

Um... Yeah.

Actually, reading things like that does make me feel better--it reassures me that I'm not alone and that, if I'm going through the same things as the pros, I may be closer to joining them than I realize.

It's been a pretty productive week so far. Mailed out "Wings" and "Pale Roses" to their respective places on Monday, spent most of yesterday painting my bathroom, have a painting halfway to done for my mother (and I like it!), and have done some serious soul-searching and deconstruction/reconstruction on Crowmaker. And on my long term career goals (although "get stuff published" is still the general direction).

I logged into World of Warcraft last night for the first time in over a week and was met with a chorus of happy-to-see-you greetings and then dragged off to complete a quest and try to get a loot drop because "you just have to have one of these." Pixelated loot, yes--not a big deal. But the warm and fuzzies of good friends is priceless. I didn't win the drop, but I've already been told we WILL be going again until I get it. But you know, if my Tauren shaman does wind up with a beer-keg-bearing kodo mount, it'll be the recollection of how she got it that makes me smile every time I use it.

Rediscoveries

Right around the year 2000, I decided I was going to stop daydreaming about being a writer and actually do something about it. A discussion about the community of online gaming people I'd become a part of and the absolute necessity of the encouragement I received from them is for another time--suffice it to say, no one will ever convince me that online friendships are anything less than as real as it gets.

I had a 5 year old, a 2 year old, a husband with a job that required a ton of traveling, and a relocation from Illinois to South Carolina to contend with. I was pretty much solo parenting in a place where I knew absolutely no one. Looking back, I'd say I did a fair job of mucking through learning the ropes and growing, albeit gradually, as a writer. (Not to mention the whole "learning how to be a mother" business. Lord.) I was getting better. The publications that were accepting my stories were working more and more toward the pro level I yearn for. The sale to Cricket Magazine IS a pro sale.

And then I lost it. I still can't put my finger on exactly why--another relocation, another adjustment to a new place with no support system, but probably, mostly, a bout with depression that sneaked up and took me down without me really noticing that it had done so. At any rate, I simply lost the desire to keep trying. I sold "Frost King's Bride" to Cricket in 2004, but I'd pretty much stopped writing by the time it was published in 2005. Working through the requested edits for The World Between Earth and Sky was torture--I just wanted it off my hands, and I didn't care who published it or, quite honestly, if it was published at all. I couldn't remember why I'd ever wanted to write, and I couldn't remember a single good thing about the writing I had done.

So, as I was researching markets for "But He Had Wings," I noticed that my teeth sort of itched when I added The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction to my list of possibilities. The name of Gordon Van Gelder immediately popped into my mind, and my teeth itched even more. I couldn't quite remember exactly why, although I vaguely remember at some point deciding that submitting anything there was likely a monumental waste of my time. (F&SF is, for those not into the whole spec fic short story scene, at the top of spec fic short story publishers heap.) In search of a specific cause for the itchy teeth syndrome, I dug through my back files. I couldn't really find anything horrible, aside from a nice collection of Mr. Van Gelder's very polite "alas, it doesn't quite do it for me" rejection notes. Judging by the contents of F&SF, I do think that perhaps most of my stories will never "quite do it" for that market--not a complaint against the magazine or Mr. Van Gelder, just that sometimes, well, a writer and a reader (or a market) don't quite fit.

I also re-discovered some other interesting tidbits I'd forgotten:

The Leading Edge apparently does/did critiques as a matter of course for rejected stories, or at least I was fortunate enough to get them when they rejected "Disappearing" in 2002. Since the magazine is published by a rotating group of student editors at BYU and the critiques came on a form which three of them had filled out, I'm guessing it is/was part of their usual process. The three I got ranged from "It was good in some places, but I didn't get it" to "OMG, this is the best story EVER!" Another sign that sometimes it's not about your ability or the technical soundness of a story, but about whether or not the story makes that little magical connection with a particular reader. (Which is not to say I believe that story--or any of mine--are perfect. None of them ever are.) They did, however, later accept and publish "The Second" (in 2003). (A story that still whispers at me to come and revisit it, sometimes. I have a file of notes on how it could become a novel, if it really wanted to. Maybe.)

"Disappearing" also got a request to revise and resubmit from Strange Horizons in 2001. They ended up rejecting it anyhow, but the revision suggestions they gave me made it a stronger story. The same editor (Chris Heinemann, who is no longer with them, it looks like) also offered personalized feedback on another story they rejected. I am not the only person who's received the human touch treatment from these people, even if I had forgotten how awesome they are until my walk through my back files. Hats off to the folks at Strange Horizons.

I entered "Disappearing" in the Writers of the Future contest in 2002. I have no recollection whatsoever of having done this.

My publication in Cricket Magazine in 2005 made me eligible for an associate membership at SFWA and a full membership at SCBWI. Neither of which I have followed up on. I got a story published in a pro market--at CRICKET, for God's sake--and I have done NOTHING to build on that.

Where the hell has my head been for the last few years?!

Actually, to be fair to myself, I didn't just stop. I have a middle grade novel that I landed an agent for, but that she eventually sent back to me because she couldn't place it. I have a handful of half-developed children's nonfiction book ideas, and notes and a first chapter for a second middle grade novel that I never finished (but that Joey sometimes still asks me about, God love him). But I couldn't quite get them to GO--I was stretching for something above what I'd been doing, and I couldn't quite make that leap.

Then. I can blame it on a depressive episode or I can call it burn out or I can just shrug and say "I dunno." But whatever happened, it happened. All I can do is remember what I've learned and appreciate the people who've believed in me along the way and keep learning and trying.

Sounds like a plan to me.

Dithering at top speed

I may or may not have mentioned that I am of the opinion that I have at least a passing acquaintance with manic-depressive tendencies. Or rather, I acknowledge that my moods and energy have a marked pattern of moving from high to low and back again on a pretty regular and mostly predictable basis. It's not debilitating, and I therefore don't treat it as a disease so much as personality tendencies that I've learned (with varying degrees of success) to manage. (Disclaimer: I'm talking about my personal experience with this. Obviously, there are others who are on much less civilized terms with this disorder--to the point where it is a disorder and not just tendencies. A matter of degree and all that. I do not make light of their situation; I speak only for myself, and sometimes I speak with humor because that is also part of my coping mechanism.)

Having just dragged myself through a decidedly low stage, I'm not surprised to find my engines revving again this week. Dozens of things I want to/should accomplish started buzzing in my brain and would happily chase each other into exhaustion if I allowed them, with the end result being that I start dozens of things and finish nothing-IF I allowed that to happen. Being all too familiar with the high-pitched white noise sound of my manic phase kicking into gear, I immediately instigated one of my usual tactics and sat down to make lists of projects and steps required to complete them and estimated time required (severely padded, because I know I'm prone to overestimating my abilities at times like this). And then I sat down with a calendar, reminded myself that there are only 24 hours in a day and that a certain portion of them are already allotted to sleep and taking care of kids and minutia like that, and scheduled a portion of those projects into the next couple of months. It's the equivalent of giving a toddler a basket full of building blocks to distract him from pulling other stuff out at random and making a big mess.

The other advantage is that I have things on my calendar to work toward, which provides a focus for my manic days. ("It's on my calendar! I need to finish it before I allow myself to run off and do anything else!") AND, it's a motivation when those days wane back to depressive days of much less energy. ("It's on my calendar. Crossing it off my list will make me feel better. I guess I can manage to do that one thing.")

My other tendency on manic days (OK, on any days) is to constantly feel like I've accomplished nothing, even when I objectively know I have. The daily rough tally I keep in an attempt to stay objective indicates that I've put in 10-12 hours a day for the last several days on either writing or household-related work (with probably 2/3 of those hours landing on the household side). I have:

• Done the weekly cleaning of the bathrooms (2.5 of them). Hate bathrooms. Hate, hate, hate.
• Plunged two different toilets on three separate occasions. Hate stopped-up toilets. Hate, hate, hate.
• Painted the new patch of drywall in our bathroom, scoured our shower, and moved all our shower stuff from the boys' bathroom back to ours.
• Started a new painting for my mother.
• Done the usual dishes, cooking, laundry, running kids around, grocery shopping, homework helping, etc.
• Measured the living room/kitchen/dining room area of our house (which includes 2 hallways and a half bath) which are sorely in need of a real paint job and calculated how much paint I'll need to buy for that job. (They still have the flat cheap primer, which holds onto every single speck of dirt and scuff marks aimed at it.)
• Dealt with my annual physical and the bi-annual bloodwork that goes with my thyroid condition. (Hate bloodwork. Hate, hate, hate.)
• Done a big block of revisions to "Pale Roses," which is now only in need of typing in proofreading level stuff and a final prep for submission.
• Researched magazine markets for "But He Had Wings," which is now ready to come down off its Honorable Mention pedestal and get back to work finding a real home. (Or maybe re-researched, since I'm familiar with most of these markets and only need to touch base with them again when I'm making the "where do I send it first?" decision.)
• Re-researched children's/young adult magazine markets and added them to my writing schedule in lieu of more WotF stories. (I've been itching to write some speculative fiction for kids, so I thought this would be an acceptable switcheroo for a few months. It's also the field where I've made my only pro sale so far, so, you know... Maybe following up on that success, even belatedly, is not a bad idea?)
• Made great strides in finding a fresh angle on Crowmaker and even wrote a new (small, but new) scene for it yesterday. (I have not updated my progress meter for it. I've done some shuffling around from one software to another and from an old file with stuff I know I won't use (probably) to a new file with just the stuff I'm sure I will use (probably), so I'm not sure how accurate it is at this point, or what my real word count is.

Today, I will type in the mostly-final revisions for "Pale Roses." Tonight, the boys and I will clean up the basement play room. Tomorrow I will do a final proof of "Pale Roses" and prep it to send out. Tomorrow after school, we will entertain a dozen or so fifth grade boys with video games and pizza.

Come on, manic self. Surely even you have to feel we're doing pretty well this week?

Just like I really know what I'm doing

Sat down with my marked-up ms for "Pale Roses" today and typed in revisions and wrote all the new material I needed to write--including a new ending, which was not nearly as overwhelming as I'd feared it might be. I am cautiously optimistic about the story, at this point. It feels much more whole and finished than it had, previously. I'll let it sit a few days before I print out a fresh ms and take a red pen to it for line level editing. I doubt at this point that it'll make the Sept. 30 deadline for this quarter's WotF contest, but I'm fine with it not getting in until the next quarter if that's what it takes.

I also started a(nother) painting for my mother. She requested "Oh, just something" for her new dining room wall when I was visiting over the summer, which tickles me even though I'm 42 years old. I suppose you're never too old to feel special when your mom wants to hang up your picture on the refrigerator. Err... dining room wall. I'd started one for her a month or so ago, but it is refusing to evolve from its ugly stage. So I have snubbed it and am turning to another idea.

So, you all remember our lovely little lightning-struck tree and its friend the tipped-over lamp post? Hubby got the lamp post all fixed up a couple of weeks ago and got all the dead branches out to the curb and our front yard was (mostly) hunky-dory again. High winds came through this weekend and knocked another (evidently weakened and/or dead) branch out of the tree. Onto the lamp post. Scraped the side of the van, but no damage to it. Mr. Lamp Post, however, is once more down for the count. Poor guy.

To-do list for this week:

• More Crowmaker research reading. Maybe even some new word count, since I feel close to figuring out where I'm going. Again.
• Paint for the newly-patched drywall above our shower. So we can once again take showers in it, instead of hauling stuff upstairs to the boys' bathroom.
• See if I can get this new painting past the ugly stage for my mother.
• The usual homework/housework/kidwork routine.

Making lemonade

Progress so far this week:

• Finished making notes on what "Pale Roses" still needs and marked up the ms to indicate to myself where I wanted to add/tweak things, and what I wanted to do in those places.

• Spent some time hashing over the main plot line for Crowmaker and considering which subplots work with that main plot and which don't.

• Made a trip to the library for books of a background research nature for Crowmaker.

• Started reading the above books.

I have not felt in a writing kind of mood, but I can darn well still do planning and research.