Sunset at Rialto Beach

What I learned in my first hour on the beach: (1) Rocks covered in green slime are slippery, (2) climbing onto said rocks to avoid errant waves is a bad idea, and (3) hiking back to the car in wet jeans & shoes is cold.

Other than that (and a bit of rain Friday morning) I managed to stay dry. Friday night the sun came out just in time for sunset, which made for some nice pictures that are now up on my Flickr site.

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And this happy little fellow is called the gouger…

Have to head to the dentist this afternoon to have a filling replaced. Shudder.

In more cheerful news, tomorrow I’m heading out to the coast for a few days. There are some gorgeous beaches with nifty rock formations and tidepools, so it should be a good place to play photographer. And I’ll also be able to hit the Dungeness Crab festival in Port Angeles. Yum!

I have to assume that when I come back from my little jaunt all rested and recovered, I’ll be bursting with energy to work on one of my three new stories. I keep starting them, …

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Adventures in Portland

Kelly Link gave a reading at Powell’s Books on Friday, which was a good excuse for me to head down to Portland to visit tinaconnolly. In addition to the reading (which was excellent–I expected Kelly to read something from Magic for Beginners, but instead she read a story that isn’t out in print yet), we wandered around in Washington Park, found some delicious dark chocolate, and drank mojitos…All in all a very fun trip! I snapped a few pictures, which are up on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/78523822@N00/

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POETIC IMAGE NUMBER 37 NOT FOUND

Sat down at my computer to work on one of my new stories (I have two different things that I’ve started post-clarion I’m not making much progress on), but the words won’t come. Or they do come, but they’re completely the wrong words. The problem is that I’ve lost the creative intensity of the workshop. There’s no way to maintain that level of productivity and energy indefinitely, of course, but lately I’m feeling like a firefly that can’t light up.

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Freedom! Horrible, horrible freedom!

Well, I’ve done a third pass on my spiders, and they are now neatly packaged up and ready to go to F&SF in tomorrow’s mail (aka, I’m setting them free…hehe). That’s one down and two to go for the submission challenge (3 subs in Sept). Submission number two is in pretty good shape, and it’ll probably go to WotF. Submission number three…*shrug* There’s still a fair amount of time left, I’m sure something will come to me :)

Thanks to the excellent recommendations of my Clarion classmates, I’ve been reading tons of great SF lately (in reverse chronological order): Marooned …

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More photos than words…

I’ve been spending more time on photography lately than writing (thus the new icon – for bigger pix check out my flickr page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/78523822@N00/ ). It’s not necessarily a bad thing…photography is easier on my wrists, but still keeps the creative juices flowing.

This is not to say I haven’t gotten any writing done. Mostly I’ve been focusing my energies on revisions – I polished up my twice-workshopped draft of my spider story and did a first pass of revision on one of my other Clarion stories. I’m still stalled out on my fresh stuff, but rather than force it, …

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Artificial Deadlines

Well, I finally met my goal of writing a post-Clarion story. No, it isn’t the one I was working on when I wrote my last post. Yes, it’s flash fiction. And it’s more than a week late for the deadline. (I think the deadline went by so fast that there was a doppler effect on the whooshing noise it made!) As a result, I find myself questioning the utility of self-imposed deadlines as a motivational tool — they just don’t have the bite of real deadlines. So I think I’ll try writing without deadlines for a bit and see how …

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