Friday night was the week 2 Clarion party. Tina, Julie, and debtaber came down for the evening, and I got to hang out with them and with several members of the 07 class. Fun stuff.
On Saturday, my brother was in town for his birthday and we went to the Mariner’s game against the Blue Jays. It was a fun game to watch — lots of hits, a couple double plays, and the M’s won 8 to 3.
Also over the weekend: Rejection #43, a 17-day rejection from Strange Horizons
Had a lovely time going out to dinner at Tula’s Jazz club with some of my Clarion classmates. We got to meet up with Paul Park, who is in town to teach a one-day workshop through Hugo House. Sadly I can’t make it to the workshop today, seeing as I’m leaving for Whistler sometime in the next hour or two. Still it was nice to see everyone and catch up a bit.
Post-JaNo I haven’t generated a whole lot of new words, which is okay. I did manage to get the (very) short story I wrote mid-JaNo revised, so all …
Day 7 JaNo – 2061 today, 15573 total
One full week of making quota!
I think that four of my six clarion instructors told me that my stories were too neat and tidy, and that what they lacked was little tendrils of things working their way in from the world outside the story. When they told me that I nodded my head. Great idea, having the outside world creeping in at the edges of the story. And, at some level, I understood what they were saying, but I couldn’t really wrap my mind around what was needed enough to do …
Happy New Year!
All the cool kids are posting summaries of 2006 on their blogs, so here’s mine: 16 short story submissions, resulting in 12 rejections and 1 acceptance (3 stories are currently out at markets). Not the most impressive numbers, but 2006 was a ramping-up year for me, writing-wise, with most of the submissions going out in the second half of the year. Attending Clarion helped me be more confident in sending stories out, as did friendly competition with my Clarion classmates (and not-so-friendly threats from a certain stuffed Zebra).
Hopefully I’ll have bigger numbers this year (I subbed …
Well, my first Clarion story, “Tending the Mori Birds” was rejected at Clarkesworld, but I turned it around for a quick sale to Fantasy Magazine! It’s my very first sale, so of course I spent much of this past weekend celebrating (having heard on Friday that the story was accepted). And, as proof that I didn’t hallucinate the whole thing: http://oldcharliebrown.livejournal.com/87419.html.
Well, I wrote about 2.5k words this weekend to finish off the not-so-alternate-history story that has been plaguing me for several weeks now. I’m thrilled to have it hammered out–it kept trying to turn into a novel, but I showed it who was boss. Now all I have to do is tidy it up a bit and then I can start collecting crits on it!
I’m officially a Flickr junkie–I caved and payed for a full-featured account. The ever-so-smart people who designed the site rate the photos on a random mishmash of things (how many times it’s been viewed, comments, who calls it a favorite) to give it an ‘interestingness’ score. Competitive person that I am, I want my photos to get recognized as ‘interesting.’ So I spend way too much time finding groups in which to display said photos. That and I like to look at all the purdy pictures other people are posting. The whole thing is highly addictive. But it’s relatively harmless …
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, …
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.
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 …
