Not all blog posts need titles.
I think a month has passed. It must be time for a blog post. J
So what’s new? All the stories are finished and sent. I did try to get this accomplished sooner but as soon as I’d send one story out, it would come pinging back again. Cue, anxious rereading and rewriting and angsting and wangsting while I dithered between trunking and resubmitting. Seriously, submitting shorts when I really want to be a novelist may just be the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. See how I speak for nobody but myself there. I finally decided not to send my stories to the places with the best shot of acceptance, but the places with the longest response time. That’ll show them. No coming home till the novel is done. J
Last week I got two rejections. One was particularly hurtful as I got it the same day as I received news that my story Begin with Water, in the Dead Souls anthology, had received an Honourable Mention in the Years Best Horror. Srsly! Could they not have held off on the rejections for one miserable little 24 hour period so I could enjoy it unsullied? Obviously not. And to return to the honourable mention, I can barely believe it. Talk about a little unexpected happiness. Two of the stories from that antho. got an HM. I’m still stunned. The editor of the anthology put it up on Facebook and I had to go and Google it before I believed him.
In other news I am working away on my novel. I find it hard to talk about which is why I don’t really blog about it. I have to hold it close to my chest. But it is working and so am I. I need to obsess about just one thing I think, which is why having stories constantly returning home and showing me their wounded paragraphs was not good for the novel. They pulled me out of it, plus I dislike being slapped across the face by the cold fish of rejection while I’m in full-on creative genius mode. J
One other thing about writing and rejection. I had a dream the night after I got the HM and the rejection one after the other, where I was watching a girl riding a horse. Or trying to. The girl had come for help riding this horse, as she just couldn’t, basically because the horse was crafty and cunning and kept getting her off. Each time she hit the ground with the most solid thump. I winced in the dream it sounded that bad. And yet, each time she’d get up, ask the instructor who was there some question or another, and get back on. I kept thinking she’d get really hurt. She kept thinking she’d ride the horse. It was a bit vague beyond those details, but I do remember feeling great admiration for her tenacity in the end. Anyway, when I woke up, I wondered of course whether it was one of those metaphorical dreams, and the rider is me and the horse is , I dunno, writing success, self discipline, I’m not exactly sure. I do remember how much falling hurt though. And how bloody crafty that horse was. It was a chestnut with a wide blaze down its face. If you ever see such a horse, run. J
And random titbit from my life. Do you all remember the Alanis Morrisette song, Isn’t it ironic, which wasn’t? Well, does this qualify as ironic then? Could Alanis work this into a verse? Last summer I had my garden fenced. Before that it had a three foot brick wall separating it from my neighbours on either side. Now it has a six foot wooden fence. As the houses are all bungalows, that now means I have a private garden. Before this I never bothered with the garden as it just felt so, exposed. Last week, the sun came out and for the first time I went out and sat in the garden in the sun for a while. It felt, very gardenly. So this weekend I planned to do all manner of gardening stuff, plant a few plants, tidy out the garden shed, mow the lawn, look at the moss on the lawn and wish it would go away all by itself, oh, and read, and other nice stuff. But do I get to do that? Oh, no. The sun stayed out all right but one set of my immediate neighbours decided to build a garden shed. So, all weekend long, there has been men on scaffolding sorting out the roof of their shed, and basically having a bird’s eye view into my garden. Feels just like the old days when I never used the garden. They were there all day Saturday and Sunday. All day. I expected they’d be there today again and maybe be finished real soon. However there’s no sign of them today so I expect they are people who work a day job and probably only have the weekends to build stuff. So, I guess next weekend, they’ll be sitting there again, probably on top of the roof putting on tiles this time. So, is that ironic, or just annoying? I am planning to go away next weekend, just to avoid them.
Oh, and one other thing. I miss not being part of a writing site. I always liked having Liberty Hall there. I’m half tempted to go back and jump through all the hoops, but then I think, what’s the point if I’m trying to write a novel? I can’t be distracted with flashes while I’m doing that. Plus, as I have mentioned upstream, I’m not the kind that can share the novel while I’m going along. Is this the loneliness of the writer I’ve heard people speak of? It is not good.
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