Category: Navel Gazing

2008 Year in Review

Since I’m too chickenshit to post my yearly submission stats (I’ll do last month’s later), I’ll do this first-line-of-the-month blogmeme thing instead.

January – “Self-Esteem Issues”

February – Last year I tried to keep a running tab of submissions, rejections, and pubs.

March – Anyone have an opinion on the wisdom (or lack thereof) of writing while pursuing a (non-writing) graduate degree?

April – The editor of Six Sentences reminded me that I have a Twitter account.

May – I can’t believe I haven’t gotten to this.

June – Perhaps there was a deeper, more subconscious reason I haven’t blogged in weeks…

July –

August – This is on my goodreads “to-read” list and should be on yours, too.

(B. – it’s on my list, dude, I swear!)

September – 07:35 As usual, I’m going to spend Labor Day laboring.

October – 07:25 Back in the saddle today. ♫ blip.fm/~bgys

November – 08:09 TONIGHT! Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings!!! ♫ blip.fm/~mbbw

December – The subs period for a few of the mags I like to try closed last month.

2008 Lessons, Part I

If I’ve learned nothing else in 2008, it’s the first line of that lyric.

Studying for the first final exam that I’ve taken in well over a decade. It’s not a writing-related class, either. I’ve done harder things, but this stuff isn’t a cakewalk by a damn sight. Dunno how I’ve survived this semester, but after this final’s over, I gotta figure out a way to do it all over again after the New Year.

Saturday Brain Dump

Basically because I’m procrastinating, plus I couldn’t believe I came here today to find nothing on my site but reposted tweets, I needed some constructive filler.

I’m a big believer in Brian K. Vaughn’s view on writer’s block (“Writer’s block” is just another word for video games. If you want to be a writer, get writing, you lazy bastards.), but as a corollary, I believe that sometimes writer’s block is a way of telling you that there’s too much on your mind and that you need a core dump.

1
I’m not making excuses, but this has been a busy fall, between getting my academic feet wet again for the first time in a decade, family issues, and the physical/emotional perils of the writing life. I’m getting by, but at this point I feel like all I’m good for is waiting for the clock to run out on the rest of the year. It’s not necessarily a bad feeling, either.

2
I’ve been spending time deleting things, starting with crap I’m accumulating online, and finally perusing the crap taking up space on my hard drive. I freed up a few GB of space just this morning by deleting whole albums I don’t listen to anymore. There was just no reason for Neko Case’s entire catalog to be sitting on my hard drive for a year.

3
Still waiting to hear re: a bunch of October story submissions. Got one rejection back the other day and just haven’t had the time to figure out where to re-submit it.

4
Most of my reposted tweets lately have to do with this bastard of a story I’m writing. The story before it came out so easily, and with this one, I’m pulling teeth. Lesson learned: sometimes (some folks will say most times), you just have to construct a story.

5
I’m a long ways off from my goal of drafting a story a week. But my writing/editing output has never been more regular. I’d like to see more finished product for 2009.

That’s all for now, I think. Time to find something else to procrastinate over write.