Category: Navel Gazing

Tough Love

No justifications, no explanations, no excuses, though I will offer that some of these things might have been answered if I brought in the amount of material I’d intended to bring in before Life Happened the week before.

For now–possibly from now on–I won’t be posting Il Buono, il brutto, il cattivo of what I brought. Every comment I got was either Scene!Win or Scene!Fail. And the Fail list is sooo much longer…

Scene!Win

  • Scene I brought was “believeable, in a weird way.”
  • The “usual” compliments (smooth writing, believable/snappy dialogue, etc.)
  • Bits were “funny.”

Scene!Fail
(From lowest to highest degree)

  • “Soda” vs. “pop” (vs. “coke”)
  • Need to give a little better sense of exactly who the protagonist, by this point.
  • Need to be more explicit about the protagonist’s feelings toward his overall situation.
  • Need to show my protagonist’s reactions to the fantasy element (good, bad, or indifferent).
  • Confusion about how I described a facet of the fantasy element. (Totally unnecessary confusion, on my part.)
  • The fucking scene doesn’t really add anything, leaving some to still ask themselves exactly what the fucking story’s really about!!

*Sigh*

Hindsight is 20/20, but I’m thinking the reason I forced myself to bring and read 830 words of fail was for the symbolic victory of having written despite the week’s obstacles. Obviously, it didn’t even qualify as a Pyrric victory. It might’ve been if I’d have been able to finish more of it–I actually had about 500 more words, but I just couldn’t get them polished in time.

I think it’s time to drag my Inner Drill Sergeant back out…

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.