Thought-Drive

The local convention has come back around again, and all the ambitious thoughts I had this time last year seem like the rest of my dreams. I have a list of things I should have done, and it syncs nicely with the list of things I would have done had I the chance of a re-do. Oops. On Sunday, the fourth draft of the short story I wrote was sent to the contest, an entire month before the deadline. This was not done entirely to give me something useless to fret about, but mostly to let me focus on some real-life things that have become most pressing. I had some good talks with people who read it, and learned some things about my constantly improving style and feel. I've been told I'm getting better at tap dancing the knife edge of showing just enough and telling too little. And, crushing onslaught of reality or not, the voice in my head spinning sentences for the novel returned this very morning and I was happy for it. It's looking like this weekend will be productive on th...

This weekend saw a hiatus, not in writing, just in what I was writing on. A few weeks back I had a discussion with a writer friend. He had paused in working on his own novel to chisel out a short story for a competition we try to win every year. To date, he has two honorable mentions and I have nothing. Even though he knew I was working on a book, he questioned my lack of initiative to write something for this year's contest. At the time I was against it because I had nothing to write about, and felt no incentive to wrack my brain to uncover if that were really true. We left it at we were both writing, and that's what mattered. Last week an idea struck me, struck me so squarely that I decided I would write the story, and that it was going to that contest. The timing was good, I felt. Further inspired, I decided not to put any outlining or the usual amount of forethought into it. I wanted to sit down and let the idea take me somewhere. Normally, such an unfettered notion spel...

The query letters have gone out. Not to every place I could conceivably submit to, but on one particular website I found for registered agents, I certainly submitted to every single New York science fiction agent that accepts email queries. I did this because in such close proximity, such salesman could most easily shop my work to the imprints of larger houses face to face, provided they liked what I sent. Also, I wanted to test the waters, as it were, in case the query was too aggressive, passive, esoteric, or biting. I've received nothing but rejections so far, which is not surprising, but none of the kindly worded negatives implied any of my previously listed fears.  By the way, if you've ever been curious about the kinds of lives authors you've never heard of lead, they engage in daily conversation with both people and machines that include language like this: "...a s to your material I'm afraid I will be passing -- I'm just not enthusiastic enough ab...