December 1999
Saturday, December 4

A looooong time since last update. Two stories have come back. "To Anna From The Styx" came back from Hitchcock's and the winners of the Strange New Worlds III anthology have been announced. I'm not in the table of contents in the SNW III anthology, so that means another rejection.

I have four stories on my desk that need to go back out in the mail. Two of them I wanted to do some rewriting. Man, I've fallen behind! I gotta keep on top of this and I keep telling myself that.

The fifth story on my desk, "Ghost In The Machine", was my entry in SNW III, which is a Star Trek anthology/contest for new writers. I'm going to give that one the rewrite it should have gotten in the first place and send it in March for the fourth Strange New Worlds. Plus two or three others. I say that every year!

I have to get my story finished for WOTF by the end of this month.

Much to do, but the discipline is still elusive. Well, hey Rob, discipline doesn't have a mind of it's own!
I know, I know. Sometimes it's hard to get out of my own way.



Tuesday, December 7

Another story in the mail! "To Anna, From The Styx" is on its way to Talebones. That's my first submission there. I met Patrick and Honna Swenson at WesterCon in Spokane last summer.

I have four stories still on my desk waiting to go back out again. They are:

"Messages": I'm waiting to hear what Bruce Holland Rogers has to say about it. Then I'll get that out in the mail again.

"Recall": Last year's Christmas story. There's some changes I could do, but a couple of Rules Of Submission include "keep stories in the mail" and "must refrain from rewriting."

"Loud Hollow": This one will get a title change. More rewriting is needed for this one than "Recall."

"Ghost In The Machine": A Trek story. This one can't be mailed until March when Strange New Worlds IV is open for submissions. I'll be rewriting this one later this winter.

There's the rundown. Right now I prefer to get new stuff and more of it out in the mail, so I don't want to waste too much energy on rewrites. There is a point in the process of writing a story when one has to say "Enough. I've done my best. Now let's move on to the next one and apply what I've learned." With each new story, I'll get better. And I need that consistent energy that helps in writng a story and the only way to get that energy is by being productive on a regular basis. That means writing almost every day if not every day, with significant wordage each day.

In case it's not obvious, these stories listed above have been in the mail. I've just realized things that could be changed either by my own observation or by getting them workshopped, so they have remained on my desk after being returned from an editor.

I guess I could give myself a time limit on each one. Do a story rewrite per week until all four of those stories are back out in the mail. The rewrite work would be on top of new words each day as I make progress on the new stories.

This is the only way, isn't it. No question.
You may be seeing daily word counts around here soon.
Here I come Millennium!



Sunday, December 12

Christmas shopping is done. Well, most of it. Only easy stuff left.

Now all I have to do is finish a Christmas story. There's a group of us here that read Christmas ghost stories on December 24th. I have goal to get mine done.

Damn procrastination. Damn avoidance.

Having this web tv is too much of a distraction. Anything could be a distraction even if I didn't have internet access.

Change is hard.

Enough said.

More to come.



Tuesday, December 21

Christmas is almost here and I still haven't written my Christmas ghost story for the eve of the 24th.
I'm procrastinating of course.

I haven't quite connected with the story idea I have. I don't feel an emotional resonance nor a theme yet. There are ways of getting through that barrier. I'm going to do some work on that story today. In fact, I think it will be a short one and I'm going to try to get the bulk of it done today.

That's the plan. And now it's written in phosphorus for the world to see.

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I've bought the dollar gifts for Christmas Eve. There's a dollar store down the street from my place, so it was just one stop shopping. I do need to return there today. On Saturday I had bought various dollar gifts, more than enough for the ten people I'm buying for, but when I got home I realized I couldn't see a gift in all those dollar novelty-item for one particular person. So I'm going back today and exchange a bunch of them so I can get the same gift for everyone. I think everyone will be happy with it.
Sorry about the vagueness. I don't want to be specific about Christmas gifts on the internet!
I didn't do any Christmas cards this year. Shame on me!



Wednesday, December 29

I have tigers on my feet.

One of the christmas presents I got this year was a pair of slippers. Big tiger head slippers. They're kind of neat. I had wanted a pair to wear in my apartment, and I had mind getting the animal head type. I wonder how my sister knew I needed slippers. I never told her.

As for the Christmas Eve story reading: I did not finish my story. And I wasn't the only one that didn't bring one. Out of the ten of us, only three had stories to read. Good stories. I'll have to try again next year.

I'll be mailing a story for this quarter's Writers' Of The Future in the next day or two.

I'm worried about next Tuesday, that I won't get a story done for the first workshop of the new year (or new millennium).

I'm going to go try to get some writing done now.
More later.