I think I've invented a new form of rejectomancy: figuring out which magazine I've been rejected by based on the postmark on the SASE. (I've taken to putting my own address in the return address spot on my SASE's, so I can't tell by that.)

"Hmmm...Brooklyn," I said to myself as I sorted through the mail today. "That must be my rejection letter from Paradox."

And it was: a rejection on my other Arthurian story. Nice rejection letter, though. Christopher Cevasco said that he liked the writing, but thought that the story sort of fizzled out on the last page rather than having a satisfying ending.

That's pretty much the same thing that the other editor who's seen this one said. Not quite sure what to do about it, though. I kind of like the story in its present vignette-like form, but it could be the beginning of something longer. Given how tricksy Athuriana is in both a commercial (it's hard to sell) and artistic (it's hard to say anything really fresh), I'll probably just stick this one in the drawer for a while.

Cevasco did ask me to send him more. I don't have anything else really suitable for Paradox at the moment, but given my current semi-obsession with the 17th century, I think it's only a matter of time.

In other fiction writing news, I sent off a submission to Polyphony 4 a few days ago, and the story I currently have at Weird Tales is just four days away from setting a record for the longest I've ever had to wait for a response from an editor.

Today at work, I started indexing the manual I'm working on. This is slightly premature, maybe, since some portions of the manual aren't done yet, but I'm waiting on input from other people for those sections. I decided to at least index the figures and tables, since those are not likely to change much.

I've never done an index before. I have some pretty good guidelines from my company style guide, and some hundred already existing company manuals I can consult for examples (though the quality of indexes in existing manuals varies pretty widely). Still, it can be a bit tricky: every so often I'll look at a nice little set of index keywords that I've typed into the FrameMaker marker dialog box, and think, "Well, that all looks very tidy, but if I were actually trying to look that figure up, I wouldn't look under any of those words." Duh.

There was even one figure for which I could not only not come up with any really good indexing keywords, I couldn't think of any really compelling reason why I'd want to look it up! I think I may just remove that one from the manual.

On Friday, I actually got to take a screwdriver to one of these gizmos that I'm documenting, and figure out how to do stuff like take out the fuses. Getting the fuse assembly out was moderately easy. Shoving the thing back in was a different story. It went about halfway, and then stuck. I think I spent about 10 minutes taking the thing out, shoving it back in again, examining the prongs on the end that were clearly not lining up with slots somewhere in the depths of the instrument. I was just about ready to go grovel to the methods development chemist and explain that I broke her machine, when inspiration struck: I jiggled the fuse assembly from side to side, and it popped right in.

Then I went back to my desk and figured out how to say "jiggle" in technical English. (I think I settled on "shift from side to side".)

Yep, that's the glamorous life of a tech writer.

Time for me to sign off now: today's mail also brought me my DVD's of Neverwhere, and I want to watch an episode or two before bed.