Category Archives: Blog

A bit from column “A” and a dab from column “B”.

No more fun for me. Back to the grind . . .

Four cups of coffee followed by a chaser of two cups of (non-herbal) tea leads to about 1500 words and the near-completion of a first draft. Not, lamentably, one of the three I’ve been glaring at for the last couple weeks, but a whole brand new one that I started ’cause I had an opening. Sigh. I suspect this one will be unsaleable, because, again, I’ve written to one, highly competitive market only. But I enjoyed writing it and I feel good about simply getting words on the page at last. ‘Course it’s not quite done yet. But I know the ending already and I’m almost there.

I’m beginning to think that if I don’t finish a story in its first week of creation, it won’t get finished. Now that’s just sad.

But at least I’m writing something.

I think I’m on the tail end of my caffeine lift. Do I have more tea, or crash?

On a happy note, our Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 2 DVD set came in today in the mail. Hurray!

I’m in a pissy mood. Just plain and simple, I’m grumpy.

First of all, my project is behind schedule ’cause the testing environment people were so pokey getting our environment set up. So, in order to make up the slack they created, us systems analysts need to now work shifts for the rest of the month because we all can’t test simultaneously in the same environment. When we do so, we crash each other’s jobs. So now I’m working a fucked-up schedule for the next three weeks with late nights and weekends and no overtime. I hate working Friday and Saturday nights. And I hate that I’m not getting overtime for it.

Next, I’m just plain feeling uncharitable. There’s a dimwit over in the LJ community who’s espousing the “poor man’s copyright” (send your manuscript to yourself registered mail, don’t open it, blah blah blah) as a means of protecting author’s works. The poor man’s copyright has been worthless since 1909. I tried to set him straight, as I believe in spreading the word about the writing biz when I can, and he’s just being irksome and pig-headed. Hell, I even cited sources and provided links which he blatantly said he had no intention of clicking on. The stupid git. It annoys me because I posted with good intentions–to set the record straight so folks won’t waste their time and money on the useless artifice. And he’s arguing with me while refusing to acknowledge my sources (my main one being a writer’s lawyer specializing in intellectual propery and publishing law, deceptive acts and practices, and complex litigation). No reason. Just ’cause.

Okay, normally something like that wouldn’t particularly bug me, but today I’m on a short fuse.

And finally, I’m especially miffed with myself because I seem to be, once again, mired in writer’s block. I sit down to write, and nothing comes. I re-read what I’ve got to get back into the flow (my standard operating procedure), and when it comes time to make new words, nothing, nadda, zip. Fuckity fuckity fuckity.

Fume. Stomp. Growl.

Got a rewrite request in the mail today from Leading Edge. Hot fucking damn! And it’s a very positive request, as in “provided you make this change, we would like to publish your story in our next issue.”

Woo hoo! I’m *this* close to making my first sale of the year!

*rewriting like a mad woman*

When I was younger, I always thought insomnia meant 3am wakefulness and tossing and turning and not being able to fall asleep. I thought I was immune. I never had problems sleeping through the night, nor did I have difficulty falling asleep. But I was always an extremely early riser. Now I know better. Insomnia is your red, bleary eyes popping open at 5:30 AM and your heart pounding with excitement at the idea of waking up while the rest of your physiology rails profanities at it. Blagh.

Not being able to go back to sleep is a bitch. Especially when you’ve only had four or five hours of quality snooze time and it’s the seventh day in a row that this has happened. Fuckity fuckity fuck.

Matthew saw a show, several weeks ago, on the Biography channel or Discovery channel or something, about many great (terrible) historical world leaders. People like Stalin and Hitler and Mao, and some of them were loons, and some of them just really ambitious, but all of them, down to the last one, had problems sleeping. There’s also a greater percentage of tortured artists who have sleep dysfunctions.

Oh, and did I mention that sleep problems are a major symptom of incumbent or progressing mental illness? Well, it’s nice that my graduate degree in Psychology is of some use. I can tick off the symptoms of my ailing brain as they happen and hand a diagnosis on a plate to my physician. And then I can write my own psychotropics cocktail prescription. Snarl.

I wonder how much of it is whacked out circadian rhythms? I’ve always had an internal wake-alarm (and they’re only now examining the existence of an internal alarm clock in sleep research–snarf. The sillies.) which tended to wake me about a minute before my digital alarm went off, or that I could set if I needed to wake up in the AM without an alarm clock, but I think the clock in my brain got skewed. Like when you reach your arm out in bed and accidentally thunk your clock and it jumps forward a couple hours. That’s me. One poorly set clock.

Oh well. I’ll be awake for sure when my alarm goes off in about . . . oh an hour. So we won’t be late picking up our friend, Paul, at the airport. He’s flying in from Illinois to visit over the long holiday weekend. Hurray!

Hah. I ended this ranting entry on an up note. Good for me.

Overdid something at belly dance class on Tuesday. Owitch. Not sure what those muscles are, but they sure are protesting loud. It wasn’t this bad yesterday, but I felt twinges. Should’ve soaked in the hot tub. Owie. Will definitely spend some quality time under the Jacuzzi jets tonight. Ouch.

I took some ibuprophen, but, as I suspected, ibuprophen appears to inflame my thoracic nerve (don’t know why. That makes no sense that I can comprehend.) and now my arms ache and my hands are tingly. Dammit.

My story picked up thirty critiques on Critters this week. Blink. I typically average twenty, so that’s a larger sampling of readers than I’m accustomed to. Lotso mixed reviews. I got TWO regulars who said this was the best thing of mine they’ve read. I’d be worried except they’re usually pretty glowy about my stuff. And I got several useless “you should re-write this story completely and make it my story instead of yours” and quite a few comments about the vocabulary complexity. Can’t help it. “I don’t understand the big words you use” sorts of comments always irk me. Writers and aspiring writers should have extensive vocabularies. I got one critique from someone who didn’t know what the words “cloying” and “precipice” meant. Oh dear.

But, since I rewrite as I get comments in, the rewrite’s done and the story’s off to seek a home in the wide, wide world. Good luck little story! Do me proud!

Now if I can just finish up the @#*$&! three stories I’m currently working on.

Or, better yet, sell one of the ones that’re currently out.

Sigh.