Haven’t been sleeping well all this week. Between just having a restless time of it, Hobkin’s been restless too and keeps hopping up and down next to me all night, waking me up every time he does it. To make matters worse, I’ve been seeing an encore of my early AM insomnia. Been barely able to make it through the workday, calamity-free, even slamming high intensity coffee. Not good. And my hands and arms, which for several months have been pain-free, have started giving off warning tingles and little zapping shooting pains again. Dammit.
Writing stats:
Finished the rewrite on the Magic Realism piece. It’s out. Fwoosh.
The Urban Fantasy that’s up at Critters will be coming down after today. It’s got twenty-four crits now–a nice, manageable number. I expect a few more to trickle in between today and tomorrow, but I’m fine with this level of feedback.
I’m hearing some dissatisfaction with the ending, which has brought about something of a quandary. This story has a pretty heavy addiction theme. I didn’t intend to submit this to On Spec for their “Me and Mr. Jones” issue, but two critters now have suggested I do so. Problem: it’s 1000 words longer than On Spec‘s maximum stated length. So, do I want to totally overhaul the ending and gut some of the earlier bits to see if I can cull 1000 words? Or do I just want to do a less aggressive rewrite and just skip sending it to On Spec? Ponder ponder ponder.
No new words, though. My muse is undoubtedly napping somewhere. At least one of us is getting some sleep.
No no no. Just keep it the same length and let other folks have a crack at that special On Spec. I’ve got an addiction story that did really well at Viable Paradise, but has racked up 7 rejections since then. It’s currently at Infinite Matrix, but I’m sending a query soon to see what’s up with it. If they don’t want it, I’d hate to miss the On Spec deadline because I was too timid to query.
Haven’t been sleeping well all this week.
I haven’t, either. I’ve been sleeping very lightly every night and having lots of vivid nightmares. And yes, the kits can be a distraction, too. I’m sorry to hear that you’re experiencing similar difficulties. Bad nights almost make the days in between a write-off (no pun intended).
The Urban Fantasy that’s up at Critters will be coming down after today. It’s got twenty-four crits now…
You’ll have to deal with at least one more! 😉 I read the story last night, and I’ll write up a crit for you sometime today.
I’m hearing some dissatisfaction with the ending… do I want to totally overhaul the ending and gut some of the earlier bits to see if I can cull 1000 words?
I don’t know if my crit will help here, but I also had some questions about the ending and the internal logic leading up to it. I think you might be able to pare the prose down a bit, but maybe not that much.