"And I don't feel nothing at all. And you can't feel nothing small."
A dusting of snow last night. It was pretty enough. Today, it's mostly melted away, and there's rain. Currently, it's 36˚F. Last night, our shitty new LED streetlights robbed us of the warm orange glow I associate with snow in the city. Back in 1997, in "The Last Child of Lir," I think I called it "baby aspirin light."
Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Thank you.
I might have slept three hours last night.
Yesterday, I was going to begin work preparing The Red Tree for Centipede Press, but then I realized that I do not have an electronic version of the final text, the text that Roc published as a trade paperback in 2009. And then I realized that, actually, I'd need the slightly revised text that Roc published as a mass-market paperback in 2010, and I don't have that, either. Which means we're almost certainly going to have to resort of an OCR scan of the 2010 edition to get the text I'll edit for Centipede Press. And I can't afford to do that, so I've contacted Jerad Walters and I'm awaiting his reply. It's a big mess. And I should have realized, two years ago, that this problem would arise.
Returning to the subject of how I hurt myself and my writing with Quinn and Kathleen Tierney, I have this quote from my November 24, 2012 LJ entry, which predates yesterday's quote from the April 12th, 2014 entry by more than a year and four months, ample evidence that I understood the damage I was doing early on:
"I have come to the lowest point in my opinion of my work since...I don't know. There was a bad patch in 2007, but I'm not sure it's ever been this low. I love nothing that I am working on. And I am working on a lot. After The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, everything else seems like silly fluff. I thought, last year, that I needed a 'break' from the 'serious' writing. But I see now that I was horribly wrong. That it was a mistake. That there is nothing else I see any point in writing, if I am to write. And that's all I can do. I have no other professional options. And now I've let myself slide into a place from which it's going to be hard to break free. But I have to, if my writing is to continue to have any worth. To me. I'm not only talking about money. But much of what's gone wrong has arisen from a fear of poverty, from a loathing of poverty, and from taking on much more work than I can possibly handle. Now I'm blowing deadlines, and literally forgetting what I'm supposed to be working on. Sounds bizarre, but it's true. I don't precisely know how to escape this mess. Likely, it will cost me income I can't afford to lose. Likely, it will cost me opportunity. I just don't know. But here is the fact of it: I will never be a bestselling author. After twenty years, it's time for me to accept that. I am, at my best, a very good writer, and I will not sacrifice that."
When I wrote that, I was trying to finish Fay Grimmer, the unpublished original second Quinn book, the one I pulled from the publisher early in 2013, after it had been accepted, and replaced with the somewhat less rancid Red Delicious.
It's a fool's game, trying to make sense of all this.
TTFN,
Aunt Beast
Please have a look at the current eBay auctions. Thank you.
I might have slept three hours last night.
Yesterday, I was going to begin work preparing The Red Tree for Centipede Press, but then I realized that I do not have an electronic version of the final text, the text that Roc published as a trade paperback in 2009. And then I realized that, actually, I'd need the slightly revised text that Roc published as a mass-market paperback in 2010, and I don't have that, either. Which means we're almost certainly going to have to resort of an OCR scan of the 2010 edition to get the text I'll edit for Centipede Press. And I can't afford to do that, so I've contacted Jerad Walters and I'm awaiting his reply. It's a big mess. And I should have realized, two years ago, that this problem would arise.
Returning to the subject of how I hurt myself and my writing with Quinn and Kathleen Tierney, I have this quote from my November 24, 2012 LJ entry, which predates yesterday's quote from the April 12th, 2014 entry by more than a year and four months, ample evidence that I understood the damage I was doing early on:
"I have come to the lowest point in my opinion of my work since...I don't know. There was a bad patch in 2007, but I'm not sure it's ever been this low. I love nothing that I am working on. And I am working on a lot. After The Drowning Girl: A Memoir, everything else seems like silly fluff. I thought, last year, that I needed a 'break' from the 'serious' writing. But I see now that I was horribly wrong. That it was a mistake. That there is nothing else I see any point in writing, if I am to write. And that's all I can do. I have no other professional options. And now I've let myself slide into a place from which it's going to be hard to break free. But I have to, if my writing is to continue to have any worth. To me. I'm not only talking about money. But much of what's gone wrong has arisen from a fear of poverty, from a loathing of poverty, and from taking on much more work than I can possibly handle. Now I'm blowing deadlines, and literally forgetting what I'm supposed to be working on. Sounds bizarre, but it's true. I don't precisely know how to escape this mess. Likely, it will cost me income I can't afford to lose. Likely, it will cost me opportunity. I just don't know. But here is the fact of it: I will never be a bestselling author. After twenty years, it's time for me to accept that. I am, at my best, a very good writer, and I will not sacrifice that."
When I wrote that, I was trying to finish Fay Grimmer, the unpublished original second Quinn book, the one I pulled from the publisher early in 2013, after it had been accepted, and replaced with the somewhat less rancid Red Delicious.
It's a fool's game, trying to make sense of all this.
TTFN,
Aunt Beast