Pinky swears are sacred (or, why I'm in writing overdrive)
So there I am at RadCon. It's dinner. It's Saturday night. There at the table are myself, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, bravado111, Dan Duval, bjcooper and mikigarrison. (I may be forgetting someone.) Kris and bravado111 are on my case about submitting my work: "You don't do it enough," they say. It became an embarrassing and yet oddly loving sort of scarlettina gang bang on the subject of submissions.
So I made a pinky swear. With Kris. In front of witnesses. It goes like this: I have to submit three short stories within three days of my return home from RadCon, or she gets to beat me up when I get to the workshop at the end of the month. The others get to fight over who gets to hold me down while she beats me up, but the end result is that she gets to beat me up. And I have to report on my progress. So here I am. Bullied. Abused. Beaten into submission.
Or rather, I should say, beaten into submitting.
So this is my first report: "Down to the Bone Water," submitted to Strange Horizons last night, February 18, Year of Our Lord 2008. (Well, I'm Jewish, so it's really the year of your Lord, since my calendar says 5768 but who's counting?)
So that's my first report.
Second report will come this evening. At lunch time, I finished what I think is a good, solid draft of "The Winter Wife" that's ready for submission. (bravado111, that's the green man story.) What scares me is the third story, because it's got to be a draft of "The Teacher's Daughter," which has been over-workshopped and overworked. What worked for me with "Winter Wife," also over-workshopped, was going back to my very first draft, thinking about my original intentions for it, considering what feedback I could remember (because reading over the notes I received would have killed any hope of my revising the story in a timely, dispassionate way), and then just picking and choosing what I thought would work. As I consider it now, I'm really pleased with what I've got. Now I just have to get it out the door.
Safety tip: Do not make pinky swears with KKR. Or, if you do, don't make them with the idea that You'll Show Her! God will make you sorry. And you'll probably get beaten up.
So I made a pinky swear. With Kris. In front of witnesses. It goes like this: I have to submit three short stories within three days of my return home from RadCon, or she gets to beat me up when I get to the workshop at the end of the month. The others get to fight over who gets to hold me down while she beats me up, but the end result is that she gets to beat me up. And I have to report on my progress. So here I am. Bullied. Abused. Beaten into submission.
Or rather, I should say, beaten into submitting.
So this is my first report: "Down to the Bone Water," submitted to Strange Horizons last night, February 18, Year of Our Lord 2008. (Well, I'm Jewish, so it's really the year of your Lord, since my calendar says 5768 but who's counting?)
So that's my first report.
Second report will come this evening. At lunch time, I finished what I think is a good, solid draft of "The Winter Wife" that's ready for submission. (bravado111, that's the green man story.) What scares me is the third story, because it's got to be a draft of "The Teacher's Daughter," which has been over-workshopped and overworked. What worked for me with "Winter Wife," also over-workshopped, was going back to my very first draft, thinking about my original intentions for it, considering what feedback I could remember (because reading over the notes I received would have killed any hope of my revising the story in a timely, dispassionate way), and then just picking and choosing what I thought would work. As I consider it now, I'm really pleased with what I've got. Now I just have to get it out the door.
Safety tip: Do not make pinky swears with KKR. Or, if you do, don't make them with the idea that You'll Show Her! God will make you sorry. And you'll probably get beaten up.