short stories

state of the industry roundup

Wow, a lot have posts about the state of the publishing industry have been hitting my Google Reader recently.

Agent Jennifer Jackson has a rundown of which houses are announcing layoffs.

Agent Kristin Nelson expresses confusion over HMH’s “acquisition freeze“.

Susan Wise Bauer, co-author of the classical homeschooling bible, The Well-Trained Mind, is on the verge of a nervous breakdown (her diagnosis, not mine!) over how all of this is affecting the latest edition of that book.

On the plus side, Amazon announced their 2009 Breakthrough Novel Award for unpublished novels. Contest opens February 2009.

On a personal level, I came back from Thanksgiving to the good news of a check in the mail from the sale of a short earlier this year. This was especially nice because this month I received two “good, but not quite there, send more” rejections for the one story I’m currently shopping around. Back to Ralan and Duotrope, I guess.

finished

It seems so long since I actually accomplished a writing goal that I deem it worthy for a blog mention.

The Xenobiologist story is first-draft complete at 4,410 words. And it was like pulling fingernails to write it, too. The plan is to not look at it until next year.

I was toying with the idea of writing a (short) story every week this month. Is that too ambitious? And does the Xenobiologist story count for Week 1, or am I supposed to come up with something else?

What’s next? Another Elinor or a Beauty and the Beast retelling? If you have an opinion, leave me a comment.

the paralysis of perfection

I admit it, I’m one of those moms who gets twitchy every time one of my kids colors outside the lines or decides that orange lettuce and purple tomatoes make an appetizing-looking salad. I was very uptight about the whole “place your sticker correctly in the space, properly aligned” and “follow directions to a T” business when the Firstborn was starting out on activity books, hovering to make sure he was doing it “right”. I’m pleased to note that my expectations of toddler and preschooler fine motor skills are far less unrealistic today than they were two years ago. While the Firstborn was made to color things yellow because darnit, that’s what the directions said to do, the Princess has the freedom to pick from a rainbow of choices. She is also free to pick markers over crayons, because really, markers are just plain more fun to color with.

The point of all this being that once upon a time my attitude was: if it can’t be done right, then it won’t be done at all.

Perfectionism is a beast I battle quite regularly in all areas of my life. It’s like a many-headed Hydra; if I chop one head off, it sprouts another as soon as my back is turned. Just this week I balked at actually starting any of the short stories spinning in my head on the pretext that they weren’t ready.

Well, the truth is that I wasn’t ready to write anything less than perfect.

Once I got to the root cause of my procrastination, I pulled out that trusty old Sword of Slaying and hacked off yet another head of the perfectionism beastie. Then I opened up Word and got a start on two of the stories.

Progress is miserably, painfully slow and I’m avoiding reading what little I’ve written, but at least it’s happening.

Oh, and today? The Firstborn got out a sticker book his grandfather gave him for his birthday and, aside from helping him find which stickers went with the pages he wanted to do, I did not watch him at all.

There’s hope for me yet.

the Plan

I love Plans! And now I have one!

So, here is my writing Plan for the rest of the year:

Write short stories. These may or may not include: an Elinor story; a story set in the Out of Shape world; a retelling of Beauty and the Beast; something to submit to Beneath Ceaseless Skies; the story I came up with while drawing a wall with lots and lots of bricks, the Captive Xenobiologist who has been begging me to rescue her soon, please, okay? thanks; something else entirely.
Playful, low-key planning of Kai’s book. (Maybe I can even come up with a title. That would rock.)
AND, if my beta readers get back to me soon-ish: If their edits are light, I will happily re-revise Season of Rains before sending it to my second-round betas; if the comments are more along the lines of “this is broken like a very broken thing”, then I will spork my eyes, throw myself a pity party, and sulk for several days. And re-revise next year.