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Nov. 5th, 2005 06:11 pmI keep wanting to write an update entry which tells you all about the personal lives of my friends. This would not be fair on my friends, so please understand that I have friends and that they have personal lives. And that I am not blogging about them.
So instead of telling you all about the private lives of some truly fascinating people I am going to tell you that I have decided on four exercises for the 'Writing using your sense of smell" workshop tomorrow. And that one of them includes mint chocolate, two of them use essential oils (I wrote a bunch of essential oils into my Rhonda the Geek novel this morning, just because I wanted to keep my life in harmony with itself) and the last is just about my all-time favourite exercise.
I just read back those two paragraphs and realise that I am being singularly curmudgeonly. Lots of information *about* interesting things, but nothing actually interesting said. That is partly due to the weather and partly because it is an allergy-day and partly because, well, let's face it, I am curmudgeonly.
The good news is that a friend has let me borrow a Ryman book, so I am reading Ryman tonight. Geoff Ryman is not really a cheering read, but he is such a good writer that I enjoy the unhappiness.
The even better news is that if I keep up the word count like a good child, I might actually meet all my 15 November deadlines. Everything is progressing nicely, and I resolved the big issues surrounding the second toughest article yesterday - I now have hooks to hang ideas off for all five pieces of non-fiction. Which means I have no excuses. And only 10,000 words to accomplish my no excuses in. I sent off a non-fiction article last night and got an email this morning saying "Yes, please, but can we publish it over two issues" so not only is one revised and gone, but it is beyond worrying about. On the fiction front I have about 15,000 words to write. Some of that is novel and some short story. No, I am not going to add the numbers together and decide to run away to Bermuda instead of writing. Not. Not. Not.
In my curmudgeonly state, I have an answer to Ben Payne's query about women and short stories. This only explains why I am not busy putting stories into slush piles so I can experience the joy of rejection more often: it is not universally valid.
I have been asked for one piece of short fiction in the last year, as compared with twenty short non-fiction pieces. If more people expressed an interest in my short fiction I would probably be more confident about writing it. As it is, I prefer writing novels - more fun- and only four of the non-fiction pieces haven't been accepted immediately for publication. Two of those were immediately accepted by the next place that saw them. The other two of these were solicited, but got lost between one editor and another, and of those two, one is the article that was accepted today. Which means I have one piece of NF without a home. And one short story without a home. But I have written way, way, way more NF.
Non-fiction has delirious side effects, too, which short stories mostly lack. For instance, a seventeen year old boy was caught reading one of my articles and laughing his head off (should I be thankful that the article was intended to be funny?). I know this because someone was so impressed that I was telephoned specially to be informed. And Anna Tambour dragged me across the floor at Conflux this year saying "You really have to meet someone: you are famous." A woman was carrying one of my Conflux articles and had apparently came all the way from Sydney clutching it and because of it.
Since I get asked for short non-fiction pieces, and since audiences demonstrate an interest, and since it really is short fiction or short non-fiction, I mostly go for the non-fiction. Cos I am not going to give up writing novels, which is the third choice. Novels are my soul: everything else is just fun. This means I submit on average two stories a year because I write on average two stories a year.
Ben, I am sorry if I am part of the lack-of-submissions-by-women scenario. I didn't even think about it as a numbers game till people started saying it was. For me it was a matter of what I was writing and where it came from. Sometimes I have a story to write, and then I shove the other things aside and I write it. If someone asks, I will look round inside myself and find another story, but if they don't ask, and my time is full with other things, I don't push it. And right now, my time is full of other things. The enthusiasm for articles by me will soon diminish - these things do - and then maybe I'll write more short stories. Maybe.
So instead of telling you all about the private lives of some truly fascinating people I am going to tell you that I have decided on four exercises for the 'Writing using your sense of smell" workshop tomorrow. And that one of them includes mint chocolate, two of them use essential oils (I wrote a bunch of essential oils into my Rhonda the Geek novel this morning, just because I wanted to keep my life in harmony with itself) and the last is just about my all-time favourite exercise.
I just read back those two paragraphs and realise that I am being singularly curmudgeonly. Lots of information *about* interesting things, but nothing actually interesting said. That is partly due to the weather and partly because it is an allergy-day and partly because, well, let's face it, I am curmudgeonly.
The good news is that a friend has let me borrow a Ryman book, so I am reading Ryman tonight. Geoff Ryman is not really a cheering read, but he is such a good writer that I enjoy the unhappiness.
The even better news is that if I keep up the word count like a good child, I might actually meet all my 15 November deadlines. Everything is progressing nicely, and I resolved the big issues surrounding the second toughest article yesterday - I now have hooks to hang ideas off for all five pieces of non-fiction. Which means I have no excuses. And only 10,000 words to accomplish my no excuses in. I sent off a non-fiction article last night and got an email this morning saying "Yes, please, but can we publish it over two issues" so not only is one revised and gone, but it is beyond worrying about. On the fiction front I have about 15,000 words to write. Some of that is novel and some short story. No, I am not going to add the numbers together and decide to run away to Bermuda instead of writing. Not. Not. Not.
In my curmudgeonly state, I have an answer to Ben Payne's query about women and short stories. This only explains why I am not busy putting stories into slush piles so I can experience the joy of rejection more often: it is not universally valid.
I have been asked for one piece of short fiction in the last year, as compared with twenty short non-fiction pieces. If more people expressed an interest in my short fiction I would probably be more confident about writing it. As it is, I prefer writing novels - more fun- and only four of the non-fiction pieces haven't been accepted immediately for publication. Two of those were immediately accepted by the next place that saw them. The other two of these were solicited, but got lost between one editor and another, and of those two, one is the article that was accepted today. Which means I have one piece of NF without a home. And one short story without a home. But I have written way, way, way more NF.
Non-fiction has delirious side effects, too, which short stories mostly lack. For instance, a seventeen year old boy was caught reading one of my articles and laughing his head off (should I be thankful that the article was intended to be funny?). I know this because someone was so impressed that I was telephoned specially to be informed. And Anna Tambour dragged me across the floor at Conflux this year saying "You really have to meet someone: you are famous." A woman was carrying one of my Conflux articles and had apparently came all the way from Sydney clutching it and because of it.
Since I get asked for short non-fiction pieces, and since audiences demonstrate an interest, and since it really is short fiction or short non-fiction, I mostly go for the non-fiction. Cos I am not going to give up writing novels, which is the third choice. Novels are my soul: everything else is just fun. This means I submit on average two stories a year because I write on average two stories a year.
Ben, I am sorry if I am part of the lack-of-submissions-by-women scenario. I didn't even think about it as a numbers game till people started saying it was. For me it was a matter of what I was writing and where it came from. Sometimes I have a story to write, and then I shove the other things aside and I write it. If someone asks, I will look round inside myself and find another story, but if they don't ask, and my time is full with other things, I don't push it. And right now, my time is full of other things. The enthusiasm for articles by me will soon diminish - these things do - and then maybe I'll write more short stories. Maybe.