Words of the Barely-Published

I went on vacation, and then I came back and edits and $payingJob ate my brain. (And other things too.) Edits are hard work. Edits where I'm still not entirely sure what I want to do about things are even worse. The fixing of Easter Lilies is proving to be just about as difficult as I expected, though I know it will be a better story in the end.

However, the second story set in the House of the Mad Russian gained about 1000 words this evening, and more importantly, gained a solid end. Finally knowing what I was doing at the end really helped, and after a lovely celebratory dinner with the Fabulous Margaret I came home and proceeded to blat out on the order of 1100 words.

There is one scene left to write, and then BRAWL can have it and tell me it sucks. But compared to all the pain and suffering I went through trying to figure out what to do about fixing The Popinjay's Daughter to make it suck less, I think this one will suck in new and hopefully interesting ways.

And for once, I hope to have my BRAWL piece done early so I can go back to my blasted editing.

I am open to evil opinions on what to do to my wussy protagonist here. ;) He is sufficiently full of himself as to need taking down a peg, and he's been offered probability magic.

I have some ideas, but I love hearing what other people think I could do with this. ;)

I have a complete short story. With plot holes. I can *see* the plot holes. I can, in fact, see not just the plot holes, but at least two things that the BRAWL folks are going to tell me is wrong with my story. (I've gotten enough crits now that I can hear several of them saying to me, "But, you know, there's this thing...")

Unfortunately, when I try to pack stuff into those problem areas, it doesn't fix things. In fact, it's making it worse.

This is not useful. I'm starting to think that I need to take the whole thing apart and rewrite it from scratch. In seven days.

Somedays, you get the bear. Today, the bear got me. :/

I sent Sufficiently Advanced Printing off to Asimov's today. I expect I will get rejected and then I really will have no idea where to send it. It has too much magic for me to expect much luck with Analog, and there doesn't seem to be much else out there that's a good fit. Sadly, I remember looking at Ralan's when I was in college and just out of it and being completely overwhelmed by the breadth of places to submit short stories...

...that's not there anymore. Especially for a fairly generic Techno-magic story.

Fortunately, BRAWL has reminded me that they all had this sort of sucky period where they sent crap out regularly, and I can't say that I've been terribly regular about it. So it isn't entirely my fault, except that I've been lousy about doing my research and sending the stories OUT. If they're not out and in circulation, they won't get published.

So, if they come back, I'm only allowed to let them languish if I've tried absolutely everywhere I can think of to send them.

Right.

We'll see how long *this* resolution lasts... :/

(It would probably help if I were better at writing short fiction.)

Today was a beautiful, beautiful day. I thought I was going out early, but ended up ambushed by a nap where I dreamed about writing with a friend of mine.

Mildly inspired by that and the beautiful weather, I girded on my lumbar pack, complete with laptop, trekked down to my favorite pub, got a couple of pints of hard cider, and started writing. While I had been walking, as it is a bit of a hike, I'd been thinking, "I want to write a short story about the protagonist from River's Wath, preferably set before Iron Debt, just so that I can establish that she has been Doing Things." I started thinking about what she might have been doing, and since it's a proper walk, I had enough time to come up with something of a premise.

About 2000 words after I started, I realized there was a wait at the door for seats, so I got up, picked up my laptop, and went over to my favorite local place to get chocolate, and got mocha and a chocolate croissant, and wrote the rest of it. It clocks in at about 3400 words, which isn't bad at all for not having even had a story idea when I started walking.

It's still in first draft format - very, very rough - but Easter Lilies and Imaginary Angels is now written. This is the very first story I've ever written in a single go, which is quite startling to me.

There will be a great deal of editing, I suspect. But I'm not unpleased at all. Or as one of my friends who makes things for a living says on a regular basis, "I'm not embarrassed."