And the World Erupts

Recent news inflaming sensitive souls: there will now be three Hobbit movies.

http://www.facebook.com/notes/peter-jackson/an-unexpected-journey/10151114596546558

So now I'm clued up, given that I hadn't even realised there were going to be two films. I mean, it's** such a little book. I think it's safe to say the movie plot will wander away from the  path of the original text, and meander up and down the many dark and snurkly side roads that criss-cross Middle Earth. Expect much passionate cheering / debate / outrage / support on the subject. People take their Tolkien very seriously.

** 'it' being 'The Hobbit' by J.R.R. Tolkien, of course. How sloppy of me not to mention the actual title. I mean, there just might be a single reader of this blog who, for reasons that are none of my business, has lived under a rock on Mars for the past fifty years and thus doesn't know which literary mass-phenomenon I'm casually referring to, and a good writer should always strive to be clear and precise.

Fishy Advice

Since I am but a tiny minnow paddling about in the swirly waters of that vast pool called publishing, when it comes to writing advice, you're far better off taking guidance from experienced hands like Justine Larbalestier than following any suggestions I might post.

And on the topic of 'Write What You Wanna Write, Yeaaaaah, Well, Maybe, Maybe Not', you should pop over and read:

http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2012/07/23/becoming-a-brand-versus-writing-what-you-want-to-write/

and then:

http://justinelarbalestier.com/blog/2012/07/30/writing-to-the-market/

She knows of what she blogs.

So Many Stories, So Few Sundays

So I spent hours today knocking an already edited and polished story down to a (for it) lean 4000 words and then submitted it with much confidence. This confidence was utterly misplaced because just now, a mere 5 hours later, I received a rejection for said story. The editors certainly know what they want, and obviously this particular story didn't even come close. This was my second sub to their anthology. The first one was rejected quite rapidly too. I've got one more piece up my sleeve that I plan to cruelly inflict upon those editors before their deadline - hahahaha - then I'll call it quits, because even the most deluded writer has to accept that nothing quite says 'we are not on the same wavelength' like a third rejection.

Anyway, I'm fine with said rejection, and I'll just calmly sub the story to another publication tomorrow with nary a disappointed tear staining my cheek, but I do wish they'd waited until tomorrow to send it. That way, I wouldn't find myself wondering now whether my precious Sunday afternoon would have been better spent on that other story which might have...

Time is my Friend

The quantity versus quality debate has probably been going since one cave person spent half  a lifetime (after the Day Job of hunting mastodons or gathering tubers) scrunched up in backbreaking positions whilst painstakingly painting a complicated paleolithic scene replete with herds of local wildlife portrayed in loving detail while another prehistoric visual artist, overcome by inspiration, seized the moment and wildly smacked a pigment-dipped hand countless times against a rock face and then demanded equal respect for that quickie. Time is the distinguishing factor here, and the ongoing debate reflects how we evaluate its importance in the creative process. Can fast be good? Is slow necessarily better? Might the slapdash artist have benefited from taking a few moments to consider composition and colour? Might the meticulous one have heightened the dynamics of the animal subjects by loosening up a bit?

Over at the SFWA blog, there's a post by Marcis Yudkin on the perennial time as an added value topic :

http://www.sfwa.org/2012/07/guest-blog-post-in-praise-of-ripening-4/#more-25449.

She's not taking a swipe at the self-publishing industry, or damning ebooks to a special circle of Hell, but questions the way these modern developments often spin an attitude that promotes churning inferior word-stuff through the system as an admirable thing, and actually encourages would-be writers to not worry about ripping off readers with hastily written, bad quality prose because the product is so cheap. Often the message is that you don't need to waste your time agonising over your work to make money from writing. Quality craftsmanship is for chumps. Content can be copied. As per usual in these shallow days, it's all about the packaging. 

 Me, I'm an old-fashioned girl with a mostly non-linear approach to the physics of writing time. I too can, in a fit of inspiration, slap my hand against a cave wall to produce the occasional fast piece, and I still consider those to be well-worked stories in their own right, but mostly I write, put aside, write, put aside, write, and finally finish my tales, sometimes years later. I actually enjoy letting the bigger stories mature. Years can add layers to a first draft that only a few geniuses can achieve straight off the bat. I wouldn't mind being a faster writer, not at all, and I'd love more than anything to be be paid properly for my work and to make enough money from writing to be able to do it full time. I do believe in having a realistic and professional approach to the business of fiction writing, but fast or slow, mainstream or genre, literary or pulp, I also believe one's work has to be motivated by a real love of words, stories, characters and ideas, include a willingness to let tales unfold at their own pace, and incorporate a genuine enjoyment of the process. If there's no love of bringing unruly elements together and racking your brain for a way to make them gel, just a preference for following easy tick-the-character-and-plot-boxes developed by marketers, then it isn't writing as I know it. If there's no artistic component to it, a story is just another mass-produced product. If there's no understanding that no matter how disciplined you might be, you can't always force creativity to abide by imposed time strictures, then you should invest your energy in a more regulated, punch-in-and-out-according-to-a-roster office job to avoid frustration.

Possibly this is an unrealistic attitude that dooms me to a life of writerly poverty. So be it. Now, it's time to get on with that story about...

A Very Modern Nightmare

So yeah, I slept in BIG TIME this morning, and as my mind emerged from whatever wild and weird joint it hangs out in while I snooze, it presented me we a terrifying scenario: my blog had been hijacked by an extremely sinister, underworld criminal organisation populated by beefy, overcoat-wearing thugs from central casting circa 1935. The mob boss was appropriately well- dressed in a snazzy, stripey suit, and he did all his extorting business from the backseat of a vintage gangster car using a mobile phone. He was very mean. The more distressed I grew, the more smug and over-confident he became. My mind even presented this unlikely scenario in black and white, an arty-farty device that leads me to suspect that my subconscious was very consciously showing off and doing a fair bit of hijacking of its own, mainly from cinematic sources like On the Waterfront (which I caught again a few weeks ago) and anything with James Cagney or Edward G Robinson in it.

And what did these tough guys want? As classic crims, their goal was uninspiringly basic - it was merely about procurring an obscene amount of money. Mostly the dream focused on my inability to access my blog, and how helpless I felt. It was terrible! To up the anty and make me sweat when I couldn't cough up, the heavies started posting horrible opinion pieces and pictures that outraged everyone, and even though I tried to cunningly leave comments all over the Internet to alert the world to the fact that I was no longer in control of my blog, this nightmarish media-mafia kept outsmarting me, heading me off in the back alleyways of cyberspace. As they did the typical overcoats-and - scarves-and-hats-and-brandishing-smoking-automatic-weapons-in-profile shots, mob minions mocked my attempts as clumsy and typical of most marks. Those dirty rats laughed evil laughs as I squirmed. My subconscious does not do subtle, it would seem.

If the alarm clock hadn't woken me at a certain despairing moment, I wonder if I would have triumphed? I suspect so, since the plot was mostly strung together clichees and cardboard characters, and the thugs were all so arrogantly despicable that they were practically begging for their comeuppance. Perhaps I would have lured my enemies into a deserted warehouse, pulled a Tommy gun from a violin case and mowed them down in the best gun moll fashion. Perhaps, whilst wearing a natty beret and cheekily chewing gum, I would have infiltrated their organisation and finagled a financial sting to bring down their whole sleazy empire, thus freeing the Internet forever from such extortion rackets and liberating blogs everywhere.

Yes, I'm pretty sure my subconscious had already scripted an upbeat, empowering ending. Maybe tomorrow morning...

Did it!

On Monday, on my way to the Arvo Job, as I was crossing a park (the slightly magical one that so often provides interesting writing ideas and story breakthroughs), a golf ball came whizzing through the air at an extremely high velocity, shot past my head and thwacked into the sports field beyond. Just a few hand spans to the left and bam! Cranial crunch time!

I immediately went into alternative universe mode and thought That'd be right. A person goes through the bother of being sliced and diced by surgeons, spends months recuperating, and then on a sunny day, just five minutes away from a triumphant return to normal life, gets knocked unconscious, or worse, by a recreational missile. Okay, it didn't happen in this reality, only almost, but a lot of unfair stuff occurs in this world, and sometimes it's only a matter of unfortunate people being in the wrong place and the wrong time. Move a little faster or slower on a certain day, and your fate changes. It's quite scary sometimes. As is, I was just happy not to become a sad headline or tragic topic of conversation. Life, right then and there, could have suddenly become a whole lot worse.

Anyway, thrilling near-miss aside, I've just made it through two days of commuting and putting on a reasonable show of business-as-usual industriousness at the Arvo Job. Tomorrow - or rather today, since it's just after midnight -  will be a (oh, thank goodness!) breather, a day for sleeping in, reading, writing, walking, submitting a story or two, napping, baking bread and building up energy for the rest of the week.

Nice.

Plugging Away

One of the best things about getting a story into the Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations anthology has been the way the editor, Eric J. Guignard, has kept us humble contributing scribes in the loop about its progress every step of the way. Yesterday I received one of his updating emails with the following news:

1) Dark Moon Books has just released the e-book format of Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations for sale. Priced at just $3.99,  you can purchase the e-book at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble (BN.com).
 
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Tales-Lost-Civilizations-ebook/dp/B008NC8SEW/ref=sr_1_1_title_1_kin?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1342932080&sr=1-1&keywords=Dark+Tales+of+Lost+Civilizations .

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dark-tales-of-lost-civilizations-eric-j-guignard/1108924742?ean=9780983433590

2) Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations has already received several nominations for the Bram Stoker Awards in the Best Horror Anthology of the Year category.

3) Goodreads, partnered with Listopia, is running a friendly contest ranking 'Best Horror Anthologies'. Eric wrote yesterday that is was currently #4, but when I checked here, it was actually #3. Go book!  

4) And the good reviews keep coming in:
 http://zombiecoffeepress.com/2012/06/29/for-your-reading-pleasure-5/

http://www.monsterlibrarian.com/anthologies.htm#Dark_Tales_of_Lost_Civilizations

http://thegingernutcase.blogspot.com/2012/04/dark-tales-of-lost-civilisations.html#!/2012/04/dark-tales-of-lost-civilisations.html

http://www.countgore.com/Tomb.htm

It continues to be an amazing experience to be part of this great anthology, and to share its pages with such fantastic writers. Do not deny yourself the pleasure of reading it! And, if afterwards you feel so inclined, please leave a review at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or Goodreads. It would be very much appreciated.

And now for the Real World, after 2 months in the la la land of recuperating. Must get ready. Must catch train.

Okay, I can do this. I can...

Yulefright

Restaurants all over Australia, especially in solidly built regional hotels with big fireplaces and frosty mountains beyond their french windows, are busy this weekend with Christmas in July, a through and through foodie celebration devoid of any religious connotations whatsoever. It's all about stuffing oneself with those hot, rich, filling meals traditionally eaten with gusto on Xmas Day in the Northern Hemisphere but which practically make you gag when forced down in the heat of a December down under. It's a practical response to the ludicrousness of transferring traditions developed for a winter festival to the exact opposite season.

Anyway, I'll seize this topic-related opportunity to mention a film I've been meaning to recommend for a while, well, since Christmas 2011 to be precise - the 2010 Finnish movie Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale. It's the funniest, darkest, goriest, most bad taste and frightening yuletide tale I've ever seen that also manages to maintain a core of childhood innocence and seasonal sweetness. A movie like Bad Santa touches a few of those bases, but, let's face it, the scope of most Xmas movies is small and suburban. This film exists elsewhere. Its brooding atmosphere is heightened by featuring a geographically isolated people embedded in a stunning but pitiless environment that kills careless folk, and a society shaped by a palpable continuation of their pagan past well into the present. Their Christmas myths are most definitely not our jolly Xmasy traditions. Simply not getting gifts didn't cut it as fitting punishment for naughty children according to the tough, barbaric peoples of yore, and the ur-customs developed to keep young folk in line make you laugh as much in disbelief as in horror at the outrageous cruelty.

Also, you have to love a movie that casually features countless filthy and very sinister, naked old men with such abandon. As with most Nordic horror films, there's much blood and guts nicely framed so as to contrast with the snow. There are chainsaws, there are guns everywhere, there are borderline psychotic but lovable local characters, and there is much seriously questionable behaviour as well as a moving father-son relationship. What more could you want from a Christmas movie?

Now I'd better get a move on. I have to gussy up (put on something other than trackie dacks) and meet up with a few people, not for a Yulefest (at least, I hope not... ), but for a normal Sunday arvo lunch.

Trial Run

I spent most of yesterday in Melbourne, taking my usual Arvo Job train to the city and, for the first time in two months, also returned home on my usual evening train. From my experiment, I suspect that for the next few weeks at least, train time will not so much be writing time as napping time.

In between, I did many un-Arvo Joberly things. First, fresh off the train, I caught up with a friend in Degraves St. Arriving early, I popped around the corner to Flinders Books only to discover that another mainstay Melbourne bookshop is closing down. So sad! Ah, the times I've ducked into that repository of second-hand treasures for a nice peaceful perusing. Long ago, I purchased one of my most favourite and always envy-inspiring books there - Writers' Houses  by Francesca Premoli-Droulers, with a forward by Margaret Duras, which features beautiful photos of the amazing abodes of Ernest Hemingway, Jean Cocteau, Lawrence Durrell, Karen Blixen, Virginia Woolf, and many others. Castles and fantastic retreats abound, and browsing through it never fails to inspire sighs of longing and thoughts of how I too could be a great writer if only I had a mountaintop chateau in which to collect my thoughts. Anyway, since there was a 50% off sale, and for old time's sake, I bought two hardbacks - Brian Stableford's The Empire of Fear and Robert Silverberg's At Winter's End. Then it was back to Degraves St for tea and a chat.

After that, I trammed it to St Kilda (and gleefully eavesdropped on a bunch of young Danes), visited my doctor, walked back to the city via Chapel Street popping into many shops along the way, and finished off the day with fried noodles and a movie, namely A Royal Affair, simply because Mads Mikklesen is in it :) It's all about an infamous liaison between King Christian VII of Denmark, his wife Queen Caroline Mathilda, and the freethinking court physician Johann Friedrich Struensee. Not very historically accurate, it was nonetheless entertaining, and had some pertinent comments to make on the power of  ideas, information and misinformation control, political spin, influencing the masses, and the sheer nastiness of folk with much when it comes to sharing their toys with the less fortunate. It was also a long movie - if not for the arrival of a just-in-the-nick-of-time tram to speedily carry me across town, I would have missed my homeward train.

So I did the time (a day crammed with fun like that certainly illustrates just how many perfectly good hours our day and arvo jobs take up) and even though I had to sleep in this morning, I'm not overly pooped now. I should be right for a gentle return to the Real World next week.

Now for some walking and writing.

Rah-Rah Rejections

When one can't talk about sales (because there aren't any), there's always that faithful fallback of going on about one's rejections. I know - boring, boring, boring, - but, alas, they are a regular feature in a writerly life and must be dealt with on an ongoing basis, usually when you've had a crap day and are least up for it.

And I'm only bringing them up again because I've had a few this week that were wonderfully kind and supportive knockbacks of the 'loved your work but...' kind , which include breakdowns of what was so great about the story that wasn't purchased *sigh*, and of the 'if I'd had more room in this antho you'd have definitely been included' types, along with counsel to send one piece to other publications that might be more up for its 'structural challenge', and exhortations to 'keep writing!' and 'send more!'  Lovely stuff.

In each case, I've wanted to email back to the editor just how much I appreciate their personal comments and encouragement, but of course, that's deemed unprofessional. Yet such kindness from a stranger can make a real difference, and help you to decide whether to give up on a particular story and bin it or send it out again, and possibly whether or not you give up the whole ridiculous writing gig and devote your life to helping war orphans or making real money.

I've been thinking a lot about the ability to weather the ups and downs of rejections lately because of this great post Steve Cameron put on his blog last week about a writer who stopped subbing stories back in 1991 because he didn't think he was getting anywhere, when in fact, behind the scenes, editors and agents had noticed his work and earmarked him for great things. I can't even begin to imagine how that writer felt when he discovered the truth. Anyway, Steve concludes that nicer, more constructive rejections might have made a difference, and I heartily agree. In lieu of a sale, a pat on the head is the next best thing. If that makes me sound pathetic, then so be it - I'll take what crumbs I can get.

Editors are busy people, I get that, which makes it all the more wondeful when they do take the time to treat you like a real person. As said, there are times when I wish that I could respond when editors take the time to say good things and let me know whether I'm in with a chance, and tell them THANK YOU!    

Random Chance or Rip-Off?

So I was reading New Scientist this morning, and the last article I perused was about funding for telescopes to monitor asteroids lest we be squashed or vapourised by an interplanetary trespasser. Apparently, at the end of this month, the Sliding Spring observatory here in Australia is closing down, leaving the global monitoring network with a great big blind spot - any object approaching Earth from below 30 degrees latitude won't be visible. A non-profit will be stepping into the breach, but won't have its space telescope up and running until 2017. Let's hope there aren't any great, big, vicious space-rocks sneaking up on our little planet as I write this.

Anyway, this non-profit organisation is called the B612 Foundation, named after the asteroid that was home to The Little Prince.

What the...?, I thought as soon as I read it, because today I plan to sub a spy story which features an A.I. I'd designated B-6.12. Of all the letters and numbers in all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, why did I, supposedly off the cuff, choose that particular sequence? Could it be because of the contents of my bookcase? It's been decades since I last read my 1977 copy of Le Petit Prince, but there it is, proof that I've been in contact with it.

Possibly, Saint-Exupery's work left a little informational flotsam drifting about in the murky waters of my subconscious that I simply scooped up and typed in. That, or in a just as valid theory given the limited number of letters and numbers we have to work with, sheer utter coincidence is at work here. But let's also just add to this equation the fact that I read this article just in time to change B-6.12 to something else before subbing it, thank goodness. Possibly no-one would have noticed, or cared, but you just never know...

This is exactly why I get a little worried when stories come too easily. But, enough with the writerly angsting - it's time to get to work now. I've just been researching espionage terms for the final polish of my spy story, which I MUST sub today or I'll end up fiddling with it too much. After that, I'll embark on my latest and greatest idea for a suite of poems about practical cats, and then move on to that torrid mathematical romance of many dimensions that I think will knock 50 Shades of Grey off the bestseller lists.

Picking Up the Pace

Strengthened by regular mini-keyboard sessions - noun push ups, weightlifting heavy verbs, flexing my vocabulary, stretching ideas to keep them limber - my concentration stamina is building. I wrote for four whole, flat out hours today, the most yet that I've done in one day for many, many months. I plan to sub a whole lot of work tomorrow - I'm down to just 5 stories out in the wild - and start getting real about finishing off stories for three end-of-this-month deadlines. I've also begun to beat myself up over having had so much time at my disposal for the past seven weeks without much writing to show for it. Selective amnesia has set in. What on earth have I been doing with myself these past two months? Bugger that recovering from an operation crap - my more ambitious self is pretty sure I've just used not feeling well as an excuse to slack off, and she's riled about it. As she keeps reminding me, I could have completed and polished my YA novel by now, or finished countless short stories. That I'm once more nagging myself about being a lazy so and so is a sure sign that things are returning to normal.

This all probably ties in with my body feeling stronger too. When I went for my daily medwalk today, I straightened my spine, lifted my chin, and shifted from a cautious shuffle into a confident, speedy stride. I blitzed the botanical gardens track, completing two laps in near-Olympic times, and had to stop myself from doing a third turn. It felt good.

I've started to measure my energy levels against the prospect of returning to the Arvo Job. It's the thought of getting through a whole day without a single nap that worries me the most. I did have an awfully long snooze today. How do people do it? Why would they want to do it? Naps are excellent things.

I've begun to wonder when I'll be right for horse riding again. Muscle memory dogs me. The sensation of swinging up into a saddle and gathering up the reins for a ride feels real and plays over and over. My brain keeps serving up scenes of wending through bushland, sauntering down a country lane, or galloping along a stretch of lonely beach on a lively steed. Maybe I'll be good to go again in a month? Two months? I'll have to ask my doctors...

Lemon Tree Very Pretty

Gus loves the new addition to our Xmas swing nook.







The Chook, pottering about in the background, is less impressed.

HB to Me

So I've been busy. Not busy according to my usual every-micro-second-must-be-packed-with-useful-activities definition of busy, but a substantial-lowering-of-the-bar, post-operative busy as in 'more than one extra thing to do above and beyond the daily routine of eating, napping, going for a walk, napping, doing medical stuff, reading and an hour or two of writing'. I had guests over the weekend, which entailed getting a head start last week with squeezing in additional tasks and initiating a precise plan to feed them. Fortunately, I was provided with back-up support, it was all very low key, and no-one was that fussy anyway.

But it was all worth it because I received presents! I got a lemon tree in a gigantic terracotta pot to add to my collection around the Xmas swing oasis-nook, money for spending on nice things (done yesterday), plus my sister delivered a lovely, hand painted candle lamp from J ( a.k.a. the apple and blueberry crumble making lady), and my littlest brother's boss, whom I don't even know, sent me a huge feel-good hamper full of chocolates, magazines, other assorted goodies, bedsocks and booze, while another of his acquaintances gave me some feng shui articles to promote healing (two very different approaches to getting better, and I appreciate the kindness of both), all of which I can add to the presents given to me earlier for my post-surgery, therapeutic convenience, namely the blu-ray and wide screen TV which have kept me well entertained these past five weeks. A good haul :-)

So yes, I'm a year (plus one day too, now) older, and thank goodness for that. Any person who is ungrateful and ungracious enough to whinge about having to add another 12 months to their age CV is a person with no sense of perspective.

Anyway, it's a beautiful dark and  rainy day, perfect for guilt-free cocooning and recharging my batteries. I plan to polish and sub a hopefully funny story to a spec-fic humour anthology, and, as per usual, keep an excited eye on my emails for possible sales.

Easy Reader

I'm getting towards the end of Nicholas A. Basbanes' A Splendor of Letters: The Permanence of Books in an Impermanent World, which had elicited many oohs and aahs and I-didn't-know-thats from me along the way, as well as reminded me of many other wondrous bookish facts that might have eventually faded from my memory.

 One such welcome shake up of my synapses was once more coming across the amazing reading wheel designed by the Italian military engineer Captain Agostino Ramelli in 1588, which I first read about in Alberto Manguel's History of Reading. This reading wheel (along with the 'mobile library' carried around by camels) struck me as a perfect reminder of how the same urges and needs, dreams and laziness have driven people throughout history. Each age is only hampered by the level of technology available to them.

The very useful  "rotary reading desk" was designed to allow a reader to browse through many volumes  and consult many texts without having to move (always a desirous goal for humans, apparently). Much like a Ferris wheel, the wooden cylinder rotated a number of lecterns. Upon each of these shelves, the reader could leave a book open at an interesting point, and, when needed, could refer back to that text simply by turning the wheel using an easily reached pedal. The required book would be presented to the reader again without the necessity of bookmarks or scavenging through messy piles to recover the desired information. Some consider this system to be a prototype for hypertext.

In short, as Ramelli himself wrote in a caption that could have been written by a modern PR department, the reading wheel was a beautiful and ingenious machine, which is very useful and convenient to every person who takes pleasure in study, especially those who are suffering from indisposition or are subject to gout: for with this sort of machine a man can see and read a great quantity of books, without moving from his place: besides which, it has this fine convenience, which is, of occupying little space in the place it is set, as any person of understanding can appreciate from the drawing. 

Many books. Little space. Convenient. Much information at you fingertips, or rather, toetips. These are all still powerful selling points. Unfortunately, Ramelli's vision did not catch on in his or any other time, and his book wheel never became a must-have, iconic, household item.

Me, I'm wondering whether my woodwork-loving brother could knock one up for me. There's a certain corner in my lounge room that would be just right...
  

Lovecraftian Brain-Laxative

I just started my steampunk Cthulu story and wrote 326 words in an hour. I'm back! My writing-mind is working again. All it took was a dollop of Victoriana, a dash of Lovecraft, and a few teaspoons of a secret try-this-just-for-fun patented mixture purchased at a mysterious sideshow from a shadowy stranger wearing a top hat covered in enigmatic symbols to get the cogs chuffing along again.

What a relief. After so many weeks, well, months even, I couldn't help but illogically and dramatically start to worry that perhaps my writing abilities were now floating beyond my reach in some creative ether, forever inaccessible :)

Now, it's my body's turn. I'm off for a shuffle around the park. I'd better take my brolly.

Go Figure

So I spent a while this morning doing research and deciding that I couldn't possibly write a steampunk Cthulu story for an anthology with that theme, then went for my daily medicinal walk. Lo and behold, I arrived home a few hours later with the whole of just such a tale in my head - main characters, voice, ending, first line, the lot.

But is it any good? I'm always suspicious when a story comes too easily. Appreciative, but suspicious. Mind you, I've only put down that first line so far (it was inspired by a rack of DVDs in front of a shop I passed - one of the titles was Contagion - crossed with something I then read about 5 minutes later on a community notice board). Possibly actually writing the story will throw up enough roadblocks to make me feel suitably tormented and subsequently less leery of it. :)

But now I really, really need to get writing again soon, rather than just thinking about it all the time. My muse has returned to duty, but alas, my writing oomph is still MIA.

Duck Weather

It absolutely bucketed down today, but eager to build up my fitness as much as possible, I nonetheless ventured forth with my mega-umbrella and embarked upon my daily shuffle.

And I'm glad I did, because I had the botanical gardens all to myself. Well, almost.  It was just me and a couple of ducks who'd vacated the lake paddling along the paths. Still, they were no bother and didn't take up much room, so I could have a good think about life in general and specific stories as I splashed along in peace and quiet. Best of all, the fresh air obviously cleared my head, and it occurred to me in a facepalming-at-my-own-denseness kind of moment that a certain story I wrote at the beginning of the year for an anthology (it was rejected) also fits the theme of another anthology, and so I promptly subbed it on my return.

End of the Month Report x 2: May and June 2012

Submissions: 12
Rejections: 12
Acceptances: 2 (The Wolfgirl in the Cupboard / The Snowy River Feral)
Published: 0
Stories out in the wild: 7
New stories completed: 0
Mood: Since I can't seem to string words into coherent, fictional sentences these days (I've managed 3 original lines this week and a smidge of editing. Still, it's a start. And my brain does feel more up for it today.) I shall have to quote: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...