(no subject)

Dearest Diary. It has been so long since I last wrote, and I have so much to tell you.


Or something like that. I know, I need to write up my notes on the markets. And I need to clean the living room, cause I swear I thought Helen was coming in Saturday, not 3 hours ago (She also went home, saw her mom's cats, and realized that it's just this one she hates). And I have critting and slush--please! someone remind me to slush tomorrow, I couldn't do it tonight, it would have messed with my writing.

And I'm feeling plenty neurotic about said writing, let me just tell you. For those who are following along at home, remember the piece about the starfish girl? the one who cuts herself and heals over right away? I finally found the story for that this weekend. It's like being on drugs. I would really like to be able to write 2000 words without feeling like my brain has been sucked out of my head, shaken thoroughly, and poured back in. Plus, I need a better chair. My butt hurts, my back hurts, and I'm grumpy, but that could just be the high wearing off. Next time though, I'm going to network myself through the desktop and just sit on my comfy green chair. comfier. I haven't tried marathon sitting on it yet. Is there a new buffy tomorrow? Anyways, I've got it done, and I really really really like the idea. And perhaps it's my suck monkey talking, but the story is just potential and isolated-but-good scenes. I'm going to need a new monkey for this one. A revision monkey.

On the map for the next few days, if you're playing along at home: Driftwood needs massive revision, and this time I'm not asking Hannah for help. she has really valid points, but I'm not sure if anyone else cares. :) OKay, I'm exagerating for effect. It's just frustrating me. I need to work on making Cynthia's motivation a little more obvious, seeing as there were too many crits asking why it wasn't Patrick's POV. grrr. I may need to bench it for a while, and revise something less complicated. Oh, wait. I don't have any of those. All my revisions involve something pivtol and completely lacking. Such as flawless and Goddess. But I've been doing really well on the writing front lately, it's time to revise and have things to send out, to make my stats look more impressive: http://home.earthlink.net/%7Etanaise/Submissions.html
ROF just finished reading slush--since I'm clarion, I'll get given to Shawna, though she'll probably BFOD me--it's my other submission story. SH is about halfway through it's average, and I forgot to check what Storyhouse's times are, but I seem to remember people telling me a month or so. And I need to work on a back-up story for Asimov's, which will probably be Nightlight.

(no subject)

Okay, I learned how to finish stories. but the downside is I now move through them a lot faster. and end up with a lot more crap than I used to, because I don't get those re-readings.

I end up leaving lazy phrasing in my stories. I leave scattered 'really's and 'and such' and other useless phrases in my stories now, whereas I used to, in the numerous re-readings.

So my stories work better on a global level, but my sentence level has gone to hell. They need re-reading and rephrasings, and I'm not used to doing that in a revision. Usually by the time I'm revising a story I've polished every sentence to the point of no return.

So this new speed means I have to remember to look for them when I revise. which i'm not used to doing, because my stories used to be so clean as far as that went. It's frustrating, because suddenly it feels like I've lost that. And I know I haven't, it's just the difference between a first draft that takes 9 months and one that takes 2 days. But I hate! looking a review and seeing all these things I should have noticed but didn't. When I was reformatting Firing to send to Strange Horizons, I found revision artifacts all over the place--sentences that didn't actually end, random words that didn't belong--everything. All my drafts are like that now.