(no subject)

I have a highly refined suck monkey. My suck monkey acknowledges that my stuff is good. My suck monkey asks, instead, is it good *enough*.

We talk about this all the time in the chat--eventually you get to a point that you can write. You've got all the technical bits down, hell, you've even got the finer points figured out. You get to this point, and then it's no longer a case of being good, it's a case of being good enough, of having the extra little bit that rocks the editor's world.

THat's where I start to worry. But I've got two stories to ship out tomorrow or Tuesday (amended because I suddenly remembered that everyone and their brother has stuff they need me to do tomorrow. So it may not get sent out till Tuesday, or it may get put in the mailroom tomorrow afternoon, which works out to the same thing.) They'll be going to Analog and Polyphony. Strange Horizons has one of my pieces for 26 days today, and Realms of Fantasy is at 111 days, and Shawna still hasn't seen it. THey can take their time, though, cause that piece has no certain next market--probably LCRW, if I had to pick now, but I'm not sure, and I have no piece that I want to send there right this instant.

All my stories are good. Some may even be good enough. It's just a waiting game now.

(no subject)

damn those suck monkeys. I can't even spell money anymore. Everytime I try, I write monkey instead.

(no subject)

I have this friend who I adore. I forget about him, but he's just my favorite boy. I met him the first day of college, and we were friends the whole way through. He was cute and sweet, though by the time Kirsten met him he was bearded and would pretend to be serious more, and Christina and I had *such* crushes on him. For about 15-20 minutes, I think. :) He was the sort of boy you think of more as a friend than a potential boyfriend. Well, at least we did. It was like having a nice brother. :) And freshman year he started dating someone who changed schools. So he was always taken, in our mind, but not so much to people who started after us.

He's blond. I mean, he's just *so* blond. I remember his utter astonishment that the scary goth vampire business girl (she was. And she wore *way* too much make-up, and like, pantsuits. Pantsuits. On a college where sartorical elegance was pretty much defined as not wearing the same shirt to class two days in a row. If you were *really* fancy, it wasn't even the shirt you'd slept in the night before.) might like him.

"No, shawn, really, I think she likes you."

"no, no, she just wanted to talk about X." (where X is some complicated and to me boring past belief philosopical construct or some such)

"No, shawn, trust me. She glared at me the whole time, and no one in their right mind voluntarily wants to talk about that but you." (He had his arm drapped over me the whole time he was talking to her, and I was very bored and leaning against him--we'd been in a cuddly mood, I suppose--and she was not amused. :-) I was. I was *very* amused.)

I was thinking about this because I got an email from another of my friends from that time, who's apparently nearly done at NYU, and I'd gotten his address from a friend who'd told me that Shawn was living in NJ, which Kirsten hadn't bothered to tell me. *cries*

And it's funny cause I miss him suddenly. And he's not in, for example, the picture of us that I adore that's up on my wall in front of me--that's just Tom and Alex because Shawn was off with his girlfriend all the time then. I wonder if I forget about Shawn because I would miss him so much if I remembered her--Tom I miss, but not so much, mostly just potentials, and even that not so much anymore, but Shawn I knew all four years, and while he'd piss me off and make me want to kill him, it was like a brother (albeit one that I got along with, so not actually *my* brother, just a generic, possibly mythological brother.) .

I called him for his birthday last year. Um, 2000. He was born on Halloween, and I was tired of emailing him and hearing nothing. so I'd dug his number up off the internet and called him. And being shawn, he didn't tell me he was getting ready for a shower till we'd talked for a half hour--getting ready as in, wearing only a towel. I didn't call him this year because I didn't have his number, because I didn't know where he was. perhaps if someone who is never there when I call gave it to me, I would forgive her for never being there when I call.