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Well, I rattled off about 500 words for "Hoc Vale," and made notes for "Nightlight." I'm really happy because it's the first quality writing I've done since, oh, January. I think maybe my muse was being held hostage by my fret monkey. Now that my fret monkey has been destroyed, she's free (I'm getting a new fret monkey, but he's a larger size, and they have to special order him, so it'll be a little while.), and suddenly I'm getting story ideas. Not new short story ideas--those I have all the time. No, these are the subtle ones. I don't know what they exactly would be called by other people. But it's little elements, like the idea of having the 'butchers' in my suicides stories be priests, like in roman religions (incidentally, can anyone tell me if the whole kosher thing is related to roman religious practices? It started niggling at me recently-seems too similar to be a coincidence.) for the sake of the parallelism it would create in the story. "Hoc Vale," which is my exposure/pillar saints story, is still missing some cultural elements to really set it apart, but those are the sort of things that usually show up as I write, not so much beforehand.

I wanted to write more on "Hoc Vale" (real title jumps back and forth between "This Vale of Tears" and "Hoc Vale Lacriminius"), but I've brought the ex-boyfriend back on early, and we've stalled.

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Excellent interview with PNH from Tor: http://sfwa.org/bulletin/articles/pnh_ds.html Discusses how the market works, how selling books works, how being an editor works. Very cool, and occasionally highly quotable:

At any rate, we buy the books that editors want to buy and that they convince Tom to buy. We are so overbought these days that Melissa and I perform something of a gatekeeper function of basically reminding Tom and the editor in question just how long it might take to actually we schedule a book, or that we already own seventeen vampire/Nazi books and perhaps we need to space out this kind of acquisition. I am making that up as a variable. We don't actually own any vampire/Nazi books to my knowledge.

PNH: Writers have a lot of reasons to have paranoid views. Writing is the ultimate paranoia-producing profession. You sit alone in a room and you brood....

He also goes into depth on the whole mass market vs trade paperback thing, which I believe I've discussed in chat, but haven't ever trusted my powers of recall from Clarion well enough to post about it here. (of all the people not to miss quote in your journal, people who could have influence on your professional future would pretty much top the charts. So I went with silence over potential errors)

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Incidentally, it occurs to me that the best details for sucking a reader in may be the physical responses to stimuli. because I *know* when I write that my character tightens her legs to stay on Van, you'll tighten those muscles unconsciously. I think that's why parts of things that I write that have strong tactile sections are the most popular with people. I mean, I really think the face thing is overdone with Paul and Toby in Blinding. but people really like it. and hi think it's because they can follow it so exactly. which blows to hell most of my writing patterns. But then again, I don't think it's always necessary to be that detailed. I wonder if that's part of what makes people like Firing.
that it's a very physical story--very tactile, very auditory. so each of the little details that you know and agree with pop up every time the story itself may flag. One of the teachers at Clarion just *loved* the scene with the guy pinning the flower on her dress.

that may be tonight's epiphany: that I need to pay much more attention to my details.
THat I simply *don't* put enough in a general passage to keep people in the story. I wonder if I should revise goddess for practice with that then. because I think a lot of my comments on that one were lack of grounding details. And maybe, if I make the narrator more reliable and solid, she'll stick better in their minds, and they'll keep up with the timeline better.

I know I write my stories too short in rough drafts. Blinding should be a novella. Goddess maybe should be 3-4K instead of 2-3K. One of the most popular complaints at Clarion was, "why isn't that in this story?" and "it makes a lot more sense when you tell me that." WHen I go back through, if I really work at it, I end up adding a lot. And cutting a lot as well, taking out all the deadwood and grafting in better stuff. I get my pacing wrong, and end up over emphasizing things that should be cut completely, and breezing over things that are actually important to the story.

Well, that, combined with the PNH interview discussions I've had today, and the discussion Hannah and I had on the difference between wanting to make it as a writer, and being serious about writing, has pretty much worn me out. Plus, it's 3:30, so my mom would kick my butt if she knew I was up.

Someone remind me tomorrow to call the people who need calling. I'm tired of washing dishes by hand.