“Right Before Your Very Eyes” pulls off another trick!

Got a pleasant little surprise this morning:  my story "Right Before Your Very Eyes," which appeared in issue 19 of Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, is on the Tangent Online Recommended Reading List for 2010.

This tickles me to no end.

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Progress Report, in which I ignore the Voice of Reason

Eked out some 3200 words on the new short story, which still doesn’t even have a working title.  But hey, that doesn’t mean we can’t bust out a new Magic Meter:

I was originally shooting for around 5K, but the way things are going, I’m thinking 7500 words is more likely.

I’m not up to full speed yet, which is a little disappointing, but I suppose this pace isn’t as glacial as it could have been.  And of course, now that I’m in the middle of this thing, I’m dealing with the crisis of confidence that usually appears around this point.  You know the one I mean–that sudden voice popping up in your head, matter-of-factly informing you that what you’re doing is silly and pointless.

I’ve been at this gig long enough to recognize that this is actually the Voice of Reason speaking.

Seriously, gang.  When you get right down to it, the whole business of making up stories about people and places that never existed–that’s pretty silly and pointless.  But I’ve long since made my peace with it.  If I had listened to the Voice of Reason, I would have given up on the entire enterprise decades ago.  And what fun would that be?

So I’ll just keep blowing off the Voice of Reason, thank you very much.

No updates for Write Club.

Onward . . .

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Progress Report, in which I discuss yet another of my neuroses

Writerly Neurosis #324:  Whenever I go for an extended period without writing, I start doubting myself and my ability to pull the plow.  I feel like a fraud, a poseur.  If, during such moments, someone asks me how the writing is going, I smile and give some automatic "Fine, thanks."  But inside, I die a little.

Then I start writing something new, and that goes away.  For a while.

So I started something new on Sunday.  I don’t even have a working title at this point.  But it seems like just what the doctor ordered.  I still need to do a rewrite of From Earth I Have Arisen, and that would have been a perfectly acceptable project to work on, but I felt like I could get a little more distance from that piece if I completed some small, totally unrelated project first.  This new story should be short–although given my track record estimating length, take that for what it’s worth–but it will be enough to occupy my brain for a bit.

And hey, new story.  (Accompanied, no doubt, by all those other neuroses.)

Also, at some point this week, I have to get ready for our tax guy’s annual appearance.  Oh, joy.  Stress?  What stress?

Write Club updates:

Tier one rejections from Basement Stories, Apex, and Daily Science Fiction.  Response times:  one month, 16 days, and 19 days, respectively.

I’m out.

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