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The Pains and Perils of Writing
May. 11th, 2007 04:04 pmNgh. It's been a "productive" (for maintenance-type writing chores) yet frustrating writing day. My mind starts going elliptical after staring at writer's guidelines for a certain amount of time.
Particularly for certain stories, in whose direction I'm ready to throw my hands up and shout, "Fine! Everybody I know who read you, liked you and thought you were funny. But you are such a peculiar mess that no editor is willing to love you. And I cannot bring myself to make another revision that wouldn't change anything anyway. I release you into the ether!"
But I can't do that. Because I will scrape and scrape and scratch until I find a place for all my stories, even the ill-fitting ones. This may be a mistake, but I just can't let them go. I have a half-written story that just didn't work the way I wanted to, and it still haunts me. I hear it rustling in the filing cabinet late at night when I can't sleep.
Also, I'm busy pondering iron dragons, pneumatic knights, and mechanic princesses. I think I'll be writing a story to submit to the Magic & Mechanica anthology. I'm not at all sure it's a good story idea, but I was browsing around to figure out what to write next, and I usually start with checking the anthology listings to see if I have a story idea that would fit one. Well, the idea I was thinking of didn't, not really, but the guidelines got me thinking. That's always dangerous. Now it will nag at me until I write it. Deadline's not that far off, either, to make it all worse.
In more good news/bad news, the ongoing project at Job #1 is over, which means no current time demands from them. And Job #2 has not seen fit to mention whether they'll be needing/wanting more hours from me, so I'm torn as to how much I should try and get whatever's there at Job #1, because that can lead to unpleasant things.
Well, I think the Mad Scientist bought a lottery ticket recently....
Particularly for certain stories, in whose direction I'm ready to throw my hands up and shout, "Fine! Everybody I know who read you, liked you and thought you were funny. But you are such a peculiar mess that no editor is willing to love you. And I cannot bring myself to make another revision that wouldn't change anything anyway. I release you into the ether!"
But I can't do that. Because I will scrape and scrape and scratch until I find a place for all my stories, even the ill-fitting ones. This may be a mistake, but I just can't let them go. I have a half-written story that just didn't work the way I wanted to, and it still haunts me. I hear it rustling in the filing cabinet late at night when I can't sleep.
Also, I'm busy pondering iron dragons, pneumatic knights, and mechanic princesses. I think I'll be writing a story to submit to the Magic & Mechanica anthology. I'm not at all sure it's a good story idea, but I was browsing around to figure out what to write next, and I usually start with checking the anthology listings to see if I have a story idea that would fit one. Well, the idea I was thinking of didn't, not really, but the guidelines got me thinking. That's always dangerous. Now it will nag at me until I write it. Deadline's not that far off, either, to make it all worse.
In more good news/bad news, the ongoing project at Job #1 is over, which means no current time demands from them. And Job #2 has not seen fit to mention whether they'll be needing/wanting more hours from me, so I'm torn as to how much I should try and get whatever's there at Job #1, because that can lead to unpleasant things.
Well, I think the Mad Scientist bought a lottery ticket recently....
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