Several interesting items before we begin a gray, murky, misty Iowa writing day.
1. Story Acceptance: I’m pleased to announce that my ambiguous horror story Crystal Vision will be appearing in Swill issue 5, most likely this summer. One of the things I like to do as a writer is stretch, and this one is a bit of a stretch for me. I get to climb into the head of an alcoholic grandmother. Swill is a non-paying venue, but fills another part of my writer agenda, working with people I know. It sort of dovetails into the third part–placing yourself in areas where you think there will be buzz. Because the Swill guys really have a quasi-literary project.
I want to thank all of my great readers who made me work harder to shape the story. You guys really know how to make a woman revise!
Viable Paradise peeps might also like to know that this was one of the evil overlord vignettes I wrote.
More? Let’s cut this thing a bit, so you don’t have to read the whole list if you don’t care to.
2. Live Journal Statistics: Under the new My Stuff feature, I can actually look at the statistics for visits to my live journal page. At Writer Tamago I usually have around 20 visitors a day. It turns out that the live journal end of the mirror receives almost 50 visitors a day, give or take, with occasional spikes up to 100. Interesting to know. All around the journal system, I’m about 500 clicks a day. I’m still not a rock star.
3. Stay-at-home Writer: I thought about writing an entire entry about this, but basically it boils down to this.
a. My God, it’s easy to write when you’ve nothing else to do with your day. Easy to write AND do all those chores that you have to usually cram into your spare time when you’re working. There’s also a serving of spare time on the side. The conflict of what is the best way to spend your spare time is no longer even relevant. You guys don’t know how lucky you are. What am I missing? Where’s the downside? Oh. Periods of poverty. Right. Health insurance. Retirement. Right.
b. If you’ve got to have a job to cover yourself for cash and benies, I guess mine isn’t too bad. If my writing gets somewhere, the college is willing to “work with me” in terms of travel, what I teach, and so on. We get fake writing times like this–spring break and some vacation (most teachers get more, because I also administrate a program). I can recommend it overall. Of course, you do have to spend time in graduate school getting your doctorate, and you MIGHT not really get serious about your writing until you turn 41…
4. Sharing your writing is helpful. It’s hard for me to get motivated without an audience, and without folks who can give me feedback. I’ve taken positive steps in that direction lately, and it’s really helpful. However you can manage it, DON’ T work in a vacuum. I’ve got to say that having people excited and interested in reading my work is a motivator like no other. I write what I want, but I appreciate shaping it for audiences.
And speaking of shaping some writing, I need to get on it for the day. I’m in the middle of deep writing some new scenes, and then I’ll have to do some refocusing of chapter 5 for the new plot.
See you around today.
Catherine
