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Hello!
I’m updating, because I haven’t updated. I’ve been writing, and I finished my new story about the hanging underwater city. Hooray!
I’m about to go to Maine, will be gone for maybe a week or so. So, I figured even though I’ve been updating less I’d let anyone know who’s wondering that I’m not going to be updating because I won’t actually have the internet for a while.
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Today I sent off a copy of my revised, edited, and finished story “A Stowaway’s Tale” much of which started here, in serial form. I sent it to “Fantasy & Science Fiction” through the mail. My first non-electronic submission.
I’m working to get through my new story, about the hanging underwater city. As usual I could always use people to read it and give impressions in between my first draft and final edit, so email me if you’d like to recieve it as an attachment. Maybe another week or so, maybe sooner, depending on how long it ends up being and how diligently I work at finishing it.
Tomorrow I have another workshop. Looking forward to it. Might have a bit of fiction to post afterwards.
Okay, haven’t updated in a while. So much harder to blog when I’m writing every day on things I want to publish in the non-blog sense.
I’ve got another new concept I’m developing into a story. It’s probably my most fully developed sci-fi world so far. I won’t say too much, but imagine a world where people build out from the coast, floating new development on huge blocks of foam, like is being tried in Holland and the UAE. Next imagine classic underwater domed cities. Finally, put the two ideas together and you get a hanging underwater city, anchored from the top in a floating mass of foam, connected to a coastal city with an inbetween bit where development is mostly on top of the foam, but new development taking place downward and under water instead of upward.
If you can imagine that then you’ve got the starting place for my new tale. I’m having tons of fun, both in writing and in talking through the implications of the hanging under water city with my brother!
Today I got my 3rd rejection, this time for my “World Without History” short story. Instead of being downcast, though, I am seriously excited! That’s because this time my rejection mentioned a reason the person writing chose to pass, instead of the first two times when I got what was clearly a form letter sayind basically ”Great story, thanks but no thanks!”
It was only a single sentence sandwiched in between the standard “thanks but no thanks” kind of sentences, but I’m pretty sure that in this case negative means positive. It even indicated a good direction I ought to take my revisions in, by clarifying the scenario and adding some detail to make the world of the story more convincing.
The magazine that rejected me pays actual money for the stories it accepts as well, which means that they probably get a lot of submissions and are very selective, as opposed to the kind of publication that only offers no payment or a token payment. The fact that my story was taken seriously enough to be commented on is totally encouraging! Especially since it’s only my third try at this publication stuff it’s more than I realistically expected to see this quickly.
I’m working on a new story, but I’m also motivated to go back to this one and rework it before sending it to somewhere else. It may take a while, but I think this story has some real potential and maybe, if I keep at it, someone will agree to pay me money for it someday.
Cash money, bitches. I won’t settle for anything less. Suck on that, Ally Arkallian and all you other haters out there.
The paint chips Jonathon was breaking off the rowboat hurt his fingers, but he kept on picking at them anyway. Pick, pick, ow, suck on fingers. They weren’t bleeding yet so sucking on them only tasted bitter and left his mouth feeling powder dry and tingling. He kept on picking. He couldn’t stop until he reached the end of one of the big patches of flaking paint or until his fingers started showing specks of red between the white paint flecks. That was his habit, and habit for Jonathon was everything.
No rule said he couldn’t wash his mouth to stop the dry feeling or the tingle, though, so with his right hand still picking paint chips he reached down his left inside the boat and grasped around for the lid of the chest he’d stuck his water bottle in to. His hand found the points of a hacksaw someone had abandoned on the bottom of the rowboat first, and then the rusty metal fastener that kept the chest’s lid closed. He opened it by feel and pried the lid back with the cracking sound of old wood resisting new intrusions.
The water bottle was still cold and prickly with condensation when he put his hand around it. He pulled it out and saw a drop of blood begin to run down the side, comingling with the water. Jonathon stopped picking paint chips for a moment in confusion. He always stopped when he saw blood, but this blood was coming out of the wrong finger. It was from the hand that held the water bottle which was brilliant, glistening and glittery as every drop of water reflected sunlight differently.
He’d cut his finger on the hacksaw before he’d found the chest’s lid. Now he had to race to the end of the patch of peeling paint before the blood dropped off the bottom of the bottle. The new rule came all at once, from everywhere and nowhere, and Jonathon became frantic in his efforts as he tried to meet it. Pick, pick, pickpickpickpick, pick. His other hand was bleeding too now. Good. That balanced it.
this is from my latest workshop. i’ve finished a first draft of a new story also, but right now i hate it and not at all sure it’s salvageable. starting a new thing though, which is fun and hopefully i’ll like it better. thanks for the support, everyone 
Well, I got my first rejection notice. I think I was pretty well prepared, and I turned around and sent the story right back out to the next magazine on my list. Still, there’s a bit of a sting to reading a form rejection letter, and the worst part is wondering if I’m fooling myself for trying.
Don’t get me wrong. I know I write well. I know the pieces I’ve sent out are probably professional quality, or at least close, and with a bit more practice writing at that length I’m sure I can make even more improvement.
But! But what if I’m deluding myself, telling myself I’m better than I am? What if the ultimate impact of my stories are to make some poor editor slog through another piece of shit badly written short story in his or her pile and waste the time they could be spending reading decent writing. What if I’m another poor deluded sap that things they can be a writer without having a clue?
I hate feeling like I might be fooling myself. Even though I don’t really believe it, just the possibility feels bad. I know, logically, that all successful writers rack up a pile of no’s before they ever get a single yes, and I believe I can be one of those people if I perservere and believe in myself and just keep telling the stories that I want to tell.
The little voice saying “Vanessa, you’re crazy/stupid/foolish/self-deluding” is just whispering a teeny bit louder, that’s all.
She really does, you know. She may not know how huge the donkey balls that she sucks truly are, but she sucks them nonetheless.
Allow me to explain. “Ally Arkallian” is a made up name, to protect the poor girl from googling herself as a whim some day and finding out how much she sucks, but she is very much a real person. She’s a little older than me, and the daughter of a close friend of my dad. She’s a lesbian also, or possibly bisexual, and last I heard she was trying to become a writer.
A writer, of all things. She takes classes and I’ve always fancied her a sort of nemesis. A sort of alernate Vanessa, the slightly less crazy, slightly less flaky daughter of my Dad’s slightly more successful, slightly wealthier friend Mitchell.
The thing is, though, that she sucks. I’m way more talented, also prettier and thinner, and everything about her that is silly and flaky is, in me, true life difficulty and/or serious artistic pupose.
I found a book of her short stories on the kitchen table when my parents left for Italy. Her VANITY PRESS book. Her SELF PUBLISHED book. This is important. I would never write stupid garden-variety short stories about relationships that could substitute for any moderately competent set of stories by any MFA on the East coast. If I wrote such uninteresting derivitive BS I certainly wouldn’t pay money to publish my own book. If I couldn’t sell my stories I’d write better ones.
This girl is everything I hate and fear about myself while at the same time being somehow someone I’m jealous of or trying to measure up to. And she doesn’t even know it!
(of course, the fact that I make up elaborate scenarios, back stories, and motivations for her is just further proof that I am a true writer and artist, and she’s just the shallow vain rich stuck up self delusional SUCKY person my imagination has turned her into)
Yesterday I had my 1st of 4 writing workshops, and one of the exercises was to create a character as a group and then everyone wrote using that character. Thought it would be fun to show you what I did with the male, 49 year old, unemployed former botanist with a pet groundhog and a fixation about weeds named Gigantor.
Gigantor, weed killer, stood astride the Clements’ garden like a colossus. There were weeds here, aye, weeds aplenty and large enough to require gloves upon a lesser mortal. Never Gigantor, nay, he pulled the weeds barehanded from the Clements, yes and from the Marshal’s and from the Rajensanjays. These labors he performs for nothing, for he is too much a man to bother over payment. A word of gratitude and some fresh baked scones or curry or a muffin were all that he expected.
For the dandelions he felt a certain kinship even as he grasped and yanked and vanquished them. Their silly puffball heads inspired bleak despair in men with rusty grumbling lawnmowers, aye, but pure delight in little children.
Deep inside the perimeter of the Clements acre plot he came upon the Ivy. Ivy, poison, dreaded rash-inducing menace, bane of his existence. He looked down upon the Ivy with disdain as he contemplated the hubris he’d shown before, forgoing garden gloves. Once proud he now stood humbled by the one weed even the mighty former botanist Gigantor couldn’t approach without some hesitance.
To Hell with it! If rash he was to face then face it he would with steel and strength and fortitude. He’d grasp it, aye, and pull it out and damn to hell the consequences. No meek creature he to go and ask the Clements for some gardening gloves. Besides, they’d gone to Orchard Beach for the long weekend.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: creative writing, eating disorders, writing
Quick post, as update and sharing of little insights. Things continue to go well with me, the weather is a big part of that. Being in Bedford with a car is a nice change, and I can’t wait for when my brother comes, in about another week he’ll be here!
Eating disorder update, briefly, for a while my pattern was something like 2 days, oops, 2 days oops, 3 days oops, 4 days oops, 2 days oops, etc. Now its more like 3 days oops, 4 days oops, 5 days oops, 3 days. My face is looking decidedly more human, but weight remains distressingly high and might be climbing, though.
My writing is going well, I’m deep in to my new Psychohistory story, and on Saturday I’m going to a workshop in person run by my online teacher and then later on Saturday I’m going to be reading my story for a group she gets together to do readings of short stories and poetry once a month.
I feel I’m learning a lot about writing, and also that I’ve passed a milestone now that I’m able to write longer things that don’t feel tentative or open ended. The trick, it seems to me, is to pay full attention to all the writerly stuff like dialogue and character and description while also being simultaneously aware that in order for something to be interesting to read you have to have things actually happening- plot, or whatever. Balancing the two makes for good writing, while too much focus on either one or the other is a problem.
What to write about? I’m not doing fiction on the blog much lately, after having recently learned how to write short-story length short stories. And I’ve stopped writing about the big bad eating disorder on the theory that if things are going well (they are!!!) it’s best not to do anything that might upset the balance. So I figured I might write a little about the new story I’ve started and the ideas I have for it.
For those that don’t know science fiction, one of the big names in sci fi is Isaac Asimov. Asimov was a favorite of mine in my early teens, and I even had a subscription to “Asimov’s Science Fiction” which was a magaazine of short sci-fi stories.
One of Asimov’s most successful series was the Foundation Novels. The first few were sets of shorter stories, and later on some of them were ordinary novels. The Foundation books began with the idea that the Galactic Empire was on the verge of collapse, and one man figured this out ahead of time and set a plan in place to limit the damage after the collapse occured. This man was Hari Seldon, and he worked out a mathematics of Psychohistory which was what allowed him to predict and shape the future.
My new story began with a character, the tempermental genius. I thought about writing a story about a genius who is revered by the general population but is very difficult for those closest to him. It’s not a new idea of course, the tempermental genius is an archetypal character.
The direction I decided to go on was to make this genius character a revised version of Hari Seldon, and have him discover Psychohistory in the present, at MIT, in Boston. I decided to look at him mostly through the eyes of a woman who both studies under him and becomes romantically attached to him.
I like the idea of re-imagining a classic character and maybe putting a bit of a feminist take on him. All my heroes, I’ve recently realized, are male writers. Many of them write in ways that totally by accident end up either not including women or devaluing them. I also like the idea of bringing Psychohistory back because these days we have so many doomsayers, so many people predicting our imminent collapse and destruction. Is it all hysteria, and can we as non-scientists even know what’s really to be feared and what’s just, you know, Swine Flu aka the Porky Sniffles?
