Way-yay-ting is the hardest part!

I hate waiting.

I try not to wait.  I try to keep writing and editing and looking forward.  I try to build my story portfolio and keep things in the mail.  But there's a certain contest I'm very eager to hear from.  Every time I load the page I think why, oh why isn't it updated?  It's been ten days since their big to-do.  Isn't there even a teensy eensy batch of new results?  Is anyone calling anyone to let them know they're on the honorable mention list?  

It's all part of the writing thang.  The anticipation is part of the 'fun.'  

Done with whining, back to writing.

Whine!

Okay, done now for real this time.

Passive: Progress is being made

Passive or not, I am making writing progress.  Eets just verry verry slllooowww.  I had something going on every day off, and I had a lot off in a row.  I'd be frustrated, but it got to the point where I just had to laugh.  Starting out with a last minute prom prep helped.  Always begin with a high note before plunging into the pit, if possible.  My first day back at work this week I was still dealing with the fallout from a water pump failure that cascaded into a water tank replacement.  But it's all good.  I still managed to get some editing done at the Fireside and some critiquing done this morning while the tank was being installed.

Which, btw, sadly I'll be late, verrry laaaate to INK tomorrow because I close.  I should be there around 8:30 or 9pm.  Knowing our INKiness, ya'll will still be in full swing.  Just in case, though, I'll email everyone my finished critique tomorrow morning before I leave for work.

If I remember.

Provided nothing else drastic comes along.

The synopsis as a haiku

Since we've been discussing synopses so much lately, my eyes bloinked out of my head when I was at the Absolute Write Water Cooler today.  (Yes, I know, I should be writing ...)  The post that caught my attention had a link to a Miss Snark post about synopses.  Miss Snark's post is short and snarky, as always.  The brilliant quote in the middle that I wanted to call everyone's attention to was this:

A synopsis is just a totally weird form. It's like haiku on steroids. Everything that makes you a good writer works against you for writing a good synopsis.

Read the entire post here.  There are lots of great comments that go with it.

Curse you, synopsis, you mock me with your artificial constructions and the disproportionate value that is placed upon you!

Escape

My brain is looking for escape routes.  Yesterday I wanted to write on anything except what I was supposed to.  Last night I even came up with a new story idea.  This morning I came up with more ideas--luckily one was for Masks--but the primary idea was for a project that has been on a backburner and will probably stay there for a long time.  I can blame my heavy schedule for this bout of escapism, but that would be just an excuse.  I know how to kick this.  Write anyway.

Definitely owe INK a dollar, and considering Radcon, that'll be another dollar because I'm not going to get a sub in by next Monday either.  Might as well pay up now.  But hey, after Radcon I'll be home free for quite a while.  With two day jobs days of work a week, three max, and the fact that lately my schedule has been arranged so that the workdays are consecutive, I'll have a lot more free time to get writing projects done.  I'm really, really looking forward to that.  Radcon has become my Thunderdome, and all I want to do is get beyond it (she said, dating herself yet again.)  I'm sure once I get there, though, I'll have such a blast that I'll forget all about these silly things called deadlines and goals, at least for a while.

Yet Another FAQ

Everyone has pet peeves. Everyone gloms onto certain issues that they simply can't overlook in writing. I have this thing about first sentences in passive voice. I'm not against passive voice altogether--it has its place--but the first sentence? We haven't even gotten started and we're already distancing the action.

The thing about pet peeves is this--they're irrational and cruel. But they need their due. They're irrational and cruel because no matter how much we hate them, we're guilty of them. Passive voice in the first sentence? Oh yeah, I've written that, and stuck to it too. They need their due, though, because pet peeves arise from seeing the same problems over and over again until you start looking for inventive things to do to yourself so that you don't have to say it again.

I couldn't tell so and so that I didn't like that passive voice in the first sentence because we were out of bread in the house and I had to go shopping and then I forgot to write it down and during the critique I decided that if I hadn't written it down in the first place it must not have been that important.

My (actually Ris' proposal, I was going to do this by myself because you know I can't shut up once I've gotten an idea) is for INK (and associates, if you would like to contribute!) to submit your pet peeves for a FAQ. We can organize it by person, or, if you think this would be a better idea, we can hide in pseudo-anonymity, pretend we don't know who wrote what pet peeve, and just glom them all together into one list.

For the record, I refuse to take the blame for first sentence in passive voice. That doesn't bother me in the least.

Which One

I have a lot of stories to choose from.  They all have flaws.  I'm having a hard time committing.  I thought I'd go with Comes in Colors, aka Colorized, but now I'm having doubts.  So I've decided to throw this list online, basically thinking aloud, to see what happens.  (In other words, I'm inflicting my thoughts on the universe, not asking that everyone vote, although if you have suggestions I am so, so willing to hear them!)  

It's really hard to judge my own stuff.  I have the same trouble painting.  The ones people gravitate to are not my faves, generally speaking.  I'm only looking at fairly recent stories.  I don't want to dredge up really old ones for WotF.

[Secret WotF sub]:  People remember it.  It's pretty clean (though Ris is right, it could use trimming.)  It has some good visuals.  Overall, though, I'm afraid the idea is not very creative, and it certainly doesn't have much punch.  Even after editing I don't think it'll be a vivid story.

Calling In:  I think it's funny, and it recently got funnier thanks to some tightening and a plot adjustment.  I like that it's very short, the shortest thing I've written.  But, it's humor.  Humor is hard, and humor pieces deserve recognition, but I don't know if this humor piece does.  

Flight:  This is the oldest of the stories I'm considering.  It's also a shorter story.  The tale of the engineered child whose first flight is recorded in JonBenet Ramsey style has some moments that I still think about, but I think I missed the mark with it.  I dunno.

Invaders:  Although this idea of robots being engineered to imitate alien invaders is nothing new, I think having the pov from the robot is unique.  The critique I got from Strange Horizons when I offered it for publication was that it was a near miss but it felt 'slight.'  I guess I didn't go deep enough, or the situation was too cliche'.  I don't know if I'll be able to get out from under that response to submit it to a contest.

Walking the Earth:  This rambling story about an alien born on Earth after his ancestors crash landed here has some fun moments, but plot-wise it verges on a mini-novel.  It's a classic Kami short story in the sense that I had a novel plot and tidied it up enough to fit into a short story.  I've had cleaner ideas but I really like the characters in this one.

[Secret Future WotF entry]:  A story about a general who switches to the losing side of a war.  I like that she dies at the end, and how that happens, but the opening starts on one of Diedre's nits--with a bloody fight.  I suppose I could change the opening.  It wouldn't even be that hard.  Despite being last on my list, this is the one I'm closest to considering submitting to WotF instead of [The Current Actual Entry.]

I just realized that I could submit Comes in Colors one quarter, and Causes another.

And I really need to start writing more short stories if I'm going to be submitting to contests.  Sheesh, you guys, I'm a novelist!  I'm not even supposed to be here!

The Dreaded Bio

I've been struggling with my bio.  Part of the issue is that some of the things that have influenced my writing are things I did only for a short time--five years or less--and haven't kept up with, and none of them are formally recognized by orgs or institutions that I can point at and say see, they know me.

Paragliding--This is an expensive hobby that I played with for several glorious months with Rory.  I think I went on only one class/play day without him, and that was one of the high altitude flights I took to deepen my certification.  Any time I talk about a character or creature flying, I draw from my experiences in paragliding.  Sometimes it gets in my way, like when I mention rotors and experience frustration that hardly anyone in my audience will know what I'm talking about.  The sensations of flight as well as learning how to read something invisible by a combination of touch and indirect observation and educated guesswork has opened the world of flight to me.  The stories I heard from our instructor also influence my writing.  The failures, the humor, the commentary about early paragliding and the hazards of other types of unpowered flight molded my opinions about what flight is and should be.

Caving aka Spelunking--I hardly ever go, though this is one of the things I do end up doing once a year, usually.  The smells, sights (and darkness,) feel and sounds of underground, the emotional sense of earth--I wouldn't have a good grasp of it without my caving experience.  My particular experience deviates a lot from folks who tour caves because there's so much climbing and also crawling in very tight spaces as opposed to walking around on metal walkways with handrails and do not touch signs.  I learned to not touch by example and the obvious respect that my instructing spelunkers showed to the cave environment.  And to get back to the dark part--cave darkness is just so palpable, and I'm not sure anyone can identify with false sight (where your brain makes up things it thinks it sees in perfect darkness) unless they've experienced it for themselves.

Rock climbing--man I love this sport, but I haven't gone since we've moved.  What makes it even more annoying to include in a bio is that I've only gone rappelling in the big outdoors.  All my most meaningful rock climbing has been indoors.  There's something primal and kewl about holding your entire weight by your fingertips and toes, sometimes just the tips of toes.  And I love the challenge provided by overhangs.  Oh, hey, I'm ten pounds lighter now!  Maybe I can get my ass over that four foot overhang--but I digress.  When I write about climbing and exposure (height and danger) I'm remembering all my climbing happy places and also my appalling failures (I'm terrible at regular outdoor rock climbing.)  And yet, I can't call myself a rock climber.  I just did it for fun when we had that gym membership where they had a fun wall, a stretch of a mere two or three years.  We've had memberships at other places with walls, but their walls sucked (small, uncreative, too easy.)  The biggest difficulty with a small wall is that there's no place to traverse (go sideways) and so if you're alone, and you actually obey the rule where your feet can't go three feet above the floor unless you're on ropes, there's nothing to do.  In my favorite room, on the other hand, I used to do laps.  Wee!

Well, I guess I'd better go back to working on the bio.  Bleh.

Part time means never having to say I'm available

Before I start, heh, I love the Moody's comment about a period agricultural event. If only ...

I've been griping about my work schedule for a couple of days now. Apparently part time has been translated into Kami working six days in a row, getting one day off (Wednesday) and then working some more followed by getting Saturday off. Okay, yes, I'm looking forward to the ensuing fat paycheck. But dang! I have stuff to do, people! Once again I'm facing an unhappy chat with the manager which may not become necessary if, on the upcoming Thursday, I look at the schedule and see a heap of days off in a row. Problem solved. Normally I make excuses for management along the lines of so-and-so is on vacation or what's-her-name is sick so we have to fill in, yay checking account. In this case, though, a managerial type is on vacation and there is no such thing as filling in from the ranks for that position. Other supers fill in, not us grunts. They even pulled a super from another store to help. So what gives??!!

What gives is someone who doesn't like to do scheduling, or any paperwork for that matter. Rather than deal with the issue by making everything as automatic as possible (by making the schedule almost identical each week, shuffling people around only as needed to cover vacations, etc.) the manager has chosen to just fill shifts with qualified personnel in pencil apparently at random until all shifts are covered and then tack the schedule on the wall. Which is followed by us recipients of said schedule looking at it and scratching our heads wondering WTF. This negates such niceties like being able to say with fair certainty if you can make the picnic in two weeks or the Friday meeting down at the local burger joint that happens every other week. There isn't even a pattern as to shift or post. Nor is there much advance notice--it's posted week by week, one week at a time Sunday-Saturday on Thursdays, period. How in the world can people plan weekend stuff with their families if they only know if they'll get the Sunday after the Saturday off two days in advance? I've never seen a schedule done this way, dartboard style. I hope to never again. It's terribly inconvenient for everyone, including the schedule maker, although he probably doesn't see it that way. For him, short term, it appears to be the least stressful way to fill positions.

He'll be retiring soon. I like the man, and yet, yay!!

He needs to retire. In the meantime, apparently working part time means never having to say I'm available on a given day. Boo, drat.

Time for Sale

I've figured out a back door onto blogger so that I can post--hopefully this will do until I can update my confuter sometime in the distant future.

Working even part time has opened my eyes to the world of the writer-while-worker. I know that some folks, once they quit their day jobs and are able to devote full time to writing, get writer's block. (Oh, the humanity!!) Others blossom (go Ris!) though even those sweat and plan and juggle until they can really hit their stride. Coming from the other side, as a writer who had an entire day in which to work in writing, every day, year 'round, I've hit the wall of work interference and my nose is bruised.

It's not so much the five-to-nine hours I'm out of the house (up to ten hours if you include days that we close late due to customers plus commuting time and the leeway I give myself for arrival at the shift start) and can't write because I'm on duty. Well, all right, it is that because sh*t rolls downhill. At the top, by necessity, is work where I make money and where hours are regimented by The Big Man (aka Dan aka The Big Guy) and this presses aside all other duties normally assigned to me, including housework, laundry, gardening, and making sure the animals are properly tended to (never mind actually getting to play with and train the dogs, cuddle with the cats, do sudoku, watch videos with the family, and enjoy the occasional sit down dinner.) Before and after work, my other duties must be performed. Back in the day of total freedom, I could pick away at chores or even neglect them for days and later come back to them in a frenzy of cleaning. Well, if I do that now then more often than not the frenzy of cleaning must be put off until my next day off, which may not be until the end of the week. Then I have to prioritize for the day. Is it sunny outside? Garden! Is it cold/windy/rainy/all of the above? Tackle the laundry and dishes. Strip the beds and change the sheets. Vacuum. Clear away clutter and try to get something, anything organized. The day off is gone, and I haven't written a word except in my head where it doesn't much count.

I used to juggle writing and work. I used to work full time and write. Of course, back then, my house was even more gross than it is now and I got about four hours of sleep at a stretch. I can't do four hours of sleep or less anymore.

It doesn't help that my current job verges on full time more often than not. They're hiring again because we lost our receiving manager, which shuffled our hardware manager over to that department (he's actually trying to work both jobs at the same time, currently, which is fun to watch the tall thin man run all day.) As spaces get filled in as best they can, the hours shuffle around and land squarely on the part time staff.

Am I saying I can't write? No. I am saying it's hard, harder than I remember, and bushwacking my way toward editing Masks with my handy-dandy MacMachete (with a dull blade) is slow going. When I'm not working anymore, whether it's because I get published and need to meet deadlines, or work conflicts with daily life build to the point that I'm not willing to continue working (even for my fabulous employee discount and the ability to hammer away harder at debts and enjoy more vacations in Victoria or the coast,) I will definitely appreciate my freedom more. And get a helluva lot done in a day. I was such a slacker ...

So, a word of caution to those of you who have full time writing ability and are considering returning to work for grocery money or whatever--money is indeed not everything. Time is everything. Time.