Don’t look at me, I didn’t buy him the eyeliner…

So last week I started working on a story about a man with a birdcage full or sparrows instead in of a heart and the question of what happens when you swap out the sparrows for something else. It ends badly (because it’s one of my stories and they almost always end badly), and there is heartbreak (’cause, again, I’m writing it…), and last night I finally hit the end of the draft and said “oh, well, that’s done.”

It’s not a terribly good story yet, and may never be, but there is rewriting to correct that problem should I decide it has the seed of a good story in there.

The important thing is that it’s done, because that’s how The Fear is combated – you crush it beneath the weight of endlessly finished drafts until it gives up and goes away.

And because I was the model of writerly virtue yesterday, I’m going to go collect mail this morning.

Current Project: Getting Back to Basics
Number of Stories Submitted in February: 0 of 8
Rejections Accrued in 2010: 0
Consecutive Productive Writing Days: 1
Days without coke and other soft-drinks: 3
Days without chocolate: 6
Today the Spokesbear is: getting his emo on.

Spirit: willing

I got the writing moving again over the weekend. Not full, productive workdays where I get my 1,000 words down, but enough to feel like I’m actually doing something. Today’s list of things to do consists of words: words; e-mail; tracking down groceries. I will achieve all of these. Everything else is superfluous.

This will not, of course, prevent me from wasting time on the internets.

Current Project: Getting Back to Basics
Number of Stories Submitted in February: 0 of 8
Rejections Accrued in 2010: 0
Consecutive Productive Writing Days: 0
Days without coke and other soft-drinks: 2
Days without chocolate: 5
Today the Spokesbear is: sleeping in.

And lo, I could not think of a title

Mornin’ peeps. The laptop’s on battery power* at the moment so I’m racing against time to get a blog-post written before the computer yawns and says “sleepy now, going away.”

Yesterday I wrote 381 words on a story, poked at another to see where it fell over**, cleared out 50-odd e-mails had been waiting for me to answer them since the beginning of January***, ate half a loaf of bread, took out the rubbish, pondered tactics for tonight’s Bloodbowl game****, and learned that one of my stories from last-year has been picked-up-for-a-reprint-that-I’m-not-sure-I-can-talk-about-yet-so-we’ll-leave-that-there.

Among the various e-mails was a note from Andrew C Porter that basically went along the lines of linked you on my blog, and you might want to go check out the nice things Apex Submission’s Editor Maggie Jamison said in her interview. And so I went, and nice things were said, and Andrew’s blog proved to be fun and vaguely maddening with his insistence on posting Advanced Dungeon’s and Dragon’s trivia that I half-remembered but couldn’t *not* try and answer out of some vague and misplaced sense of gamer-geek pride. Andrew’s also got interviews up with John Klima of Electric Velocipede and Rick DeCost of Absent Williow Review, and blogs quite honestly and amusingly about the whole trying-to-get-published thing.

Current Project: Getting Back to Basics
Number of Stories Submitted in February: 0 of 8
Rejections Accrued in 2010: 0
Consecutive Productive Writing Days: 0 <- Say it with me: FAIL
Days without coke and other soft-drinks: 1
Days without chocolate: 1
Today the Spokesbear is: trying not to point out that giving up chocolate is pointless if I fill the gap with half a loaf of white bread and butter, failing at it, then giving me an aggrieved “shouldn’t you be working” sigh.

*keeping the laptop on battery power while playing on the internets means I can’t waste the *entire* day hanging out here.
**The beginning, mostly
***folks should know that I am teh suxxor at e-mail when afflicted with The Fear, because every e-mail starts with the question “how can I avoid looking like an idiot.”
****I play halflings. The scattered few of you familiar with Bloodbowl can laugh at the absurdity of contemplating tactics now.