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Joy to be Had

This week was rather productive writing wise. No, I didn’t start work on my untitled werewolf novel, but I did come up with a potential title for it — Beneath the Midday Moon. Why “midday”? Well, because in winter in Alaska it is perfectly possible to see a full moon during the middle of the day. 🙂

I also finished the drafter of one short story and sent it to my Writing Gang for review and started sketching out random phrases and ideas for yet another story. Both of which I will have finished and off to their respective anthology markets before the end of the month. Huzzahs!

In other news, I just realized that my poetry review, “Joy to be Had: On Ron Padget’s How Long,” has been published in the Summer 2012 issue of Gently Read Literature. So, yay!

Reading it over though, I had to cringe because there is a rather blaringly bloody mess of a mistake that was left in the review when it was published. One of the sentences just cuts off halfway through and is painfully incomplete, neither I when I was putting it together, nor the editor caught this. *sigh*

In other other news, a friend pointed out Book Crossing, which is a way of assigning a number to books and tracking them as they are shared around the world. I had heard of this site before and loved the idea, but lost the link and couldn’t find it again. So, I’m thrilled to see it, because I love leaving copies of books in the hostels when I travel for other people to pick up. 😀

[Cross-posted to my livejournal.]
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It's Friday. Huzzahs.

I’ve been somewhat sick half the week, but I’ve discovered that taking Nyquil before bed = awesomeness. What? Sleep through the night? Without my head congested and generally unbreatheable? Wake up feeling better not worse the next morning? Yeah! Why haven’t I done this before?

Because I’ve been a head full of mucus this week, I’ve use this as an excuse to be lazy. Thus no progress has been made on my anti-nano goals — I can’t, at the moment, even bring myself to open the untitled werewolf novel to even see where I’m at with it. However, I have been making some progress on a piece that will probably end up being just a little too long for flash fiction.

So that’s it in news about me.

Now I point you to this awesome post, “Black Women in Speculative Fiction: A Brief Investigation,” which increases my TBR list exponentially.

Also, here’s a meme I snatched from brigits_flame:

Book you are currently reading: The Hobbit by Tolkien, Nebula Awards Showcase 2012, and Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente
Last book you read: Buffy and the Heroine’s Journey: Vampire Slayer as Feminine Chosen One, by Valerie Estelle Frankel
Book you could read again and again and again: The Hobbit and Beloved by Toni Morrison and a handful of others.
Book you are glad you read once but will never ever read again: Most recently? Probably The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett. (But I never really know what books I’ll read again.)
Favorite book (if it differs from a book you could read again and again…): Too many, but a novel that is my current favorite is Seraphina, by Rachel Hartman
Writer whose stories you enjoy immensely: Neil Gaiman, for one, Holly Black, Nova Ren Suma, Libba Bray, for others.
Writer whose style blows you away: Mostly poets, such as Ai, or Walt Whitman, or David Perez, or Karen Finneyfrock. Also, Toni Morrison.

[Cross posted to my livejournal.]
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Ready… Set …

Tomorrow is the first ever Mindful Writing Day, organised by Kaspa & Fiona at Writing Our Way Home! Yay!

To join in simply slow down, pay attention to one thing and write it down (making a small stone ). As per Fiona: “small stones are easy to write, and they will help you connect to the world. Once you’ve started, you might not want to stop…” Read all about it here. You can also submit your small stone and see it published on the blog, and be entered into a competition to win one of five paperback copies of the book.

I shall gleefully be trying to write as many mindful stones as I can tomorrow. (^_^)

Also, in celebration of tomorrow’s Mindful Writing Day, a free kindle copy (US & UK) of the new anthology, “A Blackbird Sings: a book of short poems” (which includes a poem by me) is available both today and tomorrow! For joy!

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In other news…. tomorrow (or rather tonight at midnight) kicks of Nanowrimo or Anti-Nano or whatever writing challenge you choose to launch into for November. In my case, it’s my Anti-Nano almost-from-scratch rewrite of my Untitled Werewolf novel, for which I am not prepared mentally or organizationally or in any way at all. *sigh*

[Cross-posted to my livejournal.]
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November: Anti-Nano and Mindful Writing

1. Anti-Nano
November is generally known as the month my family stares at me in wonder and shakes their heads as I dive into National Novel Writing Month. Generally, they think of me as a crazy person for this (except for my youngest sister, who occasionally participates, too).  I will not be participating in the official Nano this year, however, as the Untitled Werewolf Novel I began for Nano last year is still sitting in a sorry state of disrepair. I don’t think its a good idea at this juncture for me to try to jump into a new novel just because it’s shiny and new.

Instead I shall be participating in Anti-Nano, which just just like regular Nanowrimo, except that you can set whatever sort of writing goal you want, from rewrites to a series of drabbles. It’s nice in that you get to participate in the mayhem and feel the camaraderie, but at a pace and a goal that works for you. If you’re interested, you can go sign up here in the squidathon community.

The end result will be that my family will still be staring at my like I’ve drifted into madness and, hopefully, a second and less-rough looking draft of the Untitled Werewolf Novel.

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2. Mindful Writing Day
I will also be participating in Mindful Writing Day on November 1st. The premise is simple: Write a small stone (poem or prose) by paying proper attention to one thing and writing it down. It’s a lovely little challenge that I’m happy to be a part of. Already, I’m starting to look more at the world around me, gathering ideas as to what I might write about.

Mindful Writing Day will also coincide with the anthology A Blackbird Sings: a book of small poems being offered for free on the kindle for that day — a nice little tie-in promotion.

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Therefore, before November I have quite a few things I should do to prep. It would be nice if I could clear my palate by finishing up some edits on stories and sending them out, but what I really need to do is read through my existing Untitled Werewolf Novel drafts and begin a new set of outline and get myself in a general head space to be able to handle the workload coming my way.

[Cross-posted to my livejournal.]
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"There is no great writing, only great rewriting." ~ Justice Brandeis

I recently finished a second draft of a zombie/Bluebeard story, tentatively called “The Girls Come and They Go”. It’s almost there. I need to smooth out some of the scenes, add some details and tension toward the end, and chop out some exposition before finishing up with some good polishing. (I’m tempted to try out the nerd polish excel thing, though I tend to be so focused on the text and hearing it in my head that it’s hard to me to stop and count how many times I used certain telling words.)

I intended to submit this story to an anthology, but the market has closed up. I was too slow getting the story written and edited, which I find terribly annoying. I would much prefer to have my story read by an editor and rejected than to not submit it because I working past the deadline date. It’s happened several times now, and I always kick myself every time (though the upside is that I now have a new story completed). So, now I have to find another market that’s open to looking at zombie stories.

Anyway, this realization — that I would prefer to have the story read and then rejected — has lead me to a decision. I currently have a handful or more stories in various states of revision that need to be polished off and submitted somewhere…. anywhere.

Therefore, I am not allowed to start any new stories (which is a sort of way to avoid the submission process) until I have finished revisions of at least a handful of stories and started sending them out. As great as it would be to launch into the next shiny thing, it’s also important to follow through, take the journey to its conclusion, so to speak.

I also have enough poems to assemble them into a collection for submission, too, and that also needs to happen.

I’m hoping to get all this done by November, though I have a two week trip to Germany (for work and play) happening at the beginning of October, which will really cut into things, but it’s an attainable goal, if I stay focused. Also, while I may not directly participate in Nanowrimo this year, I so have the Untitled Werewolf Novel to get back to and maybe start from scratch on.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at. I’m hoping I’ll have a lot of submission posts to report in the near future (followed by lots of acceptance posts…. *fingers crossed*).

[Cross-posted to my livejournal.]