October report and NaNoWriMo doubts

All right, so October didn't really go as planned.

I mean, it kind of did. I sent out 21 submissions, 2 of which were queries for The Last Song. That's good progress, right? I've gotten 12 rejections back already, many of which came in the last week or so. 2 were personal, 10 were form.

But. In the middle of October, my organs staged a revolt (I am now acutely aware of where my kidneys are) and I'm still getting back on the horse from that. I haven't been reading anything, just watching stuff on Netflix and Amazon Prime. Other than yesterday's workshop, I haven't written a damn thing three weeks. So. It would seem NaNoWriMo isn't going to happen for me this year. Which is okay. I think I'm still pretty numbed from being sick and wanting to sleep all the time (okay, I still kind of want to sleep all the time).

My life isn't creatively bereft, anyway. We've got a lot of gaming going on still (I only missed a couple sessions of our assorted Pathfinder games through my sickness), including a new Shadowrun story in which I'm playing a decker (though not the same decker depicted in this post). It's probably the party role I've enjoyed best, though I did really like my brief stint as the Face (which is the person who arranges jobs and payments, does the risky purchasing, liasons with contacts, etc.)

Who are you people and why are you in my house?

Okay, we've slid past October's halfway point. Where am I? Where are you?

Quotable Quotes from Gaming Life

A lot of gaming quotes are really only funny in context. I know it, you know that. Some gamers don't.

Then, there are some gaming quotes that are funny regardless. May I direct your attention to: Out of Context D&D

We frequently have D&D going in my household (well, Pathfinder), but we've also had Shadow Run and most recently Fading Suns going on in our gaming group. I thought I'd wade through and find some gems from there.

Flash Fiction Finalist (or, Close But No Cigar)

I post every once in awhile about how I take part in Janet Reid's 100 word flash fiction contests. Well, after some stiff competition this summer, I still didn't win, but I was a finalist for the final one of the season.

Even though I haven't gotten mentioned a whole lot, I do try to enter each one of Ms. Reid's contests. Writing a story in 100 words, beginning-middle-end, is damn hard. It's a writing muscle challenge, to be sure.

The words to include were: remove, escape, away, lull, spare  (can use the word as part of a larger one)

And this is what I came up with:

When Becca was removed from her family and set up in our spare room, she was too old to be a kid and too young to be on her own. The only comfort she accepted was the lullaby of Grimalkin's burbling purr.

A person's ghosts are hard to get away from, but she was almost okay. Then the whispers started again. The knocking. Grimalkin hissed arched-back at empty corners, a tuxedo asterisk.

We labored over her escape plan, and there was no margin for error when we sent her off to prom, barred the doors, and set the fire.

Some quotes, mostly from work

Coworker: Jen's necklace is full of pixies!
Me: Well, they're probably dead by now, so the chiming you hear is the sound of their bones.
Coworker: You're fucked up.

Housemate: So there's this guy named Minotauro, and I wonder how you get a name like Minotauro.
Me: Well, your mom fucks a bull....
Housemate: Yeah, that's fair.

Coworker: "Who's the bad guy in Star Wars that's dressed all in black"? No, that question is too hard, the kids won't know it.
Me: Look, if those kids are so ignorant they don't know who Darth Fucking Vader is, your next program is showing them ALL of the Star Wars movie.
Coworker: Okay.
Me: Clockwork Orange style.
Coworker: ....oh

On August 6:
Me: Today is the anniversary of when the Enola Gay dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima.
Friend 1: ....oh
Friend 2: the only trivia I have about today is that it's Soleil Moon Frye's birthday.
Friend 1: Who's that?
Me and Friend 2: PUNKY BREWSTER

Coworker: *holds up magazine with a picture of a platter on it that has a 3d dinosaur in the middle* it's for...with candy?
Me: It's a shame the sides aren't higher, you could fill it with dark chocolate pudding and it'd be like the La Brea Tar Pits.
Newest Coworker: ....well that's....morbid....

And finally:

Two men were talking a little too loudly down the hall, while my coworker and I were dealing with a line. I finished up, and then the comment that broke the camels' back: "...hasn't been touched in 45 years!"

I went down the hallway to confront the gentlemen, and realized one of them was holding a fire extinguisher. He was the fire extinguisher maintenance guy. I got their attention and said "I'm sorry, but we need you to be a little more quiet than that, especially after your last comment, which could really be misconstrued.

They looked at me, looked at each other, and cracked up.

My flash story "Adventuring" in Episode 65 of Far-Fetched Fables

So who's got two thumbs and has a story in a podcast with a story by Aliette de Bodard? THIS GUY!

That's right, episode 65 of Far-Fetched Fables contains my flash fiction story, "Adventuring", which first appeared in Daily Science Fiction a few months back.

I'm at work, so haven't listened to the podcast yet, but I'm sure it'll rock your socks! I've loved everything I've read by Aliette de Bodard (she's won two Nebula awards and a Locus, amont others), and of course I'm pretty fond of my story too.

Keep writing stories, and keep sending them out

I learned today that Tor.com has two different form rejections, one a little less form than the other, and that's the one I got today.

Along with the regrets that the short story they read wasn't quite what they were looking for, and luck sending it elsewhere, it includes the line "Please send us more of your work in the future."

I read an interesting article not long ago about the gender split of story submission behavior. It claimed that men, when they receive an encouragement like that, try to follow up as soon as possible (some markets want a gap between your submissions, as a for instance, a week, a month, etc.) and women will sometimes wait up to 6 months, if they submit to that market again at all.

I'm not sure how true it is. I'm not saying it isn't true either. I honestly don't know.

There are a lot of women writers getting published out there. The women who are successful, or becoming successful, could not possibly have been such shrinking violets when it came to submitting their stories. They had to have kept trying, kept sending them out (or been so goddamn brilliant they got published the first time out. I'm sure that happens to some people as well).

And then there's this blog post on The Missouri Review about perseverance (Okay, "stubborn" might get bandied about a bit). I feel like writers who are successful even a little, they persevere. They get the rejection and go "Okay, where can I send this next". Or, "What changes do I need to make so that this becomes a better story?"  I try to do both of these. I've been submitting stories for ten years or so by now and have had one acceptance. It isn't like I'm going to stop writing, so I need to keep being stubborn.

Onwards and upwards, my friends.