#3

Charm my ass.

This one was personalized, so that was nice. Dammit, I really wanted that T-shirt.

#2

Already, the novelty is gone.

Working the Plan

"Stage 28" lies, thus unread and unloved, in the submission inboxes of a couple more e-zines.

Foundlings, faeries, catrinas...but first, "After the Blackout".

There are a couple of new links on the side. One is my friend Vikram's website, with his beautiful artwork, and the second is "The Digital Medievalist", which is currently proving more fascinating and distracting than Wikipedia and Crimelibrary combined.

Compensation

Shayne: Try these guys next. They're one of the fastest markets out there, pay a $25.00 flat fee, plus a t-shirt.

T.: Sold. You had me at 't-shirt'.

Not Artistically Acceptable

So, "After the Blackout" has been driving me batshit, and not in the artistically acceptable way where I feel myself being stalked by shadows of the main characters, or unable to sleep, making me instead stay up all night at my desk, drinking gin by candlelight with shaking hands (a bad mix all around. In other news, I need new batteries for my smoke detector), and penning rambling letters to my sick wife in the sanitorium about how I long for the release of a squalid death. No, it has been driving me to hair-ripping, wall pounding, procrastinating, run-on sentence Hell.

I was in a coffee shop yesterday (I was waiting for someone! Don't judge me!), and I made a bunch of notes, so I think I know what is wrong, and what I have to do to correct it. The problem is, it means scrapping everything so far and starting again, which I'm not keen to do. I have other ideas I want to move on to.

Part of my reason for having this site is to keep myself disciplined. I have the attention span of a lobotomized gnat, I want an egg salad sandwich.

Sorry, sorry, really, I'm back, but see what I mean? I know lots of writers have trouble finishing projects they start...that's a pretty common problem for people in general. My way of combatting this is by making myself work on only one project at a time, and I don't let myself touch anything else until it's done. My reward for completing my work is more work. This website is also a disciplinary tool of sorts, for publicly shaming me into working so I actually have stuff to post.

Right now I'd love to throw "After the Blackout" across my apartment, or bury the notebook in the garden, and work on the next thing. I know if I do that though, I'll fall back into bad habits in a second, and not finish a piece for another two years. I have a few writer friends who seem to actually work steadily on multiple projects at once, and I look upon them as unicorns. Pink unicorns, with glittery manes, and ruby hooves, who speak fluent French.

I'm still a bipedal, non-imaginary anglophone, I'm afraid.

So, for the sake of any and all future works, back to the beginning I go.

(sorry Shayne)

#1

Today is a day for the ages, I received my very first rejection letter! Thanks to all who've been there for me through it all.

Clearly, your friendship and love did me no good.

Blind Recommendation

"Tis better to have loved and lost then to have never loved at all? No. Tis better to have never met certain people in the first place."
-Kurt Daniel Glowinski

I'm not up at all on current poetry. I don't usually find it all that interesting, and because of that, I've no idea how to evaluate what's good and what's bad. Most people will yap at you that it's all subjective anyway until you say you like ________ poet, and then they'll loudly call you on your stupidity.

I stick to reading poets who are dead.

Still, let me take a moment to recommend Narcissistic Personality Disorder by that guy I just quoted above. I've no way to tell whether this set of poems is particularly good or not, but I can say that they will speak to anyone who has been in a relationship with a chronic narcissist. For those who have been, perhaps it will speed the healing process to know that you are not alone. For those who haven't been, maybe you will see how abusive relationships like those hold together. Or maybe the poems will be useless to you.

Poetry's pretty useless anyway. Unless it's Dr. Suess.