Friday Rants and Raves - April 25

[sarillia]

Happy Friday everyone! I haven't done this in a while but we're back. Hopefully you all have lots of good things to talk about , but I want to hear about the bad stuff too if you need someone to commiserate with. How has your writing life been lately?

Continuing with my ongoing presentation of the pictures in my "inspiration" collection, today we have James Skelton Smith's Courting the Moon.

Comments

[agilebrit]

My bear story is out in the Far Orbit anthology--which is on sale for under a buck right now, so grab it while it's hot! Greg Benford is the headline author for that one.

I'm waiting impatiently for the Writers of the Future results. My dream "response" day is the day where I get a call from WotF, a snail mail acceptance from F&SF, and an email acceptance from Streets of Shadows. All three of those have Ben stories, so it would be a mad confluence. And hugely unlikely. But I can dream.

I'm working my novel synopsis in preparation for going to MisCon over Memorial Day--DAW Books is guesting, so I'm hoping to do a pitch. All my shorts are driving me crazy right now.

[inkdust]

Ugh, things are going terribly.

The next story idea I had picked just doesn't make me care enough, so I started questioning whether I should return to my back-burner massive trilogy idea, but the reason why I set it aside in the first place (aka being incredibly overwhelming) is still true, so I haven't made any progress there either. I realized I've never actually been in this situation before, and that in the past whenever I've started on a new story it's been a "it chose me" kind of deal. Here I'm trying to move on simply because I need to start on the next thing, and it's a struggle.

I've decided to try being gentle for a while and see if that gets me anywhere better, but it's hard to fight the feeling that I'm not accomplishing anything / should be trying harder / blah blah do better. There's no one to tell me whether I'm doing things right or doing enough, but I still feel everyone's eyes on my back.

Basically I'm flailing through a new kind of transition with little sense of direction and a lot of negative feelings.

[serria]

I've made a lot of progress on my "epic", but then hit a wall. There just seemed like too many pieces, and it didn't seem solid enough yet. I don't understand my antagonists yet, I am introducing more characters than I feel like I can handle, and I'm not sure how exciting any potential reader will actually find it. I don't know whether or not to keep chipping away at it, or take a break to clear my head.

So, I've kind of done the latter over the past week. I've worked on a different story, which is definitely not an epic, and much more simple. Hopefully I can keep it a little more straight forward.

[splinteredstar]

Real life has been a pain, so I haven't had the energy to do any intensive writing. Short version: I do not work in a queer friendly office, or even a particularly queer friendly /state/.

I have however found myself writing several genderqueer characters in a new story, almost as if I have a deep reserve of spite inside of my brain. But that actually fits in with a developing theme in this story, so I'm going with it.

I'm sort of in that slightly fiddly stage of a fantasy novel where I have to figure out how my new species even works. Except since they're sort of spirits who interact with humans so I have to figure out the metaphysical framework of my universe and how souls even work. Even though I know at some point I'll just have to hand wave it and basically go "look these are my assumptions go with it," I don't particularly like doing it.

Also I found notes on a novel from when I was 15, which was surreal.

[mk10]

Real life has been a bit tough lately.

But I am finally beginning to write again, starting with fanfic. I've been carrying a little notebook around with me and scribbling ideas in it. So that's something.