“Simplicity is the most difficult thing to secure in this world; it is the last limit of experience and the last effort of genius.” –George Sand
Why can’t I learn this lesson once, instead of once a month?
What lessons do you learn over and over again?
Status as of right this freaking minute
Current stories
Games: Out
Section III: Out
Anything Chocolate: Out, made it to editor, crossing fingers/toes/eyes
Deus Ex Machina: Out
Basic Biology: Out
As They Get Warmer, They Give a Little: Freshly out
Drafts
Jam Today: OMG stuck
Other Ideas: Refusing to take shape
Age when I decided I wanted to be a writer: 20 (late bloomer. I wanted to be a scientist)
Age when I wrote my first story: 20
Age when I got my hands on a typewriter: Computer geek here. Commodore 64, age 8
Age when I first submitted a short story to a magazine: 20
Thickness of file of rejection slips prior to first story sale: 2
Age when I sold my first short story: 21
Age when I killed my first market: Not yet
Approximate number of short stories/novelettes/novellas sold for copies (small press): 2
Approximate number of short stories/novelettes/novellas sold for cash money: 14
Number of sales since switching to SFF: 0
Age when I first sold a poem: LMAO
Age when I wrote my first novel/book: 23
Age when first novel/book was published: 24
Number of books: 2 (one novel, one collection)
Number still in print: 0
Level of bitterness on that subject: 7 out of 10
Age when a work was first shortlisted for an award: 24–Village Voice’s “Writers on the Verge”
Awards won: 1 (the Octavia Butler Scholarship to Clarion West)
Age when I became a full-time writer: Dude. I wish.
Age now: 35
Consider this a journal meme: if you write professionally, feel free to post your own equivalent of this list. (Obviously you’ll need to customize it to track your career path — but you get the idea.)
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Which reminds me to add: I am a NaNoWriMo LOSER *L on forehead*. I think I got, oh, 5,000 words done this whole month. And 3,500 of them were for a rewrite.
It was NOT a good writing month. Nonetheless, I liked this quote from the last emailed Nano “pep talk” that came from, of all people, Piers Anthony:
“Here’s a secret: fictive text doesn’t necessary flow easily. Most of the time it’s more like cutting a highway through a mountain. You just have to keep working with your pick, chipping away at the rock, making slow progress. It may not be pretty at first. Prettiness doesn’t come until later, at the polishing stage…You just have to get it done by brute force if necessary. ”
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In other news, I made a red velvet cake. Nom nom nom.
And I’m shocked that I have a cavity and have to go to the dentist tomorrow morning.
Still. Nom.
“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.
It’s the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen, by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different, that their voices could be that difference.
It’s the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled. Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection of individuals or a collection of red states and blue states.
We are, and always will be, the United States of America.
It’s the answer that led those who’ve been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day. ”
–President-elect Barack Obama, 11/4/2008
“I want to write about people I love, and put them into a fictional world spun out of my own mind, not the world we actually have, because the world we actually have does not meet my standards. Okay, so I should revise my standards; I’m out of step. I should yield to reality. I have never yielded to reality. That’s what SF is all about. If you wish to yield to reality, go read Philip Roth; read the New York literary establishment mainstream bestselling writers…This is why I love SF. I love to read it; I love to write it. The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It’s not just ‘What if’–it’s ‘My God; what if’–in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming.”
—Philip K. Dick, 1980
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