Rust of Distraction

January 28

Sorry I haven't written; last weekend I started playing Black and White, the game of being god! (I am the demon ape Puzuzzu.) So I've spent the past couple of nights flinging villagers off cliffs, setting cows on fire, etc. My might is mighty. I should, of course, be spending that game-playing time writing, but sometimes even my iron will falls victim to the rust of distraction...

I have been working on the Harpy story, wrote a couple more scenes, probably 500 words. It's coming along nicely. It will be very short, but information-and-impact dense, I hope.

I had a story sort-of accepted, but I don't think I'm going to let the magazine have it. I sent "Lachrymose and the Golden Egg" to The Leading Edge (a magazine run by Brigham Young University, which is Mormon; this becomes important later) back last June, then found a magazine I thought would be a better fit for the story and sent LE a withdrawal. Apparently they never got the withdrawal, though, because this morning I got an e-mail saying they love the story and want to accept it -- if I'm willing to change a few things, due to their religious affiliation. Now, I know they're Mormon, and I know what Mormons object to, and I never would've sent them anything I thought was outside their realm of acceptability, but it's a bit more stringent than I'd expected. The story concerns a terminally ill man who uses an illegal drug to escape from the pain of his disease, and the editors want me to make the drug prescribed, not illegal. That changes the flavor of the story a bit, but it's doable. The other thing they want me to do is change the last line, because it suggests that the protagonist and a woman he meets are going to "live together without the benefit of marriage." (I thought it suggested that they were going to shag like bunnies, but all it says is that they're going to have breakfast together, so, you know.) That's the sticking point, for me -- I really like the last line, the whole ending, and I don't want to sanitize it. Maybe if they paid 10 cents a word I'd be more willing to, ahem, sell out, because we're cash-poor lately, but for $50? Nah. Not for $50. Besides, that other magazine I sent it to is holding the story for consideration, and maybe they'll take it. So I think I'm going to tell LE no thanks. To their credit, they made it clear that they would respect my decision if I didn't want to change the story, and that they'd hope to see more of my work in the future, and that they love my writing, and so on. So I think we can part friends, and if I have something more wholesome in the future, I can still send it their way... Kind of weird, though, to say no to an acceptance. I doubt I would have done that two years ago.

In other writerly news, the agent I sent Rangergirl to didn't like the book at all. She says she likes my writing, and would be happy to see future novels, but Rangergirl failed for her totally. So it goes. I take comfort in the 20-something rejections Karen Joy Fowler got for Sarah Canary before it sold, and in the fact that a major editor in the field told Tim Powers that The Anubis Gates was a piece of crap; there's a lot of subjectivity in this business, after all. So I queried another agent/editor, who'd expressed interest a few months ago in seeing my novel when I finished it, and I'm sending it to him this week. Wish me luck.

I've got a busy week/weekend ahead. I have some Star*Line administrative stuff to do, and I need to read Mike's novel (not to mention finish the collab! This harpy story just swooped in), and comment on a marvelous alternate-history Sean Klein sent me, and finish my Harpy story, and line-edit an essay for Heather, and of course send out the novel, as well as a couple of stories. It's all either fun or trivial stuff, so I have no dread...

We saw Erin Brockovich finally, and I thought it was quite good. The deleted scenes were interesting, too -- they cut out a whole subplot for the final film! And I'm reading Jeffrey Ford's collection... and la la la.

Words written since February 1, 2002: 208,700

Words written since last entry:
500

Buy Floodwater via PayPal! $5, includes shipping. Or send a check payable to Heather Shaw to the PO Box below.