Virtuous

January 29

A strangely short day, subjectively. I spent a ridiculous amount of time putting several new computers together at work, installing software and so on... it ate hours away, somehow. But by four in the afternoon all I could think of was coming home, making myself a cup of tea, and sitting down at the kitchen table to write... which is what I did. I wrote about 1300 words of the train story, which is going quite well. So I guess I've started my story-a-week self-imposed-dare a bit early; so be it. It's not like February's a real month, anyway; it's a month in short pants, so I might as well start early. I feel like I've awakened from a long sleep... writing came very naturally, and joyously, tonight.

I'm still reading The Tooth Fairy. At lunch today I started Swanwick's Bones of the Earth, which is entertaining enough. I've always found Creationists interesting, especially the scientist/creationists, and the "deep creationists" of that book are fascinating.

I just read "Little Gods", looking through it one last time after final edits. It's a good story. Really good. If I didn't know I'd written it, I'd say it's better than I'm capable of writing. There's more truth and heart and feeling in it than in most of my other work; perhaps all my other work. So when it comes out in Strange Horizons next week, go read it. And let me know what you think. And mad props to Jed, for a wonderful editing job. He actually edits; gives good suggestions to strengthen the story, sees to the heart of flaws and figures out how to solve them. There were no major edits on "Little Gods", but it's a whole lot stronger on a line-by-line level now than it was before it got jedited. And since the story as a whole is ultimately the sum of its lines, well, that's important. Jed does it well.

Tonight Heather and I watched a less-than-stunning episode of Buffy... and I re-read a bit of Declare, just because I wanted to have the flavor of Powers's prose in my head... and now Heather's playing Diablo, and when she's done, I'll probably take the disc, and play a while myself. I dunno. I did work tonight. I feel reasonably virtuous.

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