Never Never Never Enough

July 9, again

Mid-day

Hee. I'm now a full-fledged active member of the Horror Writers Association. Whee! I feel all like a pro and stuff. How horrorific!

Lots and lots of people responded to my pleading for poems! I have a beautifully full in-box. I haven't sent any responses yet, but I've read several submissions, and once more I face the pleasant dilemma of having more good poems to choose from than I can afford to buy.

Columbine has a nice essay on art. Stuff about Mark Tansey (about whom I knew very little) and about Murakami (about whom I knew a bit more) and other things. Thought-provoking and, as is generally true of Columbine, well-written.

The essay addresses the issue of selling work, of the necessity for marketing art... which is something I've been thinking about a lot lately, having just sent out my novel, and having talked with Marissa about her recent experiences with editors asking for re-writes. How much am I willing to change my work to sell it? So far I've never been asked to do anything that grated *too* much-- most often editors have accepted or rejected my work outright, without any talk of making changes, and the times I have been asked to do revisions, they've been quite reasonable.

I will say that I hope some cynical marketing-minded person at the publishing house looks at my novel (a contemporary fantasy about gods) and says "Hmm... American Gods by Neil Gaiman is doing awfully well... maybe our company should snatch up this vaguely similar book and try to ride Gaiman's coat-tails."

I think hoping for this kind of helpful cynicism is perfectly reasonable. The important thing is that I didn't write the book with any hope of catching a trend, riding a coat-tail, or cashing-in. I wrote it because... well, I don't know. Because I needed to write it.

Rangergirl... well, wow. It's going to be good, I think. Heather is introducing me to a friend of hers who knows a lot about the world of independent comics, which is a biggish part of my protagonist's life. This is one of the fun parts of being a writer... getting people to talk about their passions, and using that information in your work. I'm starting to really understand the structure of this book, which is nice. I sort of know how it's going to be built, now.

I made a list in my journal yesterday of images and ideas that I expect to use in the book... here's a partial list, for your amusement:

• The hole in the ground
• The cult of the earthquake
• The scorpion oracle
• Altars made of trash
• A skull full of locusts
• Barbed-wire braces
• Dusters
• Rainmakers
• A phobia of opening doors
• "Don't let it end like this; tell them I said something"
• Mudslide weather
• Dime novels
• Choke the streets with dust

... and on and on. All that stuff has additional resonances, meanings, a freight of implication, for me. It's gonna be a cool book. There'll be motifs and stuff.

Later

Sigh. It's late, lovelies. I had *so* much I wanted to accomplish today, and I didn't. It's not that I was slack or anything, it's just... it's never enough. I have so many things I want to do!

After work I grocery shopped, which was necessary. Then I cooked, and ate, and started working. I read a little poetry slush. I got contracts and checks ready to go. I paid bills. I put some stories in the mail. I typed the handwritten pages of the Mr. Li story, revising as I went. And... sad tra la... that's all.

I was supposed to do a crit (finally) for a friend. I was supposed to read *all* my poetry slush. I was supposed to type more of the Genius edits... Gah. I just set myself too many tasks. I haven't been slack at all. Some of it will have to be done tomorrow. I have a truly lengthy to-do list.

It's actually not that bad. There's just a lot of administrative stuff to do, maintenance, and that's no fun. I enjoy doing crits, and writing new fiction, and sometimes doing revision... but too much of what I have to do isn't fun at all.

I wouldn't normally be so whiny, but it's late, and I'm unhappy with my progress. If I have time at work tomorrow I'm going to do the crit I didn't get to tonight, and do another read-through of the Mr. Li story before sending it off, because I just don't trust my perception tonight. I'm cranky and sleepy. I've felt slightly off-kilter all day...

Okay. Enough bitching. I'll go to sleep now.