Patchwork Monkey

October 7

Writing for the past couple of days has been a Frankenstein's-monster kind of prospect, with lots of odds-and-ends cobbled strangely together, working on many things in tandem and making little progress on anything, and so forth. Biggest dedicated hunk of writing was 900 words to write a con report that may or may not run in A Certain Magazine; I did my best, but I'm not entirely sure how to write one of these things without it sounding like "What I Did On My Summer Vacation By Tim Pratt Age 25", so it may not make the cut.

Also did about 400 words on the collab with Nick, shot it off to him late Saturday night, and he finished it on Sunday (he gave it a hell of an ending, too). Now the ball's in my court for the first round of revision -- there's some good stuff in my first section, but it's all infodump, so I have to make it into scenes. Should be easy -- and fun -- enough, I just need to find the time to do it. Tomorrow, I hope.

Last night I did 300 words on Yet Another Way of Looking at a Blackbird, my endless unpublishable side-project novel that I've been writing for years... I doubt I'll ever finish it. I'm not sure it can be finished; I'm not sure it's that sort of thing. It might just be an outlet for metafictional catharsis.

Late last night I did about 500 words of automatic writing (which is like freewriting, but crazier). Normally I wouldn't count such a thing in the big word-count, but it might actually be usable; there's some really striking stuff in it, weird bubbles that rose from the miasma of my unconscious mind, and there's a place for it in a Super Secret Project that Heather and I are working on...

Tonight I made notes toward a Marla story which is going to kick ass, probably; at the very least, it'll have something wild and cool in nearly every scene, which is the idea-density I strive for in Marla stories.

The only other productive thing I did was catch up on reading submissions for Star*Line -- they've all been answered, postal mail and e-mail, except for the two submissions I've received since yesterday morning.

I guess I accomplished a fair bit this weekend.

Another "Bestiary" poem is up at Strange Horizons, "Engulfer", concerning the weirdest monster I've ever read about. Go read it, let me know what you think. Seriously. Feedback makes me strong.

Got a bounce from Ideomancer, about a month response time. They liked it, but not unreservedly enough to buy. So it goes.

Whoo! Best of the Rest 3 is done! The books are back from the printer, and will shortly be available for order, and suchlike. The cover is here (it's actually an illustration from Strange Horizons, for a Jo Walton story which isn't in the antho... odd, but it's a good illustration), and the Table of Contents is here. It should be available from Amazon soonish, and will likely show up in specialty bookshops. More details when they materialize. Whee! "Annabelle's" is in good company here...

Here's Sean's latest Dare update, which I should've posted last time, but forgot:

Nothing much to report. Moes is over 8000 words now and will probably top oput at 10-12 thousand. Life seems to be in a holding pattern which is giving me a blah feeling. Two and a half weeks left in the dare and I'm still plodding through goal #2. Yikes!

I've decided not to make a new discussion board thingy for every entry, but to just leave one running, for the sake of continuity and laziness...

Words written since February 1, 2002: 172,900

Words written since last entry:
2,100

Please, please, please subscribe me to the Bunny-of-the-month club.

Tim Pratt
P.O. Box 13222
Berkeley, CA 94712-4222

Yes, you can buy my love.