Archive for the ‘Writing Blues’ Category

Dealing with Fantasy of a Different Sort (or I would reject your reality to substitute my own, except my fantasy is nicer than my reality…)

So last week our dryer broke down. Just stopped working on us. You would think that would sadden me, but it didn’t. For me, No dryer meant that I could actually dry our clothes outside.
Now let me tell you something–I’ve always had this weird desire to do line-drying outside. Call it a idyllic vision from [...]

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And another one bites the dust…

Realms of Fantasy will be ending with the April 2009 issue…
I was looking forward to the day when I get published in that too.
Sigh.
Why do I get the feeling that by the time my writing gets good enough for the pro-markets, there won’t be any pro-markets around anymore?

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The Passing of a Great Anthology; No more Year’s Best Fantasy & Horror

In the past, I’ve done reviews for the Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror that you can find on this site. Well, today, we got the news that this great anthology is no more. You can find news about it at the Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet’s Blog, and at Terry Windling’s blog.
In a nutshell, St Martin’s [...]

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Doing the Clean/Write Juggle (or how to be a part-time writer and a part-time worker mom and still have clean dishes to eat on…)

I’ve just realized that it’s been a long time since I wrote any personal posts.
Not that my life hasn’t been quiet. Far from it. Ever since we’ve moved to Madison, I’ve been getting involved in a lot of things, personal and work-wise. It’s funny–a year ago, then only things taking up my calendar was Mommy [...]

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Fact Checking? We don’t need no stinking fact checking!

Oh, boy! My first rant!
Normally, I like to keep the Cafe rant free, but this really got to me, and I realized that it’s better to write about it than go charging out with a pitchfork and torch towards the nearest newspaper stand. That wouldn’t go over well, considering that I’m Christian, black and a [...]

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October Scheduling (or time to get down to business…eventually…)

October already, huh?
It amazes me how time simultaneously crawls and speeds. When Kaleidotrope sent me the acceptance note for my story “Click” back in April, I didn’t think I could wait until October for it to be published. And now, here it is, October 1, and it feels a little weird.
It’s not just a new [...]

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Another rejection! Hooray! (or, lesson on dialect)

On Thursday, we got ourselves a pretty wild storm, wild enough to knock down a tree branch. As thunder grumbled above our house, I settled down after we put Daniel down to bed to surf the web and check my email. Lo and behold, I got a response for a story I sent a couple [...]

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Overflow and Underflow (or I trade you a tomato for a writing idea)

It’s been raining a lot these past few days. It means that I don’t have to water my “garden”, which is nice, though what constitutes my garden this years happens to be several of yellow pear tomatoes plants spilling profusely over the backyard lawn (thus showing the need, or rather disregard, for tomato cages), a [...]

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Time is Ticking Away (or how not to deal with a self-imposed deadline)

Critics and naysayers may say that NaNoWriMo is silly. That it’s not what real writers do when they sit down to write a book. That sitting down and hashing out a bunch of nonsense words doesn’t automatically make you a writer–there’s also planning and plot and structure to consider, etc. and so forth.
However, having gone [...]

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Mental Shutdown

What a week so far! Hanging out with hubby’s relatives’ on Sunday, spending time with PopPop on Monday before taking him to the airport on Tuesday. And on Wednesday, a simple letter that I thought wouldn’t take more than an hour blossomed into taking up the entire day…and some of the night!
Granted, it’s an important [...]

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