La Vie Boheme

Stupid blackout!

Well, obviously, I didn't do much of anything on Thursday or Friday because of the power situation here in the northeastern corner of the country. My schedule is completely off. Next week is going to be a real struggle to get back into writing regularly and in real amounts, not bits here and there. :P This morning has been pokey, because I've mostly been doing housekeeping work--getting submissions ready and such.

I ended up chopping about 10 percent of "Computer Dating". The tech wasn't so much the problem (although I really do still need to clean a bit of that up) as the writing. I'd forgotten, I started writing that story two years ago! It's not horrid, but I really have improved as a writer since then. Most of the chopping I did came from my tendency to overexplain and weigh down dialogue with lots of extraneous crap. I think it improved the story quite a bit. Once I get the technical aspects straight (I so should not write science fiction), I'm optimistic about it. It hasn't gone to F&SF yet, so that's where it's off to next, once I'm happy with it.

Also did a little bit of cleanup work on "An Eye for an Eye", which also came back from Glimmer Train last night. However, since I just wrote that last summer, there didn't seem to be nearly as much to clean up. After a little bit of actual (gasp!) market research, that one will be going out to Cemetery Dance once I buy some envelopes.

And finally, on a whim, I signed up for the Virtual Studio at Zoetrope Studios. While they seem to be geared towards filmmakers, there is a section for short story writers. It's the usual thing, you critique stories and in turn have yours critiqued. I submitted "Midsummer", mostly because I'm curious to see what non-genre readers think of it. I read a couple of the stories there, and was impressed. There's definitely spec-fic tinge to several of them, but some of them were fairly literary in their approach. This looks promising.

Okay, I've put off starting Chapter 9 of The Exile's Daughter long enough. Back to work!