Hmm

I ended last week with yet another rejection. This one admitted that they hadn't even read my story, which I'm quickly learning is actual common practice amongst 'zines. Surely though, if you don't have time to read submissions, you should close your slush pile for a while? And this was from a magazine where I noticed that in their last issue, there were two stories written by the same person (who wasn't the editor or on staff or a "famous" author). Fair?
Anyway, so I did what anyone else would do - I sucked it up and sent my story out again to a different magazine. I'm going to get this story published if it's the last thing I do!!
Urgh. Having a crappy day. Going to go home later, drink hot chocolate and watch America's Next Top Model.

Yale Recruitment Video

OK now, so knowing that I'm into musical theatre, and also that I work in Student Recruitment, why am I finding this video so cringe worthy I might have to take the rest of the day off to recover? http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/mortarboard/2010/jan/20/yale-recruitment-video-blog

Editing

I'm feeling a bit down today. One, because I got an email yesterday saying that one of my stories was rejected from a magazine, and two, because on my way to work today I went arse over tit and fell over in the snow. Was very embarrassing (and painful).
Editing Inter Vivos is time consuming and not very exciting. It is good when you get to a part of the story where you suddenly find yourself swept away by it, but those moments are few and far between, and most of the time I'm rewording clumsy sentencing, or else cutting scenes altogether. Chapter one has had to go entirely, which has meant rewriting half of chapter two to make it make sense.
Sigh.
Anyway, on a positive note, I've an idea for a story but I don't know really where to start with it, and whether it might be a short-story or a novel. It is set on a dying Earth-like planet, where the rotation of the planet has stopped completely, and most people now live in the shadowy part along the world's equator, sandwiched between freezing cold and boiling hot. I haven't written anything yet, but I think it might be something I work on in the future.

New Year, New Post

Happy New Year everyone! Hope you all had good holidays. Watch Doctor Who? I'm a big fan of the show, but even I thought the last ten minutes were too sentimental and self-indulgent. Also, internally inconsistent: In the past the Doctor has never been able to control his regeneration so he can go visit all of his loved ones and stare at them before disappearing again in the Tardis, and I don't see why the Tenth Doctor should be any different. Plus, since when has the Doctor shot lightning bolts out of his body during regeneration powerful enough to destroy the interior of the Tardis? But then again, maybe it's not as tough as it used to be; the Titanic space ship was able to crash through it after all two Christmases ago.

So, anyway, I came to the library to work on Inter Vivos. Then I realised I had forgotten to put a file on my USB. Oh well, never mind, I can look at the proofs instead. Then the battery in my netbook goes. Nevermind, I'll move upstairs where there's a plug socket. Then I realise the notebook I need is in fact still sitting on my bedside table at home. So that is why I am now blogging instead of doing any actual work.

I'm currently working on the first chapter, which needs to be completely rewritten as I've cut that scene and decided that that information should be discovered by my narrator (and the reader) later on in chapter three.

I've been thinking a bit about growing up recently. The future is a really scary place. Well, OK, thinking about the future is really scary. It's full of Grown-Up things like buying houses, starting a family, that sort of thing. Not that I'm going to be buying houses, etc any time soon, but now that I'm approaching my thirties, I've been forced to think about what I might like to see happen before the beginning of my next decade. I mean, I don't want to be forty and think, shit, I'm homeless. And likewise, I think I'll regret it if I don't work hard now and try to be a paid, bone fide writer. Of course, it helps when you remember your notebook... But the point is, I don't want to have any regrets, noone should have regrets about things they wish they had done when they had the chance.

So that's my New Year's Resolution. To do things that mean I won't have regrets when I'm forty (in 2020 aargh!).

What about you guys out there? Any Resolutions you want to share?