Vylar Kaftan

I got my contributors’ copies for the October issue of Realms of Fantasy, where “The Luckiest Street in Georgia” is published. The illustration is wonderful! Eric Dinyer read the story closely and captured details accurately, depicting multiple scenes in one montage (can that word apply to illustrations too?)

What I like most is the wise look in Minette’s eyes. She’s 83 and has seen many things. (In a speculative fiction sense of the word, too.)

The story was written in the 2005 Clarion West Write-a-Thon, so I can thank Kate for inspiring me to write this one. And my former neighbor’s cat, an old tuxedo cat named Minette, who liked to sit on porches and look at things. I spent rather a lot of time looking at Minette, and her occasional gray visitor that I dubbed Tom.

If you’re a short story writer, and you have any of the following problems:

• you’re just getting started and have no idea what you’re doing
• you have trouble with character, plot, dialogue, or the essential building blocks of a story
• you have nothing ready to submit to markets
• you keep working and reworking the same story trying to get it right, but you’re never happy with it
• you’ve completed several stories, but can’t figure out what’s wrong with them
• you’ve completed several stories, know what’s wrong with them, and can’t figure out how to fix them
• some of your drafts come out well, and some don’t, but you’re trying to salvage every story you write
• all your stories are currently in circulation, so you have nothing new to submit
• you’ve sent your stories to almost every possible market and you’re running out of appropriate ones
• none of your stories in inventory suit the current markets you see available
• you’ve sold some stories, but your inventory is dwindling
• you’ve sold all your stories and have nothing left to circulate

…there’s one solution which will help with all these problems.

WRITE ANOTHER STORY.

Too often writers (especially beginners) work and rework the same story. While of course there’s good reasons to revise, often the time you spend on that one story is better invested in writing 10 new ones. You’ll learn more from that than you will from trying to make a broken story work. And chances are, one of the new stories will be better than the old one anyway. Eventually it’s easier to see which stories are worth revising, and which ones are just learning experiences.

There’s more benefits too. New stories give you more material for circulation, thus increasing your chances for a sale. When you have several new stories, it’s easier to see which ones are worth your time for revision. Having lots of stories means each one matters less to you–which is a good thing, because it makes rejection easier to handle. So what if a market doesn’t buy a certain story? You’ve got five other great stories to choose from for your next submission.

There’s only a few exceptions to this advice–mostly for the people who write exceptionally fast and/or without much conscious effort. That’s not necessarily bad, but sometimes it’s useful to slow down a bit and reconsider things. These people can probably figure out who they are.

For most of us, writing another story is a fine way to solve many of our problems. Why don’t more writers do this? Because it’s hard work. Enough said.

So go write another story. Start one today.

Guess the 100 most common words in English.

5 minute time limit. Harder than it looks! I only got 43, and that’s more than other people I know who tried this. I’m sure someone else can do better, though.

For those who’ve been worried about me–

While I’m still learning to cope with assorted medical conditions (collect the whole set!), I can finally say that I feel about 95% recovered. It’s mostly happened since early July–just in this last month. I’ve still got restrictions, but now they’re more manageable.

Guess how I know I’m better: I’m furious at how much time I lost this spring. GODDAMMIT. I could have written so many stories in this time! RRRRRR. RAGE. HUGE TEMPER TANTRUM.

There. Now I’ll go channel that rage into KILLING CHARACTERS.

doom doom doom

“Galatea” is now available as a podcast from Podcastle. It’s really weird to hear my work read by someone else! But neat, though. It’s like discovering a fresh side of the story for me.

If you’ve never tried a podcast, it’s pretty easy. You can either download it or just play it from your browser. It’s about 30 minutes long, so you can take a popcorn break partway through if you want.

The response to Transcriptase has been overwhelmingly supportive. I’m happy about that; readers will find our stories there for years to come.

In other news, William Sanders has responded to Transcriptase here and here.

Is there anyone out there who both:

1) has extremely long hair (I can almost sit on mine)
2) exercises daily?

I need to increase my activity levels. I’m doing my best to stick to this, but I’m having trouble with my hair feeling sweaty and gross. I only wash it three times a week, and it feels icky on the days where I haven’t washed it. I was trying to figure this out, and then I realized I don’t know anyone who exercises daily and has long hair. So I’m wondering if these are strongly connected. I would hate to cut my hair off, but it’s discouraging me from exercising.

Anyone? Is there a hair product or shampoo that would help here? Do I just need to cut my hair? Or suck up and deal with being sweaty? (If I wash my hair more often, it dries out and breaks off.)

Edited to add: These are great comments and I’ll respond more soon! But here’s more detail about my hair. It is very very long, and thick–but the individual hairs are very fine and there’s definitely breakage all the way down. It is very slightly wavy, but near-straight. The bottom three inches are pretty rough and splintered and need a trim. I have to trim it regularly or the ends look awful. So the bottom of the hair is dry, and the top is oily; if I go more than 4 days without washing it, it sticks together in that nasty way (even if I’ve been sedentary).

The exercise at this point is walking; I am wearing a sun-hat to protect myself, and that’s part of the trouble because it collects the sweat and keeps my head a little warmer. I do tie my hair back with non-tear Scunci brand elastics; it still breaks and tears no matter how careful I am. I often do braids instead of ponytails for that reason. Even so, short hairs escape and get everywhere. I’ve had my hair chin-length and never been happy with it. A while ago I cut off 18 inches for Locks of Love; I grew it all back and swore I didn’t want to cut it again. Now I am rethinking that.

We went live with Transcriptase 24 hours ago, and we’re still getting Helix authors asking to have their work posted. If you drop by sometime today, you’ll see new stories and new poetry.

One thing I should say is that this one of the best team projects I’ve ever worked on. Many people participated in the creation of this site; the communication among us was fantastic. After thoughtful discussion, once we decided to build this site — Transcriptase went up in 13 days. That’s incredible to me.

I’m proud to be part of this.

A new site called Transcriptase now exists for reprints of stories from Helix Magazine. You can read our stories and poems, see author statements about the incident, and join a discussion of the issues involved in the situation.

If you don’t know the background and why we chose to build this site, start here.

Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus!