2012 update

Happy New Year!

My writing status is as follows:
(I picked up the habit of saying "as follows" while working in a law office & i can't seem to shake it.)

I have one sci-fi short story, "A Singular Being", which is complete, which I will continue marketing to publications on the SFWA (Science Fiction Writers of America)  Qualifying Short Fiction Venues list. It was rejected by The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in May of 2011 with a personal note wishing me luck with the story. That was a first for me, as I've always gotten form letter rejections before, and I found it very encouraging.

I have one sci-fi short story, "The Daily Grind", which needs one more revision before I consider it complete & can do the same. The revision may involve changing a recipe that is central to the story. I may ask writer, cook, & geek Cyn Mackley for feedback on this.

I completed draft one of my novel THAT AND A TOKEN during nanowrimo of 2010. It was a messy Draft 1, which is probably typical of nanowrimo. While writing it I never made fundamental decisions about things like tense and person. Draft 2 has been completed up to chapter 3.

I also have an ideas & future fiction folder in case I need to go back to the well.

Day to day i am focusing on things like what's for dinner, what medical people do i need to see to live comfortably with my disability, & finding an apartment with an elevator in case I need assistive equipment I can't get up the stairs to the 4th floor. After I've sent out one batch of applications for housing lotteries I will get back to a day to day focus on writing.

Until next time,
Me

.

wistful email to myself

Subject:   Apex From:   "Linda Talisman" Date:   Tue, April 20, 2010 9:16 am To:   "Linda Talisman" Priority:   Normal Options:   View Full Header |  View Printable Version  | Download this as a file  | View Message Details Sender: blacklist whitelist

Dear Jason Sizemore,

Please decide to publish my story The Daily Grind. It's a good story, and
I was thinking of you when I wrote it. I hope you don't think the turtle
shell or the bird are too lyrical. It's your choice, of course, but I hope
you decide to publish it.

Hopefully,
Linda

finally a rejection

On Halloween, no less, "A Singular Being" received a rejection from the New Yorker. Now I can submit it elsewhere.

Yes, even the New Yorker can sometimes behave like a black hole

Here is the New Yorker's entry on the black hole page:

Magazine/Book Publisher	Response time (#days)	Submission date	Response date	Still waiting for reply?	Type
Magazine: New Yorker	125	2/10/07	6/15/07		Rejection
Magazine: New Yorker	81	07/21/07	10/10/07		Rejection
Magazine: New Yorker	79	8/11/07	10/29/07		Rejection
Magazine: New Yorker	84	9/21/07	12/14/07		Rejection
Magazine: New Yorker	93	08/02/08	11/03/08		Rejection
Magazine: New Yorker	90	07/02/2010	09/30/2010		Rejection
Magazine: New Yorker	101	06/11/11	09/20/11	X	Other non sale

 This includes 2 "data points" I submitted, the 2010 one and the "still waiting" one.

 

My 2 bring it up to a grand total of 6. (Analog has 99.) The 125 days "data point", along with the 93 days one, shows that they don't always respond within 90 days.

To clarify my blog post about my queries, the first time I put the whole story, not just the word "query" in the message box. (I think if you pick "fiction submission" and don't include a pdf it triggers an automatic response telling you that your submission is missing.)

So I have queried twice using the "contact us" form and once using the email address the rejections come from. I think that's enough querying.

So now it's back to the waiting game. 

"A Singular Being": 101 days and counting.

The 90 days have come and gone for my submission of "A Singular Being" to The New Yorker. I am now in Black Hole and Query Land.

Here's how I've attempted to query:

First, using the same "contact us" form you use to submit your work, I put my query naming the date & title of my submission and the word "query" in the "message" box. I picked "fiction submission" as the subject line & got a response that I hadn't enclosed an attachment. Next, I sent a query to the email address the rejections come from. Third, back to "contact us" using "other" as subject & my query in "message".

With so much pending in my life right now (mostly the disability application)... well, a black hole also means infinite possibilities, or infinite time, or infinite gravity, or... infinite something. A rejection is so... finite.

submissions status

It's all about The New Yorker right now. "

"A Singular Being" is 67 days into a New Yorker submission. "The Daily Grind" is 38 days in.

Here's hoping!

Ok, make that rejection at 60 days

Strange Horizons rejected "The Daily Grind" on the 60th day.


I haven't forgotten what I said I would do...

The latest about "The Daily Grind"

Strange Horizons submission: 59 days without a rejection!

Check out MS World's Creative center:
http://creativecenter.msworld.org/

People have submitted some amazing work. I submitted my blog, My Multiply Scleroded Life but it's not up yet. It's inspiring.

I just watched a video of the song "Growin' Up" in which Bruce tells the famous story of the first time he met Clarence. (this link goes to several videos, it's one of them. I'm sure the others are worth watching too.)

That song played a role in my first novel, the title of which kept changing. It was a long time ago, but I already knew that very useful trick in which you refer to a song in such a way that you get the effect you want on your readers even if they don't know the song, and even more so if they do, all without direct quotes and copyright fees.

"Grownin' Up" played a big role in my growin' up, & I'm sure that's true of anyone who ever heard it.

If Strange Horizons ends up rejecting "Grind" I'm going to submit it to The New Yorker again.

I sent it to them about a year ago and they took the full 3 months to reject it, which I think is a sign they seriously considered it. When in April I got ready to send it out again, I realized the version I had submitted to The New Yorker was the one without the beheading. I made that spectacularly unhorrifying revision for some complicated reason i no longer remember. So before its next submission, I put the beheading back in. Let's face it, it's a better story with the beheading.

"Grind" is such a New York story, about how the city needs all the people who can no longer afford to live here. The New Yorker seems like its natural home. So if Strange Horizons takes a pass, back to The New Yorker it goes.

With the beheading.

By the way, The New Yorker is a Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Qualifying Short Fiction Venue.

As well it should be. I'm sure they do still publish "realistic fiction", or whatever that thing that's not science fiction or fantasy is called, but those are probably the stories that lose me.

I was so encouraged by my personal rejection from F&SF that I submitted "A Singular Being" to The New Yorker on June 11.

Meanwhile my submission of "The Daily Grind" to Strange Horizons is still under consideration after 53 days.

Their guidelines say they always respond within 70 days.

I got the autoresponse they send when you submit, fiction@strangehorizons.com is whitelisted so no response is ending up in the spam folder.

53 days and counting! XXXXXX!

Saw Mattie Stepanek on Oprah, & I thought of the role of muscular dystrophy in That and a Token.

After I thought the novel should touch on disability in some way I decided to write about muscular dystrophy.

I definitely didn't want to write about the disease I have. I have to focus on that way more than I want to in real life! It had to be something else.

I had written that Segullah had 3 brothers who died before she was born and her parents moved from Uganda to the U.S. So I decided what they died of; something called Duchenne muscular dystrophy or DMD. It affects even the muscles that enable people to breathe & their hearts to beat. That's how most of the people who die of it die, especially in early childhood.

Mattie had something that sounds even more pervasive, affecting the mitochondia, which are like the power source for every cell.

Mattie and his mother both needed oxygen frequently. Seeing them I wondered if patients could live past early childhood with better medical care.

DMD usually only affects boys. Women are carriers who can pass the disease on to their children but usually don't have symptoms themselves. I'm not sure whether Segullah is going to have any symptoms herself. I'll figure it out when I get there.

"A Singular Being" was rejected by THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION. I got a personal letter from an assistant editor after 7 days, saying he had decided to pass, good luck on this one. I never submitted to them before. Am I deluded to find this encouraging?

After Nina's comment on diversity I just realized my novel is ridiculously diverse.

Deborah is white, a fairskinned redheaded Jew.
Segullah is a tall darkskinned black Jew from Uganda with a disability.
Dov is a Jew, white and Ashkenazi apparently, though not stated.
Sal is Puerto Rican with a Jewish grandfather.
Moshe has the same background as Segullah, Abuyudaya, a black Jew from Uganda.

I submitted "The Daily Grind" to Strange Horizons. :-)

I decided the other day that with everything going on with me I don't think I can go back to the happy carefree novel I was writing in which all the characters are ablebodied. So I decided to give Segullah a disability.

I see now that I spent a long time obsessing over 1 paragraph in the story of Deborah. I'm glad i did, & i'm happy with how the movie scene came out. February 13 was when i got sick, nasty flu with lingering cold symptoms. Feb 15 was my 1st appt with the nyu ms center, & it's all been a round of bizness about health insurance, treatment options & the like. Tonight was the first time I've paid attention to the novel since all that. No wonder I've felt so weird!

After what seems like an eternity of obsessing about issues that seem earth shatteringly, excruciatingly important without having anything to do with writing, I finally got back to looking at my novel. Do i ever have my work cut out for me!

I'm going to change the spelling of the name of Sisera's killer in the movie scene from Jael, as in my English translation, to Yael. It's spelled with a yud. Where did they get the "j"? This book is the Artscroll Joshua/Judges. I'm not at all impressed with the translation, but then I can't really "judge" because my Hebrew's not good enough.

I'm still working on understanding the translation of the dialog between Deborah and Barak. I'm imagining that in the movie it's a duet they sing.

The word that's translated in my book as "your glory" is tiferetecha from tiferet. Tiferet is the 6th sefira in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life.

It seems like a different meaning of "glory" than kvod.

The main point is that the real meaning of the prophecy turns out to be different that what one expects. When Deborah says "Hashem will have delivered Sisera into the hands of a woman" of course you think that woman is Deborah. But it turns out to be Jael. Barak will not be the one to kill Sisera. A woman will kill him.

I just found out from this great Artemisia Gentileschi site that she painted Jael killing Sisera from the story of Deborah as well as Judith and Holofernes. I never knew that, and Debra might not have known it either. Maybe I can add this info to the glossary.

The web page for the Sisera painting says "The act fulfilled the prediction of Deborah, prophetess and Israelite leader, who foresaw that a woman would slay Sisera."

I had thought it meant, and the commentary in my text agrees, that Barak wants Deborah to go with him to the battle and Deborah says ok, but then people will say Hashem delivered Sisera into the hands of a woman. Because if the woman is Jael and not Deborah, what difference does it make whether Deborah goes or not?

But Barak says I will only go to fight Sisera if you, Deborah, come along. And Deborah says "Indeed I will go with you --- but the path on which you have chosen to go will not be for your glory, for Hashem will have delivered Sisera into the hand of a woman."

I wish my book were interlinear, so I could see the English and Hebrew right on top of each other. You get a much better sense of the meaning of the Hebrew with an interlinear text. My Hebrew is not so great. Path and hand of a woman are clear, but the translation of words like "but" and "indeed" aren't always so straightforward. Also I don't know about "glory" since I don't see the word I know as glory, kvod, spelled kuf bet dalet.

I think what it means is this: Barak says I will only go if you go. That means no Deborah, no deal. It's never in question, of course she will go. Regardless of whether Deborah goes or not, regardless of the victory of Barak's army over Sisera's army, the victory will not be complete because Sisera will escape. The Canaanites will not be vanquished if their leader still lives. The true victory, the death of Sisera, will belong to a woman. To Jael. Deborah is not the woman she spoke of in her own prophecy.

That's prophecy for you. It never means what you think it means.

For Part III of my novel, all I have to do is describe the movie from the point of view of Debra sitting in the audience. I don't have to write the screenplay or direct the movie, just describe seeing it.

Of course, the movie doesn't exist, but why should that be a problem? I've described planets and life forms that don't exist. If i can imagine them, I can write about them. How is this different?

One of the many words the most brilliant Torah scholar I know personally uses to describe the Torah is "cinematic." Since I heard that, I haven't seen the Torah the same way. There's gotta be at least 23 screenplays in there. Why have so few of them been written?

So this is just one. And, as I said, I am not writing the screenplay. I am just pretending Debra's friend Segullah did, and Debra is watching it. The other significance of the movie is that seeing it is a turning point in Debra and Sal's relationship. They don't call it a date, at least Debra doesn't, and Sal's too smart to draw attention to it, but it is their first date.

Writing. It's what I do when I can't stand the thought of another day.

Not now, though. This afternoon I thought of some ideas to flesh out the turning point in Debra's life when she decides to change her major from studio art to art history. Decides to become a professor, in short. But it's been a long and exhausting day, and I think it will have to wait for another one.

So now I've written a novel. Or at least, I believe by the time I finish revising it will be a novel.

I see how getting people to critique a novel is a problem. Critters seems to have solved this problem. You have 2 choices: either send your novel through the queue in pieces or ask for dedicated readers, who will read your novel exclusively.

Trouble is, my novel is not one of the genres Critters deals with (sci-fi, fantasy, and horror.)

Back in the day I joined the International Women's Writing Guild and a "kitchen table/meetup" writing group. That's how I met Sapphire. Now I don't think running around town going to meetings is the way to go. I'd rather do it online, just like critters.

On the other hand, IWWG has something called "clusters"and zip code parties. The members of the writers group i was in were from all over the city. Maybe there's something there for me.

In any case, getting feedback about anything you're writing is essential. Thanks to all who have volunteered to read THAT AND A TOKEN. A leaner "part I only" document is now available. Let me know if you would like one.

I wonder how it's possible to hold onto the freedom from overthinking that comes with nanowrimo. There comes a time when it's appropriate to agonize over every line your character says, but I don't think I'm there yet. It's just that when I hear characters talking to each other I have to think "Wait, he wouldn't say that. I would say that, maybe Debra would say that but Sal wouldn't."

November is over. The rush to as many words as possible is over. I'm revising the plot, rearranging the scenes. I called for readers as I wanted to get input before revisions get frozen into place. Having done that, having sent out 3 manuscripts, gave me the freedom to step back & rest a bit. Thanks for that. I began to think how to revise.

But it's still wide open!

I read through it myself. There's some redundancy, & I can think of some edits, but I feel like I'd like to take a rest & let someone else read it before I proceed. Who would like a copy?

I revised & printed. I'm the first reader. After that I'm looking for some more readers. Any volunteers?

So November is over. The next thing i need to do is get a ream of paper (which I've needed forever) to print the thing and read it.

So all i have left to do is describe a conversation about planning a wedding between somebody who has been married before and is familiar with the ways of the US on planet Earth and somebody unfamiliar with said ways. Plus inviting the guests, getting the license, and the ceremony at City Hall with more than the required number of witnesses. Plus a celebratory meal afterwards. Can I do it using at least 4751 words?

I wrote about shopping for Oscar night, what Segullah and Debra are wearing, both gowns and jewelry, Segullah's date Moshe, natural hairstyles for Segullah and Moshe, the big night itself, Debra's sudden decision to accept Sal's proposal, and her late night telling her roommate about it. Now they just have to iron out the details. My word count right now is 15,249. That includes a glossary. I think I'll include recipes too, for the dishes Segullah serves for her Shabbat dinner with Debra and breakfast the next morning.

The conflict over the marriage proposal and the tension between Debra and Sal will be forgotten when the news comes out that Segullah has been nominated for an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. She invites Debra & Sal to attend the Oscars, & offers to buy them gown, tux, jewelry. Segullah & Debra will go shopping, leading me into places my writing doesn't go very often. What female charaters look like and what they wear, & shopping for it. Debra's lifelong conviction that you can't make a living as an artist or writer takes a hit because Segullah's novel made money and now she made money from the movie.

The spirit of nanowrimo says i shouldn't go nuts finding out whether this is possible, how many guests are nominees allowed to have at the Oscars, i should just write it.

The time frame for my story has undergone some transformation as I've written it. When planning it i got away from my own life & decided Debra is younger than me, and should have her young adult experiences in the 90's instead of the 80's like I did. However as i write it this doesn't seem to be happening. Debra's job at the sculpture store is based on a job I had in the 80's, and there are no computers in the story. So far there are no real references to mark it in time. I'm finding it sort of refreshing to write about a time when shipping orders to customers meant writing them up in a 5x7 UPS book with carbons. My husband prepares UPS shipments every day and he says UPS doesn't even give you that book anymore, everything is done on the computer.

Still to come: I want to capture in this story the excitement of 2 big nominations in real life. The first was for an Oscar for best adapted screenplay. I was once in a writer's group with the author of the novel the screenplay had been adapted from. The experience of watching that screenplay win the award on TV and seeing the author (who I haven't seen since the writer's group) in her seat at the awards show and cheering for the movie, although I was really cheering for the author, yelling my head off in my in-laws living room.

Seems like a few months later Eugie's novelette was nominated for a Nebula. This was a story I had actually read, and an author I was actively in touch with, and a genre I'm deeply involved with. This time the awards show wasn't on TV, I had to figure out how to watch it on the Internet, and watch what seemed like hours of a door with waiters going through it serving the dinner. This time I was yelling in my own living room, my husband & daughter watching me glued to the unreliable webcast. As a reward for this enthusiasm I got to see a shuttle launch because Eugie recorded it on her Droid and posted it on Facebook. When Sheila Williams wrote about Nebula weekend in her column in Asimov's I got to relive all this again.

I feel like we're all on the same team, and we share our victories.

i guess i know how the story is going to go from here on in. Sort of. Don't know when i'm going to have time to write it. Friday I'm supposed to work at home. The office is sort of a disaster, as everything has been dismantled for painting/carpeting. I'm sure I have plenty of time to get at least the outline of the story written this weekend. Maybe i'll get to 20,000 words.

The weird thing is the number of holy books I've had on my desk while writing it. First, the book of Judges, because the story within the story is Deborah, written by Debra's high school friend Segullah. I'm imagining a feature length musical epic based on about a page in Judges. I couldn't write it, but my fictional character Segullah could. Does. Did. She wrote the screenplay and the book of the musical based on her novel of the same name.

Then, while writing the scene where Debra goes with Segullah to a Friday Shabbat service some Hebrew words and a tune that has always haunted me, I don't know where I know it from, started running through my head, and I typed the words into Google and discovered it was the 133rd Psalm. So then I had the book of Psalms on my desk. (I'm getting away from my usual Ashkenazic/Yiddish spellings because Abayudaya Jews of Uganda say Shabbat and synagogue, not Shabbos and shul. I want to try harder to find out if there's a word for synagogue in their local language of Lugandan. But I think they want to use the words that other Jews use.)

So I think I'll be able to wrap the story up by the deadline of Nov. 30, if not the word count.

In this story, a marriage proposal is a source if great conflict.

So skipped everything else and wrote the marriage proposal scene.

I think I'm stuck in "i don't want to write THAT!" land. Feeling discouraged. Maybe I should proceed to the idea I got when reading "A Pep Talk from Chris":

Chris Baty says

incite change. If your story is losing momentum, juice it up by
inflicting some major changes on your characters. Crash the spaceship. End
the marriage. Buy the monkey. Change is scary because we have to figure out
what comes next. But feeling afraid is ten times better than feeling bored,
and your book will benefit from your risk-taking. Go big this week! You
won't regret it.

Chronologically it comes later, but i can always fill it in.

I'm not sure it's going to end up being a novel, but I'm having fun writing it. I never really aspired to the 50,000 words because my energy level is not always so great these days. My goal is more modest, more like 20,000 words. I never know how long anything is going to be until I've finished what Eugie calls the 0 draft. I get an idea and I write until it's complete, not thinking "it's a novel" or "it's a novella" or "it's a short story." I figure I'll know after it takes shape. They usually end up being 3-5000 words. Then I edit it to make it better, which usually means shorter. Then when I get to the marketing stage I think about the requirements of different publications. I have never marketed a novel.

I think The Object of My Affection by Stephen McCauley is something of a perfect novel. It takes exactly a year, and it ends the way it starts, with a trip to Coney Island. Maybe a year is the minimum time frame for a novel. I guess there's no real maximum time frame. Anywhere But Here by Mona Simpson is a big novel, encompassing 6 years in the protagonist's life, but is told from several characters points of view, and goes back into the grandmother's childhood. So it incorporates three generations.

I think my time frame is about five years.

Day 3 of NANOWRIMO. I'm on Day 8 of my outline, but I've only written 2,628 words. Only 47,372 to go. In 27 days.

I've written the entire "past" background to my story, and have now arrived at the present. 3 of my supporting characters are very likeable. Now that my protagonist has been kicked out of school, I don't think these characters should disappear. I can't seem to bring myself to write about the roommate at all.

The Daily Grind was rejected by THE NEW YORKER. I have to decide where to submit it next.

ASIMOV'S seems like an obvious choice, but after it took them 104 days to reject "Being" with a pefunctory form letter, I decided never to submit to them again as an unpublished author. I really got my hopes up. Here I thought they were seriously considering it, while in reality it probably fell under the desk. But that's not really a reason.

How about STRANGE HORIZONS?

I still have not sent A SINGULAR BEING to THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION.

So who's doing NanoWriMo this year? Wanna be my writing buddy?