I joined nanowrimo!

I think i'll be able to achieve close enough. Close enough to 50K words, close enough to the 2 hours a night i was originally imagining.

Well, now it's 24 hours later, and I'm again (still?) tired. Also, I still haven't sent "A Singular Being" to S&SF.

I'm wondering if my plan of doing nanowrimo this year is at all realistic. I had pretty much figured I'd be unlikely to make the 50k words, but I don't think that's the most important thing. But now I'm wondering if I'll have the energy to write every night.

Maybe I'm just saying this because i'm tired tonight.

I'm thinking about going inactive on Critters again. I've fallen behind in my critiques. Of the stories I had imagined submitting I did "The Enemy", the mold one. That leaves "A Night Out", the dust one, "Always Birds", the one about the cold. "The Daily Grind", the job one has been Crittered, revised, and submitted to the NEW YORKER. But now I'm focused on THAT AND A TOKEN, which as whatever that genre is called that is not SF, Fantasy, or Horror is not critterable. For feedback, after I ask the members of Writer's Playground, I plan to see what I can arrange through the International Women's Writing Guild, the source of the f-2-f group where I met Sapphire.

Today I finished naming all my characters who still needed names. My protagonist has a surname.

Realizing a lot of my real life experiences in the 80's would not work in the 90's. In real life in 1986 I worked at Pearl Paint & lived in my rent stabilized apt. w/o a roommate. Couldn't happen in the 90's. In real life I changed jobs a lot. I found them through the Village Voice. I had my character finding a certain job in 1999, but I couldn't imagine how. I couldn't find a job in 1999, and neither could anyone else I knew. Realized she has to have a roommate, and she has to keep the job she gets after getting kicked out of grad school.

Real life is so complicated. The trick is to streamline it to make a good story, but still keep it real, keep it believable. Of course, there's no reason why the complications of being me have to be in it. It's not me. It's Debra.

i'm getting excited about the characters and settings in THAT AND A TOKEN. I'm having the character born in 1970 instead of 1961. From time to time I realize, hey, it's fiction, I can make it up however I want. And I don't even have to create a planet or invent a society! Setting fiction in the reality we all think we live in. What a concept!

I just outlined my new novel. It's "regular" fiction. I've been thinking about it a long time, am happy with the outline.

I think "Being" is ready for submission. This will be my first snail mail submission in a long time, it seems daunting. Having to produce a manuscript as a physical object, and send it using envelopes and stamps. Oh no!

I'm very happy with how the revision is going. I think it's almost ready.

As it is the story is divided by headings with Roman numerals I-XII. At least one Critter thought this was uneccessary for a story this length. I think the divisions are necessary, but they could be just blank lines, asterisks, or any other style of division. I'd like some feedback on this.

On 2nd thought I don't think an omniscient narrator is necessary. I just got rid of the words readers didn't get.

About the title. What I meant by it was that humans are singular beings, having only one self, and also that Newmia is a singular being since the Imray, at least the ones she knows about, place a high value on conformity, and she is different.

So why was I thinking of changing it?

Octopus pictures

Paul pix & video

They keyword is UNDERWATER INVERTEBRATE. Has no bones, doesn't hold its shape.

Next up: "A Singular Being" to the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, though I'm still considering changing the title.

2 things are helping me think about this story:

1. I'm reading Unbelievable by Stacy Horn, which is about the parapsychology lab at Duke University, and the attempt to scientifically prove or disprove the existence of ESP. My sci-fi story is about alien beings among whom 2 abilities considered "paranormal" here on Earth are universal: ESP & the ability to appear without one's body, both during life and after death.

2. Paul the psychic octopus. Not because of his ability to pick World Cup soccer winners, but because he is an octopus. My aliens are sentient octopuses. The ubiquitous pictures and videos of Paul over the last few days have given me an image of what they actually look like & how they move that all my research never did. I can't remember why I chose octopuses, but my research into the life, death, & habits of octopuses has driven the plot in some odd directions. I wanted to tell a story in which a young alien from a species that doesn't know the sort of permanent loss humans experience at every turn observes a bereaved human & is upset by the sadness.

What's funny is that to tell a story about beings who don't know loss I chose a creature that doesn't live very long. But that's kind of the point, they experience death a lot but not permanent loss because on their world the dead & the living have no trouble communicating. That brings me right back to #1, because what the Duke scientists were really trying to prove or disprove was that something of us survives death.

3. My experience with Critters Writers Workshop, both from the "reviewer" and the "reviewee" side has taught me that the reader's ability to read your mind depends solely on your ability to put it into words. Should I explicity say they're octopuses? Should I introduce an omniscient narrator?

After submitting "The Daily Grind" to THE NEW YORKER, I also submitted 3 poems to MOONDANCE: CELEBRATING CREATIVE WOMEN. I really only wanted to submit the one about Nina, now titled "What Is It About Nina?" but they want 3-5. I picked the 2 in my poetry folder I thought were the best, titled "The Pre-Med" (which I wrote while at Pomona College) and one I just retitled "At the Library" because I know I initially wrote it at the library at UCSB, and I think that title will add to the reader's appreciation of the poem. I don't really understand the poetry market, don't read it, only write it once in awhile. When I was very young, high school and college, it's mostly what I wrote, and if I'd pursued that path my whole life might have been different.

I don't think MOONDANCE is very organized about submissions, or rejections, anyway. I had one acceptance from them, and no reply ever to my next submission.

My submission might stand a better chance if I had submitted 3 poems about special women in my life instead of 1 about a special woman, 1 about some guy, and one about some weird moment freshman year. But the poem about my cousin Hillary that I wrote for her 50th birthday struck me as incomplete, and the one about a woman that was special to me in my teens made me cringe. So i picked the 2 that i thought were best.

There's also a poem I wrote about my husband years ago that I couldn't find to evaluate whether I thought it was any good or not. That drives me crazy. I suppose it will turn up. It's not on the computer.

I did it! I submitted "The Daily Grind" to THE NEW YORKER!

Not being in the mood to write, or crit, I turned to the easiest choice: reading. I just read the most wonderful short story. "Dance of the Kawkaroons" by Mercurio D. Rivera in INTERZONE #227 March-April.

I don't feel in the mood to write a critique. I think my inner critic is out of control. I don't want to turn it loose on someone else's work, or my own.

Realized I miss this blog. "Writer's Playground" isn't complete without it.

Here's my list of projects:

1. "The Daily Grind" was rejected by APEX MAGAZINE. I am planning next to submit it to THE NEW YORKER.

2. I think I really overreacted when after "A Singular Being" was rejected by CLARKESWORLD MAGAZINE, I reread their guidelines & saw "alien observes humans" on their list of "stories we don't want to see." Of course, "visitor to alien world is told rules & ignores them and is punished" is on that list too, & that describes "Babysitting" by Christine Murphy to a tee, & that is one of my favorite stories ever. Anyway, I went nuts & did radical surgery on the ms, called the results "version 5b" & submitted it to Critters under the title "Was A Singular Being, Probably needs New Title" as Fantasy instead of SF. I realized reading the resulting critiques that my butchery didn't make much sense. I am now going back to version 4e & going from there, destination THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION.

3. The memoir was rejected by agent Betsy Lerner & I didn't feel like that book length project was still on the agenda.

4. I submitted "Return to Darkness: My Sojourn in the Realm of the Cavedwellers" to MEMOIR (AND)

5. The novel i started in my 20's is now officially shelved.

6. I've been considering 2 ideas for NANOWRIMO, one sci-fi, one that other thing.

7. I also have another idea for a novel, not too developed yet.

If I post on my blog, will this fact show up on facebook?

The memoir is finally finished and is now over 22,000 words, so it's BOOK LENGTH! Yay! I can't believe I almost gave up because of the misery that is ANGELA'S ASHES. Thank you Ellen for talking me into participating in the workshop.