You know, I’m not a big Hemingway fan, but I love this quote of his:

The first draft of anything is shit.

That’s very true.

October went by way too fast. NaNo starts on Thursday! My writer’s group has a killer kickoff party on Saturday. We ate way too much food, had great swag bags, then played our own made-up version of NaNo-themed Balderdash! Good times all around!

I’m still working on my NaNo outline. It’s coming along fairly well. I’ve decided to shelve the robot/zombie/mad scientist story for now because every time I look at it I want to do anything but write. :-(  I’ll probably try to pick back up on it once NaNo’s over.

So, is everyone else out there ready for NaNo? I’m aiming for 2000 words per day. If I can do the 3-day novel, this should be a piece of cake. Really, really stale cake that’s been sitting out on someone’s kitchen counter since the Nixon administration.

Wow. All I can say is wow . . .

Monday night I was at my parents’ house when the phone rang. It was for me, which was strange, but whatever. It turned out to be the lady who bought my parents’ old house two years ago. She had received a SASE addressed to me and wanted to mail it to me. I gave her my address and received it today. It was a rejection letter for a batch of poems I’d sent to a poetry journal most likely in 2002! Wow. What could possibly have happened that would cause them to: a) take five years to mail a rejection letter and b) even bother to reply back after five whole years. I haven’t lived at that address since 2004, and my parents haven’t lived there since 2005. At least the letter was handwritten (though it wasn’t any more personal than a form letter), and it was on fairly attractive stationery. But I was disappointed that they didn’t even bother to give an explanation as to what the heck took so long . . .

A flash piece I wrote called “Brimstone and Liars” can now be read online at Every Day Fiction. It’s a quick read, so check it out!

The cats are having a major case of the night crazies right now. I just brought them home from being spayed and neutered on Thursday. You’d think they’d want to take it easy, but you’d be wrong. The stitches haven’t slowed them down at all.

Between the hyper kitties and waiting on a late-night load of laundry to dry, I don’t think I’m going to get much sleep tonight. :-\

Sent a few more stories out, got a few more rejections. The usual. Making revisions to my zombie/robot/mad scientist story . . . came up with a few new plot ideas, because it was a bit lacking in that area. I think it’s gonna turn out well. Hopefully I’ll have it complete and ready to send out by the end of the week. Then . . . then my focus will turn to NaNo . . .

You know what’s worse than getting a rejection letter? Waiting 87 long days for this:

Hello,

We apologize for the delay in responding to your story submission. [Unnamed Journal] is taking a hiatus and will resume accepting submissions soon.
Until then we encourage you to submit your story elsewhere, and feel free to
re-submit it to us in the future. You can stay abreast of [Unnamed Journal's] happenings at our website or with our mailing list.

Again, we’re sorry this reply is so long in coming. Good luck placing your
story elsewhere.

Thing is, when I submitted my story almost three months ago, their was nothing on their website indicating their were going on hiatus. Why’d it take 87 days for them to send me this? I could have been submitting my story else where instead of waiting around for this lovely notification. Oh, well. Live and learn, I suppose. :-/

The Boyfriend just sent me this link. Sure to provide hours of “laughs.”

Been working overtime for the last couple of weeks at Ye Olde Day Job. Fun stuff. Spent half my day at work today reading an IRS document. Spent the other half banging my head against the wall. I’m home now, and about to check references in a mockup I brought home (yay for tax handbooks?). The cats are on the couch being extra cute right now (yay for distractions!).

Once my reference checking is out of the way, I’ll hopefully work on revising a couple of stories and outlining my NaNo novel. Oh, and I also have to bake a casserole for work tomorrow. Potluck (again, yay for distractions!).

Got a rejection letter for my YA story today. They suggested that the overall execution could use a little work, so I’ll have to revisit that soon, if I ever get a free moment. Ah, rejection’s real fun, ain’t it?