W2 - Wendy to the Second Power

When I got so much into screenwriting, and evolved into the kind of jobs that eat your life and creative mind, I quit doing the fiction so much. I wrote 2-3 stories in the past 5+ years, but didn't even send them out.

But now I'm starting that up again! I sent a slipstream story to Delia Sherman for her Interstitial Arts anthology called Interfictions. Got word a few weeks ago that it was rejected. (Gone are the days when I could send a story and be confident it would sell in the first one or two markets, I guess. But this antho only seems to have 7 stories in it, so chances weren't good to get a slot.)

Now I just sent the story to Ideomancer, and hopefully they'll respond to the slipstream, plural first-person-ness of it. It's the kind of story that the SlugTribe reads and criticizes for not being fantastical enough. But it's slipstream, y'all! It does what I want it to, has depths it pulls from the odd, surreal imagery, but it doesn't go kick down that door into magic. On purpose.

We'll see how "Devouring Day" does with Ideomancer.

My goal in March is to rewrite my comedy script CAN'T SAY NO and polish it. By the end of March I want it ready to send to contests and producers. I feel optimistic about the script because comedies are hellaciously difficult. A joke or three on every page -- I haz them! And getting input from the full ASG table read in December, plus the excerpt reading in the Austin Cats and in the SlugTribe (hey, they may not be screenwriters but we have fun reading and they give great plot logic and character development for genre critique which the screenwriters cannot) to direct the rewrite has been really useful. Maybe I'll take excerpts back to the Thurs night ASG study group too...

Following this project, I will clean up, polish and start submitting:

1. "A Black Habit" - the erotic SF story I didn't get finished in time for the Sirens antho all those years ago
   
2. "Locking Horns in Ladyland" - the satire set in a future gynocracy that makes nerd boys spitting mad, for some reason, but Bruce Sterling and Don Webb liked it
   
3. "Orbiting the Egosphere" - alternative, literary SF (really hard to write, btw, so that it's not just "look at my tricks!")

Right. This post is me giving myself marching orders.