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Holidays in retail + anthology deadline of Dec 31 = 1 tired writer.

Fortunately, I did get a passable draft finished of the short story I wanted to submit.  It's not my best work--I'm too close to it, and the deadline snuck up on me, so no one else has read it--but I enjoy it and am glad I submitted something.  There's another short story deadline in February that I want to work on; this one unfortunately I don't have anything ready for, so we'll see if I can pull together a story in a month and a half.  Right now I have characters and a decent idea of what happens, but no specifics, and without specifics it won't work.  So I need to keep working on that.

In the new year I pretty much want to keep doing what I'm doing, but with more hours a week spent on writing and on reading books.  I read every day--mostly fanfic.  While I love and adore fanfic, as a writer and just a person who misses her books, I need to get back in the habit.

Also, this week I continue to be thankful I no longer live where it snows.  Stay safe if you're in blizzard territory!

We know I've been querying Skywatch, and tonight, just out of curiosity, I googled myself to see what an agent would see if they tried it.  I have to put in the "K." in the middle because there's a model and a volley ball player named Lauren Moody who come up way more than I do if you just search "Lauren Moody."  So, googled "Lauren K. Moody".

Most of it was ordinary and stuff I'd like an agent to see--this blog, reviews for SS25, The Girl She Truly Was on DSF, etc.  Then I clicked the second page--I don't actually expect an agent to look at more than one page of Google results, but like I said, curiosity--and found this.

"THE GIRL SHE TRULY WAS" GOT RECOMMENDED FOR THE 2012 TIPTREE AWARD!

I had no idea.  I mean, I do fairy tale gender messing with in that story, but I didn't know I'd gotten recommended!  Results are in, didn't get nominated, etc, but seriously, I got recommended for an awesome award and didn't even know it.  I'm on a website with 76 other works that did interesting things with gender in 2012.

Squee!

. . . can be found here (link leads to the DSF page).

I have been remiss!  But also on vacation, and then writing (short stories, yes I know it's not May anymore), and now back at work which means buried under a pile of e-mail.  I got halfway through last week's e-mail today!  Working backward.  And also skipping anything that couldn't be immediately dealt with.  Still progress, I suppose.

It seems to be FINALLY summer here, which makes me happy, even if the nearest pool is still in that phase where it's overrun by kids and teenagers b/c it's the beginning of the summer and they haven't swum for nine months.  I suspect the glamor will wear off in a few weeks, but for now I have to REALLY want it to brave the jumping and splashing and that weird feeling of being a single person going to a small pool when everyone else there is with family or friends.  Awkward much?  Yes.  Keeping me from swimming on weekends?  So far.  I just have to get home from work before the temperature gets too low.  One of these days . . .

And that's about it.  Vacation was awesome and relaxing.  WisCon was The Best, again.  I will be returning next year, barring financial ruin.

Ooh, also, I read some really good YA books!  I will list them here, in case I am too lazy/overworked to come back and review them properly: Cinder by Marissa Meyer, Team Human by Justine Larabalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan, The Five Flavors of Dumb by Anthony John, and a re-read-but-still-awesome, Highway to Hell, By Rosemary Clement-Moore.

I had an insanely busy week, so I didn't actually think to check my e-mail as regards Humanbearer till today.  I'm glad I did--I got both the notice it was being held for consideration, and the final couldn't-fit-it-in, at the same time.  Since Well Enough got held for consideration, I would've been on crazy pins and needles waiting for the two days it took the official rejection to come in, and yesterday would not have been the awesome relaxing (first swim of 2012!) day it was.

On the one hand, I am sad that it got rejected.  On the other, I am philosophical, because--note my last post--I saw this coming.

It's one of those choices you have to make as a writer, when you know that for reasons beyond quality, a story might not be saleable.  Do you try it anyway, or do you move on to other projects?  I know there are stories (novel ideas, even) I've stared long and hard at, and decided not to write more than the outline because I knew they'd never get anywhere, and I didn't love them enough, I wasn't devoted enough, to go through all the sweat and then not get anything concrete out of it.  With Humanbearer, I chose the other route.  I decided I wanted this story badly enough, that it meant enough to me, that I would devote time and energy and emotion to it, even though I knew it was unlikely to be accepted anywhere.  S&S has a generous word count limit--9k--and Humanbearer got held, at least, which means my other worry--the not-quite-the-right-subgenre worry--was irrelevant, and that I did make the right choice in submitting in the first place.

So I'll shop it around to the few other markets that might want 7k words of high fantasy about a dragon and her girl, and we'll see.  There might also be a few more stories about these two in the future, as well, but I don't want to count my dragons before they hatch.

Humanbearer: due in to S&S submissions by May 10th (subs close the 12th).  Editing.

Auction Story: deadline TBA; research needed - possibly after WisCon?  Need to ask winner.  Not yet started.

JT/supervillains/evil!Leverage story: due June 7th.  Outlined.

The Clock Who Fell In Love: anthology submission deadline June1st; subbed to WisCon writer's workshop.  Editing/off my plate till end of month.

The Girl She Truly Was: Proof for DSF as soon as they send it.

EDITING: one story per week for WisCon writer's workshop.


. . . so in May I plan to sleep and write.  Jeez.  Appropriate new icon is appropriate.

Though I will definitely save the good news for last.  I like ending on high notes.

Stress=my RL job is still with the crazy.  I got promoted a while ago, in the midst of my department being very shorthanded, and thus got off to a rocky start.  Since I'm sort of built to begin as I mean to go on, things have continued to be rocky, even though objectively they have improved.  I've been reading a lot of fanfic and sleeping a lot and not much else.  Which is depressing in and of itself, which leads to more . . . you get the idea.

Not much writing has gotten done.  I was hoping my new process--writing Horizons in a very different way than I usually write novels--would help.  Because writing always helps!  This is a truth of my existence.  (And might explain this blog.)  However, mostly what my attempt at a new process has shone me is that it doesn't work.  I've been "working" on Horizons for about two months, and have written less than 10k words.  I'm pretty sure I wrote two or three times that when I started The Novel, Skywatch, and even Sanctuary.  I might be annoyed with my current involved, long editing process, but I'll never get to the editing process if I never finish writing the first draft!

Thus, I am devoting the month of May (and what little remains of April) to short story writing.  I'm working on possible submissions for two themed anthologies, one due May 10th and the other June 1st.  I also volunteered to write a short-story-to-order for my work's charity auction, so we'll see what happens with that.

And then--the good news!--I am going to WisCon again!!!  WisCon is Memorial Day weekend (May 25-28 for non-States folks), and should cap off my month of crazy writing with a bang.

Then . . . well, we'll see.  I need to buckle down and finish putting together submission packets for Skywatch so I can send it out to agents (I've been doing this since January, on and off), I need to sit down with Horizons and beat an outline into shape so I can give it another try, and I need to start getting more serious about Moxie.  I may have spent more hours lately doing research and worldbuilding for Moxie than I have writing Horizons, so that should tell me something.

Skywatch: Two synopsis drafts, one 1-page and the other 2-3, working on just 2.  List of possible agents to query acquired; currently going through their websites and writing down what they want from a query (just the query, query+synopsis, query+synopsis+1st five pages, etc).  Frustraing, difficult, time-consuming.

Horizons (that YA sci-fi I was talking about): Rough draft started--three times, so far--and we'll see if it picks up momentum or if I wandered off the drawing board too early.

Moxie: A little more worldbuilding, some poking at what I want from book two (yes, I know, I'm not even ready to start book one yet, but--I'm universe-building, here.  A wide scope is necessary.  We're not going to talk about the plotting I've done for book five.  Or eight).

The Girl She Truly Was: no news yet.  I will annouce its publication date as soon as I know it!

Other: some random mish-mash of stuff--a couple of short story drats that likely won't go anywhere, and research for a world idea I'm not sure is going to pan out yet.  

I did plow through the book Parasite Rex (nonfiction) with great enthusiasm, and checked a few more parasite books out of the library, so we'll see if my intellectural curiosity can beat down my gag reflex long enough to learn anything interesting.

Besides my favorite parasite, which has been toxoplasma gondii for years.  You can thank Scott Westerfeld's Peeps for that.  (And also for the book rec on Parasite Rex, whichi I second.)

I didn't want a whole month to go by between posts, but with my laptop still out of comission I've been using the work laptop--sparingly--and focusing on writing.

Skywatch: working on a query letter, researching agents. Almost finished with Draft IX.

Possible New YA Sci-Fi Book: in worldbuilding/character building/researching stage.  Will post more info if it gets past this stage into real outlining--that's always the test of whether I'll actually attempt the book.

Moxie: worldbuilding and character building, going slowly.  Researching, also slowly.  This series is still pretty far out there in terms of when I intend to start focusing on it.  It's like a snowball being rolled around a yard full of wet snow: Right now it's throwing-sized, with just my main character's bio, rough sketches of her world, and vague plans for a series.  By the time I'm ready to outline the first book, the metaphorical snowball should be five or six feet in diameter.

Short Story: might have news; no annoucement yet since I try not to tell the internet things that aren't absolutely certain for sure.  But maybe news!  Soon!

While I only have one story making the rounds now, and I'm waiting to hear back from the latest market, I am really excited about finally getting a good draft down on a story I've been meaning to write for years.

It's one of those ideas you have when you write a lot of spec-fic--you go, "Oh, stories usually go thus and such.  Wouldn't it be interesting if I wrote a story where things when such and thus, instead?"  But you don't have a plot or characters, so you write it in your story ideas folder and let it percolate.

( Rambling in the second person, mostly )

In related awesome news, I've broken my own highest wordcount in one sitting record!  Out of the 8k words of the short story, 5500 words were brand new, written today, which ups my highest-ever daily word count from 5000 to 5500.  Shiny happiness for a writer who loves high daily wordcounts!

Spent the weekend reading instead of writing.  It was one of those things where I just had to finished the trilogy.  Nothing I can really recommend; I finished it mostly to find out how the authors would accomplish what I knew they were going to accomplish.  And it felt a lot more like a D&D campaign than a trilogy of novels.  The books weren't bad, they were just not my cup of tea.  I like urban fantasy and sci-fi and weird little subgenres a lot more than I like Traditional Epic High Fantasy.

I am, however, working on a steampunk short story (I have tried writing steampunk short stories before.  This one has come the closest to being worthy of editing).  It keeps making severe left turns without warning me--my main character got attacked by sky pirates and then joined the California Lighter Than Air Brigade, and I had no idea that such a thing as the California Lighter Than Air Brigade existed in this world until I wrote it down.  There might also be rayguns and wizards.

This short story is seriously a trip, y'all, and I'm not really sure how I'm going to end it.  Or edit it.  It's behaving a lot more like a novel than a short story, but I have too many other novels to write to want to write this one.  So it will be a short story if I have to stuff it into the format like Mary Poppins stuffs a lamp into a carpet bag.