I’ve changed my name to Anxious

I swore I wouldn’t talk about this until I had something more definitive, honest to God, I took an oath. But the waiting and not saying is just more than I can stand.

I’m not sleeping much, obsessing about this. I’m eating too much, what I always do when I’m faced with something important that I can’t control.

I’ve been writing, but I’m not finishing anything. I have five stories started right now, but I get to 1,000 or 1,500 words and it feels as if I’m dragging heavy weights.

And I’ve been haunting my mailbox, too; so much so that the mail carrier flinches when she sees me.

Here’s the situation.

Last July, I attended Jim Gunn’s SF Writers Workshop in Kansas and workshopped a story that wound up being titled Flotsam. It’s hard science fiction, a near-future story about a work team in low earth orbit. I don’t write much hard SF and I sweated .44 caliber bullets doing the research for it.

In mid-July, after the workshop and at Professor Gunn’s suggestion, I sent the story off to Analog. Editor Stan Schmidt requires hard paper submissions, so I knew there would be a wait before I knew anything. Maybe a long wait.

So, here’s what I’ve been holding in.

The third week in September, I got a letter from Dr. Schmidt saying that he liked the story and that he wanted to use it in his magazine, if I was willing to do a minor rewrite.

Would I be willing to do a rewrite to have one of my stories appear in Analog? Might as well ask if I would be willing to go on breathing.

It really was minor, though. In fact, all I had to do was insert five paragraphs that I had taken out in my final edit. I put the revised piece in the mail a couple days later and sat down to wait.

I haven’t heard anything yet. It’s been six weeks, but in this business, that’s nothing. I’ve talked to other writers who have had work published in Analog and they’ve all told me I just have to be patient.

But this is one of only a few times I’ve submitted a story via snail mail — there aren’t many magazines that require that anymore — and it’s the first time I’ve gotten a conditional acceptance from a major SF market.

I know it’s stupid to fixate upon this to the point that it interferes with my writing. With my life, to be honest. But I’m new enough to this profession to be anxious about the outcome. It’s possible this sort of thing may become commonplace at some point in my future, but right now this is a big deal for me.

It will be my third professional sale, which means I can apply for membership in the Science Fiction Writers of America. It’s validation that my Writers of the Future win wasn’t just a fluke. And, most important, it’s frakkin’ Analog. I’ve only been reading the magazine for fifty years.

But I’ll be good. I swear I will. I’ll wait patiently. I’ll focus on my writing; get it back on track. I won’t pounce upon the mail carrier the moment she steps down from her truck. I just hope word arrives soon, though.

Before I’m forced to resort to slicing open live chickens and reading entrails.

An update

I finished Alice, When She’s Ten Feet Tall this morning. It’s a cautionary tale about mucking about with the natural order of things, even when it appears that there has been crossed signals. 2,800 words. I’m pleased with it now, but I’ll let it set a few days and then go back to it. If I still feel good about it then, I’ll send it out.

I also have completed the outline for my SF novel, Power in the Blood, and have 10,000 words in the file. I’ll tell you more about it when it’s a bit further along.

UPDATING THE UPDATE (Monday, October 13, 2009): It has been a week since I finished Alice, When She’s Ten Feet Tall, so I ran it through my critters. I wound up changing the POV from first-person to third-person, doing a full rewrite and adding 300 words.

Oh, the humanity!

My work station is littered with the skeletal remains of old paragraphs and bloodied by the wholesale slaughter of words. Even so, she lives and is a better story. A writer who ignores an honest critique does so at her peril.

I’m going to comb its adjectives and brush its verbs now, so that I can send it off to Clarke’s World before the day is through.

At long last

The story that would not cooperate is complete.

I finished first draft of Wayfarer tonight; it came in at just under 10,000 words and it fought me every single word of the way. I think it wanted to be a novel. Maybe some day I’ll let it have its way and expand it into a book, but not just now.

I’m pleased the way it turned out, but I think I’ll let it set for a day or three, let it cool off in my mind, before I polish it and send it to Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

Here’s a sneak:

First glance at the little fellow, standing in the tavern doorway, I wondered why he hadn’t blown away in a stiff breeze.

He didn’t look much taller than my shoulder and he was all hard points and sharp edges. His spiky cap of hair was white as the bleached bones of a flensed whale.

“Don’t be certain he’s as old or brittle as he seems.”

Eakin’s whisper scratched at my ear. The defrocked wizard-priest was still hidden away aboard Blessèd, but his magic let him see what I saw and hear what I heard. And he hissed into my ear as if he was at my shoulder.

Eakin hid from the public, for the practice of white magic not sanctioned by the One Church had left him a ruin. His skin was pale as parchment; his arms and legs twisted from the effort of the casting. And he wore a scarlet patch over the ruined pit of his left eye to hide the price he had paid to gain the arcane sight that allowed him to witness my Journey.

I took a second look at the newcomer and decided Eakin was right.

There was nothing flyaway about the little fellow’s manner. He stood his place in the doorway, one eyebrow cocked, studying us all, as if he could shine a light into our minds and so was privy to every sorry secret in the joint.

Back in the saddle

After a six-month stint, I stepped down last week as a slush reader for Every Day Fiction. My time in the job was a delight and an education, and I think I am a better writer and a better editor for the experience.

It’s amazing what some folks submit to magazines, hoping to be published. That was part of the education. But it was also so much fun to happen upon a well-told tale. That was the delight.

And stepping down allows me to submit flash fiction to Camille and Jordan again. I wasted no time.

The day after I turned in my notice, Jake Freivald, editor at Flash Fiction Online, e-mailed me, passing on Canticles. So I wiped its nose, tucked in its noir and sent it back out the door to Every Day Fiction.

I just heard from Camille. She said it was “a great story” and that she would give it a home.

Canticles didn’t wander around forever, but it’s a good example of why a writer shouldn’t give up on a story because one or two (or a dozen) editors reject it. If it’s a good story, the right fusion of writer-story- editor will happen.

As Tim Allen’s Captain Jason Nesmith said in Galaxy Quest, “Never give up. Never surrender.”

Thanks, Camille. It’s good to be back on the writers’ roster at Every Day Fiction.

I’ll let the rest of you know when to look for Canticles. Thanks for dropping by.

An update

The folks at Strange Horizons said “no” to Stuff of the Old Gods, the story I brought back from Jim Gunn’s SF Writers Workshop.  So I tweaked the ending a bit and pushed it back out into the cold to go knocking at the door of Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show.

I’ll let you know whether of not they let it in.

And Downunder, Upon Whom the Pale Moon Gleams, made it through to the third round of review at Australia’s Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine.  So more waiting and the editors there say only about one in three stories make it through the third round and into the magazine.

More to come there.