Week of December 31, 2006, to January 6, 2007

Three rejections. Apparently the exhortations to go back on our heads earlier this week were heeded by at least some editorial staff.

The Target in Burnsville is disappearing slowly into a dimensional rift. If you want anything from there, you'd better go now, because it doesn't look like it'll be there much longer. There were expanses that looked like they were wide open, free of shelves or racks or stuff to buy, but apparently you could lose a toddler in those supposed wide open spaces, because there was a woman calling for hers in an increasingly desperate voice. Entire departments were walled off; others were just empty. There was no indication that they were going out of business. They just didn't have...y'know, stuff. Target stuff. Extremely disorienting.

Also, I am beginning to wonder if putting "casual" in the name of your store is like putting "science" in your field of study: means it isn't one.

In any case, I may be done with the "attempting to spend money" component of the day and may be moving into the "putting things away and writing" component of the day, which would be nice, all things considered.

Feast of Epiphany

I haven't had any epiphanies, just some good solid work on this story. ("Carter Hall Lights the Lamp," I mean.) I'm not going to finish it tonight, but that's okay: I know where it's got to go yet, and it's going there pretty quickly, probably less than a thousand words. And I'm having good fun with it, and I'm pretty sure I can finish it Monday.

I have been in a suppressed panic about the number of short stories I have in circulation -- by my standards extremely low -- but I've been picking and pecking away at several for quite some time, and they feel like they'll be falling in a tidy-looking little row. (Tidy-looking from the outside.) Of course, about the time I say that, I'll be going like crazy on novel stuff instead. That'll be all right, too. I can do both. That'd be good.