My Deadline, Still Looming

Unlike this cat it is however not wearing a Santa hat. Or whatever that is.

Sugar-cube Empire

So guess what guess what I have an email, like an official you-can-mail-me@publisher.com email, and a blog and a Twitter.

I have my success fix for the week, which should be enough to stave off the looming cold sores and bring about some brutal glee-based insomnia, but I also read agent blogs obsessively enough to know that whilst being published by a legitimate house at all is a huge step, it is by no means the largest, especially considering that a blog and an email and a Twitter aren't investments for the publisher, and that the publisher is a startup, an indie, and not based in either the U.S. or Britain.

It feels like making an empire from toothpicks and sugar cubes.

My Deadline: IT LOOMS

Inspiration Strikes

Damn, I wrote a thousand words today. That's nothing. Nothing. Why am I so proud?

Writer's block, my friends. When it strikes it hits me in the belly, hard, and makes me feel nauseous, like I've been tossing and turning in bed all night with a tummyache. You think you're all better then something's a little uncomfortable, no problem, you just have to turn around, have to fix your pillow all better, but rrrrn still uncomfortable, curl up into a ball? Better? For a little bit, sure, but you still can't sleep so you turn over again, and nothing is ever achieved.

I was suffering from creative stagnation. Today, I gave up writing what I thought I should be writing. Instead, I wrote a crazy-ass scene that should never be in a fantasy novel at all, and by the way I love it.

Why can't I write the way I always do? Why do I have to chain myself down to plot, plot, plot, world-building, plot plot? Why can't I go into a strange deconstructed scene that switches between tenses and between first and third person as my character becomes more and more outright bonkers? Yeah! I can! Nuts to you, marketing brain. I can write what I want.

A thousand words is nothing but it was the best thousand words I've written in a while.

I am So Fucking Made for this Profession, or Maybe Something Else Comparable, Like Hermitting

So I was eating breakfast today and I overheard this woman telling this other woman that she, "was writing in a vacuum" and that she, "needed to get out more, get some critique, just go outside, you know?" and I glanced over and there was a single typed sheet on the table with "SO-AND-SO'S NOVEL" written on it in caps and in sharpie, I think blue or green.

So I went over and I was like, "This is really awkward, and uh, I overheard you, well I was eavesdropping really, and I'm really sorry... but I'm starting a writing group, and I'm going to be leaving flyers around. Maybe you'd want to come?"

They looked at me like I ground up babies and snorted them.

Then the one with the typed sheet said, "Yeah, I'm Some Name I Forgot Immediately and this is Another Name I Forgot Immediately, she's a writer too."

The other woman was like, "What's your name?"

And the presumption was, "Why the fuck are you starting a group? Who the fuck are you?" but I told them my first name.

And I was like, "Well I just signed my first contract so I thought, you know, since there are no groups around here that I can find, maybe I can start one, spread the love a little?"

And the woman with the first page said, "What was it?"

I said, "A fantasy novel?" like it wasn't as good as a self-help book or whatever but what can you do... and her eyes just light the fuck up and she says, "Oh, wow!"

And I said, "Um, I am really sorry I listened to your conversation..." and I thought, I could have just pinned a flyer up and they'd have probably attended the fucking meeting but now they won't.

And the one who'd done all the talking said, "No, really it's OK, I overheard this woman at the gym talking about adopting on her iPhone and I was like, 'Just finish your damn conversation so I can ask you about agencies!' "

And I laughed sort of awkwardly and was like, "OK, well, I hope you guys come," and then spent the rest of the time in the cafe looking at the floor pointedly so I would project the message that I was not in any way listening in on their conversation again, which would have been difficult anyway because they lowered their voices a lot.

I'm like a dog who's been raised alone and who freaks out barking around other dogs and who vets think "needs socializing".

I hated the Matrix trilogy apart from the

INTP - "Architect". Greatest precision in thought and language. Can readily discern contradictions and inconsistencies. The world exists primarily to be understood. 3.3% of total population.

Cover Art

After months of writing alone in my dank little cupboard, lighting pine-scented candles to wash away the stink of circumspection, I found myself wanting to be distracted. Perhaps it was the light and the air and the sound of children laughing outside as they smacked the pavement with rubber balls and the street signs with rocks.

I scrabbled through the discarded threads of my correspondence. Maybe if I reached for the outside world in this way, it would respond to me -- rather than gracing my Inbox with nihilist gifts of the bottomless Zero.

The light reached out of my screen, held my shoulders with both hands.

"Yes," it said. "It's worth a shot."

To sum,

I HAVE THE COVER ILLUSTRATOR I WANTED GLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

NOTE TO SELF IF PUBLISHER SAYS THAT IT'S OK TO CONTACT HER IN MORE WAYS THAN JUST EMAIL IT IS ACTUALLY OK