“Creativity is a continual surprise.”
Ray Bradbury

author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

actually writing blog

flip-phone replacement, part the second and concluding
Tue 2024-02-20 21:50:27 (single post)

OK so it turns out that firstly, the NUU F4L does not by default save text messages to the SIM card.

But that secondly, there is a setting by which you can tell it to.

And also, thirdly, the long-press menu for every individual text message includes the commnad "Save to SIM card."

However, and fourthly, attempts to do so result in the error message "Save unsucsseful. SIM card full." (This would explain why, despite telling the new phone to save SMS to the SIM card and then having a lengthy conversation with the out-of-town friend I was kitty-sitting for, there continued to be no SMS saved to the SIM card.)

I am not sure what could possibly be filling up my SIM card, because, fifthly, as far as I can tell, it brought nothing from my old phone over to my new except my telephone number and whatever other esoteric identifying data a new phone needs to be given, that it should successfully replace an old phone.

Ergo, I conclude that the SIM card which Credo assigned me has absolutely zero capacity for extraneous data, which is sad. Though I could test this conclusion by taking that new SIM card that came with the new unit, which I am otherwise not using, and popping it into the old phone, and attempting to save my sentimental value texts to it, but I'm not particularly hopeful about the results of that experiment.

Anyway, sentimental value texts aside, I am successfully transferred onto my new phone. Contacts imported. SD card full of music transfered. Shortcuts reassigned. Mobile data turned OFF before I could accidentally run myself into an overage charge (I have a grandparented-in data plan that's limited to 25mb but is SUPER CHEAP). And while it is exactly the same as the old phone, meaning its calendar interface sucks rocks and its playlist-creating interface is mysterious (where does it save them? Not the SIM card!) and the photos it takes are somewhat low-res, it is also brand new rather than 4+ years old, which means that when I press a button, the phone damn well knows it got pressed, making the act of composing a text about 98% less painful than it had been going on a year or so now.

Also the new unit arrived on Thursday rather than Friday, and early on Thursday at that, so, hooray! I was up and running relatively quickly. And I sprang for the insurance this time, so should I be as foolish with this one as I was when I doomed the previous unit last week, replacing it should be even more painless.

So! Thus for the saga of the NUU F4L. I sholud probably get back to talking about actually writing.

...tomorrow.

toodling along in the low-tech slow lane, 4G and app-free
Tue 2024-02-13 21:13:42 (single post)

So several things have happened between last post and this one--most excitingly, a couple roller derby bouts; most disappointingly, an abject failure to keep to my morning routine--but today I want to talk about/document/gripe about my poor flip phone.

Flip phones are rugged little things. I've had this NUU F4L for, ooh, at least since before the pandemic I'm pretty sure, I'm honestly not sure how to check. In any case, I've dropped it countless times, gotten it lightly splashed, kept it in my pocket during scrimmage, and otherwise treated it roughly. Through it all, it kept on chugging. But last night at roller derby practice it finally met its match. As I was sneaking glances at a web text in between drills, I wanted the browser to stay on and open to that page, so I left the phone open. On the floor. Next to my water bottle. Also next to the track boundary. During a drill involving extreme footwork.

Yep. Poor thing got under someone's wheels. And the interior display got borked.

Happily, it is a flip phone. It is not expensive. A new NUU F4L plus its activation fee comes to less than $150. Also, after opting for the insurance plan, my monthly bill is still going to be less than $35. We're talking a lot less headache than when John has to replace his Android. Also a lot less set-up on the new phone, since there are no apps to download. Just swap in my SIM card and the 64gb mini-SD where my tunes and playlists live, and I'll be good to go.

...except I'm not actually certain that my text messages live on that SIM card. I hope they do. I have a few conversations I want to hold onto, for sentimental purposes, but there is no option to save the whole thread or forward a collection of messages. All I can do is forward single messages to myself at my email address. And I'd rather not have to do that. Also, I spent a significant amount of today combing through text logs for people I hadn't added to my Contacts yet, and also for any photo attachments I wanted to keep (again, just in case text messages don't transfer over with the SIM card). Photo attachments to texts don't automatically save themselves anywhere useful. You have to highlight the message, long press the big central button, then choose "download attachment" from the menu. And if you're me and you're using this particular device, you do this multiple times per photo, because the phone has a bad case of button-lag such that it isn't always convinced I'm doing a long press, but thinks I'm just selecting the message instead, and then I have to hit the Back button, which, again, sometimes the phone just ignores.

With all this button-lag, this "I swear I am trying to push the button, I'm PUSHING the damn BUTTON, noooooo I only wanted to push it once" factor, it was, honestly, about time I replaced this unit. I'm just glad I didn't pull that trigger and then let the phone get crushed under someone's roller skates.

But now I am ALL BACKED UP. Text photo attachments downloaded. Photos from Downloads and Gallery moved over to my computer. Phone contact list updated and exported. Everything's ready to go.

FedEx tracking estimates the new phone will be delivered Thursday, which means realistically I'll probably get it Friday, which means that, by the weekend, I'll be able to see the corners of my screen once more, and small text on the web browser will be legible again, and maybe I'll get a few years without button-lag, which will be nice.

All the above complaints aside, I don't regret my decision to continue sticking with the flip phone. Not only is it inexpensive and rugged, not only is it of a size to fit easily in my jeans pockets, not only does its battery charge last several days to a week (depending on wi-fi and bluetooth use), but also it is not eating my soul.

Which: no shade on anyone with a smart phone who interacts with it most of their waking moments! But I just don't want that to be me. It's already kind of me, what with my constant laptop use; but the laptop introduces just enough friction that sometimes, when I'm out and about, or when the laptop's in another room, it's easier to just... not. So instead I end up knitting at the pub after practice with friends, or reading a physical book over a quick brunch at a local restaurant.

(Or, admittedly, reading something on my phone's web browser that I Saved For Offline Reading. I'm not made of stone, and Project Gutenberg is right there.)

One day, I suppose, Credo Mobile will stop offering a flip phone option--or more society infrastructure will require use of apps and QR codes such that I can no longer get by with Bluestacks, I suppose that's possible--and I'll have to upgrade to a smart phone and a real data plan. Until that day, I'll just keep toodling along in the low-tech slow lane, a loyal member of Team Flip phone, texting like molasses via KT9 and occasionally grumbling "I said H, I pressed H, why will you not---no, only one H, dang it--"

water finds its level and that's a good thing
Tue 2024-01-09 22:59:22 (single post)

Hello! Last week kind of puttered out and took the Thursday blog post with it, but I am feeling MUCH BETTER today. Despite today starting with a physical therapy appointment and ending with leading a roller derby practice, I got a LOT of writing and writing-adjacent stuff accomplished.

But I'd mostly like to talk about that roller derby practice.

Our league experienced a high level of membership turnover during the pandemic hiatus. A lot of good people left the league. On the other hand, so did a handful of toxic people who'd had disproportionate influence on league culture. As a result, our league--the remaining members along with the brand new members--utterly reinvented itself, and very much for the better.

Here is one specific and powerful positive change that affected me personally: Where once I got the message loud and clear that my role was and always would be to shut up, listen to my betters, and do what I was told --what I was now hearing was, "You've been around a while. You've seen this league through its ups and downs. You're good at this sport, you're effective at sharing that knowledge, and you're kind about it. Why don't you join the Training Committee?"

That was 2021, when we returned to play, revamped our practices, rebranded ourselves, and reinvented our culture. But growth did not stop there--how could it? we are always learning--and so now, as we kick off the 2024 season, our Training Committee looks very different than it did three years ago.

The biggest change this year is that we've divvied up into subcommittees, one for each practice level. I've joined the subcommittee dedicated to training our beginners (cryptid-themed team name: Jackalopes; team color: Orange) and preparing them for their skills assessments.

This new organizational structure has had a remarkably positive impact on me.

Before, when we were just one big Training Committee, and the question "Who can lead Travel Team practice this Sunday" went out to all of us, I felt a like a vile little slacker for never saying, "Me." I was giving in to my imposter syndrome. I was refusing to step outside of my comfort zone. I was signing up to train the beginning skills because I had to train sometimes, and I didn't feel capable of more. I felt like I was guilty of making my insecurities into other people's problems. Like I was failing to pull my weight.

And--wow. What a disservice to our newer skaters, to view training them as the job for people who aren't good enough for anything else! And I never really looked at it that way, not truly. It was more like--OK, in avoiding the training spots I was uncomfortable with and gravitating toward the ones where I was more confident, I felt like I was guilty of eating dessert while dinner got cold on my plate. Like, by never taking a turn leading more advanced practices, I was shirking a responsibility.

But now that script has flipped. The call that went out was, "Who wants to be on the Orange Team subcommittee," and I said, "Me!" not because it's the only work I'm fit for but because it's work that I'm good at. It's a strength. And it's work that I love. I love this sport, and I love making this sport accessible to others. (It's why I head up the Recruiting Committee, too.) I didn't wind up training the "newbies" by process of elimination. I jumped at the chance to make it my specialty.

So tonight I had the joy of welcoming seven new members to our league and teaching them their very first roller skating skills. I got to watch them light up as they made their first strides. I got to bask in their great big smiles as we ended practice on a team cheer. I felt like I was exactly where I belonged, and it made me so happy, I can't begin to tell you.

So. What's the lesson here? Something like: Don't beat yourself up for what you perceive as your weaknesses. Work to improve where you need improvement, sure, but never forget to value your strengths. Do the things you love. They are valid contributions to this world.

the chronicles of a not-quite-wasted non-writing day
Wed 2024-01-03 23:29:49 (single post)

By golly, there is going to be a blog post today.

Problem is, being all out of the habit of regular blog posts, I'm also out of the habit of regularly coming up with stuff to blog about. And it's no good asking myself, "Why did I start keeping a blog in the first place, some twenty years ago?" I remember exactly why I started blogging. It was a form of external accountability: if I blogged that day, it meant I had written that day, and I would blog about what I had written. So on a day like today, when I in fact have not written in any meaningful way, it feels like there's really nothing to say at all.

So that sucks. But--what the heck. Let's pretend today was worth blogging about. What all did I do today?

7:00 AM - My alarm went off and I got up. That wasn't fun. It never is. Getting up early is painful, like, literally full of actual pain. Nothing localized to a particular body part, aside from the daily soreness/stiffness attendant on having slept (approaching one's 50s apparently means one can hurt oneself sleeping); just the sense that being conscious at all hurts, and can I please not? Please? But I've managed it all week and I'm not breaking my streak yet, so, up I get.

There are consolations. I got out of bed, stepped over the pet gate that keeps our bunny Holland out of the bedroom, and encountered Holland beside the sofa, where he usually is at that time of the morning, waiting for signs of movement from his humans. He came bounding over to me and lowered his chin to the carpet, presenting his nose and forehead to be petted, please. I obliged. The look of bliss on his little furry face at such times will never not melt my heart.

After a few minutes, I went over to the office, set up my thermos for tea, and filled up and started the electric kettle. (Tea, also, is a consolation.) While that came to a boil, I did the bunny breakfast chores (gave him his food pellets, topped off his hay and water, portioned out his day's treats) then went to brush my teeth and hair. I transferred my laptop to the office. I put tea bags in the thermos and filled it up with just-boiled water. Morning routine: complete!

7:30 AM - Time to join my scheduled FocusMate session. My partner informs me she'll be off-camera doing her morning routine; I tell her I'll be doing my Morning Pages as usual. We each do those things. I fill up three pages with messy handwriting, using my Platinum Curidas retractable fountain pen and some lovely green ink. Then I review what I've written, especially in the margins, and from this extract a to-do list for the day. That goes in my Day Planner, which, under better circumstances, I would refer to throughout the day--but today I would set it aside and never touch it again, alas. Anyway, 7:55 rolls around, my partner and I unmute our microphones and report to each other how our session went, wish each other a lovely day, and log off.

8:30 AM - And here is where I lose my momentum. Already? Yes. Because I did not have the luxury today of moving directly into my actual writing. I had to go run an unpleasant errand. And while I treated myself to a delicious breakfast burrito to make up for the unpleasantness, and I was actually kind of cheerful about being awake and out of the house early on a lovely day, I got home exhausted and pretty much went back to bed. Until noon.

So much for my morning.

I won't chronicle the rest of the day, but suffice to say, writing didn't happen. I got up, futzed around, and never wrote at all. (Exception: this blog post.) But I did get a lot of work done on my new LibriVox project, so I can't really call it a wasted day. It just wasn't, properly speaking, the writing day I'd intended it to be.

But there's always tomorrow. (Unless there isn't. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that there is.) And tomorrow's errand doesn't have to happen early in the morning. So I'll be able to proceed from my FocusMate session and my Morning Pages directly into actual writing. Hooray!

ceci n'est pas une new year's resolution
Tue 2024-01-02 20:16:43 (single post)
  • 24 words (if poetry, lines) long
  • 52 words (if poetry, lines) long

Hello! Happy New Year! Happy new blog post! [Insert ritual self-deprecating quip about not having posted in seventh months, assume appropriate New Year's resolution as read.]

Things I did in 2023:

Things I would like to do in 2024:

  • All of the above, only moreso; where applicable, on time
  • Attend my 30-year high school reunion
  • Attend WorldCon in Glasgow
  • Blog! Here! Regularly!
  • (Maybe make this blog look more attractive? Ye Gods, this post looks like ass)

To those ends, I will:

  • Renew my intention to get up on time, that being 7:00, every weekday (thanks, Focusmate!)
  • Renew my intention to write every day (and not just my daily freewriting and fictionette work either)
  • Renew my passport

That's it. That's the blog post.

There should be another tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Holland. In a box.
Cat and Niki, together at last for a few minutes
Finally! Knee length! (We are going for thigh-high.)
in which the author catches us up all over again and mostly ignores the holiday
Tue 2023-07-04 18:09:33 (single post)
  • 24 words (if poetry, lines) long

Hello and happy 4th of July! No big plans at our household, just eating good food, being lazy, spoiling the bunny, and trying to tune out the random party noises from next door. Also the random explosions (fireworks) that, oddly enough, don't seem to bother the aforementioned bunny. Let's start off with a picture of Mister Captain Holland Fuzzy Bunderpants, why don't we, so you can see for yourself just how unflappable that guy is.

It's a day off from roller derby, and I'm taking advantage of the extra evening writing time to do a blog post. For once! When did I last post here--May? Seriously? OK then. Here's the round-up of Stuff What I Been Up To Since May.

When last we left off with the blog's intrepid hero, she was about to drive off to Salt Lake City for a couple of roller derby bouts. (Two, not three; one of our opponents had to withdraw at the last minute because of a COVID outbreak within their league. It's still out there, y'all. Mask up and be safe.) Well, we won the sanctioned game by a decent amount and we lost the regulation game by not much at all, doing our rankings no harm thereby.

The games were fun, and so were the team's various excursions around the city. Team dinner was at The Bayou, where I had something they called "alligator cheesecake." It was more like a souffle, except with a graham cracker crust, and I will have to take their word that there was actual alligator sausage in there. Tasty, in any case. There was also a smaller lunch outing to Mark of the Beastro, address 666 S. State Street. A+, would dine on vegan omelets with Satan again.

But dearest to me was the morning after everything was over, after I had checked out of the hotel, when I met one of my oldest and closest friends for a walk around the park before hitting the highway for home. There we are in the photo gallery, all big smiles with tulips in the background. Love you bunches, Cat--let's try not to take so long about seeing each other again! Give your doggos lots of love from me, and all the best to your family.

After Salt Lake, our next engagement was a home bout (sanctioned) against No Coast Roller Derby on June 24. The visiting team won that one, but a number of them assured me that we did not make it easy. It was a very hard fought game. As for the afterparty, I honestly couldn't say who won that one. Both teams showed up in strength and numbers and with great appetite. There was an after afterparty down the street at a sandwich shop and bar for those still hungry after the first location's kitchen closed, but I was tired and did not go. Whoever won the afterparty, it was not me. I am at peace with that.

Next up, this Saturday will find us hosting a double header, two mix-up bouts featuring first the Boulder County Devils (our junior league) and the BCRD adults second. After that, the league will take a well-deserved four-week break!

In writing news, I have a brand new poem out in Eternal Haunted Summer, in their Summer Solstice 2023 issue. It's called Fiat Nox, and it's a sort of Miltonian call-out, I guess. Big thanks to the editor for picking a lovely illustration to pair with the poem!

Big thanks also to my teammate and that night's carpool partner who responded to my whining ("argh, tonight's the deadline, I wanted to send in a poem but I don't have one yet and I'm going to be tired after tonight's scrimmage") with the exhortation to GO! WRITE IT! IT'S NOT TOO LATE YET! YOU CAN DO IT! The fact that the poem got written at all, let alone submitted in time for the editor to consider it, is something like 90% her doing.

Meanwhile, I can attest that the whole Rhysling Finalist thing actually happened, because while I may have imagined many things, I am certain I didn't hallucinate the proof copy of the 2023 Rhysling Anthology that was sent my way. You can order this attractive volume for yourself at that link. Whether in print or PDF, I guarantee it's chock full of excellent poetry.

Oh and hey! Fibercraft news. I'm knitting a new pair of socks! They're all rainbow and they're not nearly tall enough yet.

All for now - more soon, I hope. I really do intend to do this once a week thing. Will I manage it? ONLY NEXT WEEK KNOWS.

in which the author buries the lede
Tue 2023-05-02 22:32:42 (single post)

Well, hi. So it turns out I have this blog. Let's brush the rust off the controls and do a round-up post of Stuff What I Been Up To Since January.

In roller derby news, which I'll start with because that's always a thing, my league, Boulder County Roller Derby (nee Boulder County Bombers), is thoroughly renamed and rebranded. We have jerseys with our new logo on the way and everything is very exciting. Meanwhile, our travel team program is up and running and so are WFTDA rankings. Sanctioned games are a thing again, and we have now played three of them: one against the Denver Standbys here at home, and two in the Taos-based Rumble on the Rio tournament a couple weekends ago. We won all three.

This weekend we're going to Salt Lake City to participate in Wasatch Roller Derby's Galactic Brawl tournmant. We'll be playing three games, two of which will be sanctioned. If there is live streaming of those games--and I don't know that there will be, but if there is--you'll hear about it via the host league's Facebook page (see the "Galactic Brawl" link).

In mundane life news, we lost a car and gained a car. The black 2013 Chevy Volt got totaled thanks to Some Dude rear-ending John, thereby causing a five-car pile-up on eastbound Arapahoe Road approaching 95th Street. Happy to report that there were no injuries! But, like I said, the Volt didn't make it. There followed a couple of weeks during which we were in far closer and more frequent contact with our insurance company than we generally like to be, meanwhile gaining a certain category of life experience we'd have been just fine never having to experience, thanks awfully.

And then we went looking for another used plug-in hybrid to replace the Volt with, and, wouldn't you know it, Boulder Hybrids had a red 2013 Chevy Volt with a price tag of not unreasonably much more than the settlement pay-out on the totaled Volt. Indeed, what with the replacement Volt being a Premium rather than an LT and having 10K fewer miles on its odometer, it was a damn good deal. And we drove that sucker to Taos for the aforementioned Rumble on the Rio tournament. And the 10-years-out-of-date onboard navigation system was entirely adequate to get us there (freeing up John's smartphone for very important business by which of course we mean VIDEO GAMES). So that all worked out.

In writing news: My poem, "On the Limitations of Photographic Evidence in Fairyland", published in the Summer Solstice 2022 edition of Eternal Haunted Summer, made the Rhysling Award long list. The Rhysling Award is given each year by the Science Fiction & Fantasy Poetry Association, whose members each get to nominate one work in each of the poetry categories, long and short. There were slightly more than 100 preliminary nominees in the short poem category, which is quite a lot, but I got to be one of them, and that's pretty darn spiffy!

That was announced back in February. Fast forward to just now, when I went Googling about to see when the finalists would be announced, so I could mention that date here. Surprise, surprise--turns out, the finalists have been announced. While I'm still not seeing anything in SFPA's official communications, I found several blogs and poetry publications congratulating the finalists. For instance, here's File770.

There are 50 finalists in the short poem category, and my poem appears to be one of them. Eep!

An anthology of the finalists will be put together and mailed out soon, and the SFPA membership will begin voting in July to determine the eventual 2023 award recipients..

So... yeah. That's my news for the year so far. Happy Beltane!

in which the author takes a hard look at shitty company behavior and task list gamification
Thu 2023-01-19 22:55:59 (single post)

OK, so, this week's post is kind of a bummer. Also a bit of a reprise, since I posted about it Monday over on Patreon.

Here's the thing: I'm leaving Habitica.

I know! I've boosted it so many times over the years! It's helped me organize my life in so many really useful ways! The camaraderie, the accountability, the joy of clicking a thing and saying "I did it!" and getting imaginary gold and experience points for it--these have all been good things! (Mostly good things, anyway. About that, more in a moment.) So what happened that suddenly I'm canceling my subscription and deleting my account?

Well... this.

That link goes to a Reddit thread that describes, in some detail, the abominable treatment that Habitica's volunteer community moderators have received from Habitica's paid staff team. And because I rarely ventured outside my various Guilds' social spaces, I had no idea anything was going until sometime last week, when a Mastodon acquaintance, who turned out to be one of Habitica former moderators, mentioned it. Anyway, if you want the full story, follow both links; and, on the Reddit thread, scroll down for comments by former moderators.

A brief and thus very imperfect summary of what transpired might look like this: A longstanding company culture of treating the mods with very little care, respect, or gratitude for their unpaid labor of love for the Habitica community culminated in the staff firing all the volunteer moderators in early December 2022, then declaring any discussion of the situation in Habitica's public spaces off-limits and against the Terms of Service. The inciting incident for the first firing was this: After a heroic after-hours effort by the mod team to deal with a fast-moving crisis in the message boards, one of the mods suggested that maybe the staff might say "thank you" once in a while.

Again, this is a summary, not the complete story. I have left out the steps between "How about a thank you?" and "We are taking moderation in-house." And there are some pretty horrific codas. Basically, click through the links above and you'll know as much as I do. If the length of the Reddit page is daunting, I can specifically recommend these comments by former moderators MaybeSteveRodgers and ALittleYellowSpider (Alys). But I think the whole thread is worth your time.

Anyway, I was appalled. I immediately decided I could not support the app anymore. I put myself "in the Inn" indefinitely (i.e. paused damage so I could ignore the app without my character or those of my party being punished for it), exported my user data so as not to lose track of my task lists, and began the process of letting my various communities know why I'm leaving. This blog post is part of that.

This blog post is also me realizing that maybe I'm better off without Habitica after all.

Not long ago, author Elizabeth Bear wrote an article about how "Gamification might be bad, actually?" and it got me thinking. Well, to be fair, it got me resisting. I've been using Habitica so long, it's been such an integral part of my day--how dare you suggest it might be bad for me? But since pausing damage and thus freeing myself from the obligation to check in, check the boxes, complete my task lists OR ELSE, I've been thinking about Bear's article a lot.

Every time I catch myself thinking, "I didn't water the plants today - but if I do it first thing tomorrow, I can justify checking the 'Water the plants' Daily." Every time I felt bad because I didn't "Feel good about your writing - and yourself!" and thus couldn't honestly check off that task. Every time I thought, "OK, posting the Monday Muse is blogging, so it's OK if I check 'actually writing blog' today even though I didn't post to the actually writing blog." Every time I regretted failing to do my daily physical therapy or was too tired to brush my teeth, regretted not because skipping those routines isn't good for my physical well-being but purely because it meant I'd leave a daily task incomplete--

Every time, in fact, that I thought of the things I want to or need to do every day in terms of whether I got to check a box, it brought home all over again that maybe, just maybe, task list gamification might be bad for me.

I think I still need some sort of task list manager--it could be an app, it could just be me writing a list of "What do I need to do today?" in my Morning Pages--because without lists I lose track of the day's wants and needs and, like I've said before, I just drift. (I've done a lot of useless drifting this past week, despite my best intentions.) But what I don't need is any further excuse to punish myself for failing to complete a task. I do that enough just in my own head--I don't need an app telling me how many hit points each party member lost because of my failure. And I need to retain a sense of doing the thing for the sake of doing the thing, not for the sake of checking a box.

OK, but no, I'm not leaving 4thewords any time soon. For one thing, it's not nearly as useful a tool for punishing my failures. If I don't make my 444 words for the day, I have oh so many stempos stockpiled for repairing my streak. For another, it's fun. It's got great community and lots of new content regularly and actively maintained software and a culture of listening to and respecting each other and please don't disillusion me on this point I could not take it

Anyway, that's where things stand for now.

in which the author looks back on 2022 and realizes she was not entirely unpublished therein
Wed 2023-01-11 22:21:06 (single post)
  • 2,850 words (if poetry, lines) long
  • 14 words (if poetry, lines) long
  • 3,453 words (if poetry, lines) long

At least one post per week: Check. I have not been uniformly On The Ball since last post, but this much I can do.

This week's post will be my "what I had published last year" roundup. It will be fairly short, because 2022 was not a great year for writing new things or submitting regularly. But there were some things published:

New poetry: "On the Limitations of Photographic Evidence in Fairyland," Eternal Haunted Summer, Summer Solstice 2022 (theme: Other-Than-Human Realms).

In fairy folklore, there's a story that turns up now and again involving a human who gets invited into Fairyland to perform some necessary function, and has to have magic ointment applied to their eyes in order that they might see true while they're there. Much later, after their return home, a fairy looks them up in their day-to-day and asks them, "Which eye is it you see me out of?" Turns out they did an imperfect job of removing the magic ointment, which means they've got a loose end to tidy up. Can't be having random humans going around able to see fairies clearly! So the human answers, "The left eye," and the fairy says "Cool, thanks," and immediately puts out the human's left eye. As opposed to dunking them in a handy ditch to just, y'know, wash the ointment out. Because fairies are cruel and capricious and, above all, dramatic.

Anyway, I wanted to play with that trope, such that the "eye" that had to be put out was the photographer's camera (the photographer's services having been engaged for an important fairy wedding). The fairy would smash the camera, and maybe even blind the photographer (see above: cruel and capricious), but of course the photographer still has the negatives, which they would pass down to future generations along with the story of the photographer's adventures.

One day I will actually write that poem. Or story. It could be a story. In any case, it wasn't what I wrote in time for this submission deadline. I wrote this other thing instead.

Reprint poem: "Reasonable Accommodations," The Future Fire issue 2022.62

My poor little corporate weredeer first appeared in Departure Mirror Quarterly Issue 2 (Winter 2021). You can still download that issue, but you'll have to do it from the Internet Archive "Wayback Machine," because the publication sadly had to close its doors before Issue 4 came out. In which issue, incidentally, another poem of mine they'd solicited had been set to appear. Alas. That poem remains unpublished, and not for want of my sending it out. Maybe 2023 will be its year.

Reprint story: "Survival, After," Apex Magazine 2021 (or via Weightless Books)

Originally published and podcast by Apex Magazine in August 2021, this story was included, along with every other story they published in 2021, in the magazine's yearly anthology. I understand it's their biggest table of contents yet! There's lots of amazing stuff in there that quite frankly blows my little tale out of the water, so it's well worth the price. Yes, you could just go read all the stories for free on the website, but the print anthology, in addition to being extremely convenient in providing all the content in one handy codex (no need to click all over the place! Just turn the pages!), is a truly gorgeous artifact. It would look beautiful on your bookshelf or your coffee table.

Reprint story: "First Breath," penumbric speculative fiction mag vol vi issue 4 (December 2k22)

Originally published in Ellen Datlow's vampirism anthology Blood and Other Cravings (Tor Books, September 2011), this is my most reprinted work--less because of its classic staying power, I think, and more because it's the story I keep sending out in hopes of getting it reprinted. But this is its third outing (not counting its debut) so I guess editors like it. (Previous reprintings: Denver Horror Collective and the Tales to Terrify podcast.)

I'm saddened to discover the purchase pages for the original anthology are gone. But I suppose every anthology must go out of print sometime. You can still find copies via that online retailer named for a river in South America, because of course you can, but it's no longer available via Macmillan Publishing or Barnes & Noble that I can see. So instead I've linked the Publisher's Weekly write-up, which actually name-checks me (I was a "newcomer"! I arguably still am) so that's kinda cool.

I suppose that will be one of my 2023 goals: Get "First Breath" reprinted again.

Anyway, that's the 2022 Publications Roundup. As you run off to click the links and check them out, do check out the rest of the relevant issues (or the relevant year, in the case of Apex). There's some great stuff in those tables of contents, written by some enormously skilled wordsmiths, and you need to get your eyeballs on 'em STAT.

Until next week!

in which the author plots and schemes with good intent and high ambition
Tue 2023-01-03 22:52:55 (single post)

So, happy new year! I have res... um, goals. Goals and intentions. One of them is to blog here more regularly, which probably means shorter posts, each with only just one subject. It's the very long, complicated posts that make this daunting and also inappropriate for the brief couple hours between roller derby and bed. (Speaking of which: I am tired.) So let's make this a short post.

Like I said: Goals. Writing goals, mainly. They are as follows:

Make progress toward getting the Friday Fictionettes Project back on schedule, via a sustainable schedule. One that doesn't involve trying to do everything in one day, or even in one week. Recognize that I am a certain amount behind schedule, and that, just as I didn't get there all at once, I won't dig my way out of it overnight either. The plan is... well, I'm not going to describe my plan here, because that is how I jinx myself. But trust me. I've got a plan.

Receive 100 rejections in 2023. Which means submit my fiction and poetry at least 100 times. (Optimistically, not all of those will be rejections. The first year I attempted this goal was my most published year ever. Which, arguably, is the whole point of the exercise.) Not a new goal, not for me or anyone else, but one I've had for myself for several years running and which I failed spectacularly at last year. And not just because I didn't submit regularly, but also because I didn't...

Finish more stories and poems so that they can be submitted. One thing that really dampened my submission game was running out of pro-paying or near-pro-paying markets appropriate for the pieces I had to submit. Which can happen if one isn't constantly writing new things. So that's what I want to do: write new things, new things besides the Friday Fictionettes. Not that Friday Fictionettes can't become new things for commercial submission, mind you. It's happened before.

Post to this blog at least once a week. I mean, ideally three times a week, but one has to walk before one can run, and in this regard, metaphorically, I haven't even been upright. To expand that metaphor, one blog post per week seems like a reasonable equivalent to, say, getting out of bed and moving around the house a little, maybe cooking myself a simple but nutritious meal?

And, in service to all of those goals: Stick to a sustainable and productive daily schedule. I've developed one over the past few years, accruing a piece here, discarding a strategy there, until I'm pretty confident that I know what works for me, as long as I do it and don't lead myself off course by 1. screwing up my sleep schedule, or 2. getting lost in video games and social media. I have some real foibles in that area, such that Catherynne M. Valente's recent post about being a writer with ADHD resonated frighteningly. I am not diagnosed with ADHD, and I certainly don't feel qualified to diagnose myself, but wow a lot of failure states that writers with ADHD talk about sound familiar. The bit about, whatever I do first is the thing I'm going to do all day? And the other thing, the one about limited decision making capability, such that if it all gets used up early, there's none of it left for writing? Which is a problem, because writing is nothing but one decision after another? Yeah. Extremely familiar.

The coping strategies I hear about also sound familiar. Have I told you about all the lists? Everything is a list item. With a little box next to it for me to check it off when it's done, so that I can get a little wind back from the sheer delight of accomplishing a thing. Everything is in lists or else nothing gets done. Nothing but social media and video games. Because the lists focus my mind and make the things I have to do concrete. Without focus, without solidity, I'm just floating from distraction to distraction, and it's bad.

So I'm working on it. I have my schedule. I have my lists. I just have to stick to them, and everything will be fine. EVERYTHING WILL BE FINE.

Did I say "a short blog post"? Well, it's a single-subject blog post, anyway. A single subject broken into a whole bunch of parts about which I had a lot to say.

Welcome back to the Actually Writing Blog, everybody!

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