author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

I am, in fact, still in both laptop and deadline crisis mode. However, laptop crisis is bandaged by the availability of my husband's old Compaq Presario, and deadline crisis is mitigated by setting myself a daily word-count quota and actually meeting it.

Thus I was able, this evening, finally, to make time to read the critiques that came in from the Critters crew.

My novel is no longer a virgin. It has for the first time been seen by eyes that do not belong to me. And it has deep and abiding flaws that were not visible to my eyes, because my eyes were my eyes and they sat inside a head that was my head. You know how it goes: I knew too well what I meant to see what I had in fact said.

Now, I have Doubts.

I am aware that Doubts are a natural side-effect, sometimes, especially when most of the comments are pointing out flaws rather than sparklies, but it is fruitless to speak logic to a writer who is in the middle of Doubting.

Just, y'know, give me a day or so. I'll get over it. Doubts do give way to Decisions and Plans, but it takes a bit.

(Meanwhile: if you critted chapters 1 and 2 this past week and have not yet received the fulsome thanks I owe you, it is because your email bounced. Now to hunt you down in the newsgroup. Mwahahahahaaa.)

I'm sorry, I have nothing new for you here. I am currently in the middle of another laptop crisis simultaneous with a deadline crisis. But you should visit Miss Snark, just in case you, as a genre writer, ever again get asked, "When are you going to right a real book?"

ps. critiques are trickling in. joy! thank-yous will be forthcoming.

It's probably getting boring to hear it, but I've sent "Turbulence" and "Heroes" back out again into the slush. Hurrah! I am being a Writer, yes I am.

Although I don't usually like to say which markets I'm trying until I get an answer back, yea or nay, I will mention that my first choice for "Turbulence" turned out to be a non-starter. DNA Publications's Fantastic Stories of the Imagination has apparently not been heard from in some time. Andrew Burt's The Black Hole has no data on them later than 2004. (Absolute Magnitude, on the other hand, has quite a rew recent rejections logged, but I suspect that market likes its science fiction somewhat "harder" than this story delivers. So I have sent it elsewhere.)

So there that is. In other me-write-fiction news, tomorrow is the beginning of a couple of critique periods for me. I've got the first two chapters of The Golden Bridle to be released to Critters.org, and the short story "The Impact of Snowflakes" entering the Newbie Queue at Critique Circle. If you're a member of either, I sure wouldn't mind the feedback. If you're not, but you want to read and comment on these pieces, it takes no time at all to sign up at these sites and dive into the queues.

And then on the work-for-hire side of my life, I have a June 19 deadline, so if I seem to get a little freaky between now and then, don't worry, that's just my standard operating procedure.

And for those who haven't noticed, the AbsoluteWrite.com Water Cooler (i.e. big huge honkin' 7000+ member forum) is up and functional again without a jot of lost data. All hard feelings against those involved in its time down should be sublimated into posting the 20 Worst Agents list far and wide, with the proper preamble attached and donating generously to AbsoluteWrite.com to help pay its bills and fund the legal proceedings. (The post at Jenna's blog is dated, but the PayPal button still works.) No mention of the persons involved in the ISP Which Cannot Be Named, we are told, will be tolerated at the Cooler. It's called "taking the high road," and it grates harshly upon still stinging nerves, and it's the best thing to do. So do.

Yo. OK, so, the story is now down to with 50 words of 5000 words. Which means I'm allowed to say "about 5000 words" and send it in. Which I did Thursday evening. Ms. Last minute, that's me. The first 1200 words were really easy to cut, what with pointless mental meanderings and obnoxious repetitions and the plot holes that were more verbose than the sealant used to plug them. The last 300, now, those were damn hard.

Last weekend was pretty action-packed, between movies and concerts and 10K races. OK, well, one of each. But still. One of each is plenty. Saw X-Men 3 and the Cars/Blondie Road Rage tour, my opinions of both of which you can read over at my latest blogging gig. Did my fourth Bolder BOULDER in 1:30:30, my best time yet by about 4 minutes (yes, I suck), and my bodily reaction is somewhere between "ankles and knees no longer sore" and "toenails not quite fallen off yet."

On for this weekend: Pretty much everything I've been yammering on about for the last few weeks. Working my way through The Golden Bridle and maybe getting "Snowflakes" closer to ready to submit somewhere. Kicking finished stories off the couch and back out into the world. Logging some five thousand words or so on the current work-for-hire assignment. Y'know. Writing and stuff.

In other news, I hear the AbsoluteWrite forums are this close to resurrected. (This link goes, not to AW itself, but to a post at the temporary forums telling us to please not try to visit AW because all the server's resources are needed just to install and heal up the database that the greatly dishonorable web-host-of-a-million-contradicting-stories, JC Hosting, gave the gang a 24-hour window* of access to (after sitting on it without sufficient explanation for nine freakin' days). Rejoice and hold your breath.

*24 hours was what the gang were told yesterday in the wee hours of the morning; today the story has already changed to say that the May 22 shut-down was an automatic bandwidth overage suspension, which counter is reset automatically on June 1, so that there is no shutter on their access window. Like I said, a million contradictory stories. It's like these people have never heard of screen capture.

OK. Everyone who knows my husband needs to give him a hug for me. Like, right now. Because if it wasn't for him and his generosity in emailing me the latest copy of "The Right Door, The Right Time" (title now condensed to the latter phrase) on absolute short notice and in spite, it must be admitted, of my sickness-shortened temper, I wouldn't have been able to enter that story in last night's Flash Fiction contest.

In which I placed third! Squeeeee! Happy dance!

And among the illustrious personages upon the judges panel was WHC 2006 Toastmaster and, of course, celebrated horror writer Peter Straub! Squeeeeeeee!

There were pictures taken of everyone involved, which Tina Jens of Twilight Tales will be emailing to me, so, pictures as soon as I've got 'em. Tina also invited all the winners to send her their stories so they could be published on the Twilight Tales website, so, links when I've got 'em too.

(Interesting. I hadn't been aware, until going to their website, that Twilight Tales was connected to Tim Broderick's Odd Jobs series. It's obviously been awhile since I've checked in--maybe it's not called that anymore--but they seem to have the whole Lost Child storyline hosted there, and they sell a hard copy graphic novel edition of Something To Build Upon.)

I won a great Twilight Tales T-shirt and copy of one of their anthologies, Blood and Donuts. But I am in much covetous admiration of the first place prize--which was well earned by that winner, whose story was amazing and funny and totally effed up. That was a plain white shirt with black sleeves which sad, simply, in red serif print, "I Read Like A Motherfucker"--in homage to that immortal countdown which starts the five minutes ticking for each competitor. ("Three... Two... Rrrrread like a motherfucker!")

I'm writing this while sitting in on the traditional Gross-Out Contest, which I am emphatically not going to participate in. I could absolutely not compete with champions in this tournament. There's a lot of potty humor involved. In great detail. And with much hilarity. After a few minutes, the MC takes away the microphone and asks the audience to show by their thumbs--up or down--whether the contestant should be allowed to continue. I'm almost ready to leave, not because I'm too grossed out or anything--I've no problem hearing descriptions of things as long as I don't have to watch them acted out on TV--but because some of the more enthusiastic contestants get a little close to the mike and sting my ears.

As for the second session of the Editing Workshop, that went well. We only went over out 3-hour time window by about 15 minutes, which was pretty impressive, and the critiques were more in-depth than I would have expected from a read-aloud format. Stephen Jones did indeed join us, but not for the reading and critiquing; instead he gave us a great talk and Q&A on the business of anthology publication. He also gave us his atcual web address, which found myself strangely unable to Google up yesterday. My story went over well, with much love for the POV character and the diary format, and the main thing everyone pointed out that needed improvement was the ending. No surprise; I still haven't figured that on out myself. I got some good suggestions as to how I might resolve that. The title needs changing, too; I need to think about that.

Next, I hope to get a new draft done in time to submit it to Borderlands Press's "Writer's Boot Camp" (deadline May 15, no application fee, workshop takes place August 4-6).

And I'm feeling much better today, thanks!

Uh-oh. Gotta go. They're about to start throwing chickens at the contestants.

Just got the email back yesterday afternoon from Fictitious Force. They will not be publishing "Turbulence" after all. Deep *sigh*. The email said something that made me smile, though: "Your story made our second round, but we ultimately decided not to publish it." Oooh! My story was not an immediate "we don't think so"! That's kinda cool.

Meanwhile, I just got done attending the first session of Nancy Kilpatrick's Editing Workshop at the World Horror Convention. I passed out copies of "Still Life In June", which I brought up to something like presentable over the last couple days. Tomorrow we're all going to read our stories aloud, as we have a three hour session and Nancy has figured that all the reading will take 67 minutes total. (One minute per page.) A really exciting thing, besides the excitement of having my work put in front of Nancy herself, is that Stephen Jones will be sitting in on tomorrow's session too. That's just too cool.

A lot of things are cool today.

Now I'm going to take a nap, because one of the things that is uncool is my raging sore throat. I'm hoping to feel well enough to enter the Twilight Tales Flash Fiction Contest tonight... which involves reading aloud. Quickly. Yeesh.

...of allowing someone else to read my novel in progress.

No, no, the submission of the first three chapters of The Drowning Boy doesn't count. The first time, it was a submission to a Faceless Editorial Entity that would decide Yea or Nay without much feedback. The second time, it was a submission as application to a workshop; until and unless those folks say Yea, I won't have to worry about other people reading my novel. If they say Nay, once again the Nay will probably come back without feedback.

No, that didn't count. It's not anything at all like submitting the first two chapters of The Golden Bridle to the Critters.org queue.

If you who happen to be reading this happen to be someone whose story I once happened to critique, and who happened to have said to me, "Thanks, and let me know when you've got something in the queue so I can return the favor," then the week you're looking for, provided I can keep my crit ratio up, is June 7. No pressure; I'm just passing along the info. Do or do not. There is no guilt.

Oh. My. Gods. People are actually going to read it and tell me what they thought. Nervous!

Time to go work on something else just to get my mind off it!

Yes, I already quoted this on Metroblogging Denver. Yes, I do tend to go on and on about things that are funny. Yes, this is another example of me reading other people's flamewars for kicks and grins. But OMG this is good.

So we have a follow-up to Miss Snark's "When To Quit" post. It's an example of the sort of doomsayer I've been railing about here. Only this guy's line is, apparently, that anyone who writes but isn't seeking publication really ought to just stop wasting their energy on such a pointless endeavor. Her Snarkiness, of course, trods him firmly beneath her famed stiletto heels.

Oh, but that wasn't enough. Intrepid Snarklings had to go read this bozo's blog. Mr. "If it Ain't Gonna Be Published Why Bother" has a self-published book of his very own, and a blog subtitled "a novel in progress." That blog, apparently, gives one little doubt as to his book's commercial viability, or, more to the point, lack thereof. Each entry consists of one sentence, perhaps two, each of which earnestly vying for the title of Longest Sentence In The World. A reader might be prompted to reflect on the other meaning of "sentence," and how appropriate it is that both meanings fall under the same word, for reading the run-ons to be found at the bozo's blog is certainly a punitive procedure.

Or, as these comments demonstrate, one might be prompted to think other things:

I'll say he's talented! In scrolling through his blog, I think I saw two periods. Those are some of the longest ass sentences I've seen since me Joyce and Faulkner readin' days. Yikes!

I read some of his stuff.

Congrats, Mark!! To judge by the singular lack of periods in your narrative you're PREGNANT!

This has absolutely nothing to do with my writing beyond the fact that in reading blog archives I was rewarding myself for a successful hour on the novel while simultaneously procrastinating the next round of attack upon the current work-for-hire project. Which goes swimmingly, by the way. I am still on the aforementioned sanity-saving schedule, and should be able to go to the goth club with everyone Sunday night guilt-free.

It probably says something unflattering about me that one of my passtimes is reading ancient USENET flame wars. I can say that thus far I have not actually given in to temptation and posted responses to five-year-old posts. But it's been a near thing.

[Begin anecdote] ##Trust me, this is going somewhere.

There was this post at the AbsoluteWrite.com forums which I can't seem to find anymore, sorry, but it linked to this thread here. (Don't click the link! It will eat your soul!) The "discussion" has an all star cast and one very clueless, rude would-be author suffering from Golden Word syndrome. (Don't be tempted!) It probably wouldn't have been nearly as long a thread as it became were it not for a spectacularly stunning exchange between the would-be author and one of the shining stars in that all-star cast. She gave his awful novel excerpt a detailed critique, lovely in its thoroughness and more generous than he deserved. He dismissed it as petty. She said she was therefore puzzled as to what he expected in a critique. His response? "If you've ever written a real book... you'd know. :)"

(Yes, that was a smiley on the end there. As in, "I've just been breathtakingly rude but don't take offense because I tacked a smiley onto the end of it!")

They say that on the Internet no one can hear you scream, but even over that distance of five years I could hear the distinct sound of a convention full of authors' and editors' jaws dropping.

(But really, don't read it! There but for your forebearance will go weeks of your productive life!)

So shortly after that happened, another star in that cast picked up the gauntlet and began a new thread in which he gave this would-be author's excerpt an even more detailed page-by-page critique. For which everyone else in the thread was grateful, except of course for the one person who had been specifically asked to killfile it. He didn't, so there was more juicy flamage, With The Result That...

[End anecdote]

[Do getToThePoint]

##Told you this was going somewhere!

...he found himself used as the example in a fascinating discussion about the banality of evil.

While reading Gene's latest excesses, with increasing horror, I also noted quietly that this is an interesting way to introduce a villain into a trusting community. The back of my head considered that, as there aren't many vicious pathological liars around in most people's lives, thanks be, I may be reading other people's versions of Gene Steinberg as Dark Lord for years to come.

The discussion that followed held examples of real live evil, which is rarely as flashy as Darth Vador or flamboyant as The Joker. Real pathological evil is hard to recognize, because most of us tell ourselves it doesn't exist, certainly not in our circle of friends. Pathologically evil people take advantage of our tendency to assume motives of goodwill in all. How many times have I myself quoted the Author's Creed For Creating Three-Dimensional Antagonists: "No one is the villain in their autobiography"?

It's true. I cling to my faith that the Creed is true. However, do not underestimate an antagonist's ability to reframe their villainy in their internal narrative. In real life, it isn't always helpful to tell yourself that they just want the best for everyone and are misguided as to what the best is. They may actually want the worst for you--but are convinced that desiring the worst for you is reasonable.

Not going to go into details about it, not going to name names, but... my husband and I are recently on the rebound from someone who fits the description. And the sad thing is, that someone probably has legitimate historical reasons for being broken in her particular ways. But she absolutely did not want the best for anyone; she merely was convinced that some of us were evil and out to get her and needed to be destroyed. Once you finally realize--and it can take a long time to realize--that this person expects her friends to make her the center of their lives, prioritized higher than preexisting friendships, than family, than marriage; and that her more obnoxious behavior, far from being unconscious, comprises active attempts to break up those preexisting relationships by which she feels threatened; that wrecks every pattern you have for interaction. You can no longer assume goodwill as a motive. You can no longer take for granted a beneficient common ground.

The point here is not "poor pitiful me, I have seen Evil." The point here is, realistic evil--or a damn good facsimile thereof--comes in all different flavors. A villain needn't be a misguided philanthropist or a self-described benevolent dictator to be three-dimensional. Sometimes the villain has an unjustified persecution complex, or an overdeveloped sense of vigilante-ism. And whatever the flavor, it's valuable to recognize a villain when it shows up in your life. Not just because you're better off wasting less time and energy on people like that (really; the self-defense mechanisms by which we manage them in our lives can be actively bad for the soul), but also because once you recognize it, you, for certain writerly values of the word "you," can use it.

'Cause when you're a writer, and you find yourself losing at the games of life, that's your consolation prize.

So I've got bad guys in The Golden Bridle. I've got a high school clique leader who's downright nasty. I've got the protagonist's boyfriend who uses the protagonist in all the worst ways. I've even got the protagonist herself, who starts off the novel in her guise as Bad-Ass Cool Chick, a guise she's build out of self-defense over the years. None of these people are motivated by wanting the best for everyone. They want the best for themselves, and they treat others poorly, and they rationalize their poor treatment of others as being the only way to give themselves the best, which of course they're convinced they deserve.

And when I stopped to think about it, I realize that many of the examples raised in the USENET thread I'm linking you to here, as well as the example I mention from my own life, they've got threads of behavior and rationalization that make sense in the context of my bad guys. And I thought, damn. These people are so right.

So I'm passing on the link as a public service to writers everywhere. Enjoy.

But don't, for the love of the Gods, read that first thread. Or, if you do, limit yourself to the "Cooking for Writers Who Forget To Eat" subthread. Recipes are very cool. And the posts where people invent whole fictional accountings for the rude would-be writer's mental state, that's kind of interesting and heart-warming. And--

[do slapSelfSilly]

Look, it's not worth it!

Woke up quite late today, toddled down to the mailbox, and found my official form rejection letter from Wizards Of The Coast regarding The Drowning Boy. Reactions?

1. Darn! I could have sworn my three-chapter excerpt was irresistable!
2. Figures. My synopsis and chapter outline were teh suxx0r.
3. Whew! Now I don't have to worry about racing the phone call with my rewrite!
4. Whoo-hoo! Another number located! Mine is 166! ...I have no idea what that means.

Like I said in the AW thread, I'm going to keep working on this one through December, hoping to have the rewrite close to finished. Then in January I'm going to primarily do whatever the NaNoPubYe Plan says to do with The Golden Bridle, making sure to schedule time for other projects as well. Like short stories. And work-for-hire projects. Etc.

So. Time to hit chapter 13. More later tonight. Probably.