“I'm all in favor of keeping dangerous weapons out of the hands of fools. Let's start with typewriters.”
Frank Lloyd Wright

author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

actually writing blog

Humpty Dumpty silohuette photo by ME! which is why it`s maybe hard to tell that`s what it is
Cover art incorporates and modifies “Lamia” (1905) by John William Waterhouse
someone who isn't me reads a friday fictionette and you can listen
Thu 2018-04-19 23:39:03 (single post)
  • 982 words (if poetry, lines) long
  • 739 words (if poetry, lines) long

It has happened at last! Y'all remember I said that a revised version of "What Dreams May Hatch," the Friday Fictionette for September 26, 2014, would be featured on the Toasted Cake podcast sometime in April 2018? WELL, GUESS WHAT. It's April 2018, and the blessed thing went live Monday.

Here it is.

Someone who isn't me is reading it! That's kinda cool. And of course Tina Connelly is one of the best someones I could ask to read it. You should all follow Toasted Cake and listen to her read flash fiction every week, because she is a joy to listen to and she picks great stuff to read.

I should probably also mention that last week's Friday Fictionette, which went out on Saturday again, was "My Best Friend's Girlfriend" (public teaser excerpt, ebook and audiobook for Patrons). It was not inspired by the Cars song by that name, but rather by The Church's "Reptile." That plus the cover art is kinda sorta a spoiler. Sorry? Anyway, I think this is the first time I've written a story in the form of a letter to a relationships advice columnist. That's kinda cool.

Let's see. How's Camp NaNoWriMo going? Not so great over here. I've had to resign myself to the impossibility of reaching my goal. My goal was 40 hours of short story production, revision and submission by the end of April. Alas, there will be no last-minute panicked scramble to catch up. It is no longer feasible at this point. But that's actually kind of OK. While I still thought I could make it, it was actually harder to get anything done, because I was all like, "I have to do two and a half hours or there's no hope! But I don't have time or energy to do two and a half hours today! So I fail. Why bother?" Letting go of the 40-hour goal has made it easier to do a few minutes here and a half hour there and still feel it's worth while. Instead of a daily failure to hit my daily two hours (the original weekday goal), it's a daily success at spending any time on the short stories at all. Because, in all honesty, most days I don't manage even a little. This April may fall short of the original goal, but it's still been a huge improvement.

I mean, look! I already revised and submitted a thing! It came home two days later with a rejection letter, but that's OK! I can send it somewhere else! Somewhere else that welcomes Patreon reprints, anyway. (I know just the place.)

So now to spend a few minutes--just a few!--on the next thing I'm revising. It's post-derby, I'm tired, it's almost midnight, I want to sleep--but I can open the darn thing up and, oh, stare at it for a few minutes. Think about the changes I want to make to its ending. Jot down some notes about that. Then maybe even unravel a little of it in my dreams tonight.

(It would be nice to dream about the stories I'm working on. Mostly these days I have weirdly roller derby themed anxiety dreams. Those are typically not fun.)

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