The State of the Writer Address

I’ve spent most of this month working on literary magazines; Mirror Dance, for which I’ve read, edited, formatted, accepted, rejected, solicited, and “illustrated” a decent number of quality stories, and my most recent brainchild, a historical fiction e-zine that I hope to begin taking submissions for in June. I’m making an effort to keep my resolution about shortening Mirror Dance’s response time, but there’s been an unusual influx of 7,000+ word submissions, which take a little longer to read and work through rewrites for than the 3,000 word variety. Not that I’m complaining; they all have much to recommend them, and I’m honored to be able to consider them for Mirror Dance.

I’ve taken a small break this week from formatting and art searching (though not, of course, from reading and editing) and worked on revising several tanka from my old notebook. I dislike revising fiction and narrative poetry, but I find it an enlightening and deeply relaxing process with tanka. Since nearly all of my tanka are written from life, I often need the revision time to flesh out the ideas that came spur-of-the-moment and half-formed during the original writing.

I’ve also taken a break from the swarm of meticulously planned-out short stories awaiting nascence on my word processer and begun writing a short novella by hand. It’s coming out with surprising coherence for not having an outline, and there’s something about hand-writing a story that makes the voice feel more organic. Which is a good thing, honest, even if it means I’m falling occasionally into the tone of a turn-of-the-century-esque city boss.

On Wednesday I finished reading Tanith Lee’s indescribably magnificent The Gods are Thirsty. I cannot recommend this book highly enough, particularly to my fellow French Revolution fanatics. I’m just surprised that I didn’t discover it sooner!

And finally, for those same fellow French Revolutionary fanatics, yesterday was the first day of Ventôse CCXVII in the French Republican Calendar. Vive la Révolution!

Friday, February 20, 2009

editing, fiction, French Revolution, Mirror Dance, New Year's Resolutions, recomendations, tanka, voice, writing