Journal

Sunday, October 29, 2000

Hey, this was a pretty productive weekend! I think maybe this journal is helping raise my productivity -- it's motivating to be able to come here and brag. ;-)

Since we last spoke, I:

• Sent "Corporate Anthropology" off to get critted from the RMCrit online critique group. This is the closest thing I have to an honest-to-goodness straightforwardly-narrated tale of adventure in a mildly plausible, speculative-fiction future -- the only thing I have that John W.Campbell might have even looked at (though he would presumably have grunted disapprovingly at the protagonist's wishy-washy indecisveness -- cf. GVG's editorial this month). Most of my stuff is much more Joseph Campbell than John W. The first batch of people who read "Corporate Anthropology" found it confusing. Most of them weren't serious spec fic fans, though, so I'm interested to see whether the RMCrit folk have a clearer take on what about it is confusing. 
• Finished my latest scene for Crimp, the horror novel. Short, but creepy. Dang, I never knew I was this twisted until my friend Ramin (aka David Ackert) made me write horror with him....
• I figured out why Amra's life is in danger. Amra, in case you've forgotten, is the symbiote in the aliens-with-no-humans story. The idea that her life was in danger popped out on the page when I was trying to write something else altogether. When stuff like that happens, I don't like to argue -- I figure my subconscious knows what it's doing. But I couldn't write any further because I didn't know what the hell was going on. Today I figured it out -- it took me so long because it's such a Harlequin romance answer. So now I appear to be writing an aliens-with-no-humans bodice-ripper. Hey, don't ask me, I'm just along for the ride.
• I started another story. In my last journal entry, I claimed that "I'm really not at all interested in doing medieval-Western-Europe-with-magic," i.e., the traditional High Fantasy setting. Of course, perverse creature that I am, as soon as I wrote that I started wondering -- is that true? Am I really not interested in that? What would make it interesting? And so, while trying to avoid writing Crimp, I started another fairy tale, "The King Who Ran Away."

Also, I am now a Web Rat.