11/8/06: Bleah

[davidlevine]

Word count: 2122 | Since last entry: 774

The day job's been really intense so far this week. I haven't been to the gym but once in the last week. And, ever since Halloween, traffic has been absolutely abysmal. I've been spending as much as three hours a day driving to and from work. This is getting really tiresome. Can I retire yet?

Also, my novel was rejected by Ace. "I'm sorry to say it's not the kind of science fiction we're doing well with right now." Oh well, at least it was quick, and as rejections go it's very straightforward and professional -- nothing to make me question the book's quality, it was just the wrong novel for this market at this time. We have several good candidates for the next place to submit it; I'll be talking with my agent soon.

But the news on the political front has been refreshing, of course. We spent Election Eve at a Capitol Steps concert, with friends. Interesting that the audience refused to applaud even for a comedian pretending to be Bush. It was great to laugh about politics for a change, and even nicer to read the results after the show. I find I'm even more pleased about seeing the back of Santorum than Rumsfeld.

It's been very hard to make time for writing lately, with all the political news to keep track of, and I've fallen 600 words behind my target for the month so far. I hope to be able to catch up tomorrow. I also hope to write out an outline (one one- or two-sentence bullet point per chapter) when I get a chance; I have a general sense of the book's structure but it feels weird to be writing without a concrete plan.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Hang in there, David. It WILL get better! Talk to me at Orycon.

I'm cranking out the NaNoWriMo stuff. Doesn't mean it's any good, of course, but I suspect that all the years of going to grad school/writing IEPs/learning how to teach and case manage/dealing with high school kid has penned up a massive amount of I Want To Write Creatively But I Have NO TIME!!!!!! writerly frustration which is only now getting set loose. This is the first time I've written anything this large without a concrete plan--my current plan is very roughly in my head, and everything else that comes wandering along is just more of "hey! things are mellowing out! throw them back into the stew of trouble!" It's been interesting. I also can't believe the volume I'm writing for the time I'm spending. Which probably means it's junk. Who knows? I'm into Killing My Internal Editor at the moment.

I think my characters are starting to hate me and are looking for ways to distract me so they can catch a little down time . Lord knows, I'm sure torturing them. They like it when I spend time torturing the horse instead.

I feel your pain about the commute. That's one reason I'm teaching on the Mountain rather than in Beaverton-Hillsboro--any more, when someone comments that it's a really long ways up to Welches, I just point out it'd be longer if I were driving to Hillsboro (and a lot of special ed teaching jobs are over there...). That said, I have parents who commute from Welches to Hillsboro. At least my commute is a reliable, if long, commute with little variation (unless there's snow or ice, but ODOT is aggressive about treating 26 from Sandy on up).

And the political news is wonderful. Realizing that now I have an in-house designated driver, I shook the son out of his evening rut and we went to the Benson Hotel to hear Kulongoski's victory speech. Cool. Very, very cool. I realized that it was the first political victory party I'd ever been to. Sweet!

My journalism kids are pushing me to write. I have a good group this year, and a bunch of 'em are getting trained by a parent volunteer in the elementary for me for when they hit middle school. I read science fiction to my classroom kids, and while some of the girls go ick, the boys are really getting into it. It's dawned on some of them that I write, and they're asking to have me read some of my writing to them (these are very low level reading kids, too!). Hey, it's an audience.

Joyce