“Realer” vs. Real Life

Real life is nuts, is screwy, and I just don’t feel like writing about it now. Except to sigh.

But I did get some editing done, and finally, a story I started in 1999 is ready to go out the door. The title is “Realer,” and it’s a far different story than it was when it started out–but better, at once more brutally real and more hopeful. I think, anyway.

That’s one more story to put into my send-pile, I guess. Since it’s appropriate for all ages, I think I’ll be saving it till I hear back about “Vortex, Inverse” which is currently somewhere at Asimov’s.

I’m also about halfway through “Solvjaynghi’s Christmas Wish” but I am trying to rework it hard, and just don’t have the mental space or energy. And it’s not like it could see print until Christmas 2009, at this point, so I’m in no rush to get it done.

The rest of this long weekend (for it is the Chuseok holiday) will be taken up by me trying to distill a talk out of a fairly long and convoluted paper, and looking at textbook editing. (Why editors think I would want to spend my whole Chuseok holiday working is beyond me. I almost wish we were going away for the holiday, so I could point out that, uh, their timing stinks.) But anyway, I’ll do at least some of the work, I suppose.

As for my creative writing, when I do get back to it, I’ll be diving back onto a short story I’m writing with my friend and classmate from Clarion West, Tristan. But that’s at least a week or two away, so thank heaven he’s a busy and patient man. When that’s done, maybe I’ll come up with an ending for “Ten Spikes and a Hammer” or “The Story of Baejjangi and Gaemi,” or perhaps I’ll shove all that aside for now and just get back to work on A Killing in Burma. I guess it depends how I feel. I’m focused on revisions at the moment because I’m too worn out and distracted for anything else.

5 thoughts on ““Realer” vs. Real Life

  1. Nah, I have some editing to do, and the editors sent it on Friday with, “Please give it back at the end of the holiday.” Because I don’t need a holiday, right? Well, I might get some done today, but I’m not going to knock myself out, as I figure it’s an unreasonable request.

  2. The editors are doing it because *they* want to go on a holiday.
    Boss sending work to be done “by tomorrow” or “by Monday” is a typical Korean maneuver. They want it to be convenient *for them* because they are the bosses. They send assignments before they take off from work, and expect it to be done as soon as they come in so they can check on it.
    It’s also one of the reasons why many Korean employees don’t work all that much during working hours, and have to do so much overtime. Most Korean employees do not have the luxury of saying “screw it” like freelancers. :)
    It happened almost every other day in my unit when I was in the Army.

  3. Junsok,

    Ah, yes, that’s familiar to me, and I’ve experienced it before.

    I hadn’t thought to connect that dynamic to the massive overtime here. Makes me glad to be a freelancer… a friend was trying to convince me office work would be better than teaching but it sounded unlikely to me!

    As for in the army… brr.

    To be fair, these editors have been through much worse themselves, as you point out. I won’t get into details here except that, um, I didn’t think it was physically possible for women late in their third trimester of pregnancy to put in the kind of hours I heard about.

  4. Wait, wait, that hint of sympathy I dropped into my last comment? I take it back, after having received something this evening that MUST be edited for noon tomorrow, which is full of has more than its fair share of garbled content, which was written by people who simply shouldn’t have been tasked with writing said content. (And whose work makes me wonder about how they go about teaching these “important” grammar points!)

    Nested inefficiencies have something to do with it too, at least in the organization I’m talking about. (I’ve seen the same in Canadian businesses too, but not to this degree. Not in a company that stayed afloat for very long, anyway!)

    But unlike the army, I actually signed up for this willingly. Silly me! I should have been writing my novel! :/

    After this conference thing I have, we should try figure out a time to get together for that chat!

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