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.