I spent time today on two projects. One is a chapbook of poems written by my poetry course students. Some people haven’t mailed in their poems yet, but most have, and it’s now at almost 50 pages. I’m guessing 60-72 pages when it’s done. I’ll see what the costs are at the printshop, to get enough for three copies for each student, plus a few spares for me and for other profs in the department. (Plus mailing a few to friends.) Since I cannot do the layout for staple-bound texts, they’re going to have to be perfect-bound, and that costs …
Category: WRITING
Eight Days Done (Sort of)
Well, I got my rewrite of “Lester Young” finalized today, and sent off. I also finished my first (well, actually, second attempted) draft of my Sado Seja story, “Eight Days,” about the eight days Prince Sado spent dying in a rice chest, and how he ended up in one in the first place. Someone asked me whether it was SF, and I replied that it’s more of a dark fantasy/horror thing. Historical dark-fantasy/horror, set in a Korean palace. But definitely there’s magic: you got your reincarnation, a magic Taoist text, a bit of necromantic assassination (not in Sado’s life, in …
Bathed in the Light at the End of the Tunnel
The editing gig I’ve been working for a month or so is now, finally, thank the stars and the heavens, over. While I’m thankful for the filthy lucre, working on two textbook projects at the same time and mostly close to the deadline, during an already-busy semester, while keeping up my writing (somewhat, because I had deadlines of my own to keep), pushed me very close to my limits as a human being. Last week was relatively free, but the couple of weeks before, and the last few days, have been so crammed that I felt as if I were …
Great Progress
I’ve made great progress on a few things: Textbook editing is almost at an end! A few more hours of hell and it’s all over! Whew! “Lester Young…” is now essentially rewritten. I need a good hour to proofread it and then I can send it off! (I’m reworking it for a major magazine. More news when I have something final to announce.) A great deal of “Eight Days” fell into place in the last couple of days. Chunks of it just sort of bubbled up out of my subconscious, and insisted on being written. I also made a couple …
On Ze Plate
… ‘zere is too much! I’m a little behind on grading, but not as much as I thought I would be a week ago. I have an unknown amount of textbook-editing left to go, but at least three full books I’ll need to proofread (possibly more than once for one of them) in the next few weeks. The proofing/editing requests are in the standard Korean mode: last minute, high-volume, jaw-droppingly short deadlines. I am unlikely to meet any more of those shockingly unrealistic deadlines: I’ve decided my health is more important than someone else’s panic. Chest pains are not a …
Back to Life…
Up for air again. I haven’t posted much of substance lately, and I’m not (really) about to start now. The editing gig I took on has hit that chunk on the exponential curve of increasing involvement where time for sleep begins to erode, where I stop even the minimal amount of tidying I try to remember to do, where I stop cooking or eating properly. This is not nice territory, but the gig is almost done, and the worst of it, I hope, is past. More time for other things, then: too-long-deferred grading, working on drafts, edits, submissions, my column, …
Eight Days
The title of this post has nothing to do with how long I haven’t posted here — though it may well be 8 days — but with my newest story project. I’m finally writing a story about (edit: Crown) Prince Sado, aka Sado Saeja. He’s a particularly unusual case in the Joseon Dynasty, whose story is told in more (prosaic) detail here. As far as monarchs who lose their minds, he’s quite an odd (unusual) one. I haven’t managed to do much writing in the last couple of weeks — some last-minute-emergency-hurry editing has dropped into my lap, and I …
Achievements, Goals
Well, it’s goals and achievements time. For those who aren’t curious about this part of the writing process — where you look on your achievements and make new goals — feel free to skip this post and not look back.
Yay Interzone!
Yay to Interzone, for accepting my story “The Country of the Young” — a story I wrote for week 2 at Clarion West 2006. I couldn’t be happier, as I’ve been a fan of Interzone since I first got my hands on a copy, and the feedback included was very encouraging. Lime and I celebrated by sharing some North Korean liquor (bought near Sokcho, at the northernmost point in South Korea, and yes, it’s a kind of touristy gimmick, but yes, it’s real NORK booze, and it cost about 12,000 won, which is about $12). Only a little — the …
POV
One thing that fascinates me is how changing perspective changes a story completely. I was on the subway Friday night, to go meet Charles to go to a microbrew buffet in Kangnam — where a good time was had, by the way! — when I realized what I’d been doing wrong in “Dhuluma No More, My Brothers, and the Rains Will Come Again.” The original story (after the first revisions, following some very useful feedback from friends) was well-suited to being told in the 3rd person, limited omniscient point of view — from somewhere very close to the main character, …