The story I labeled “Consolamentum Version 2 (The Long Mix)” in my sidebar projects tracker is, in fact, quite different from the original. And it’s turning out, perhaps, to be a completely different story. The original was narrated by an eight-year-old kid, while this one is narrated from the POV of a teenager, probably in his junior year of high school. The other major difference is that, in the extended version, I’m writing something semi-autobiographical. Not wholly so — lots of bits and pieces are stolen from others’ lives, so much so that when I go back and smooth things …

Whew! I just finished redrafting another story, “Consolamentum.” It’s dark, dark, dark little 500-word piece, and I could certainly expand it somewhat if it doesn’t end up being sent to Postcards From Hell. It is very much another take on the same theme I am dealing with in my story that’s currently being called “Jinni the Quae”… about the weirdness of a kind of willful self-suppression of knowledge that is complicit with, and fomented by, institutionalized suppressions of knowledge: the kinds of forgetfulnesses that are normalized and cultivated in societies, and what happens when there’s a fundamental breakdown in those …

“The Egan Thief” was rejected, poor fella… I’ll give him a look and see if his face is clean and cute enough, and then send him out the door tomorrow, when I have more time. Off to a presentation on how to give good presentations.

I’m waiting a week or two before I start revisions on “Lester Young,” and in the meantime, I have a story idea — something very suited to Analog, in fact, or maybe Interzone since they have a submissions period starting soon — and the idea is a fusion of an old story idea I had, called “The Refugees,” and a totally different thing I was thinking about. I don’t want to talk too much about the story, so I’ll talk about the thing that got me thinking instead.

Whew. I’ve cut a little over 4,350 words from my Korean superheroes story. Since I started out with 20,500, that’s roughly 20% of the text cut.  And yes, the text is bleeding a little, even though I’ve sewn up the wounds carefully, meticulously. I wasn’t as merciless as some of my friends suggested. One friend suggested I should do the story in 10,000 words or less, but that would have been too drastic. I’m finding I tend to overwrite my supposedly final drafts of things by about 20%, so I’m happy I managed to cut that much from it without …

I’ve got about 20 pages left to re-edit on “Jjangguk” (out of approximately 90) and so far, I’m not quite halfway towards my goal of cutting it to 15000 words. It’s hovering at just about 18000 words, from a previous total of 20,500 words. However, I think I’m getting it about as tight as it’s going to be, so I think I’m soon going to have to simply concede to the fact this story wants to be this long, and send it out to find its way through the world. I’m at the climactic part where a bunch of heroes …

… to go. I’ve gotten through almost 14,500 words of revision on Jjangguk, which is encouraging, since it’s only a 20,500 word story as it is. Of course, I still have an overall goal of getting it down to 15,000. This means reconciling myself to cutting things that I absolutely love. Mind you, a very well-regarded Canadian writer, Guy Vanderhaeghe, once said to us in class, “Whatever you are most proud of in your story? Cut it. Anything you love and think is great… cut it.” That’s not always the best thing to do, but it’s true that often, the …

The writing tracker in the sidebar might suggest a sudden surge in productivity today, but in fact, that’s partly illusory. Part of the illusion is that I’m tracking “revised” words, now, which means any text that doesn’t need to be rewritten gets included. Still, I’m approximately a third of the way through my revision of “Jjangguk and the Madman of Pyongyang,” and and my pace is holding. I should note exactly what this means. I am about 35% of the way through the first complete revision of draft number 7 of the story. This doesn’t mean I’ve drafted it seven …

I just sent out a few submissions, which means I now have ten stories pending at different magazines and zines: Upgraded Phrase List for Mil-Spec iTrans Phrase Translation Unit The Country of the Young (Clarion West Story, week 4, I think) The Wager Cai and her Ten Thousand Husbands Improperly Prepared Blowfish The Day I Lost My ‘Thulu Dyscrasia Ogallala On Punctuation The Egan Thief (Update: Those marked red are beyond not only the average response time, but also the estimated response time listed at Duotrope, which tends to be significantly longer. This could mean anything, of course; with the …