Wednesday, March 5th, 2003 - Two and Twenty Blackbirds, baked As you may have heard, it's been a good coupla days here in the ShawPratt household. Yesterday started off with a rejection from Ideomancer (which stung mainly because of how I tried for a month to get it through to them), but was quickly countered by Susannah Indigo over at Clean Sheets who wanted to buy the right to reprint my article, "How to Look at Girls" in the next Clean Sheets anthology (From Porn to Poetry 2). Whoo! As much as I love the internet and all the publication opportunities therein, there's something so damn satisfying about holding your own words, printed and bound in an honest-to-ISBN book, you know? It looks so nice on the Pride Shelf, too. So, yay! The rest of yesterday passed without much incident. Work is work. Tim and I are in the midst of watching 24, so that's 3 hours on the couch (which is starting to make us both sore, but the show is too damn good). Then, my late email check turned up with an email from Nick Mamatas telling us that our story, "Blue Chuck does Thrilltown" has been accepted for his Urban Bizarre anthology! (Actually, it was a mass email, with everyone's name and a potential TOC and an extremely charming imaginary Q&A with possible questions/ reaction we might have to being accepted after so long. Very fun.) The story in question is the very first collaboration Tim and I ever wrote together, and it's totally weird and full of sexual, um, well, you'll just have to read it and see. Anyway, that's another honest-to-ISBN (sorry, just made up the phrase and am playing with it) book! Two in one day! Groovy anthologies were raining here in ShawPratt land yesterday. So, so. So, this morning I had to go to the doctor for what turned out to be some sort of allergic reaction (to what, no idea; could be a virus or something I ate). It started yesterday, a faint rash, and has spread. It itches. It's not very noticeable unless you're close-up, and it's not contagious, but it's annoying. So, I took some Benadryl and passed out for much of the day, blissfully free from itching for awhile. I woke up depressed. TV wasn't doing it and the newsclip about the impending war made me burst into tears. I felt pretty useless and down. I don't know what made me sit down. I poured myself a glass of coke (a treat these days; usually I have coffee) and sat down to write this journal entry, or balance my checkbook or something. Anyway, instead I typed in the 239 words I'd written on BART yesterday (or Monday, must've been Monday) and I kept going. Tim was going to be home in 15 minutes, and I reasoned that that's not too long, that even if I didn't feel like it I could go that long. Well, an hour later Tim came home and I was writing away. A half an hour later, I'd finsihed a story! Whoot! I believe this is my first story of 2003. I've been trying to write, believe me, and many of those fragments will hopefully turn into whole stories eventually, but this is the first complete story I've managed finish, and DAMN, I'd forgotten how good this feels! Yeah, it needs copyediting and revising and another layer (not in that order) and Tim hates the hover board mention, but it's down, the rough draft is down and it's all downhill from here. Well, ok, maybe it's uphill, all that polish and edit, but that's stuff I know I'll get done, you know? Whether or not a story will actually come together in a way that I'm happy with, I still don't control that very much. It feels like a gift when that happens. What? Oh, it's called (for now, though I like this) "Skatebirding" (I do like one word titles sometimes) and it's around 3300 words, though it'll probably get longer on revision. I got the idea from a couple of images, things I saw walking home from work and the, um, "theme" came from a book I'm reading for work. It all sort of clicked together over the past few days. Like a gift. So cool. Ok, so, that's it for now. Just wanted to share that, do some virtual cartwheels (there should be an emoticon for that!) and say YAY! That's all. Insert Macro Here

Exercise Log: What? Don't bother me, I'm writing! Writing log: Hee! Whee! Zowie! (See entry.) Current Publications: "Famishing" in Strange Horizons. My first pro sale! "Wetting the Bed" and a collab with Tim Pratt, "A Serious Case of Fairies" in Floodwater "How to Suck" reprinted in From Porn to Poetry: Clean Sheets Celebrates the Erotic Mind Currently Reading: Polyphony 1 ed. by Deborah Layne and Jay Lake The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett Donate money to my teeth, my grad school application fees, our writerly projects (Floodwater and Flytrap!). Every little bit helps!

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