MaxSpeak, You Listen!

This is good. This is going in my sidebar, next time I get round to futzing with it.

Resubmitted that rejected story to another mag. I'm trying to keep my resubmission times as low as I can right now; a day or two, long enough to reassess the story and make any necessary alterations before finding it another market. In the past there's been a tendency for me to bury anything that got rejected and never even look at it again for months. That's bad. It's negative, self-defeating and... well, fucking wet, frankly. So I'm getting back on the proverbial equine quadroped as rapidly as I can.

Anyhow, I need to finish some more stuff to send out before the weekend. My brain is not in fiction mode right now so I'm going to dig around my poetry files and see if I don't have anything worth punting out.

My immediate goal is keep it so that I have a minimum of five pieces under consideration at all times. I want to raise that to ten pieces before July; a modest goal.

Beef stew.

My imagination is broken.

Look, this is ridiculous. My stupid infection won't go away and it's stopping me from doing anything to write about on my blog.

Why am I sick anyway? I haven't done anything sickmaking. No going out clubbing with an insufficiently insulated chest, no persian rugs; I haven't cursed anyone for years, so it's not that.

My sleep is shot and it's taken my frikking writing with it. I mean, my output hasn't gone down (much), but it's just not as good. Maybe I shouldn't have kept plugging away at that stupid story the way I did. I got it finished but now I'm all fed up of writing because I got so bored. Blargh. Anyway it's finished now. Trouble is, none of my other writing projects is any healthier: gawdawful sword'n'sorcery short, couple of Forteany things, some lukewarm SMUT and this thing about people from another world living in London, which is never going to work in a million years but which I can't get out of my stupid head.

Stupid writing. Words are evil.

Oh, and I got a rejection today for a story I was really hopeful about, and which is utterly unsuitable for anywhere exept the ezine that rejected it. Blargh.

Yuuuck.

Man, this is no fun at all, but I'm on the mend. Well enough to go into a nearby town to do a bit of shopping, anyhoo, which was a relief. I get stir-crazy if I have to stay indoors. Gonna go out running tommorow, if the weather's okay.

Asked the guides what the heck was going on with this whole grotty infection business; apparently it's some sort of house-cleaning, and I'll be fitter afterwards, and blah blah blah. They also gave me a pi-jaw about my diet.

I have another big rant brewing about the increasingly hysterical and braindead comment in the blogosphere regarding the Spanish election result and the new regime's decision to pull out their troops from Iraq, but I just don't have the energy today.

Instead I've got this stupid short story to finish. It sucks--the ideas weak and the pace is off, but I have to get it finished. If I get it finished I'll be able to go back in a week and panel-beat the damn thing into some kind of shape, whereas if I can it now and work on something else, I'll probably never get around to sorting it out. God, I'm sick of it though.

I'm still sick.

And I blame you. Seriously, this is no fun at all. I'm missing my healer's meet today because of my cruddy chest (Oh, the irony). I was sick as a dog yesterday and got no bloody sleep.

Fix me. Fix me or I will harm you.

Coat.

Man, you people. It's just not working out, you know? As you Supreme Dark Ruler I need my acolytes to be actively involved in promoting my reign of terror, and you petty mortals just aren't pulling your weight. You aren't traking down gems of power, magicial rings, wands, or even volumes of forbidden lore for me; you aren't even making sacrifices to the Forces of Darkness for my greater power. Oh, don't try to deny it. If you were making even tiny sacrifices to the Forces of Darkness have been coughing up this yechhy stuff for the last two days.

Now shape up, or I'll feed you to the mutant cyborg piranahs.

I need to fix my coat again. It's still cool enough in the evenings that I can sweep about in a trenchie--or rather I could, were my trenchie not so fucked. The last lot of repairs caved in and have left me bereft of my big ol' PVC coat. *sob!*
I've given up trying to restore it to something like its former condition. I can't duplicate the original surface, no matter how I try, and am instead planning to settle for a more varied texture.

I was in La Bosc de Fades the other night with Lurid, and they had these wicked floor to ceiling curtains mae of--check this out--CHAIN MAIL! How cool is that? It wasn't ring-mail, then links were more like Z-shaped. It was gorgeous. I kept playing with it all the time I was sat there, and now I am consumed with an unrequietable desire to have a coat made out of the same stuff. Course, I'm never going to be able to afford something like that... but I'm wondering if I couldn't at least suggest a similar effect in places on my trenchie, for example on the front corners and places where the plastic has worn off. I'm thinking a kind of applìque, but with chains, fine ones but not too fine. Dunno where I'm going to find the right kind of chain. Will check out some hardware places later.

Chomsk's new blog

Fantastic! Noam Chomsky has joined the blogosphere.

Damn.

It's half-eleven, I'm already shagged out, and I've really got to finish this damn story by the morning. Got got got. Or I will cordially hate myself all day tomorrow.

Why do I respect self-imposed deadlines more than the externally imposed variety? I mean, I can certainly work to externally imposed deadlines, even blatanly ludicrous, pulled-out-of-a-manager's-earhole deadlines. I just don't get all emotional about it.

Random linkies...

TRAPPED BY UNDEAD, NEED HELP
(Via Flowers)

The Killer Gerbil
(Via blogger's "recently updated" list)

Poetryfox.com
(Via Ralan.com)

Run.

Started running again today, for the 3rd time this year. The last couple of times I got thwarted by a bashed toe and then a yuckky chest. I felt okay while I was doing it, but now I'm coughing up... you don't want to know. I reckon I have a week or so of coughing up this goo and then I'll be clear, and things will get easier. Doing the Breath of Fire excercise to help things along a bit.

I have to keep moving. When I stop moving, I get aches and pains and sundry annoyances: my right side cramps, my lungs fill up with crap. When I stop moving, things break down.

I'm having some trouble placing one of my fics. It's a light fantasy piece about a dad dragon giving a pi-jaw to his dragon son, and I just can't seem to settle it anywhere. I'm only submitting to pro markets at the moment, on principle.

Finished a poem last night; God knows who'll buy it, it's pretty bleak. No new stories tho'. I hate it when I don't finish a story for a couple of days coz I feel like I'm losing momentum, winding down. Falling behind. Rolling back to where I was a couple of years ago, when I was finishing one piece every few months, if that. I must finish something tomorrow. I have to keep on finishing, submitting, revising, rewriting, resubmitting.

I have to keep moving, or things break down.

Gnarrgh.

Bunnies. Fluffy bunnies.

Goddammit--why isn't there a 12-step programme for giving up passive-aggression? Specifically, that form of passive aggression which involves going off into one on your weblog about something someone said on a message board.

Miniature goats. Teeny little miniature goats, the ones that only come up to your knees.

I used to do that all the time, but I've been sober from it for about a year (I think), because I realised just how hurtful (not to mention bloody irritating) it can be.

Tapirs! Yay for tapirs! Exotic wuffles.

But I am sooo tempted to fall off the wagon right now, because an unwitting finger has poinked one of my buttons. And the worst of it is, I genuinely like the person doing the poinking and would bitterly regret tearing hir a new one.

Kittens. Of course.

I don't know why that makes it harder.

Tiny Shetland pony foals with weebly-woobly legs. Ring-tailed lemurs. Pipistrelles. Hedgehogs. Leeetle baby fox-cubs.

God, I'm so fucking petty.

Oi! Spooky perverts!

I've been cracking the keyboard all day, but I seem to have run out of ideas. Zap me, please.

Also: When the current stack of cats-in-a-box collapse their precious little waveforms, could there be just one or two kitties still feet-down instead of feet up? Ta.

No a la guerra

Piled out to the manifestación yesterday with Lurid A. It was pretty big; the Beeb say 200,000 but I'm betting it was more. Great atmosphere, as usual: floats, lavish home-made banners, samba music, kiddies in face-paint. It's really cute to see a whole family marching together, parents, grandparents, kids, all chanting in unison.
My fave costume? The seven-foot tall blue alien with the "PAZ UNIVERSALE" placard.

It was a festive atmosphere, but there was an edge of sorrow there too. Many people had added black ribbons to their anti-war banners; one man carried a placard that simply showed the black memorial ribbon with MADRID written below it and BAGDAD above. There was a great deal of anger, too, much of it directed to the recently-ousted Aznar.

I'm impressed by the peaceful nature of Spanish protests, as well as the high turn-outs. The police prescence was microscopic, not like back home. (Honestly, I've been on marches where the protesters were outnumbered two to one by the old Bill.)

Later we met a couple of friends for a meal in Barceloneta and then walked along the beach. There were a few protesters camped out in sleeping bags and tents, votive candles burning next to a placard remembering the dead of Madrid.

I found the culprit.

It was Wordpad. Eeeeeevil Wordpad.

Amongst other annoying glitches, wordpad is possessed by the Demons of 10ptyness. When you open your file in Wordpad it is automatically downsized from 10 to 12, which you don't notice because you're on the laptop and so inadvertantly piss off good and deserving editors with your teenytiny letters.

I say FIE unto Wordpad. How much FIE? Enough FIE that I have banished it from my toolbar in favour of a freeware wordprocessor called AbiWord. It's as shaky as Heck, tries to load a nonexistant dictionary every time you open a file, and crashes altogether if you try to use the Help... and yet strangely it still sux0rz less than bloody Wordpad. I'm running Star Office over on the big 'puter, of course, but Lurid needs that to shoot Klingons.

Edit: I've just resubmitted the story that got rejected yesterday to a different market. The ed. of the rejecting zine was right: the ending was too weak. I've altered it, and I think the story as a whole works way better now.

Dealing with rejection.

Okay, make that four bits in the post. Just got a rejection from one of the places I sent stuff off to yesterday.

I am sooooo pissed off. Not with the rejection, I mean, that's fair enough. But somewhere along the line, my attachment got reformatted down from 12 to 10 pt. font. 10 pt? What the fuck? I KNOW I formatted that bastard properly! I've been doing this since I was a kid! Double line space, single side, TWELVE POINT COURIER! How could this happen to me? Oh, the shame! The indignity! The helpful little note from the asst. ed. with a link to a writer's help site! AUUUUUUUUUUGHHHH!

How will I ever live this down?

Okay. Calm now.

Well, no, I'm not even a tiny bit calm, I'm still pissed off, but I'm all ranted out for now so I'll just whine about how hard it is to be a writahhhh for a bit.

Except that I can't, coz right now things are coming pretty well. I've been working pretty hard this past week, finished three new stories, and tarted up four old storys that I wrote some years back but never submitted anywhere. I submitted three pieces of short fiction to 3 zines, two pro and one semi-pro, which makes 4 bits in the post if you count my entry for the McSweeny prize. I also have a piece ready to send out to TSR (finally!) which I should do tomorrow. That'll clear the decks, leaving me to finish some more works which I've outlined but haven't filled in yet. Two high fantasy, one sorta Fortean-y thing. They shouldn't really take me longer than a week to finish, barring the tedious proofreading etc.

Realistically I need to keep that kind of pace up every week if I want to get anywhere with this. I want to be selling a piece to a pro market, a market that pays 3 cents a word minimum, every week. That's not so crazy. There are a lot of markets out there nowadays and I am writing faster and better than I ever have in my life.

Rummaging around the wonderful Ralan.com I've turned up some promising pro markets. Check it out.

Edit: Make that five bits in the post. It's all quality stuff too. You can hate me now, that's what I'm here for.

Roll over.

It looks a lot like Aznar and friends played up ETA's involvement for political gain, but then "Aznar is a complete git who'd sell his own granny to keep the PP in power" is hardly news round here.

I think we've all worked out by now that ETA was not soley responsible for last Thursday's atrocity (tho' not for want of trying). Most of the evidence now points to Al Qaeda, with maybe a side order of ETA. TBH, I didn't want to belive it myself, because I know damn well that out head honchos will most likely use this as an excuse to clamp down even more harshly on our civil rights.

But that's not what I want to talk about right now. Right now I have a very special message for the (largely) right-wing pro-war lobby, in respect of their comments on the Spanish election result. Obviously this is a complex issue, one which needs a sensitive and even handed approach, showing due regard to both sides, but then there's this whole part where the r-w, p-w all suck and need to be sworn at a very lot.

FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU YOU POINTLESS, POINTLESS, POINTLESS FUCKING BASTARDS! YOU KNOW NOTHING! YOU ARE NOTHING! YOU INSULT THE LIVING AND THE DEAD WITH YOUR WORTHLESS BITCHING! SO YOU DIDN'T GET THE ELECTION RESULT YOU WANTED -- BOO FUCKING HOO! CHOKE ON PROPER DEMOCRACY! HARRRGH!

That doesn't mean you get to attack the people of Spain, you ignorant, souless gits. Oh, I'm so terribly sorry that having FUCKING BOMBS GO OFF IN THEIR CAPITAL made more people turn out to vote than might otherwise have done so. I'm so fucking sorry you saw a guy in a 'Palestine scarf' in one of the photos. Jeeze, that must have been hard on you. I'm so fucking sorry that Spain as a whole decided it was sick of the taste of DUBYA'S RIM, and decided that Hey, maybe we should vote in someone with less of an appetite for bushmeat.

Oh, yeah. The Spanish voted in someone you didn't like, so they must have been "scared." I suppose they were also scared when they took to the streets to tell the terrorists to fuck off. I suppose they were scared when they piled, man and boy, woman and girl, into easily bombable public spaces. I suppose they were scared when they chanted anti-terrorist slogans.

I suppose, right, they were fucking scared when they buried their kids and then stumbled weeping from the graveside to vote in the election. I guess they were scared then, yeah?

God, you unfeeling, spiteful, ignorant, self-satisfied, pompous, narcisstic WANKERS. I hope you never lose anyone to a terroist attack. You lack anything like the emotional maturity to deal with it. These people have more fucking guts in there little fingers that you Tory hack SCUM WILL EVER HAVE in your ENTIRE BODIES.

I love Spain. I really love Catalunya. I'd raise a kid here, and that's saying something.

ps: "Appeasement" is not a magic word. Saying "appeasement" a lot does not make you be suddenly be right.

PPS: Democracy's a bitch when it ain't your democracy, innit?

Bleh.

Had a fit last night. First one for ages, so it came as a bit of a surprize. Hell if I know what brought it on; I was working pretty hard yesterday so maybe it was that.

Bleh.

The PP lost.

Spain's ruling PP has been ousted by the PSOE, the leading left-wing party over here. There was a bit more pot-banging tonight, this time in celebration. People cheered, sang, waved Catalan flags. Something like three-quarters of Spain's population turned out to vote, which rips the piss out of the UK's usual 50-odd percent.

I've just watched footage of a family who'd just buried a son killed in the bombing drag themselves weeping from the funeral to the polling booth, and I think I need to cry now.

This post over at Instapundit has many relevant links.