Comes and goes like a vagabond kitty.

So I've been gone a minute.


I've started going back to that writer's workshop, and I think I'm doing really good work there, some stuff I'm really proud of. Of course, I've started going back just as they're wrapping up; after four years of hosting a workshop there, the group leader is leaving, and I'll have to find another place to sit and fill my Fancy Pretty Notebook, one of many I've decided I'm actually going to use*, with spur of the moment words to be read aloud to strangers. We're going to have a formal reading on the 11th as a farewell to the workshop; I'm gonna read, but since all of my friends have moved out of New York there's only one person to go with me, and he doesn't seem particularly interested in it. I'm sure he would, because it's important to me, but it would be easier if he was at least a little invested in it. I'm tempted to be like I go to all your shit but he's also better at communicating when things are important to him, and I'm usually generally invested in his shit.

He has a policy, especially with me, of not faking excitement or enthusiasm; he wants me to be better able to trust when he does like something rather than fret and fuss that he's trying to make me feel better and really thinks I'm stupid and my work is terrible and my meals taste bad. But it sometimes comes across as I'm not going to do anything I don't really want to, even if it's important; of course I can't tell how much of that is actually his intention and how much is mood-dependent interpretation.

I'm also working on a submission for the last issue of Glimmer Train. Funny how, after the last rejection, I said to myself "well I guess I'll just keep throwing stuff at them, something has to stick" and then got the email that they're closing up shop soon. This is my last chance, and I think my best effort, assuming I can end the fuckin thing.

Possibly, there's something to read into the fact that this whole life update is just about my writing, but frankly I don't think any of us want me sorting through that on the fly. Let's put that back in my pocket until therapy tomorrow.



*if only so I won't feel quite so bad when I inevitably procure more

I have been discussing fandom-related feelings with pangodillo, mostly just feeling so far outside of it. I've come and gone in fandom circles since I learned it was a thing, when my high school friends and I we were writing decadent HP self insert fic on ff.net in middle school/high school, so--pre-2006?¹

( below: feelings, fretfulness, footnotes! )

I did not go the workshop.





however I did manage to get out of bed and do some laundry and buy pork chops. 

I did not think I would be this emotional, closing out the BCM tumblr.

It's still up, until whenever they get around to deleting it; there's a link in the post I reblogged to my main, which I still haven't quite decided what to do with.

I didn't think it would hurt like this. Some of it I thought was the loss of audience; even if I haven't updated it in forever, there were still people who had once read it, had once cared about it, art neatly sorted by the friend who created it. The first post went up in October of 2015. Yesterday, I reformatted that to post on the DW community, which I feel like no one will ever look at but Olli and I. Wrapped in newspaper, put in shoeboxes, carefully stacked in a closet.

The writing is rough--three year old prose always is--but it represents a lot to me. A level of creative success, validation, proof that I could do original work. I made friends, real friends, who I'd never have met if I hadn't created it. I was so proud of it, once.

 Several months ago, I borrowed a book from my library called The Future is History and it was fascinating BUT it was also far too large to read in bed. I returned it after two hopeful renewals. 

Good news! Libby has the audio book. 

Bad news! There is a 13 week waitlist.




I just got a gym membership, so I guess that's incentive to keep going? 

( how did i get by without whisperin )

 I'm getting ready to make what will probably be my final Glimmer Train submission before they shutter in 2019. There will be other contests before then, and general submissions (the reading fee for a general submission is only $2 I believe) but I have a little more than half of a story in my pocket that fits the submission category, and they extended the deadline to January 2nd, and hell, how cool would it be to not only be published by them but as a contest winner? And since I just got paid by the BoE for my election day work, I can pay the reading fee.

I had always planned to just throw stories at GT until something stuck; they pay well, they look for new writers, they're a print journal, something you can hold in your hands, rub your face on, give your mother to take to school and show all her teacher friends at lunch. I am not even vaguely ashamed of my one online publication credit--do you understand how incredible it is to hear your story read out loud by a total stranger and have been paid for the privilege?--but I've always dreamed of being in print. 

But of course before any of that can happen, I have to actually finish the story. Ask for beta reads. Edit, edit some more, keep poking it. Agonize over a title only to choose one vague word like I always do. Tell myself it's done this time and then give it one last read. Argue with my partner over whether or not this weird little turn of phrase is worth keeping. Try not to get my hopes up too much. Fail at that. Maybe make some other submissions to other places, do some world building for the other two stories I've got kicking around. Try not to be too pessimistic about my chances of any kind of success. Fail at that.


My partner, and our mutual ex, have a saying: you keep creating because it hurts too badly not to. The only thing worse than writing is not writing.


(This is all a very dramatic way of saying "I dont wanna :c ")