Okay not to like it?

Confession: I waited until the last minute to schedule an appointment with my eye doctor, and now I'm out of contacts. Serves me right

Reading:

• "Balto" by T.C. Boyle
  
• The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton
  

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold"
  

Revising:

• "Cora and the Sea"

Future Projects:

• Dairhenien's Library - Development
  
• Floorcraft - First rewrite of 1-5, first draft of 6-8
• Ferian Fetlock - "Ferian Fetlock Takes a Wife."
  
• "Motley" - Expansion
• "Fireworks and Earthworks" - 5% into first draft
  
• Untitled School Mistress Story

Unpublished Stories/Status (in chronological order of completion of first draft)

• "Pictures of the Old Port" - 5th Draft, Unsubmitted
• "What Price Stamps" - 3rd Draft, Submitted to The American Drivel Review, July 30th, 2008
  
• "The Frost Fugling" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Black Pudding" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Cora and the Sea" - 3rd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Motley" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Leaves and Sunsets" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "A Happy Ending" - 1st Draft, Unsubmitted
• "The Revenant" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Illuminated" - 3rd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "A Cup of Coffee" / "Morning Tea" - 2nd Draft, Submitted to Tea: A Magazine, July 29th, 2008
• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Hattie Donnelly's Favorite Doll" - 2nd Draft, Submitted to 24 Hour Short Story Contest, July 27th, 2008
  

As of just now, I've submitted another story. This one's to a literary humor journal entitled The American Drivel Review. I just liked the name. I submitted "What Price Stamps?", and let it be known that if it gets accepted, I owe Tom Rottcher a pizza.

All submissions required a cover letter, and for this one, I decided to do things a little differently. I believe it is worth reproducing here.

Dear Editor,

I am writing today to submit my short story, "What Price Stamps?", for your consideration. It comprises 1,318 words, and is the first story to my knowledge which approaches the U.S. Postal Service from a hard-boiled, pseudo-film noir perspective. Also there are bats.

My other credits include a forthcoming story in The Storyteller magazine entitled "Dolly Hobbles." This story was also awarded Honorable Mention in the Winter 2008 Writers Weekly 24 Hour Short Story contest. I have read one of my stories at the Library of Congress, and will be doing another reading this August at the Oceanside Summer Gazebo Reading Series in Oceanside, NY.

Thank you very much for your consideration, and I look forward to hearing from you. And I hope you'll forgive me for lying about the bats.

Best regards,

Ian Conroy

I've also decided this morning that continuing on Ferian Fetlock would be a good use of my time, immediately after finishing the "Cora and the Sea" rewrites. It's gotten a much better reception than I anticipated. I had been living with the story for so long, you see, and I no longer knew if it was funny, or even interesting. I mean, at a basic level, it's about a guy who shoved tabasco sauce up a horse's ass. And he's the hero. That's messed up.

And now that it has gone over well, the question is, can I keep it up? A large part of the story going forward is the interaction between him and Lizaju, whom my readers will meet in the next chapter/section/story. But the same things that were holding me back before, i.e., not knowing Ferian's voice, is hampering me with Lizaju. I think I need to take a long ramble one evening and do some cogitating.

Anyway, on to the analysis. I finished Ann Beattie's "Solid Wood" the other day, and out of the three that I've read, it's the first in Best American Short Stories that I didn't like. It's just so... I don't know. Let's see if my thoughts are clearer in the next paragraph.

I don't care for stories that don't go anywhere. That doesn't mean that there have to be long journeys or gigantic life-changing events. I shy away, though, from stories that are too open-ended. Maybe I'm just a slave to narrative structure, I don't know. But "Solid Wood" struck me as a long trip to Wally World, only to find it closed at the end.

Oh, and if National Lampoon's Vacation had ended there, who would have liked the movie? Dammit, you need John Candy throwing up on the roller coaster to make it good!

The writing was superb, of course. (Now I'm back to "Solid Wood," although the same could be said for Vacation.) But it had a problem that I've often noticed in literary fiction. Every word of dialogue, no matter how trivial, is imbued with Meaning. Note the capital and the italics. Holy shit, if people talked like that in real life, you'd spend half your time trying to figure out all the layers of complexity behind the simplest of utterances.

Here is my philosophy. When people talk, for the love of God, let them talk normally. Dialogue needs to flow! It's like watching hockey, where there's a steady, curving flow from point to point that keeps your attention until suddenly, it breaks off in an unexpected direction. This story made dialogue like football, where you get one little bit, and then a few minutes of setup and analysis. I felt like there should be diagrams, and narration by John Madden.

I guess it all depends what you want to get out of what you read. I'm not really interested in a story that I have to analyze to enjoy. Don't get me wrong--I'm all about analysis. I love to take things apart to see how they work. But that's just it... they have to work when they're together to make them worth taking apart! "Solid Wood" was like an intricate mechanism that didn't do anything. In theoretical terms, it might be interesting to see how it works, but there was nothing about the story that attracted me to look further.

But you know what? I think it's okay not to like it. Every author has his or her own style, and this one was quite simply not one that I like. Ann Beattie might not like my stories, either. Fair play to her if she doesn't.

Publication Status:

• Submitted: 5
  
• Accepted: 1
• Rejected: 1
• Pending: 3
  

All My Projects

Confession: I have just enough fashion sense to know when I look like crap, but not enough to effectively do anything about it.

Reading:

• "Pa's Darling" by Louis Auchincloss

Writing:

• Untitled Dark Fantasy Project

Revising:

• "Cora and the Sea"

Future Projects:

• Dairhenien's Library - Development
  
• Floorcraft - First rewrite of 1-5, first draft of 6-8
• Ferian Fetlock - Next chapter, "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold," followed by "Ferian Fetlock Takes a Wife."
  
• July 26th 24-hour Short Story
• "Motley" - Expansion
• "Fireworks and Earthworks" - 5% into first draft
  
• Untitled School Mistress Story

Unpublished Stories/Status

• "The Revenant" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "The Frost Fugling" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Leaves and Sunsets" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Motley" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Black Pudding" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "A Happy Ending" - 1st Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Illuminated" - 3rd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Pictures of the Old Port" - 5th Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "What Price Stamps" - 3rd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "A Cup of Coffee" / "Morning Tea" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  

I think this is a good exercise to do, and perhaps I'll keep it going. Above I have listed all of my projects, current and ongoing. I think I need to start getting that "Future Projects" list shorter by actually completing drafts of some of those, and need to change a bunch of those "Unsubmitted" tags to "Submitted."

I think I'd like to keep this list going every day, although I'll need to find a way to copy and paste instead of retyping it every time. I might also change the "Writing" and "Revising" categories into "Currently Working On," since in practice I usually work on either the revision or the composition at any given time. If I happen to be working on both, I'll put both under the same heading.

Regardless, this gives me a good way to measure my progress, and to remind myself of exactly what I have waiting for me, especially during those times that I sit down to write and can't think of what to work on.

I was thinking this past weekend about how much finishing some old projects will help me clear my plate, and I think that's true. There's nothing like a game plan to get you going. In fact, as time goes on, I think I'm going to start ordering this list so that I always know what I want to work on next.

I just reread the list, and I think my first step is clear. I need to finish the "Cora and the Sea" revision this week, since the reading is coming up soon, and I want to get some feedback on the new version before I read it aloud in front of a group. Also, I've got that new 24-hour short story to do this Saturday, and it has to be done Saturday afternoon. (Which reminds me... I need to make sure I actually get some sleep Friday night....)

After that, the best thing will be for me to get some of those stories moved over to the "submitted" column. There are a few, like "Black Pudding" and "What Price Stamps?" that are in good enough shape to send out as-is. Maybe "Pictures of the Old Port" too. I can submit "Morning Tea" today. Why not at lunch? All I need to do is to finish the cover letter, then I'll have one more story out.

The next step will be research. I made a promise not to send "Illuminated" out just anywhere, and that means researching a good place for it. The length is a factor that makes that more difficult, though. For a new author, the longer the story, the more difficult it is to sell. I wonder if it would be in my best interests to sit on it for a while, do a revision in a couple of months once I get a bit more objectivity, and try to shop it out again then? Either way, I need to explore a few more markets and see what stories I have that would suit each one. That's going to be the single biggest step in getting the "finished" stories submitted.

Of course, as you can see, I don't have a "finished" category for anything. Until a story is actually published, it's not finished. It's almost like each story is always growing and changing, and each submission is like taking a picture of it at that moment in time. If it gets accepted, then there just must be something about that snapshot that works. (Of course, that doesn't mean I can't keep tinkering, does it?) It's like the story is all grown up and has moved away from home.

Hmmm... perhaps the metaphor is apt. I'd like to send a few more stories off to college, and turn their rooms into a rec room. They're welcome to visit, and I'll be happy to do their laundry, but it's time they got their own place.

Publication Status:

• Submitted: 2
• Accepted: 1
• Rejected: 1
• Pending: 0