Writing–Cancelling “Someone To Hold”

August 21, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

For the second time in my writing career, I’ve had a story cancelled on me.

“Someone to Hold” was accepted earlier this year for publication in a magazine. Last week I received notice that they were putting all of their magazines on hold and therefore, my story would not be published. They said they’d get back to me when their magazines go back into production and if the story is still available, they’ll take it again.

So, the question before me now is what should I do with this story?

I could hold onto it and hope they contact me again so I get that guaranteed magazine space and that guaranteed money.

Or, I could submit it somewhere else if I come across a place that would be a good fit.

Or, I could use it in the wrecked anthology that I blogged about earlier this week if I need it.

I guess it all depends on what would best serve the story. Leaving it to sit on my hard drive is not doing it any justice, so the idea of saving it for something that might not happen makes me a little nervous. I’d hate for this story to be wasted like that.

On the other hand, my track record for self-publishing isn’t exactly great. If I put this story in my anthology and publish it that way, there’s a good chance that it won’t get read anyway. However, it will be possible to read it. That’s not true if it’s hanging out, waiting to be submitted somewhere.

Speaking of, it’s possible that if I do come across some place to submit the story and it gets accepted, there’s going to be this nagging worry that I might be short changing myself by settling for another magazine/anthology when I should have just waited.

It’s amazing the knots I can tie myself into over things like this.

The one bright spot in this is that I have time. There’s no hurry to make a decision.

It’ll be a while before they get back to me about their magazines going back into production. It’s going to be longer than expected for me to get this anthology un-wrecked. I’m not actively searching for publications. This is not a pressing matter.

But it’s one that’s going to be lurking in the back of my mind.

Writing–So About That Anthology

August 19, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’ve discussed that I planned to do another short story anthology this year and I brashly said that I could have it pretty much done by the end of this month.

Well, I did a great job of jinxing myself.

In doing revisions on my short stories for the anthology, a few things ended up occurring.

1. Two of the stories aren’t working out. “Devil Temper” and “The Backroom” just aren’t coming together the way I want them to and I’m not sure yet how to fix them. This means there’s a very good chance that they will not be done by the end of the month. It also means that they might not work out at all or, if they do work out, might no longer work for the anthology. See my next number.

2. “The Nights Get Shorter” has turned out to be a good little ditty, which I’m pleased with, but isn’t going to fit the tone of the anthology, which is a bummer.

3. “Mind the Deer” did work and will be used. Thank goodness I didn’t jinx EVERYTHING.

So this means I went from having my anthology idea worked out and all of the spaces filled to needing three stories if I can’t get “Devil Temper” and “The Backroom” to do my bidding and/or they no longer work for the anthology.

This is what I get for being too cocky and thinking that this month was going to be a breeze. Instead, I’m looking at a big ol’ setback and the goals I had for the month might not get accomplished.

Let this be a lesson, kids. Don’t be arrogant with your work. It’ll kick you in the ass.

Writing–Is This Worth Writing?

August 14, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’ve got two potential ideas for this year’s NaNoWriMo. I’m actually delighted that I’m getting any ideas so early considering the last couple of years I’ve waited until the last minute before coming up with something. I’ve also got an idea for a new novella (unless it decides to keep growing). I’m rather excited by the sudden influx of creativity I’ve got going on here.

However, I’m faced with the usual problem whenever I get any idea: is this worth writing?

I admit that I get a lot of ideas, notions, scraps of inspiration, and those end up getting jotted down in my idea notebook because most of the time, as good as they seem, there’s not much to them. At least not yet. So I save them for later.

There are times, like recently, that the ideas I get are so strong that they won’t leave my head and I find myself having a whole lot to jot down in my notebook. I keep coming back to those ideas because there’s something there that arouses my interest and keeps me wondering how it could all work out.

Those ideas, the ones that seem to have so much promise, are the ones that I judge the harshest. And I’m not always a very good judge. Sometimes I get caught up in the excitement and I start writing an idea that maybe isn’t ready to be written, or shouldn’t be written at all. After a few days, maybe a week, I realize it. The whole thing grinds to a halt and I’m left disappointed.

It happened recently. I had this great idea and I started to sketch it out. And while I was still sketching it, I decided that it wouldn’t hurt to start writing the beginning of it. Sure enough, had I put in the due diligence of sketching, I might have realized that my enthusiasm would be short-lived and the idea would have been better left to settle in the sketch stage instead of being rushed into production.

That’s the kind of dance I’m doing now with these three new ideas. I’m doing a lot of thinking and sketching. The two potential novel ideas will need some research, one more than the other. But more importantly, is there enough story there that’s worth writing? I don’t want to be caught short during NaNo. One of the novel ideas I can tell has a problem with having enough story. Right now I’ve only got one main thread and that’s not going to be enough to go the distance with if I want to do it for NaNo. The other one already has a few threads to work with the main thread, so I consider it to have a little more potential. Except the way I want to do it is different than anything I’ve ever done before and it might not be a good idea to do it that way.

The novella is healthy as a horse, as near as I can tell. The only question I’ve got with it is will I be able to write it the way that I want to and the way that I see it in my head.

But that’s another post for another day.

If Everyone Is Saying It, It Must Be True

August 12, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I was taught that when someone gave me a compliment I was to say “thank you” whether I agreed with them or not. Don’t argue, don’t protest, just say your thanks and move on. Manners and all that.

And that’s what I do. “You have such pretty eyes.” “Thanks.” “I love your skirt!” “Thanks.” “I like the way you verbally eviscerated that guy.” “Thanks.”

It’s become an automatic response to the point that I don’t really pay much attention to the compliment (unless it’s a truly unique one or backhanded or related to weight-loss because I don’t think saying, “Hey, you’ve lost weight!” is much of a compliment, but that’s another post). It’s not that I don’t appreciate people saying nice things to me on occasion; I enjoy that very much. But I just don’t read that much into it.

When I got my hair cut, I expected some people to notice because it was such a dramatic change. And I anticipated the reactions of a few people would be saying they liked my hair, whether they really did or not, as a way of acknowledging the drastic change in a nice way. In short, I didn’t pay too much attention at first when people said they liked my hair because it was the people that I expected to say something.

But then people I didn’t expect started saying the same thing. My hair attracted more attention than I thought it would. And I started to think…”Gee, maybe everyone does think my hair looks nice.”

At some point I’ve moved from “people being nice about my hair” to “this is the general consensus about my hair”.

Which is weird for me because I don’t typically think of people holding good opinions of me. I know I’m regarded as a failure by certain people and society thinks I’m a fat waste of DNA, and I’d be lying if I said those opinions didn’t impact me at least somewhat, but my opinion of myself is so high that it kind of minimizes the worth of those opinions.

So here I am, already thinking my hair looks freakin’ fabulous, and people are backing me up. It’s just strange. I’ve never had this sort of positive consensus before, particularly about a physical aspect of my being. I mean it’s nice, but it’s strange.

This is one of the few instances that I like going with the crowd, especially since for once they’re agreeing with me. If everyone is saying it, then it must be true. My hair looks good.

I could go mad with this sort of power.

But no. I like my head able to fit through doorways.

Rerun Junkie–Characters: Big Chicken

August 9, 2013September 13, 2017 ~ Kiki Writes ~ 5 Comments

There are two guest characters from the TV shows I’ve blogged about that end up in searches that lead to my blog and one of them is Big Chicken.

It’s understandable, really. First of all, the old Hawaii Five-O series ran for twelve years and it was pretty popular. Second of all, Big Chicken, even though he was only in two episodes, was pretty damn memorable.

His first appearance, in a first season episode called “…And They Painted Daisies on His Coffin”, introduces us to the Big Chicken smarm. In the episode, off-duty Danny chases and ends up shooting an armed “kid” (they called him a kid; I called him twenty-five). Only, surprise! The victim’s girlfriend takes her now-dead boyfriend’s gun and runs off so it looks like Danny killed an unarmed “kid”. An investigation ensues and wouldn’t you know that dope pusher Big Chicken is involved? He thinks the law is cool. You can tell by the way he breaks it. Unfortunately, he doesn’t feel the law is so cool by the end of the episode.

Like I said, you get a hint of his smarm the first go-round. But it really comes on full-force and pretty much evolves into shudder-inducing creep later in the first season in an episode called “The Box”. The first time you see him, he’s in the prison shower (which is apparently some sort of broken pipe trickle), singing while some of his cohorts jump and beat a man. It’s unnerving and creepy and smarmy and just plain wrong.

The episode involves McGarrett entering the prison after the scuffle in the prison shower turns into a sort-of riot, but mostly hostage situation. It’s then that Big Chicken really turns it on. He weasels better than any weasel, ingratiating himself to the guy that his boys (one of whom is Al Harrington, who went on to play good guy Ben later) were whipping only a little while before in an attempt to get McGarrett killed. It’s a total slime act and the tension between Big Chicken and McGarrett has a real uncomfortable passion to it. His skeev level is off the charts.

I want to take a shower after I watch that episode (but not in a prison because no).

To me, the greatest part of this character is that it’s Gavin MacLeod playing him. When you think Gavin MacLeod, you think Captain Stubing, happy Loveboat guy, making dreams come true for his passengers and being an adorable father to his adorable daughter. Or maybe you think Murray Slaughter, TV writer and desk neighbor of Mary Richards, a good guy with excellent timing when it comes to insulting Ted Baxter.

You don’t think of him as a creeper’s creep.

I’ve seen him play a jerk before. He was a pretty big one an episode of The Big Valley. But to see him play the lowest of scum in such a slimy, skeevy way sticks with me. Kudos to him for that.

And kudos to Big Chicken.

Ya creep.

Writing–That Walk Away Point

August 7, 2013August 4, 2013 ~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

It really doesn’t matter what kind of writing project it is -novel, novella, short story- it seems that at some point during the revision stage I have to walk away from it. Letting the story settle after a round of revisions, putting a little distance between myself and the words helps me see what needs to be done.

However, for some stories, the walk away isn’t just part of the revision process. It’s because I’ve grown to absolutely detest the story

I mentioned last week hitting that point with the Ivy novella. It’s not a unusual breaking point for me to get to when a project is being difficult.

There comes a point when I don’t want to look at the story anymore. I don’t want to read the words. I don’t want to try to make the story better. Just thinking about the story saps my will to live and makes me question my dedication to being a writer.

The only logical way to deal with this overwhelming feeling of disgust is to walk away. I put away the disagreeable project in question and I leave it alone until I’m done hating it. Sometimes that’s a couple of weeks. Sometimes that’s a couple of months. But the distance eases my hatred and makes my heart grow fonder for the piece.

Okay, not always. Sometimes the distance allows me to just hate the piece less while I gain the important objective view of the story so I can finally finish revising it and make it worth reading.

I don’t like hating any of my stories, but it happens. And I think it might be very easy for me to just abandon the stories I despise and move on to something I love. But, I don’t. I force myself to finish them to completion because just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean that someone else won’t adore it. It’s not fair for me to give up on it just because I don’t like it. If I’ve gotten that far with it, then the story deserves to be told, whether it ever gets published or not.

And I also don’t hate stories for an eternity. Sometimes I hate them at the walk away point, but then rediscover my like/love for the story during our separation. Now, if I abandoned the story just because I didn’t like it when it was being its most difficult, that would be a total injustice.

I’m exaggerating, but only a little bit.

I usually feel guilty when I first walk away a story, but I know in the end it works out for the best.

We all need our space, you know.

Sensory Overload at the Movies

August 5, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I went to see The Conjuring with my roommate. She’d been really wanting to see it, but since it’s scary, she didn’t want to see it alone. After being subject to some bribery in the form of a Salted Caramel Pretzel milkshake from Steak n Shake, I was persuaded to see it with her. After reading some reviews, I thought it might not be too terrible, high praise from someone so finicky and critical of horror films, particularly recent stuff.

And I do think it was pretty good. I’m looking forward to watching it again on TV so I can really appreciate all of the elements at work.

Why TV? Why not see it in the theater again?

Simple.

Seeing movies in the theater has a tendency to be a downright painful experience for me.

I’ve found as I’ve gotten older that I have a certain sensitivity to sounds. Theaters are almost always too loud for me. Now that’s not too big of a deal most of the time, unless I’m seeing a film like The Conjuring that contains a lot of jump scares. A component of the jump scare, of course, is the sudden crash of sound that accompanies the visual shock. Yeah, those crashes hurt.

My roommate noticed that I was cringing at things I was hearing long before anyone else heard anything. There’s a moment in the film when a mix of voices are heard on a recording. I had to plug my ears. It was too much noise. I’ve been known to do this during action sequences, too, with a lot of gun shots and explosions. Too loud.

I’ve also found in my old age that the visual experience of movies is hard for me to deal with. Hi-def is great, I’m sure. But for me, in the theater, everything is too big, too close, too much and it’s hard for my brain to adjust. I’ve never been good with point of view shots, but put them up on the big screen and my eyes can’t handle it. Same with anything that has too much shaking. It makes my eyes cross. There’s no way I could have watched Open Water, Cloverfield, or The Blair Witch Project on the big screen. My brain wouldn’t have been able to take it.

As it was there were a few times during The Conjuring that I had to close my eyes, not because it was scary, but because I couldn’t take the shaking and/or point of view angles. The sudden swing of the camera made my eyes cross. There’s a whole swath of movie that took place in the cellar that I couldn’t see because it was all done from the POV of a handheld camera.

Some days are better than others when it comes to the visuals, but the noises are always brutal. My roommate suggested that the next time I go to the movies I wear ear plugs. It might help and I’m willing to try it.

Anything to tone down the overwhelming theater experience to bearable so I can at least enjoy a film based on the film and not how painful the sensory overload is.

Just another reason I’m a pain in the ass when it comes to going to the movies.

Writing–August Projects

August 1, 2013July 30, 2013 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been thinking about what I’m going to do this month. I know one thing one thing I’m NOT going to do. The Ivy novella is going to rest this month. I’ve hit that point in the revisions where I hate everything about it and everything it stands for. I need to forget about it for a month and let my disgust cool for a bit.

I think this month I’m going to be focused on finishing the short stories for the anthology I want to do. I should find out about the one that I submitted to the contest pretty soon so I can decide if it’ll make it in the anthology. Otherwise, I’m writing one right now that could take its place. The rest need the final edits/polishing. It’s entirely possible that I could have the whole thing put together and ready to publish by September.

I also think I’m going to make this the month of the short story. I’ve got a couple that I’ve written that could be edited/polished and put up here as freebies. And since the anthology will be wiping the slate clean so to speak (one of the reasons I’m feeling the urge to do it), I’ll need to build up the inventory again.

It’s going to be another low key month.

Writing–Time to Loosen Up

July 31, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

When I first started this blog, I set up themed days and a nice schedule that insured that I would update at least three times a week and I’d always have an idea of what the blog post would be for each given day. It was a way of establishing my blog, a safety net, in a way, so I never found myself slacking.

Now that I’ve been at this for a couple of years, I’m finding the safety net a little too constricting. There are times when I can’t think of anything I’d like to write for the Monday blog post, but month’s worth of Wednesday topics. There are times when I want to post something for Friday immediately…but it’s only Tuesday. And then there’s this new idea that I think Rerun Junkie should be its own thing instead of being relegated to just Fridays.

It’s time for me to loosen up and trust that I’ll be able to blog randomly, but regularly throughout the week. I need to trust that I’ve earned the freedom to roam a little, to blog when I want to without the restriction on days.

And of course, if it doesn’t work out, if I find the ideas drying up without a designated day or if I find myself posting too infrequently, the old structure will still be standing there for me to go back to.

But I feel like I need to bust out and start something new.

Time to liven up the joint.

I Cut My Hair

July 29, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t cut it myself, of course. I went to my stylist. I’m not completely crazy.

But I did feel a bit daring.

The last time I got my hair cut before this time, in the shab style I’d been rocking and loving for the most part, I didn’t have the top layers cut short enough. I spent most of the time with my hair pulled back into a pony tail.

A couple of weeks ago I realized that this was stupid. My hair was already somewhat short and yet I had it back in a pony tail all the time. If I was going to do that, I should just cut it all off and call it good. It’d be the same thing.

Only it wasn’t exactly the same thing.

I’ve posted before about my hair and the hang-ups I have with. In short, I was afraid cutting my hair off in a pixie style would obliterate what little femininity that I think I project. A short cut on me would just add to my already somewhat intimidating demeanor.

Shorter short: I thought it’d make me less desirable, if that were even possible.

I thought, almost in jest, that I’d do the short cut when I was 40. Something to look forward to. Another way to shake-up a milestone birthday and make it fun. After all, by then who would care how short my hair was? When you’re 40 and a woman, you might as well be dead, at least that’s what I gather from society.

But a couple of weeks ago, I thought, why wait? Let’s just do it now and see what happens. Femininity be damned. I have boobs. That should be enough for people to know that I’m a girl, even though my youngest niece put my fears into words by saying that if I got my hair cut short, I’d look like a boy (she wasn’t convinced the boobs would be enough; honestly, neither was I).

You see, I’ve been in desperate need of a shake-up. I haven’t been feeling too peppy lately. In fact, I’ve been feeling downright blah, if you want to know the truth. Something had to give, something had to change. There’s very little in my life that I have the power to change right now. Too much of the changes I need require resources I just don’t have right now. But a revamp of my appearance. That I could afford.

I admit, I was more nervous the night before my hair appointment than I was the night before I had major surgery. I was more concerned with the negative outcomes of a haircut than I was the negative outcomes of a surgery, and considering those negative outcomes included death, I think that illustrates quite well just how vain I can be.

But it was more than just vanity. It was the excitement, the anticipation of doing something new, something different, of making a change. Things have been stuck in such a rut in my life that the idea of doing something as small as changing my hair style proved to be a huge mood booster.

It also ended up being quite the look booster, too. Turns out, the youngest niece doesn’t think I look like a boy (neither do I). She does, though, think I look like a completely different person.

I wouldn’t go that far, but I do think it turned out pretty well.

Don’t you?