Dreams Rebooted (Stats)

As I mentioned a few days ago, I restarted Dreams in Which I'm Dying because the two chapters I'd written so far were terrible. So here's the new stats.

New words: 2,164
Total words: 2,164

Favorite: Before that year, I’d had no idea that psychological illnesses could be magically induced. There was no reason that I should have known that, despite my abilities, but later I felt like an idiot for not figuring it out. My friends tell me I should give myself a break; I was a bit distracted, what with the delirium and the hallucinations, not to mention trying to survive my freshman year at Supernature Technical Institute, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.

----
A lot of those words were copy-pasted from the old manuscript, but a lot are pretty new, also. I'm hoping this beginning is better; I started from Adria getting on campus instead of Adria getting her acceptance letter. I'm also trying for that Sunshine-y stream-of-consciousness thing I mentioned earlier.

Now I must go do homework. I'm on fall break, but it's only two days, and I have a lot to catch up on.

Submissions and Kitty Pictures

I've started the submission process for "Dragon in a Mall" (which is going by the title "The Dragon in the Mall") by sending it to Allegory and Fantasy. Here's hoping one of them comes through, cause there don't seem to be many markets for this sort of thing. Figures.

While I'm waiting, have some kitty pictures. This is our new one, Pepper:

Kitty Pictures!

W.E. and I have our kitty. One of them. The other is getting spayed. This is Molly:



Molly is a little grouchy because she's sick. Also because I was using the flash. She has an upper respiratory infection, but she went to the vet today and hopefully she's going to be fine.

Have some more pictures of Molly:

DIWID Rebooted

The two chapters I had written of DREAMS IN WHICH I'M DYING were, quite frankly, terrible. So I started over. I have two whole sentences now:

Before that year, I’d had no idea that psychological illnesses could be magically induced. There was no reason that I should have known that, despite my abilities, but later I felt like an idiot for not figuring it out.

Those, of course, came to me right before I dozed off last night, and I had to repeat them in my head about a million times to make sure I'd remember them this morning. But this seems like a better start--kind of Sunshine-y (for those of you who know who Robin McKinley is)--and hopefully will get me going in a stronger direction.

Does Not Engender Confidence

Two rejections. In two days. For the same story. I'm glad Fantasy magazine had such a quick turnaround time, but GEEZ.

So I sent it to Pedestal. I will not be thwarted in my quest for a professional-rate publication! (Imagine me standing with my fist up in the air. If you can imagine a sword in that fist, so much the better.)

Submitting Again

I just sent "The Queen's Huntsman" to Fantasy magazine. They say their average response time is 36 hours, with a range anywhere from a few hours to 3 days. At least I won't have to wait several months for this one!

Rejection and Kitties (No Relation)

This morning I got a rejection letter from Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show for "The Queen's Huntsman." Rats.

Later this morning, W.E. and I went to the local animal shelter to get an idea of how much a kitty was going to cost us. It's actually very reasonable, and the shelter is hardcore about making sure you can give the kitty a good home. I saw a 6-month-old gray tabby that I fell in love with, and W.E. spotted a 3-year-old gray tabby named Molly that HE fell in love with, so now we're talking about getting two of them so they can keep each other company and because older kitties have such a hard time finding homes. Since both of us come from cat-rescue families, we wanted to take them all home and had to tear ourselves away from the kennels with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. As soon as we make sure it's okay with the landpeople that we have two kitties, we're going to go back and put in the application. The younger one will have to be spayed, but the older one we could take home as soon as the paperwork goes through.

And if we go back and they're BOTH GONE, I'll be very very VERY VERY sad. (Though happy that they got homes at the same time.)

I Think It's Finished

After a few more words of advice from OWW-ers, I did line-edits of "Dragon in a Mall" this morning, and managed to condense the plotline a bit so I lost about 400 words. There's now very few instances of passive voice or being verbs, and the ones that are there are necessary, unfortunately. Sometimes you just can't not use passive voice or a being verb.

So I reposted it, and assuming nobody notices that I've opened a huge plothole or something with my cuts, I'll start submitting it in a week or so.

Let me just rant for a moment, though, and say that I really hate it when people say that I've got a recurring problem with style or grammar--and then point out EVERY SINGLE instance of it. I get it. I have a passive voice issue. I know what passive voice is, how to find it, and how to fix it. You really don't need to list every single sentence in which I've used passive voice. Find something else to say and move on.

/end rant

Overall, everyone's advice has been really helpful and I'm glad I've got a group as great as OWW to help me.

DVD Mayhem

So W.E. and I spent quite a bit of good money on some nice shelves to hold our 20,000,000 DVDs. Today we finally sorted them all out and organized them alphabetically on our shelves. Guess what? We're going to need another shelf (not NOW. But soon). But here's what we've got! Aren't they pretty?!





Movieholics? Us? Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

Well, I Tried (Stats)

This week I wrote up a schedule, laying out when I was working, when I was going to do homework (and what I was going to work on during homework times), when I was going to write, when I was going to relax, etc. It's already fallen apart today because I woke up with a headache and just can't get going on DREAMS IN WHICH I'M DYING. I did, however, change the ending to "Dragon in a Mall," thanks to some constructive advice from an OWW-er, and got the new version posted for further criticism. So I guess that's something. But now I'm going to go take some painkiller, lay down, and hope this throbbing goes away before homework time starts.