So, yeah. Things are a little busy. Busier even than I thought they were–for some reason I’ve been thinking I had a month until Taos Toolbox. I don’t. I have 16 days. Plus a wedding and two birthdays to plan. I haven’t even bought my plane ticket.

I finally finished a draft of that short story I was rewriting and sent that off to a beta reader today, who came back with some great comments. It really needs a solid weekend of grooming before it’ll be ready to send out. Maybe I’ll have time at Taos, maybe not. Depends on how far ahead of the game I can get before I go. Right now I’m more worried about just trying to not be so far behind. I have to write my synopsis from scratch, starting now, and I still have some more rewriting to do on the opening chapters of the novel, and then I need to send those out to my classmates, who will meanwhile be sending theirs for us to read. Plus a ton of Lightspeed stuff.

I am panicking.

A couple of cool things happened this week. First, we learned that Rich Horton’s Year’s Best Science Fiction & Fantasy 2011 is out, and John immediately bought a copy. (I should get a contributor’s copy at some point, but I don’t know when.) Seriously, having a story included in something like that is something that seemed so impossible I never even bothered to daydream about it. And yet, there it is, sitting on the table, with my name in it. People are going to read that. (I hope they like it.)

So that was Monday. On Tuesday John and I went and spoke to the spec fic class at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference. I was nervous and severely underslept, but it still seemed to go pretty well. I was pleased to see that most of the class is writing short fiction, and surprised to learn that most of them had never submitted their work to a magazine before. We took some Lightspeed print samplers with us and let them know how to find a market and write a cover letter, advised them not to pre-reject their own stories, and told them where they could continue their spec fic education after they leave the conference.

I’ve now attended SBWC as a student, a volunteer, a staff member, and a guest. All that remains is faculty. :) (Some day!) It was a little strange, being the person people were listening to for answers instead of being the one with a thousand questions. It was a strong and very positive reminder of just how much has happened in the past two years.

Back to the panic: I am probably going to largely disappear for the next couple of weeks, both from the blog and from Twitter. I need to seriously buckle down. I can’t believe the way time got away from me. I am going to have to work very hard to get caught up and make sure I’m ready for Taos. So if I’m slow replying to emails or not terribly chatty, please don’t take it personally!

Wish me luck.

Tools: Written outline, printed draft, scissors, tape, post-its, blue pen, red pen, lots of floor space.

Where we left off yesterday in the checklist:

• Write a new beginning – done
• Do a basic rewrite of the existing story, smoothe out prose – done
• Fine-tune character motivations – done
• Print draft, get out the scissors and tape, evaluate structure, fix – in progress
• Improve beats, heighten tension
• Groom for economy: cut, cut, cut!
• Groom for voice. Find the section that reads exactly the way I want it to, get that voice in my head, and carry it through each paragraph.
• Read aloud/proofread, fix anything that I stumble over
• PROFIT. I mean…what? Submit, and cross tentacles.

I spent a little time just writing down the outline and identifying the acts and scenes. I feel pretty good about the general structure, but I’m definitely moving some things around.

I only got through half of the story tonight, but I have a narration that’s way overdue that I need to finish editing, so the second half will have to wait. That’s probably best anyway; I’d been focusing on it for two straight hours and was losing stream. Better to come back to the second half fresh tomorrow.

The rewrite is coming along pretty well, I think. I really enjoy the editing process–first drafts are like pulling teeth for me, but editing a story into shape afterward is great fun. I feel like this is exactly what I needed. I’m looking forward to getting this one out the door, but there’s a lot of work to be done first. I’m taking it in steps:

• Write a new beginning – done
• Do a basic rewrite of the existing story, smoothe out prose – done
• Fine-tune character motivations – in progress
• Print draft, get out the scissors and tape, evaluate structure, fix
• Improve beats, heighten tension
• Groom for economy: cut, cut, cut!
• Groom for voice. Find the section that reads exactly the way I want it to, get that voice in my head, and carry it through each paragraph.
• Read aloud/proofread, fix anything that I stumble over
• PROFIT. I mean…what? Submit, and cross tentacles.

Those are the steps that seem to produce the results I’m happiest with. I’m hoping to get this done by the end of the weekend. I’m fond of this story and hope that I can do it justice finally. (It is kind of funny to think that John rejected this story back in 2006, long before I had any idea who he was.)

In other news, the standing desk experience is improving. The first three days were pretty painful, but today wasn’t too bad. I find that I need to stretch and/or sit every two hours or so. Moving helps, breaks help, but by the end of the day I’m definitely ready to get off my feet. We’ll see how it is at the end of this week.

In general I’m feeling pretty good. I feel like these are two good things for me to be doing right now. The next three months promise to be absolutely crazy, so I’m enjoying slowing down a little and focusing on the work.

I’m sure I’m not the only person this happens to: Stuff starts happening in life, and the creative waters just dry up. There’s so much on your mind, it’s impossible to make up new problems for your characters to solve–you’re too busy trying to solve your own. That’s where I’m at right now. Planning a wedding, trying to get a kid into college, stressing over a partially written novel with a workshop deadline, various financial concerns, day job nonsense–it’s like each of them is a stone tossed in the well, until all of the water has been displaced, and my mind is just a dark hole full of rocks.

It’s terrible timing. I have a little free time on my hands right now, with John traveling, and I’ve sat at the keys two nights in a row unable to find anything to say. This was supposed to be my super-productive time.

The problem is that when I’m not writing, there hardly seems to be a reason to get up in the morning. Seriously. I’ll think melodramatic things like “What’s the point? I can’t write.” I did exactly that this morning. I lay there and thought about my novel and short stories in progress and just couldn’t find it in me to care about my characters’ troubles and goals, and decide what happens next.

So I decided to fix an old, broken story instead. It was the second story I trunked. Reading it now is pretty painful–there is some really terrible writing in there! But the heart of the story is good, and I think it can be saved. I’ve been at it for a couple of hours now. This is something I can probably have out the door by the end of the week, and I think that will go a long way toward helping me feel less useless.

I don’t know whether it’ll do anything to free up my mind for new material. That might only happen when these other life things get resolved.

What do you do when the well runs dry?

Literally.

When you have friends like fitness professional Sandra Wickham it’s pretty hard to keep ignoring your fitness or lack thereof. (Also hard to ignore is when one’s clothing no longer fits. Since I started working from home a year and a half ago I have “grown” two full dress sizes.) A lot of my friends are currently working on their fitness levels, some of them directly with Sandra using her Virtual Bootcamp program, others on their own.

In the past year I’ve been slowly working out what does and doesn’t work for me. Big changes that require a lot of will power don’t, so a sudden change in what I eat results in disaster after a week or two. I’m a good sprinter, but a lousy long-distance runner (metaphorically speaking. Literally speaking I’m lousy at both.) I’ve slowly honed my diet so that I know what my caloric intake is, I avoid fats, eat a lot of vegetables, and don’t eat a lot of processed anything.

That’s been a step in the right direction, but obviously I needed exercise, too. Again, slow changes: I got the 100 Pushups and 200 Situps apps for my iPhone. I do “modified” pushups–the ones where I’m on my knees instead of toes. Right now I can do 65 pretty comfortably (in five sets, which the app calculates for me.) Once I get to 100 I want to start the program over with real pushups.

So Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I do my pushups and situps followed by twenty minutes of cardio, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays I do thirty to forty minutes of cardio. (I just pushed past the thirty minute mark this week. Took me a while.)

I certainly feel better having made those changes, but it’s not enough. I started reading about how bad sitting all day is (and I was sitting roughly 15 hours a day) and how it slows a person’s metabolism waaaaay down. It also puts us at higher risk for heart disease and all manner of horrible things. So today I made the switch to a standing desk.

I had read that the first three days or so are pretty hard, and it’s true. I made the change at 2:00 p.m. today and by 5:00 my feet and legs were definitely ready for me to get the hell off them, thank you very much.

But I immediately discovered benefits that I didn’t expect. I was able to focus better. I put on some music and caught myself dancing. I wasn’t cold–and I am always cold. Normally I sit with my space heater on all day, but not today. I felt like getting out of my sweats and into, you know, grownup clothes. My whole attitude was different.

I imagine that tomorrow I’ll be hurting by the end of the day, but it should start to improve after that. My writing desk (in a different part of the house) will remain a sitting desk, but I don’t spend much time here (sadly.)

I’m really hopeful that I will see changes in how I feel and how I look. I know other people are thinking about making the change, so I’ll be sure to report back on any progress or setbacks.

I’ve told you guys before about the writers conference where I sort of grew up as a writer. The Santa Barbara Writers Conference is a week-long, very intense workshop, highly focused on craft. Its real strength has always been in the variety of workshops available, and the freedom of students to wander from one to the other until they find the one that fits. There are workshops that focus on style, romance, poetry, YA/MG, children’s literature, literary fiction, travel writing, creative non-fiction, memoir, dramatic structure and play writing, screen writing, and–of course–speculative fiction. There is something for everyone, and a qualified instructor to teach it. It is particularly specfic-friendly, for such a general conference–Ray Bradbury opens the conference every single year, and SBWC is delighted to count Christopher Moore among its alumni (he has come back to teach a Master Class in years past.) There are three sessions per day–the morning and afternoon workshops are three hours each, and the nighttime (“Pirate”) workshops go from 9:00 p.m. until everyone has read, which is sometimes not much before the sun comes up.

I invariably ended up in Matt Pallamary’s “Phantastic Fiction” class in the mornings, usually Dale Griffith Stamos and Abe Polsky’s “Dramatic Structure” in the afternoons, and if I wasn’t totally exhausted at the end of the day, John Reed’s Pirate Workshop (wine is encouraged) at night.

The conference has changed hands, and has been on hold for two years to allow it to reorganize and the economy to recover a little bit. This year it’s back on, scaled down and moved to a new location (membership is capped at 200 this year.) I won’t be able to attend as a student or a staff member this time (I spent three years on the staff, first as Volunteer Coordinator and later as Merchandise Coordinator.) There’s too much else going on this summer, but the idea of not being a part of it at all is just too sad a thought. SBWC is home to me.

As I was thinking about it, I had an idea. The idea grew into a daydream, and then into a hope. Then I wrote an email.

Sometimes you just have to ask for what you want and see what happens.

The result is that I will be speaking to Matt’s class as an industry guest. :) My career has come on a bit in the years since the conference was last held, and I’m in a position to answer the questions that I had when I first started attending as a student. I’ll probably stick around for the critique session, and hang out to get to know the new batch of students better. John will likely come with me, to meet the local SFF writers and check out this conference I’ve been yammering on about.

SBWC has a particular attachment to the term “pay it forward,” as one of its long-time faculty members is Catherine Ryan Hyde, who wrote the book by that title. I was happy to serve as a volunteer, and then on Staff, and I’m so excited to be going back in a guest capacity, to carry on a long tradition of paying it forward. Many thanks to my first teacher, Matt Pallamary, for making it happen.

John Joseph Adams is giving away ten copies of The Way of the Wizard over on GoodReads.com. As you’re undoubtedly sick of hearing, that’s where one of my stories first appeared. It’s packed full of amazing stories by the likes of Delia Sherman, Neil Gaiman, Susanna Clarke, and George R.R. Martin.

Head on over to the site and enter for your chance to win! And if you’ve already read it, why not leave a review?

Contest ends May 31.

I’ve been redecorating over here at Inkhaven and the site is sporting a bright new theme! (Looking for a new WordPress theme is like shopping for clothes only I don’t feel fat.) I’ll be updating some of the information on the site over the new few days.

This week I’m working on a new narration for StarShipSofa. It’s been a while–I haven’t been doing nearly as much narration this year as last year. It’s pretty time-consuming, but I love being part of the Sofa crew. I’ll let you guys know when it’s released.

Today I have a new post up at the Inkpunks site, “The Dos and Don’ts of Your Online Presence.” Stop by and add your thoughts in the comments!

Hi! No, I didn’t abandon my blog again. I’ve been away, in Portland, Oregon, which is a fabulous city I want to spend more time in.

I went because my dear friend, TOC-mate, favorite beta reader, and Inkpunks co-blogger Wendy N. Wagner got married! At a magical cottage in a park. That was the impetus for the packing up the whole family and heading up there, but we managed to fit in a LOT of activity in a very short weekend jaunt.

Thursday we arrived in Portland, and just took it easy with my aunt, uncle, and cousins, who graciously let us stay with them. This was John’s first time meeting this branch of the future in-laws, and naturally they all liked each other and it went beautifully.

On Friday we took my youngest daughter with us to go meet up with some old friends of mine, Tim and Sara. I’ve known Tim since 1995–we met through fandom, naturally, specifically Star Wars fandom, and he’s been madly in love and living with Sara for several years now. I knew he had planned on asking her to marry him a while ago, and then life happened and wedding plans had to be postponed–so I was thrilled when he announced that they had been stealth-married on April 11! Huge congratulations to a perfect couple.

Next was dinner, with Tim, Sara, Andrew Fuller, and Wendy. That was technically my first time meeting Wendy, a fact which I have forgotten periodically over the past two years. We email each other nearly daily, and have served as each other’s crisis hotlines for the past year–she is such a sweet and genuine person, and it was great to be able to spend time face to face for once. Andrew, too, is open and charming, and I was very glad to get the chance to meet him. There seemed to be a Bald Editor thing happening at one end of the table (Andrew, in addition to being a writer, is the editor of the Three-Lobed Burning Eye zine, now in its tenth year.)

Correlation between baldness and editorial brilliance? PERHAPS.

After dinner (most of which I didn’t eat because I was too busy chatting) we headed over to the Cedar Hills Powell’s for a reading. John introduced himself and his books, and then Wendy and I both read part of our Way of the Wizard stories. Wendy is a delightfully theatrical reader, and her story went over very well. My reading went MUCH better than the one at AggieCon (it did help that there were nearly 40 people this time, instead of six!) I got to meet several more Twitter friends and some of Wendy’s family, and generally had a great time. We ended the evening by heading over to Wendy’s wedding venue and helping out a little with the setup. She is so DIY-crafty and her ideas were so cute! My eight-year-old and Wendy’s daughter hit it off at dinner and by the end of the night were absolute BFFs. Similarly, my oldest wanted to take Wendy herself home with us. (Me too!)

Saturday morning John and I went down to Powell’s Prime before the wedding (my aunt graciously brought the kids to us there after they went to the Saturday Market) where John signed stock…and the famous Gold Room Post! His name now dwells with those of legends.

John signing the Powell's post

And then…wedding time! I’ll let this speak for itself.

Married!

Saturday night we went walking around Portland with my family and revisited Powell’s with a little more leisure time. I indulged my recent obsession with Mt. Everest by buying a copy of Into Thin Air to read on the plane. I got to catch up a little bit with my aunt and extract her official endorsement of my upcoming marriage. (Always a relief.)

Sunday was a travel day, and the day of the Big Announcement that we’d been sitting on for the past two weeks. We were standing in LAX when the Hugo ballot was announced: John is up for Best Editor, Short Form; Lightspeed is up for Best Semiprozine; and Carrie Vaughn’s “Amaryllis,” which appeared in Lightspeed’s very first issue, is up for Best Short Story. The only disappointment I have about the final ballot is that Adam-Troy Castro’s “Arvies” didn’t make it, which I consider a travesty, especially given that the category only has four stories in it this year. (It did make the Nebula ballot, though, so I guess I shouldn’t be too sad. It just seems more Hugo-aligned, to me.)

Very happy for John and everyone at Lightspeed. And man, so many other great nominees in every category. If you haven’t seen the ballot yet, take a look.

So all in all, it was a very busy and happy weekend. But now it’s Monday, and time to get back to the reality of the day job, terrible dogs, and an unfinished novel. Hope you had a great weekend too!

Spent today out at Sanford Winery with our friends Paula and Allison. They’re spending the night here tonight and allegedly making us huevos rancheros in the morning! John ate four different varieties of Thai cuisine tonight and enjoyed them all. (I know where we’re going to Date Night from now on!)

I hope you had a great Caturday also. In lieu of anything meaningful or educational, here is a picture of our cat. (Allison, incidentally, is horribly allergic and has been a truly good sport about having this animate bit of nonsense trying to rub on her all evening. Yay, Claritin!)