Balancing Books & Baby

One of the Pixies was wondering how to balance writing and a new baby. In this month's Clarkesworld, Tim Pratt explains how he does it. I don't think that there's any special formula. We all just find our way. But I'm always fascinated to hear other people's stories.

Quote for the Day

"I've seen things you wouldn't believe and I believe in things you can't see."
--Danger Ranger

"I think sabotaging the mundane is the wonderful, subversive civic duty that we have as weird bohemians."
--Peter Doty


Go ahead, people. Weird your world.

Quote for the Day (sort of) Continued

To continue on Nola's theme of not-sucking-ness... I'm currently reading "If You Want to Write" by Brenda Ueland. It's great-- more philosophical than "how to." One of my favorite quotes is:

"And so no wonder you don't write, and put it off month after month, decade after decade. For when you write, if it is to be any good at all, you must feel free, free and not anxious. The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you're interesting or very important or wonderfully funny; whose attitude is: 'Tell me more, tell me all you can, I want to understand more about everything you feel and know and all the changes inside and out of you. Let more come out!' And if you have so no such friend-- and you want to write-- well then you must imagine one."

I'm awfully glad I don't have to imagine you folks (I mean, I didn't imagine you... did I?:)

AgentQuery

AgentQuery is a database of agents and authors so you can look up your favorite author and find out who represents them. I thought that this would be very helpful for those of use who are getting ready to query agents.

http://www.agentquery.com/

Quote of the Day, sort of.

"You don't suck.  No really, you don't.  In fact you are even farther from sucking than you were this time last year when you didn't suck."

A very loose paraphrase from last night's Death Pixie meeting.  

I must say, this is a large part of why I belong to a writer's group.  I need people in my life whom I believe to be trustworthy resources to tell me that the voices in my head are wrong.  I really might actually be OK at this writing thing, I am improving, and most of all I don't suck.

Now to find a way to pound this tasty tidbit into my brain BETWEEN meetings . . . 

Research??

I've done a bit of research in the course of writing my works in progress. They're "historical" fantasy, stories set in my versions of colonial and civil war era America. I slogged through books on the French and Indian War, women in the colonial era, collections of letters by settlers in Minnesota, and more websites than I can count. Hopefully the facts I've collected will make my worlds deep and stable enough to hold my stories.

Are you a researcher or do you create your worlds out of whole brain-cloth? How do you organize your research or inspirations?

Quotes for the Day

"If the doctors told me I had six more minutes to live, I wouldn't brood. I would type faster."

--Isaac Asimov

"I write my books and raise the children. Anything else just fritters me away."

--Ann Tyler

Tate Hallaway Reads

Local vampire chick-lit author Tate Hallaway reads Monday April 28th at 6:30pm at Dreamhaven Books (912 W. Lake St., Mpls). I know many of us have met Tate and followed the spicey adventures of her heroine, Garnet Lacey, who has a vengeful goddess living inside her and a knack for hooking up with dangerous men. Sadly, 6:30 is a bit mid-kids'-bedtime for me, but I thought I'd mention it in case anyone else wanted to check it out.
Hope all is well!

Silly Contest

Here's another fun contest to get your creative juices flowing. Just write a scene in which each sentence begins with a different letter of the alphabet, consecutively from A to M. ("Anger boiled inside her. Bill was back. Could he have picked a worse day?" etc.) For submissions details, go to www.coolstuff4writers.com
Obviously, don't take time away from your big projects to play with this. But if you're stalled and need a writing exercise to get you going again, I think this might be fun. Again, maybe we could play with it at our next meeting?

Anthology Call

Hi, folks! I ran across this anthology call for submissions and thought I would pass it on :
"Winter Hawk press seeks fairytale, myth and legend in poetry, fiction, essayand short drama for its anthology, "Zeus Seduces the Wicked Stepmother in the Saloon of the Gingerbread House." Typed, doublespaced with SASE. Deadline June 30. No children's literature. P.O. Box 44810 Boise, ID 83711."

Norma, weren't you riffing on the Princess and the Pea lately? Katie, if you're reading this, how about the Bluebeard story? George, what about Sibling Rivalry? I had an idea that might work. Of course I have to actually write it... :)

Hope all is well!

Frik-n-Frak

I thought I was safe, but it was only an illusion.

Season 4 of Battlestar Galactica is streaming online for free. I'd resigned myself in my cable-free state to waiting for the dvd. But now I don't have to. Thanks a lot interweb! Some of us have work to do.

Fine! I'll watch it. But I won't not enjoy it. Frak!

http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/

WD Contest

Every issue Writers Digest magazine has a contest. They give a writing prompt and invite readers to submit stories of 750 words or fewer. The best story is published in the next issue. I have always thought it would be cool to see a Death Pixie win this contest and this month's prompt lends itself particularly well to speculative fiction. It is "A man walks into a bar. But it isn't a bar." Email your piece to:

YourStoryContest@fwpubs.com (Entries pasted in body of email. No attachments.) By MAY 10th.

Or if you would like to work on them together, maybe we could find time at our next meeting?

Quotes for the Day

"Getting the first draft finished is like pushing a peanut with your nose across a very dirty floor"

--Joyce Carol Oates

"I learned that your should feel while writing... like a child stringing beads in kindergarten-- happy, absorbed and quietly putting one bead after another."

--Brenda Ueland

How do you feel today, Death Pixies? Are you peanut pushing or bead stringing? (Is there a third option, like happily pushing a bead with your nose across a floor that's really dirty because you wrote instead of mopping it? Because I think that's me.)

Happy April!