[Draws Arrow to Next Week]

This is a busy week, and I haven't read or written anything new in the recent past. (Ulysses is stymieing me from reading any more than my required classwork.) Matter of fact, that's getting to be a problem. I've done plenty of revision recently, and I've written and revised a few essays, but I haven't written any new fiction since I finished the dissection/hot springs story in August. Over the last few months I feel like I've gotten the hang of revision a bit better than before, and while, OKAY, it is fairly satisfying after all (grumble grouse), I'm hurting for the feeling of fresh words on the page.

I know exactly the story I want to write, but it requires rotating among well-defined characters, and I need to do detailed character sketches and plot out how the arc of the story corresponds to the switching perspectives before I actually get to the writing. That seems like a lot of work, so I haven't done it.

Rather like the other big thing looming on my to-do list: my website (kcoldiron.com, don't go look). It is more than a year out of date, and I need to go in there and take out all the yoga stuff and put in my recent publications (especially since my appearance in Theaker's Quarterly Fiction is coming up very soon). I know it'll take merely a full morning or a full afternoon, and if I just set that aside I can knock it out and stop worrying, but I've been putting it off for...well, over a year.

In other news, I've had some very friendly rejections in the last week. One called my story "hypnotic" but said the conflict wasn't evident enough. (This is unsurprising, and fine with me.) One said that the particular essay I pitched didn't work for them, but "feel free to keep in touch." I've had some pretty unfriendly ones too; a mag I've been coveting for yeeeears kept my story long past their average time for rejecting stories and well into their average time for accepting stories (according to Duotrope), and then sent me a form rejection anyway.

Insert paragraph here about how rejections are mere returns, and editors have logic and demands that have nothing to do with me, and getting my hopes up like that is a reflection on me, not the mag. Okay, check. It still stung for a few hours.

The high temperatures here are supposed to drop below 90 at last by the end of the week. I'm really looking forward to that. I like opening the balcony door in the mornings and letting the fresh air come in, and it's a low point in the day when it gets so hot inside that I have to close the door and turn on the wretched air conditioning. It's not exactly a central air system, so it's quite noisy - we have to turn up the TV and our voices when it's on - and it kicks on and off about every ten minutes. I'm fortunate to have air conditioning, and to be able to afford it, but being at home with it all day long gets very seriously on my nerves during the summer. What passes for autumn here will be nice.

Here's something for you to read that's much more interesting than me talking about the weather, although it's not an especially happy story. I've read it every few months or so since I found it, and I just can't get over it. So stunningly written.