Rejection and Reading

Some miscellany for today.

I owe thanks to my anonymous commenter of a few days ago. Whoever s/he was, s/he drove a spike of traffic to my blog the likes of which I haven't seen since I got an acceptance in late January. Anonymous criticism: the gift that keeps on giving.

Speaking of comments, a handful of readers (okay really just like three readers) have complained that leaving comments on this blog is annoying and buggy. I didn't understand how that could be, as comments were as open as I could get them - anonymity OK, no spambot text boxes required, etc. A whiz friend has helped me to solve this problem, with any luck, so comment away, even with silly comments, because I love comments. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled comments yearning to speak your mind.

On Tuesday I got the most painfully awesome rejection I imagine I'll ever get (after waiting for six months): "I really wish I could use it, but unfortunately, I can't. ...I suspect you won't have much trouble placing it elsewhere, though, and I look forward to seeing more from you in the future." I laughed a bit at the first half of this last sentence, as it's a pretty exact echo of someone else's words about this story (crazy robot), and this is my third rejection for it.

Despite the positiveness of this rejection, I'm not sure what to do next with this story. It's a bit long as compared to many markets' preferred lengths - over 8,000 words - and it's definitely in the realm of SF. Problem is, this rejection was primarily because the story's too soft in the science for this market. Also, it has sex and violence in it, which nixes markets like Clarkesworld and Orson Scott Card's Etc. Too long (and not right) for Shimmer, and Strange Horizons didn't want it. I'm going to scour Duotrope again for a market that'll suit, but I'm not that optimistic, as my notes from the fall (when I did this the first time) indicate pretty slim pickings for a long, soft, violent, sexy SF story. Maybe I'll just retire it and write some more.

The itch to write has started to come back into my fingers. I have plenty of ideas in my notes book, but none of them are developed, which means a lot of work before the regular work begins. Boo. And I've really enjoyed a total O.D. on movies over the last few weeks. (Like, a gross gluttonous mass of movies. Three a day, sometimes.) But I think I'll have to get back to the red chair - and the notebook - pretty soon.

On to books: I read The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender on Monday, and passionately adored it. I read it all day, compulsively, to the point where when I emerged from the book, all sorts of things had gone on while I was reading that I had neither heard nor seen. Like the dishes getting done and the dishwasher getting started, and my husband switching video games. I'd had no clue at all. GoodReaders were not so kind to the book, but I believe they were looking for plot where there was intended to be emotion and concreteness where suggestiveness was purposeful. There were answers I wanted badly to know at the end of the book, but answering them was not the point; the journey was the point. I recognized so much of myself, cringing in horror, in various places. What an extraordinary book.

And I finished Fifty Writers on Fifty Shades. Worth reading for the handful of essays that were good, but the essays that weren't good - most of them - pissed me off. Some of them were little more than advertisements for whatever work the essayist did, whether s/he was a writer or an educator or an event promoter (!). You may be unsurprised to learn that the authors who had some dabbling knowledge and/or lacked personal experience with BDSM? They saw nothing wrong with the power dynamics in the books, while those who had deep, broad knowledge of the subject were distressed by the relationship portrayed. Gee, I wonder what that means.

I also finished Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber, which took me a very long time for such a short book. I didn't like to start right in on another story as soon as I was finished with the last. The stories tired me, they were so lavish and thick with detail and subtlety. I have a short list of friends to whom I want to send copies of this book, because despite all that it was a remarkable book. But I have this feeling like she's an author that those friends already know about (which is part of why those friends are such cool people), and I'm the last one to the party, and I don't want to embarrass myself.

And finally, I started By Nightfall, Michael Cunningham's latest. He is best known for The Hours, but his 2006 book Specimen Days basically made me want nothing more or less than to write a book exactly like Specimen Days. (And if it takes me my entire life, I will.) The first hundred pages of By Nightfall are...kind of bad, to my great surprise and disappointment. But I'm planning to read the whole thing anyway, so I'll keep you posted.

We Both Have Truths - Are Mine the Same as Yours?

Finally, FINALLY, I finished 2666 this week. Although I enjoyed the fifth and final section far more than the fourth and longest section, what had come before had wearied me so much that I was really pushing to get through it, force-feeding my eyes with the content of each page, rather than enjoying the journey, which is a shame. Also, I had hoped the storylines of the book would all tie up, because the writer so obviously knew what he was doing. They did not. Very little, close to nothing, was clearer at the close than it had been when I started the damn thing. I admire this book, but can't recommend it. Pieces of it took my breath away, and I enthusiastically enjoyed its unpredictability in the first few hundred pages, but I wouldn't wish on anyone such frustration as I ultimately felt.

I do agree pretty much 100% with this review. Spoilers there, and a real shock: the crimes, the murders of hundreds of women described in sickening, wearying detail, are real.

On New Year's Eve I read The Lifespan of a Fact, which engaged and interested me more than pretty much anything I've read in print (i.e. anything not longform journalism on the internet) since The Chronology of Water. I previously wrote about its central problem, and about it, here. I know I have friends reading this who are as interested as I am in nonfiction vs. fact and the awkward place of "the truth" in both essays and reality. Buy. This. Book. Don't miss it. Don't let the formatting or the overpricedness deter you. Get it and read it, and maybe read it again.

My other suggestion (presuming that you take the first one) is that you read a little tidbit about John D'Agata and his purpose as a writer before you read the book, or you may end up thinking he's just a complete dickface right up to the point where the book's 75% over. For instance, that he has an MFA in poetry lent some meaning to his claims about the rhythm of this or that phrase.

If you hate the fact-checker instead for his obscene attention to detail, well, let's dialogue about that. Soul of nitpicking that I am, I adored him.

Right now I'm reading The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter. I'm having a bit of a where-have-you-been-all-my-life reaction to her. Such fascinating, subtle, unique writing. Like Poe with sharper knives.

A break for music. I'm having an intense romance with electropop and I can't stop listening to this one:

I also recently read two longform articles I wanted to draw some attention to. First is this one, a Wired article (which I read in the actual physical magazine!) about John McAfee, the guy who invented the eponymous software and is now being sought for murder in Belize. In the reading it reminded me of one of the most interesting longform articles I've ever read, this one, about a guy who crashed a $1.3 million Ferrari after many bizarre only-in-America (and-possibly-Dubai-at-this-point) adventures. If you like long interesting profiles, the one about McAfee is as much a no-miss as the one about Eriksson.

I also read this article, which I found unfocused and snooty and indulgent and confusing. What am I missing about it? Maybe just that it's Harper's? I thought it had some kind of essential, thundering, Rome-too-shall-fall point to make but completely missed the mark in making it. But perhaps I'm not smart enough or old enough to see it.

On to the writing: I revised the opera story yesterday thanks to some strong feedback and sent it out to a market. I also typed the chapter of KUFC that I'd written in my notebook back in the halcyon days of 2012 and fretted briefly about chapter divisions not working out especially well in the last 5,000 words or so. Then I wrote another few pages before bed, a scene that I'm not sure I'm actually going to use, and laid in bed for a few minutes wanting very much to go back into the living room and turn on the light and write for another three hours. And then I fell asleep. There are lots of reasons why I don't stay up late and write (something I am always wanting to do but never do), all of them good, but I wish I had the stones to push them all aside and do it.

Yesterday I learned that Victrolas don't have horns; those are gramophones. Victrolas are big cabinets. I think I'm going to have to learn some things about Zeppelins in order to keep writing. I love learning things, but annoyingly, my projects seem to set me in search of obscure shit instead of easy-to-find shit. It was a pleasure to have to learn a bit about the Civil War last year, because it was so much easier than learning about the history of goddamn Greenland.

On Saturday I go to the opera for Les Troyens. Which is five hours and forty-five minutes long. I'm bringing a sandwich.

Finally, a PSA. On this blog I tried to keep to every-other-day posts in 2012, and I've determined that that's too often. Not for me, but for you. When I space out the posts, I get more comments, which indicates to me that people are reading with more interest. So maybe it'll be every three days, or twice a week, or something. Not as often as before. Just so you know.