Okay, still editing

There are a couple of little details I need to drag out of myself. Then, it will be done.

Still editing

Okay, it's still not finished. But I have made a lot of progress. I feel like I am, as they say, over the hump.

That awful last edit

Tomorrow I am not going to let myself go outside until I have a draft I'm happy to let other people read.

Even longer time...

I see it has been over a year since the previous post. I do hope no-one was checking back. Oh well, in case I'm malingering in a dark corner of someone's feed reader I should give a bit of an update...

I'm still writing, mostly hammering away at the same themes as before. I need to make myself edit stories until I am (almost) happy with them and then submit them to publishers. It's obvious, I know, but I've somehow managed to get to this point without having done so. Maybe now I'm ready.

Long time no blog

No posts for a while. I was pretty exhausted so I had to keep myself away from computer screens as much as possible for a week or so and rest my poor little mind.

But now I'm back; rested and refreshed. I've finished the first draft of my telepathy story and I've started my depression story. I'm still playing around with novel ideas but still not really committed (or sure any of my ideas could live to novel length).

Inspiration

I was reading this conversation on one of Adam Roberts' blogs. It inspired a number of insights into depression and had me struggling to compose a comment expressing them.

Specifically, I was thinking about a sense of self and how it relates to depression. (I wish they'd called it a model of self. I would have understood so much sooner.) That made me speculate about a future piece of software that we could install in our brains and would enhance our sense of self. I can see how it might be experienced.

So now I have another story that I absolutely must write. That makes two stories that are really pressing to be written. I was going to give myself the weekend off but I'm going to try and get one of them drafted.

Submission

So, this Sunday I submitted Stackspace, the story I read out at Lumb bank, to Strange Horizons. I know I said I'd submit three stories at once but it felt like the right thing to do so I did it. (It's also much easier to submit fiction through a web form than bother with some arcane system involving sticking pieces of paper together and handing them to a network of angry men in strange livery. You don't even have to get dressed!)

This week I have been working on a new story about telepathy. I had a breakthough last night when I had a vision of telepathy programmed in a web-like manner*. Following through the consequences of this is going to take a while. The piece is growing rather quickly in my head. I can currently see it coming in at seven to ten thousand words which will be something of a record for me.

Other than that, I have another short piece which I will polish up and try to find a home for this weekend. Hopefully, this will redress the shocking lack of stories where the narrative is driven by JavaScript.

* That's a RESTful architectural style for all you techies out there. In telepathy, application state must be stored by the client. I just can't see it working otherwise.