The Journal of Michael Merriam

Yesterday I had the worst migraine I've experienced in years. By a little after noon it was full blown. I took my maximum amount of imitrex and slept until nearly 5:00 pm. I woke up, but was still headachey, and dizzy, and feeling over-drugged to boot. careswen brought me toast and tea, and ended up stretching back out on the bed. greykev came and cooked dinner for us, and I managed to come downstairs, eat, and chat quietly for about an hour and a half, then I started feeling tired, dizzy, and still had a moderate headache, so back to bed I returned. I awoke at 4:00am, tired and dopey, but without the headache. I dozed for another hour and half while the Reverend Selena purred and nudged me with her nose to make sure I was not dead, until I finally felt well enough to get up and make coffee.

So yeah, completely lost yesterday, except that the migraine didn't start until after I'd taken out the trash and done other housework, which seems so very unfair.

I did manage to read quite a bit of pameladean's Tam Lin in my more lucid moments. I am near the end of the book and feeling sad that it is almost over.

If something important happened to you yesterday and you posted it on LJ, let me know.

I'm trying to get back into the habit of reading, because really. I know that, compared to most of my SF/F/H fandom peers, I am quite poorly read. This is a sad thing, because there was a time when I read daily, and went through books pretty quickly (about two a week at my peak). In fact, the single biggest complaint my ex-wife had was: "You've always got your nose stuck in a damned book!" That should have been a clue that she was destined to be an ex-wife.

But I digress.

Over the last few years, as real life and blindness and homeownership and just the general everyday mess of living has sucked up more and more of my time, I've been reading less and less. I've decided to change that. My goal is modest: Read two books a month. I'm hoping if I can get back into the habit of reading, I'll pick up speed again. The gods know I have enough unread books on my bookcases to keep me busy for sometime to come. So I've created a system where I pull a book off a different shelf each time, so that I'm constantly working through my bookcases and not, say, stuck reading the 15 David Eddings books we inherited from careswen's grandmother, all in a row.

I finished Octavia Butler's Bloodchild last week, a birthday present from markgritter, mrissa, and timprov (Thanks, guys!). It is a collection of her short fiction, and we all know how I love me some short fiction. I was blown away. I knew Butler was good (as in one of the Greats of Our Time) but I guess I had forgotten just how good she was. I had read a couple of these stories before ("Bloodchild" and "Speech Sounds," both of which I adore) and was pleased at how much I enjoyed the others, with "The Evening, and the Morning, and the Night" being my favorite of the ones I had not read.

And now I am reading Pamela Dean's Tam Lin because somehow I still have not read this book (I know! I know!), despite the fact that I've read her other works, and I've read all but one other of the Terri Windling Fairy Tale Series Books. I’m three chapters in, and am utterly charmed and captivated.

I broke a door off a cabinet yesterday. I was putting a new trash bag in the trash can, and one of the doors of the free standing cabinet I keep spices and liquor in popped open slightly, probably from me bumping the cabinet. Of course, this was under my rather narrow field of vision, so…

Yeah, smashed into it, hurt my knee and tore the door up. careswen assured me that we can take the other door off and she can make a curtain to cover the contents, which will be fine, but it kind of threw me into a downward spiral. Sure, it's a stupid free standing cabinet I bought at Target, and I could replace it easy enough. It's not a big deal. Except that it is. Sometimes this blind thing gets really tiring, the more so when I'm destroying my own possessions by accident because of it.

Gaming went okay last night. It could have used a little more action, I think, but my players aren't ready to depose me as GM just yet.

I love the fact that we all (the gamers in our group) bring food for sharing with the rest of the group, and the wraps we made last night from the various goodies people brought were tasty. That said, I shouldn't have eaten any red onion, because I've been slightly sick to my stomach all morning, and the red onion is the obvious culprit.

I have the Twin Cities Speculative Writers Fiction Network Meeting at noon. I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, and since I'm one of the actual speakers on this month's topic, (Publishing 101) I need to make sure I show up on time.

I'm in the process of writing a Publishing 101 essay, which I may use as a handout at CONvergence this year.

I started reading Rudy Rucker's The Fourth Dimension: A Guided Tour of the Higher Universes in preparation of writing "Fourth Dimensional Pony in the Concourse of the Lost." My poor brain.

More good movement on Rija's Tale yesterday and this morning. I might take tomorrow off from working on it in order to complete some other writing projects.

Rija's Tale

…or at least high energy, which was good, because The Great SF/F/H Book Migration took place today. I brought all books downstairs, then the bookcases, and then set everything back up. It is done and I am tired.

I wrote more today. This small goal of 500 words a day seems to be working well at getting me back in the swing of things.

Rija's Tale



I didn't do any other writing related stuff today, but I'll make up for it tomorrow, I hope.

I need to prepare for gaming this Saturday, and then I'm one of the features speakers at this months meeting of the Twin Cities Speculative Fiction Network. I managed for get out of doing the "Publishing 101" panel at Minicon, but I'm doing it for my group this Sunday.

I just polished off a big bowl of popcorn that was smothered in something resembling a reasonable butter substitute, but I'm still hungry. I'm going to go raid the kitchen and then work on some projects for an hour before I go to bed.

I am very nearly finished with restructuring the main part (i.e. the Mae and Jill part) of the novel. One more scene to write and that part is done. Next I will need to work Fay's diary entries on the wall, rewriting them to match the new direction of the plot and add some more insight into the antagonists. Create a new dénouement, and it's all done. You'd think I'd be sick of this novel and these characters by now, but I'm not.

I will, however, be happy to finish this novel and move on the other projects.

We are still trying to come up with a title for the short story collection. I suspect careswen and I will brainstorm this over the weekend. I might try to get some input from the people who are providing blurbs, and the cover artist as well.

I took the Christmas tree down today. I like to put the tree up with a group of people to help. It's good to laugh and talk while we work on decorating and setting up, but when it comes to the take down, I prefer to do it myself. I find the act of taking the decorations down and disassembling the tree to be relaxing and meditative. Unfortunately it took all my energy to take the tree down, so I may not get around to unpacking the new cookware (it arrived last night) until tomorrow.

The Reverend Selena was given a Furminator for Christmas. Dudes, if you are owned by a cat, get one of these things. She loves to be groomed and we've pulled off at least four more cats worth of hair from her body since starting to using it. The Reverend is sleek and plush and not hacking hairballs.

careswen received The Burning Crusade expansion for World of Warcraft, and a gig of ram for her PC. I'm going to miss her.

Luckily I was gifted with some exceedingly cool books by people whose taste in books I trust, so I'll have something to do during those lonely nights while my wife is off killing orcs and trolls and such. (Actually, she doesn't play a whole lot. Once, maybe twice a week, so don't worry, I'm not going to be a video game widower!)

The ick is firmly entrenched in my lungs now. I'm hacking and coughing and wheezing. It is...unattractive. I need another zinc tab and some Dayquil.

We bought some mixed nuts in the shell for the holidays, mostly to see if careswen's squirrel nutcrackers actually worked (they do, but not very well). Today the real live squirrels are out and about, so I tossed some nuts out the door to see what they would make of them. You get a real sense of how sharp their little teeth are when you see one shred a brazil nut in seconds.

Okay. I'm worn out. I'm going to nap for a bit and then try and finish that last scene.

Peace,
Michael

As usual I'm the last to the party (or kerfluffle, whichever the case may be) here (http://www.jeffvandermeer.com/2007/10/16/the-triumph-of-competence/) and here (http://matociquala.livejournal.com/1232451.html) concerning the quality of modern short fiction, whether writers are settling for being merely competent, weren't the old days so much better, and the evils of workman-like prose.

Okay, see, I can understand where both sides are coming from. I can. Here's the thing: In order to get to whatever it is Jeff wants from short fiction, the first thing, the very first thing, a new writer needs to be is -- is competent.

Because it's quite fine to swing for the bleachers every time you come up to bat, but before you have any chance of hitting one out of the park, you have to understand how to swing the bat in the first place (you know, which hand goes on top of the other, don't lift your front foot before the swing, make sure you're looking at the pitcher and ball, not your girlfriend sitting above the dugout). You have to develop a level of competency before the good things start to happen.

And if, while you are developing that level of competency, you manage to get some positive reinforcement as a writer in the way of sales, I would think that would be incentive to continue working and growing in your craft.

Here's the deal: You're not going to hit a home run every time. At first you're going to strike out. A lot. Then you might start to make contact with the ball, perhaps even get yourself a single or double from time to time.

Not everyone gets to be Hank Aaron or Willie Mays.
Sometimes, you get to be Roger Metzger

As Bear said: not every writer gets to be a Chip Delany or a Kelly Link.
Sorry, but it's true. So deal.

And I see no problem with -- if you can't be brilliant -- being the best you can while doing the thing you love and entertaining the reader.

Personally, I'm pretty happy that I've come this far this quickly, though of course I want more. Just because I've gotten good at getting on base (as in making some nice small press and semi-pro sales) doesn't mean that I'm not swinging for the bleachers every time I start a new project (am I stretching this baseball thing too far?).

I suspect this latest slapfight is as mostly about the definition of the word competent.

I also suspect it is as much about individual reading taste. One person's, sharp, edgy, avant-garde literature may well be so much inscrutable crap to someone else, and the kind of Big Epic Fantasy that sweeps away one reader may feel like just another Tolkien rip-off to the next.

Me? I just write the story I have at the moment, the best way I know how.

YMMV

In Peace,
Michael

After much conversation, careswen and I have decided we are going to collect some of the short stories I've had published in various magazines into a self-published anthology. I talked to several traditional publishers about this, but the truth is, collections don't sell very well, even for fairly established writers. So we are going to do this ourselves. Of the over thirty pieces I've sold and published in the last three years, about two dozen of them have had the rights revert back to me.

The idea here is to put out something professional that I can give to family, and maybe take to cons to sell to people at readings. My fiction is scattered all over the place and most of my family members do not have access to magazines published in Australia, or a real good working knowledge of how to use the internet.

My question for you, O Flist, is this:

What size book, trade paperback (6 X 9) or standard pocket paperback (4.25 X 6.875), do you prefer and why? You're input will be greatly appreciated and will enter you in a random drawing to win a free copy of the collection when we publish it.

Help me, flist. You're my only hope...

1. We spent yesterday afternoon walking around the Sculpture Garden and then Loring Park. It was a lovely day and we got to hear the bells at two different churches ring out for weddings.

2. Last night's gaming session was low-keyed, but useful. The players are starting to put the puzzle pieces together. I've had to go back and retrofit the game's mythology and continuity a couple of times, but I think I've managed to keep it from being too confusing. Three more sessions to go, including the explosive finale. Then I take a break from running games for a couple of months.

3. I have this book on order from the library, but I suspect I will need to own it. I'm slowly building a collection of books about Minneapolis – St. Paul history. Oh yes, I am.

4. Writing long-hand in the notebook has made my production increase again. It's just easier to slip in little bits of writing here and there if I'm working long-hand. Of course, then I have to type it up, but no system is perfect.

5. Yes, I had to increase my projected word count. Again.

Fey and Mage In Need of a Title

1) "Weaving Threads" has sold to Cats with Wings.

2) careswen, greykev, and I are working on getting my website back up. We were hosting with our old cable service, but they were sold to Comcast. Rather than move the website to Comcast, we've decided to buy space on sff.net. I'm currently trying to write taglines for the stories I've published. I suck at this.

3) "Over the Bridge" is live at The Harrow:
http://www.theharrow.com/journal/index.php/journal/article/view/2106/651

4) I'm reading kellylink's collection of short stories, Magic for Beginners. It's eating my brain.

5) June Stats:
Submissions Made: 6
Sales: 1
Rejections: 5
Other: 0
Publications: 1
Crits Given: 16
Approx Word Count: 6126
Stories Circulating: 12

6) Current Works In Progress:

Fey and Mage: They Fight Crime!


Fey and Mage: They Fight Each Other!


Space Opera Pirates!


Steadfast

635 new words, which is less than I wanted but more than I thought I would get, everything considered. That said, I can feel the momentum starting to build as I re-familiarize myself with this character

I finished matociquala's Blood and Iron. My first impression is that I enjoyed it, which I did. I'm still need some time to let it simmer before I talk about it at length. I have Bujold's The Hallowed Hunt to read next. I might start it this evening. Meanwhile, the Twins are on the tube.

Into this Land