*It's taken me awhile, but I'm starting to see a pattern for the way things are published. There's a mystery to it that doesn't translate well. It's a hard thing to realize that you can do nothing wrong and still fail. It's scary to think that I might be pretty good, and still not ever sell a thing.

*You write your story, but that's not enough. You have to sell it, and the people who want to buy it can't tell you exactly what they're looking for because that might obligate them in some way. So, you buy some books, you surf for advice. You hear about how the best time to sell is on a Tuesday during the full moon, and how some publishers or editors won't touch you unless you smell of lavender from the highlands and are carrying an arctic badger under one arm. So, you fly to Scotland to pick up the flowers, and you put together a team and head for the arctic. By the time you find the badger, you're cold and tired and smelling rather more of badger than of lavender. You stand outside of your home rolling in the plant, while the badger's gnawing your side off on a Tuesday night with the moon as your guide, and you address an envelope to the publisher making sure you have a SASE. And they still might reject you. And what's worse, with all the badger/lavender questing, the writing's become a little forgotten.

*Remember when a project was new, and you couldn't get enough of it? But, as time goes on, you must inevitably finish with your draft, and think what you've written is great. And then you have to edit. And god, do you have to edit. You have to remember to add parts in and take them out, to flesh out such-and-so here, and remember that the traumatic experience from Chapter 3 must come back to haunt them in 13. I just discovered that I left one character completely hanging. He seemed so important to me at the time, but I left him out at the end. Makes me wonder if I should have cut him completely. It doesn't help that, closer that I get to the finish line, the more I fucking hate these people. Seriously, I'd write a fake scene where they all die, but I don't want to waste the creative energy that wanes as I edit. I did kill more of them than I had planned, but I really want to off them all. And the more I edit, late at night, the weirder my thoughts get. How would my story go if I replaced my main character with a 400lb gorrilla named Tanya? Ah, the joys of writing.

*I think a writer will eventually ask herself what she wants to do with her writing. Not in terms of marketing, but whether or not she ever wants anyone to read it. A web board person I read is writing an epic poem about himself. He has no intention of ever letting anyone read it. It's just a personal writing exercise. I know a lot of writers keep journals just to keep them in the habit of writing. But it's not really intended to be read by other people, and often, other people might have a hard time following it.

When I first started writing, I wrote a short story in which I didn't name any of the characters. I was trying to make a point about the facelessness of modern man or some shit. When I let people read it, they did not, as I had intended, praise my genius, but instead said, "You forgot to name the characters, and I couldn't keep track of anyone." Forgot?!?! I wondered if they thought I was stupid. Instead, I realized they were actually being kind, assuming that no one would intentionally confuse her reader. That's when I realized that if a writer intends for someone to read her writing, she must make the writing comprehensible. I know e.e. cummings didn't capitalize and that Joyce wasn't a great fan of punctuation, and someone probably thought they were making a mistake the first time they showed their work to someone, too. Teachers and professors usually warn their students about cummings and Joyce before they read them, or the students might also see misprints or bad editing instead of what the author intended.

In a past critique group, I corrected some commas in one man's manuscript. He huffily told me that every comma was there on purpose, but he didn't explain that purpose, and I couldn't puzzle it out. The only thing I saw was that the constant comma use made the pages hard to read. Now why would anyone want to torture their poor writing group like that?

My advice, if you're trying to prove a point in your writing, use theme, character, setting and symbolism to drive your argument home, not grammar trickery. You'll confuse less people, and someone might even get what you're trying to say.

Showing your writing to complete strangers is a difficult hurdle that we writers have to jump over, and anything that helps them comprehend what you're trying to say will make it that much easier. A writer shouldn't have to feel like she must write to appease the lowest intellect, but, if it's her first time showing her writing to others, I think she should do what she can to make it comprehensible. It also helps to not get angry if your reader doesn't recognize your genius. ;)

* I haven't posted anything in a long time. Sometimes editing can be very mind-numbing, so that I don't actually think about anything I'm doing. I just get it out and do it. I was amazed the other day by how a project can still seem too big, even when I've completed the rough draft. I try not to think, "Yeah, this whole thing too boring," or "this isn't good enough for the rest of the book here," when I can't think of anything better. I've figured out that those thoughts signal time for a break. Go have a glass of water, take a turn about the room, and come back with fresher eyes. Then I can focus on the scene, making it the best it can be and separate it (for a time) from the rest of the book. I want to wait until I'm done with scene-editing before looking at the book as a whole. Right now, I have to stop and edit as I go; I can't just sit and read. Hopefully, when I'm done with scene editing, I will be able to sit and read and see how the whole thing works together. I guess I'll have to wait and see.

* When people tell me that they're giving up, it makes my stomach hurt. Every book, every speaker, they all say the same thing: never say die. Sometime along the way, I guess I bought into that. I can't imagine stopping. I get depressed, I have bad thoughts about my writing and whether or not it'll ever get published, but I still stuff those envelopes and write those cover letters. Does this mean I'm 'better' somehow than those who decide to quit? Absolutely not. Is there shame in quitting? My head says no, but my gut...it takes more to convince it. I guess I wanted to feel like those parents in the 80's whose kids were doing marajuna. I don't want quitting to be an option. Start down that road, and your life is over man! No longer seeking publication is a gateway drug to not living...or something like that. But there's also Charles deLint, who, at a con I attended in Austin, told one young woman that if she didn't have the discipline for this business, perhaps she should choose another career. Those weren't his exact words, but that was the gist. I'm going to keep going. If you're reading this, I hope you keep going, too. We're all in this together, man.

*So I've finished yet another project and have yet more submitting in front of me. Different parts of me are numb while others are excited. Excitement is hard to squash no matter how much I try. I don't want to be excited. Not getting excited helps me deal with disappointment. Someone wrote me the other day and told me that submitting was too hard, and she was giving up. It's the disappointment that got to her, the rejecttion that feels personal. It's hard to tell yourself that it's not; none of it is personal. So, here I go again. If anyone ever reads this, wish me luck.