author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

This just in: The deadline for submissions to Shimmer's "Pirate" issue has been extended a whole 'nother month! (Well, a little less than a whole month, what with the next month being February and all, but anyway...) So saith the Slush God!

This means I can procrastinate that sucker right up until Feb 26 and submit roughly the same quality I would have tomorrow!

...but I won't. I did a good solid 500 words on the new draft Monday/yesterday (haven't been to bed yet, all confused about how to define "tomorrow" and "today" and such), and I expect to do no less every day until the draft is finished. No breaks! I'm just allowed to be slower, that's all.

(I'm also allowed to prioritize my Feb 12 freelance deadline. Which is a relief, 'cause it would be nice to get that in on time, get paid on time, and pay my credit card bill on time. Yay for promptitude!.)

I have too much fiction lined up behind this story waiting to be finished and sent off; another month spent dawdling would not be a good idea.

On a not entirely unrelated tangent: Over at AbsoluteWrite.com, the regulars are asking each other this timeless question: What's the difference between a writer and a wanna-be? I have been avoiding that thread because Certain People make me all Huffy about it, and I have a tendency to get a bit Snarky. But I can tell you the difference. Yes, I can. The difference is this: a writer writes. A wanna-be only thinks about writing.

Here's the big secret, though: Being one doesn't mean you can't also be the other. You can be both. On alternating days, maybe. Or months. A wanna-be in January and a writer in February and then, as soon as the story's done, you're a wanna-be again for a few days until you jump back in the ring and become a writer writing a brand new story.

In Spanish, there are two verbs that mean "to be." Estar is for temporary and locational conditions (death, oddly, being one of them, which may bespeak an tacit cultural belief in reincarnation, or zombies, or more likely looking for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come etc. etc. but that's beside the point); ser is for more permanent, defining characteristics. I think the description "wanna-be" probably takes estar.

Hullo. Update: Another article of mine at Constant-Content has sold. It's called Awaken to Dreams: Begin to Remember." It's part of a series, which fact I hope will tempt those who purchase one-time rights to it to become repeat customers. As usual, my friendly blog readers, should you see it somewhere on teh interweebs, check that my name is attached to it like it oughtter be, 'k? In this case, what was sold was "usage rights," which means my by-line stays, they don't make edits, they only get to publish it once and in one place only, and I get to license it to others.

Aha! Found it. Guess who bought it? AvivaDirectory, that's who. And again, no by-line! I'm going to remind them again, but that they did it a second time after being told not to? That's really disrespectful.

"Ten Surprising Facts About Ten U.S. Dollars" has finally surfaced, but oh the shame of it! The person who purchased exclusive rights to it is trying to pass it off as their own work! My by-line is missing. I have notified them of the requirement they seem to have overlooked, but they have seen fit to ignore me. It's over here. It has a comment section. You know what to do.

Correction! AvivaDirectory HAVE added my by-line to the piece! They are in compliance with Constant-Content's policies... BARELY. They tacked my name on right at the end, which was why I overlooked it. Silly me, I was looking at the place where authors' by-lines usually go. You know, under and immediately following the title? I have requested that they move it, but they are not obliged to, at least not by the letter of the licensing policy. So I rescind my previous "sic 'em" command. Play nice y'all.

(Still haven't located the purchaser of "Untying the Knot," while we're on the subject. Google turns up nothing. Oh well.)

Keep walking. You can't go home 'til dawn.

Really. If I go home, I go to sleep. There's a bed there, and cats, and I'm sitting around, and sleepy happens. Last night this was absolutely not desirable. If it had, I'd have even more to do right now [one of my freelance work-for-hire gigs, whose creeping lateness my editor is greeting with her usual gently amused tolerance upon which I must not grow to depend]. So to avoid that, last night went something like this:

8:15 PM - Laundry. At the laundromat, not at the bottom of the condo stairs. You can dry two loads for the price of one at the laundromat. Plus you can get out of the house with your laptop and get an extra 1500 words done while waiting on your clothes.

9:30 PM - Home. Folding laundry.

10:00 PM - Leaving home. Walking to IHOP, about a mile and a half. Because I have to get out of the house or I'll get nothing done. It's too full of people. People I'm very fond of, now, but people nonetheless.

4:15 AM - Leaving IHOP some 6000 words later. I have officially worn out my welcome, as is made clear by the extra-pouty smile on the face of the gal on hostess duty. Well, maybe that's just her make-up. Maybe I'm just reading too much into it. Maybe I've just had too much coffee and I have to have to move. I leave an extra few dollars on the table in thanks for the hours I've hogged it since paying my tab at 12:30 AM, and I move out. Sadly, the new Peet's Coffee in the 29th Street Mall doesn't open until 5:30, and it only takes me about 10 minutes to walk there. I keep walking.

4:35 AM - This is amusing. I'm sitting in the office/lobby stairwell at the Steel Yards Plaza. I had not expected it to be open. I figure, I'll sit in here where it's warm and work until Joe's Espresso opens at 6:00 AM.

5:00 AM - Some 750 or 1000 words later, a policeman shows up on what I suppose is a routine inspection of the garage and stairwell. I say, "Hi." He says, "Hi," and then, "So what are we up to, then?" I say, "Writing." He says, "What, are you a college student?" I say, "No, a freelance writer on deadline."

This gets me no love. I try again. "See, I'm pulling an all-nighter to meet a deadline, so I'm kind of wandering about town to stay awake, and I wore out my welcome at the IHOP. So now I'm just waiting for Joe's to open."

He gives me a look. "Do you not have a home to go to?"

"Oh, sure, I do, but if I walk there and back that's an hour gone I could have been writing."

"OK, where do you live?"

I tell him. And I get some serious deja vu: I'm 17 or 18, walking around my home dead-end block in Metairie at midnight under a full moon. I'm at the top of the levee looking out over Lake Pontchartrain when I hear a car. Police car, heading up the bike path. I step out of the way, but it corrects to keep me in its headlights. Finally the policeman gets out and demands to see some ID; there's a curfew for 16-year-olds and under, and he wants to confirm that I'm older than that. I don't carry my wallet when I go walking at night; if I were to get mugged, I'd rather not give the mugger my driver's license and such. I just carry my keys. So the policeman asks me when I was born, and I rattle out "April 23, 1976," as quickly-but-naturally as I can. Isn't it funny how you have to carefully word the truth to make people believe it? Suspicion is enough to turn true into false and innocence into guilt. Finally I tell him, "Look, we can go down there, to that house right there, and I'll let myself in with this key, and you can ask my Mom to vouch for me. After we wake her up. Which she won't appreciate."

The policeman politely declines. He tells me to be careful out here, a girl alone at midnight up on the levee and all, and he drives off.

So last night I find myself rattling off a description of where I live as naturally-but-quickly as I can, so as not to give the impression that I'm fumbling over, or too slickly performing, a lie. Even though I'm telling the Gods' honest truth.

But they're all just trying to do their jobs, aren't they? Enforce curfew, protect an office building, tell the homeless-looking woman to shoo if she is indeed homeless but let her stay on the warm steps if she does have a home to go to after all... is it just me, or does that seem a little backwards?

6:00 AM - Joe's opens. Joe himself is on opening duty. He doesn't appear to be happy about it. Who would? It's six in the morning. I order a hot tea and pound out another 1000 or 1500 words.

8:15 AM - Caffeine is making me jumpy again. I'm going home. 4000 words to go, but I may have a nap first.

Oddly, I don't feel like sleeping now. I'm just ready to be done with the current project. I don't have the right disposition to work on the same thing for six, eight, twelve hours at a time--it makes me heartsick to try--so why I put things off until I have to get them done all in a single 24-hour span I do not know. I'm looking forward to finishing it, emailing it in, finally getting to work on the rewrites of "Putting Down Roots," The Drowning Boy, and a brand new flash fiction piece called "Turning the Earth" (no relation, it was my hats-o-war assignment at VP, and wouldn't you like to know). But I have to stop for a few minutes. So I blog.

There ya go. A blog post.

Back to the grind now.

(By the way. Aaron's visit this past weekend? Super swell. Chez LeBoeuf-Little glows with the happiness of unaccustomed friends in the house. It's part of why I'm scrambling to finish this project in one all-nighter that appears to be dragging into a second--no time or inclination to work on it while hosting an out-of-town guest--but it was very worth it. Visit again anytime, amigo! Send me some of the pictures you took of Boulder!)

Look! They're finished! The "Margaritaville Parrot Knee Socks" are finished! And they fit, and they stay up, and they look awesome.

Tree is leaving for Burning Man today. I gave the socks to her yesterday after finally grafting off the last cuff, sewing in the elastic, and basting on the bows. They really aren't graduation presents anymore. They're "My First Burning Man" presents. Tree will be the envy of the playa.

And now I can proceed to my Handknit Bikini Experiment.

Of course I can't just blog about knitting. That's not Actually Writing. Besides, these so-called "thumbnails" (click for full-sized, high-quality JPEGs) are too big for such a short blog entry. They'll hang down and stomp all over my blog entry about Nice Surprises. So, without further ado, Other Stuff that Isn't Knitting.

More Freelance Deadlines! Got another StyleCareer eGuide to complete for August 31. What is this one about? Wouldn't you like to know!

Short Story Revisions! I have two to do. As I've said, "Putting Down Roots" needs to be rewritten and submitted ASAP. However, between freelance gigs and knitting, life continues to happen. So I've slated it for the first week of September, which is A) after the eGuide deadline, and B) to take place in Hawaii. Not that John and I don't plan on doing Hawaii things while being in Hawaii, of course. But I do have a tendency to treat vacations as writing workshops, even when they aren't actual formal writing workshops. This is a good thing.

The other short story needing revision is "Snowflakes." Yeah, that still. I may have mentioned earlier that the webzine Firefox News publishes fiction? Yes. Themed fiction. For $.01/word up to $100. Submission guidelines are this-a-way. The current submission period calls for stories appropriate to the theme "It's the End of the World As We Know It," which is obviously perfect. Well, obviously to those who have read it (Critique Circle) or heard me read it (Borderlands Boot Camp Summer '06, Nancy Kilpatrick's Self-Editing Workshop at World Horror '06). Yes, it's not usually best practice to submit first to a lower-paying market, but in the case of synchronicity I will make an exception. Deadline: September 1.

Next: How I will manage to do 3000 words per day on the freelance gig and spend at least an hour a day on revising a short story until it's ready, every day until August 31. Hint: With much difficulty, stress, and pulling out of eyelashes.

But! Socks! So there.

Sweet! Another Constant-Content sale. Somebody else decided they were willing to pay money to put my words on their website. In this case, it's a cute little trivia list about the ten dollar bill. I know, I know, not exactly inspiring stuff, but trivia lists were selling at the time, so I wrote one. Again, the purchase was anonymous, so until Google finds it I won't know where or whether you can read it. I'll link it when I know. If you're feeling watch-doggy, the title is "Ten Surprising Facts About Ten U.S. Dollars." The purchaser paid for exclusive rights to use it, so it should only appear in one place with my byline intact.

Thank you, anonymous purchaser!

In other news, there's a familiar name in Heliotrope Issue 1. Heliotrope is a professionally paying ezine (pays $.05/word for short fiction) that I just came across via their submissions call thread at Absolute Write (submission guidelines here). They ought to have sounded familiar to me, because during the live reading Saturday night at the Borderlands workshop, one of the students read this story of his, or as much of it as would fit in 10 minutes. Then Elizabeth Monteleone called "Time!" and he had to stop. I wanted intensely to know how it ended. Now I get to find out! Yay! Congrats, Mr. Colangelo!

Schedule realities require that I think of today and tomorrow in terms of one goal-setting block. First, notice it is no longer noon or one. I don't recover from all-nighters quickly or easily; I need my eight hours of sleep back before my brain starts working. I mean, the guy from Hi-Tech Appliances had to tell me what day of the week it was before I could even begin to decide when I'd come pick up the freezer gasket I'd ordered. I didn't really start getting up again until 5:00 PM.

Writing hours remaining today are rather scarce, and doubly so tomorrow what with my part-time job and my semi-monthly writing class. So I s'r-pose my goals for end-of-day Wednesday are going to look something like this:

• As much as I can get done on the freelance gig
• Another critique at Critters.org
• My "homework" for writing class

Gah. How do I do that to myself? So much to do, so little time--next time I hear Tommy Shaw singing the Styx tune "Too much time on my hands" I'm going to magically walk into the radio and back in time so I can shake him down for some of that. I mean, he's obviously not using it.

Anyway.

Right now, before I get to work, I have to go Esbat shopping. That might require some explanation. Sit tight, it's wordy.

Sometimes, friends I haven't seen in a long time will ask me, "Are you still a practicing Wiccan?" That always strikes me as odd. First, because no one would ask the rest of my family, "Are you still practicing Catholics?" But, y'know, Wicca is a young religion and still widely considered "fringe." For some people it's still a bit of a sideshow--remember Mad, Mad House? So there are those who expect it to be a passing phase that I'll get over some day, rather than simply part of my identity as they would if I'd chosen a more mainstream religion. Give it another 50 years, I guess.

Besides, even fellow Pagans don't take for granted that my beliefs haven't changed. They ask that question too. I suppose it reflects an underlying assumption among the "New Age" community that spiritual seeking isn't a sign of doubt but growth. If any of my older family members stopped being Catholic, we'd all wonder what was wrong, what crisis they'd undergone to shake their faith. It's a basic tenet of Christianity that faith will be tested and must be defended. But a Pagan religion comes with no obligation to defend the faith in that sense. Defend our religious rights, yes, and demand respect for our faith, but not defend it from spiritual crisis. No Wiccan clergy would concernedly visit my house and try to counsel me if I stopped believing. Sometimes one's soul goes looking for new shoes, is all. So the question "Are you still Wiccan," from a fellow Pagan, is no more disrespectful than "Are you still living in Boulder?" or "Do you still like to keep cats around the house?"

OK. Wow. Tangent. I'm really trying to get around to the second reason it's an odd question. Which is, I never quite know how to answer. I haven't exactly been practicing much. My husband and I observe Samhain, because that's traditional between us, and Summer Solstice, because it's our anniversary, but we don't usually go out of our way to hold ritual or worship with a community. So I joke about it: "Well, we're lapsed Wiccans." "You know how there are Christmas-and-Easter Christians? We're Samhain-and-Beltaine Pagans." Well, today I realized exactly how true that is. A quick rummage through my box of candles reveals absolutely nothing suitable for compass-quarter votives. Oh, how low the pious have fallen. So. It's the full moon tonight, and I have to go Esbat shopping. Ta.

Things take time. If nothing else, that's what I'm learning from all this daily goal setting. Submitting critiques takes time, because I can't freakin' shut up. Finding and emailing interview subjects takes time, because I don't know many names off-hand in the fields I'm researching and I'm anal about getting my emails worded just right. Revising fiction takes time because I'm a freakin' perfectionist with maybe shades of ye olde obsessive compulsive disorder.

And four-hour training sessions on how to facilitate use of evil yet compellingly shiny electronic voting devices from Hart Intercivic take a really long time, especially if you hang around the county clerk's office for an hour afterwards to discover whether your out-of-town plans have turned out to interfere with your availability as supply judge. (They do. I won't be around on Saturday, August 5 to pick up the supplies, see. But I will be retained as a machine judge, so the training hasn't gone to waste.) And then if the bike ride to and from the county clerk's office exposes you to more sun than you prepared yourself for, afternoon naps take a really really long time.

So. After a night of not sleeping, where are we at?

• Not a word written today on the freelance gig, but lots of progress made Monday morning in seeking interviews.
• Revised chapter 3 of The Golden Bridle and will email it as soon as this poor old WinME-running laptop stops giving me hell via its context menus. Chapter 3 took so long that we'll just talk about chapter 4 next week.
• Turned in a very long and wordy critique at the Critters site. One more by Wednesday and my ratio will be happy.
• Poked my head in a friend's private novel critique forum, as promised, at Critique Circle. Although if my day's obligation is merely to poke my head in the forum, it's probably not worth a bullet point here.

OK, so, it's nine-ish. Blearrrrgh. Bad enough that I was working until 2:00 AM this morning. Worse that I stayed up another couple hours with John working samurai sudoku puzzles. Blearrrgh, say I. Bleeaarrrghghgh.

Today, the plan is to do this stuff here:

• Another 3000 words on the freelance gig [Never got there]
• Revise chap.s 3 & 4 of Golden Bridle and email to beta(s) [9:17 AM, July 11. Only ch 3, actually]
• Critique a story over at Critters [Done as of 3:15 AM]
• Pop my head back in at Critique Circle [Done as of 3:25 AM]

This, by the way, is your friendly reminder that you should plan on voting. It's easy, it's non-fattening, and it's your civic duty. Do it if you know what's good for you.

(Ha ha. I made a funny. Get it? Get the funny? See, if you know what's good for you, you'll vote for what's good for you. Get it?)

(OK, so I'm bad at making funnies. Blearrrgh.)

Right. Moment-o-truth is later on this evening, probably quite late indeed.

11:18 PM - Definitely "quite late." We're talking all-nighter here. It's OK though. We're approaching the full moon. Pagans run on Lunar power, right? (grumble grumble) But about that, more later.

Hello. This is what we call the Spectator Sport of Professional Writing. Since this past week has been utterly dismal for productivity, I'm going to invite y'all (all, what, three or four of y'all?) to put the pressure on. What I'm going to do is this: I'm going to post my goals for the day right here. At the end of the day, I'm going to update the blog entry to reflect success or failure. In case of failure, y'all are allowed to laugh at me.

This is an important job, the laughing. I need to start outsourcing the failure-based ridicule and smack-talking. I've discovered of late that I can't both write and hold up the carrot-and-stick contraption. For one thing, the contraption takes two hands to hold up. Carrot, stick. Hand, hand. For another, it's hard to write when you're busy flagellating yourself for not writing. So. From here on out, it's my job to write and it's your job, should you choose to accept it, to weild the mule-driving devices.

There we go. Now. Goals for Sunday, July 9 (oh, crap! it's the 9th already) are as follows:

• 3,000 words on the freelance gig (1300/3000 complete as of 1:36 AM)
• Stick my head in CritiqueCircle.com and contribute as appropriate (complete as of 11:52 PM)
• Revise chapters 3 and 4 of Golden Bridle as needed and email to beta reader(s) (Rescheduled, in a fit of realism, as of 12:00 AM, for Monday)

Update, 1:43 AM: Well. Don't I just suck. Fiddlesticks, fudge, and fubar. Thing is, I've got an easy thousand-words-an-hour rate of progress when I'm writing fiction, sure, but fiction doesn't require research. Freelance gigs do. And sometimes the research they require makes the writer go, "What the flying bleep, exactly, do they want me to say?" And then the writer spends a lot of time looking things up.

And taking multiple video game breaks.

Anyway, today was at least more productive than yesterday. And tomorrow will be better, because A) less video game breaks, and B) not so much of the farting around until late afternoon.

Look for a brand new goal-oriented bloggity by nine-ish.

Which seems obvious on the face of it, granted, but I just actually realized it tonight. I just read through the critiques for "Snowflakes" and as a result I can practically see the finished, publishable draft hanging in front of my face like a shiny bright jewel. This is not a revision session that gives me Doubts. This is a revision session that gives me Great Glee.

I think it has to do with the way the shape of 1900-ish words fits in my head all at one time a lot more nicely than the shape of 50,000 words do.

Anyway, I'll print everything out and sleep on it tonight, and then I just might get this sucker revised and in the slush. Farthing just happens to have a reading period open until end of June, which means if nothing else a quick-ish response. (Also, it being a UK market, it means I have extra cause to be grateful that one of the critiques came from a non-USian who was unfamiliar with Memorial Day. It's good to for me to be reminded that some concepts are unique to particular countries. Duh, Niki!)

Oh. And. By the way. 1100 words written today on one of the work-for-hire manuscripts. Oh yeah. I's a good girl.