hee! When I happened to glance ahead and saw that paperdol's was the first post behind this post of Jilli's...

does anyone have any advice about reading one's work out loud?

I had assumed paperdol would have excellent advice so

We're reading our work out loud? oh crap.

made my laugh like a very silly person.

Putting rejections in perspective: [link]

Nothing embarrasses a publisher more than the public knowledge that a literary classic or a mega best seller has somehow slipped away. One of them turned down Pearl Buck’s novel “The Good Earth” on the grounds that Americans were “not interested in anything on China.” Another passed on George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” explaining it was “impossible to sell animal stories in the U.S.A.” (It’s not only publishers: Tony Hillerman was dumped by an agent who urged him to “get rid of all that Indian stuff.”)

The rejection files [from Knopf], which run from the 1940s through the 1970s, include dismissive verdicts on the likes of Jorge Luis Borges (“utterly untranslatable”), Isaac Bashevis Singer (“It’s Poland and the rich Jews again”), Anaïs Nin (“There is no commercial advantage in acquiring her, and, in my opinion, no artistic”), Sylvia Plath (“There certainly isn’t enough genuine talent for us to take notice”) and Jack Kerouac (“His frenetic and scrambling prose perfectly express the feverish travels of the Beat Generation. But is that enough? I don’t think so”). In a two-year stretch beginning in 1955, Knopf turned down manuscripts by Jean-Paul Sartre, Mordecai Richler, and the historians A. J. P. Taylor and Barbara Tuchman, not to mention Vladimir Nabokov’s “Lolita” (too racy) and James Baldwin’s “Giovanni’s Room” (“hopelessly bad”).

Liese, Sarameg, nice. I love the different perspectives.

Joe, day off? I like it. It's a nice window on a moment, with clear movement before and after. The character has a real personality, hard to do in such a short piece.

I can't think of a day off drabble. Maybe it will come to me.

Thanks, Deena. Hard as hell to cut it down to 100, let me tell you.

heaves big sigh of relief

Just heard back from my agent on the partial I sent her of my WIP. She said it was good reading and wanted to know if I had any more ready to show her. Whew!

Woo hoo!

Drabble: the day off


The bedside alarm didn't go off.

PANIC! I'm going to be late for work!

Oh wait, I have today off.

I have yardwork to do -- later.
I have laundry to do -- later.
I have to clean up the house -- later.
I have to get some groceries -- later.
I have to....

It can all wait. Right now, I can enjoy one of the most delicious feelings in the world, that drowsy lassitude of not quite waking all the way up, about to fall back asleep. Maybe I can pick up the dream I was having. Where were we? Oh, yes....

Bliss.

This isn't quite it, but I'm so thrilled to get the words back, in any sense, that...

for the Time off challenge

I don’t think about cure anymore. Some medical mystery, enabling me to join the herd, as if I were never outside. It’s too late for that now;I’ve been different for over thirty years. I do wish for some time off sometimes. A whole week where I never ask anyone for anything, and wear tight clothes without feeling like they are costume or a statement only I understand. Right now, that would be worth a billion dollars, as would a week without the word “advocacy” Walking in rhythm, Moving in sound.

A Day. Off.

Woke up late, coffee but no creamer. Lit the wrong end of my last smoke. Instead of popping my forgotten AD at noon, I grabbed an Ambien by accident. Teaching my last two classes, I felt like I was slogging through hallucingenic mud, gabbling for 10 minutes on racism and jealousy as themes before realizing this hour I was teaching "A Christmas Carol" not "Othello."

Got home and slammed into bed, and three hours later woke up with a burning need to pee. Got my pants down, but realized -- too late-- that the panties had not come down as well. Stripped and went back to bed. Strange smell? Me? No; I'd been sleeping on my cat's wet spot. Fucking furball.

Stripped bed, fell over shoes on way to hamper, knocked head against doorjamb.

Crawled onto the couch, no frozen veg or ice, so laid frozen meat on eye.

Woke up, late for work, with thawed liver in hair.

Called in sick. Day off from off day.

laughing helplessly

Erin, I'm sorry you had a bad day, but thank you for brightening mine!