A friend of Hubby's, who is peripherally my friend because, well, Hubby, and whom I haven't seen in probably 5 years, is on a mail group to which I forward job announcements from our friend/landlord who is a contractor for the feds. I'm supposing I must have mentioned fic writing to him, because he just sent me a 250 kb file of Tangled fanfic that he wrote that he wants me to critique.

I don't even want to open the file. I don't know if he can write at all, I've never seen Tangled, and it reveals all sorts of shallow stereotypical thinking about me, but I don't want to read fic from a 40+-year-old man based on a Disney movie.

Has anyone else received requests for critiquing for projects you wish you didn't know existed?

Yes. (and I probably did it someone early on, too.)

I'm thinking of removing him from that mailing group and never responding and letting him think we've emigrated to Tibet or something.

"12 Yemen Road, Yemen." You might just tell the guy that it's bad form to send stories unsolicited. I believe Herself let me down gently that way once.

Another e-publishing story. It's fascinating to watch this trend, but really hard to know which it's going to go in a year or two.

I'm honestly considering giving it a go. I have some manuscripts sitting on the hard drive that aren't even going to be traditionally published because they bend so many rules, but I know they're good stories. My one concern is that the market for contemporary realistic fiction in e-publishing isn't quite there the way it is for paranormal.

Another e-publishing story. It's fascinating to watch this trend, but really hard to know which it's going to go in a year or two.

Jennifer Crusie has written some very interesting blog posts about e-publishing recently.

Her most recent post is about it, and it's fucking fascinating. I love Barbara Samuel, too -- she's been around the block a million times, she's a lovely writer, and I went to a workshop she gave which was thoughtful and helpful and really beautifully structured (which has not always been my experience).

E-pub has really taken hold strongly in para. And genre readers seem (to me) to be leading the trends in tech adapatations -- because we're big reading crackheads who want our crack, now, here.

I haven't read the Cruisie bit -- taking a smoke break from grading now -- but I know Joey Hill started at, I think, Samhain. I think Lilith St. Crow has epubbed some of her stuff that didn't quite suit publishers.

I don't know what the cost is, but the thing, from what I understand, with epubbing, is reputation and some badass aggro street marketing and some reviews of stuff.

Tangent: Ugh, I can't wait to be out of school so I can get the website up and running, and put out some writing. I would like to review some books on my personal blog -- I've been on a bit of a roll with it -- some writing, some pics, but I've been writing more consistently at it. And doing the other little jobs I have...I feel kinda juicified with the verbiage lately.

This has been such a hard thing for me to wrap my brain around in so many ways. For one, I'm stubborn and need to be beat repeatedly over the head to break out of my own stubborn mindset.

What I want to do is just write. I'm not interested in multi-media-- I've always liked the idea of traditional publishing because someone else does the work of copyediting (sometimes) and editing (sometimes) and cover design (when they don't fuck it up) and publicity (Ha!) and distribution (Okay, that one they win, sort of, but with the Borders cock up, even that's in question) and...

I look at people who can look at writing as a business-- who can say, "Oh, that's what's selling and I want to be a published author, so that's what I'll write" and I simply can't wrap my head around it. I can understand it, on an intellectual/practical level, but on a personal one, it escapes me. Yet, those are the people who seem to be succeeding. Me, with all my stupid, lofty principles of writing for the sake of writing the story I want to tell and all I'm doing is failing.

Lewis and I spent hours today talking about this and I'm trying to figure out a way that I can make it work for me. I am concerned about oversaturation, but the same could be said for publishing as a whole, so I'm not so sure how valid a concern that is. I'm also concerned about the metric shitton of promo/work involved in pimping oneself, which, as he reminded me, I have to do more and more of with the traditionally published books. Finally, he did say something that really hit home (and of course, being me, made me feel monumentally stupid, because of course, he's right)-- he said, "What has traditional publishing done for you in the last five years other than bring you to tears?"

What it boils down to is if I do nothing, I've got no one to blame but myself. If I do something and fail spectacularly, I have no one to blame but myself. I don't know if that amounts to empowering, but it does spotlight on whose shoulders the primary responsibility rests.

Ultimately, though I'm just so fucking scared of failing on yet another front.