this is what made me nearly-shout "oph!" and throw the New Yorker down in disgust today:
this is the first paragraph of a draft I sent to a manuscript development competition:
"If you don’t like secrets, stay away from dark places. Cellars, attics, the underneath of beds where old grocery boxes lurk; all these are places to push the unwanted and, eventually, unknown. If you dig into them, you’ll only find things that should have stayed concealed."
...the story then goes on to describe the character's mother's death.
the advice from the very well respected person running the program was to give more context before getting into the mystery. so I dutifully redrafted; the novella in question has yet to be picked up by any publishers. then today I open the New Yorker of May 21 and read this sentence, by Nadine Gordimer:
"Caches of old papers are like graves; you shouldn't open them.
Her mother had been cremated."
hence mental note, not to never listen to advice again, but to examine it much more carefully for truth, particulary in the context (that word again) of what I'm trying to do.
being online now is just procrastination. I finished a story yesterday and sent it off, but given I have three days a week to write at the moment, my productivity is way down. it might be mid-year slackness with no uni, but I can't afford it. I have to pick something and work on it - the things I should be doing are all so BIG, though, and at 2-3 days a week will take forever. and I am addicted to finishing things, to sending stories off, to getting those crumbs of vindication that magazine publication requires. plus of course with one novel and several novels bouncing around unpublished, it seems hard to start another novel.
book launch tonight. one small ten year old poem of mine in it. don't care. it's a launch. am going. and have had another story accepted by Island for later in the year, so will still have something forthcoming. see? the crumbs. they're addictive.
