interesting fact: of three professional publishers who have seen my three novella-length pieces, each has had a different favourite. which may mean they're all good. or not.

another near miss today in the form of an email from a publisher who would like to see more. the more, of course, will require a couple of days at least of editing and printing, let alone the completion of vaguely alluded-to works in progress that need another 40,000 words...still, it's a glimmer of hope.

meanwhile, my main current writing project is a 30,000 word summary of some very boring technology articles for a very boring technology company. when I can't stand that any more I am working on a piece about a woman who is buried alive. how very metaphorical of me.

people do read stuff I write in newspapers, at least.

well, now I feel important. I just Googled myself and found an Austlit (Australian literary databse) entry for moi. how exciting. it is probably because I mentioned Austlit in a column a while back and thereby got their attention. of course the entry is not complete. I am contemplating sending them my whole literary CV - I think I will, because if I'm going to have an entry it may as well be up to date.

not that that makes my stories any more likely to get accepted, of course. but it might help with the Australia Council grants, who knows.

oh, and Austlit have this funny classification system for stories. so my "JFK is Very Surprised" is listed as a "corpses and human remains" and "resurrection" story. hahaha.

should I read a comment like this: "very much in the style of short stories that you would find in popular magazines and would have a great appeal to women" and feel good? or suicidal? the thing is, I don't want to "appeal to women." I want to appeal to humans. fortunately, while I take editing fairly well, I can also take editor's comments with a grain of salt. particularly when they come in soothing rejection letters. and when I disagree with someone's assessment of whether my character is acting realistically or not, I am quite happy to ignore those comments. ah well, could be worse. could be: "give up, you have no chance."

tonight I sunk very low indeed. haven't been able to write much lately due to illness and work, and have almost nothing due to come out. then the above rejection letter came in. so after updating my records to include said rejection, I read my "literary cv" to remind myself that at least a couple of editors have liked me. or have liked maybe 2 % of my total output. sigh.