imaginarycircus

I've been sitting on the same short story for years--many of you have read it for me at some point. I don't write short stories all that well. I like long form much better. But even in short form I have to learn to cut the fat out. Yesterday I took my almost 6k word short story and cut 1,500 words, mostly from the beginning. Then I added a teeny bit at the end. The comments I got back from the last editor who read it said they wanted me to rewrite but could I shorten the start and add more at the end because they thought it was just starting to get interesting when it ended. I have a feeling I haven't added enough at the end for them so I have to think about that so more.

I think this was good practice for gutting the second draft of my novel. I'm going to run through it and cut everything I can (obviously leaving a copy of the current draft in tact on my computer and backup drive! and a third copy in my gmail.) And then I will take the gutted version of the novel and use it to rewrite a fresh 3rd draft, but without adding lots more padding back on. This process is so weird.

While writing the second draft I let myself flesh everything out. I expanded and expanded so I could find all the interesting moments. Now I have to take out all the stuff that, although fleshed out, is just not all that interesting. This is not a part of the process I have a lot of experience with, and I'm a bit nervous. I'm also excited. It will be nice to fly light.

If you didn't know that this week is International Blog Against Racism Week, you can find out more about it at ibarw.



This post is mostly going to be about my personal experiences as an educated white woman trying to include POC in her fiction in a positive way and hopefully not fucking it up. If I say anything from my position of privilege that is wrong--please politely set me straight.

( Brain vomit ahead... )

So I went back to a paid journal for several reasons today for the first time in a long time. I hope I don't regret it a la strikethrough later.

I was just poking around in the syndicated accounts and I found out that someone is blogging Pepys Diary and there is an rss feed pepysdiary. Wow. I haven't looked through the feeds in a while and I found a lot that I hadn't seen before. Sometimes I just don't notice things. That is how I frequently burn myself.


I also found the following which amused me and may amuse you:

a Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern feed: mcsweeneysrss

Wooster Collective woosterfeed

The New Yorker newyorkerfeed

Smart Bitches Trashy Books smartbitches

uh... fuglyhorsedaily O_O I was afraid it would be some kind of porn, but no it actually is horses. I kind of feel bad for the horses.

LOL steph_meyer. FAIL.

I'm amused that fh_weather weather in Alexandria, VA has more readers than ac360blog Anderson Cooper's blog or feed or whatever it is.

LOL there is a blog called Photoshop Disasters photoshpdiaster. I make so many typos I can't make fun of this person. The photoshop failures are funny though.

Um... there is a blog called pervscan which is like a news aggragator for pervy news stories. Pervy in a bad way. D: I didn't need to know about the guy indicted for being a fake children's "underwear researcher."

cuteotters does what it says on the box. They post cute photos of otters.

I think this one made me LOL more than it should have: velveteenrabbi

And I'm not going to even find out what "big fat hairy living" is.