Friday Done List

No Friday Done List next week. I'll be working on the Advent Project but taking a holiday break from blogging.

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• I did 7 starts for my Advent Project. I'm seeing a real future with some of these things.
  
• Fixed a subtitle on one of my published Medium pieces, for which I want credit.
• Whoops! Just got another humor rejection.
• Am working on revising the annotated reading post to publish myself at Medium.

Goal 2. Submit Book Length Work To Agents

• Received a rejection on a middle grade book submitted last summer.
• Have tentative plans to submit one of the adult books after the beginning of the year.

Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding

• Four blog posts! Five counting this one.
• Promoted some of those blog posts.
• Continue with the book challenge on BlueSky, which continues to get me a few likes and followers.

Some Annotated Reading December 19

Wow. I did a lot of reading the last couple of weeks.

Books

It's not unusual to find booky women of a certain age who have read Georgette Heyer in their youth. Heyer was a writer of historical romance, as well as some more contemporary mysteries and other things. We're talking Regency romance. Like Bridgerton but without sex. I read her books as a teenager and during exam weeks while in college. Heyer was writing, I believe from the 1920s, and she died in 1974. 

Last week we had our usual December holiday hell experience with a child in the family in an emergency room for hours one evening and feverish for days. (Of course, he's okay. He's seven years old, not seven months.) To divert myself, I turned to my college exam reading...Georgette Heyer...and read The Nonesuch, which I may or may not have read before. You can find a great deal about this book on-line, because Heyer still has quite the following.

This is a governess/wealthy aristocrat story with a lot of meticulous writing and enormous amounts of period specific dialogue. While this did the trick for me as far as diversion is concerned, I could do a lengthy analysis of things going on in this story, especially if I knew more about romance than I do. All I will say is that the book ends abruptly, as if Heyer didn't have an ending and just stopped writing. And a couple of lines before the abrupt end, the male main character, the nonesuch (a real word meaning someone who is perceived as perfect) threatens to hit a woman. Another male character shakes his hand and praises him for his behavior.

This was jaw-dropping, not only because he threatened to hit a much younger, physically weaker person beneath him in status with absolutely no one batting an eyelash, but because it was totally out of character. This guy really was a perfect man before that point. Then he does this. Not a good ending, not a good ending at all. 

Does a lot of this kind of thing appear in twentieth century historical romance? 

Short-form Writing

The 19 tell-tale signs an article was written by AI | by Jim the AI Whisperer in The Generator. Recently I've been being followed on Medium by promoters of AI or, in one case, an AI cook chef. (Note it calls itself  "cook chef Somebody" and not just a "Chef Somebody." That's a red flag. Also a red flag? Calling itself an AI chef at its website.) I mute those accounts. I followed Jim the AI Whisperer back, though, because he writes about AI without trying to sell me on using it. Here is my own, admittedly limited, experience reading AI--It's short on details and has no voice. It sounds like  Internet writers who have done 30 minutes of on-line research about something and are writing something for a quick sale. Which is definitely not the case with The 19 tell-tale signs a article was written by AI. 

Richard Brautigan by Addison Zeller in Had. I just got through going on about my past reading Georgette Heyer, so I won't bore you about my past reading Richard Brautigan, though both pasts were going on at about the same time. While I don't own any Georgette Heyer books, I still have three by Richard Brautigan. And, no, I don't actually understand them.

The Most Exciting Debut Short Story Collections of 2024 by in Electric Lit. I'm interested in a couple of these.

5 Vegan Recipes From the Past for Your Next New Year's Eve Party by Danielle Herring in Plant Based Past Food and history! I am now following this publication.

Write Every Day? Why Should I? by Daniel Williams in Wholistique. My legion of followers are aware that I'm not a fan of the write-every-day demand, because it slaps down and belittles those who just can't manage it. But this guy makes the absolutely best case for doing it.

I, Your Iconic Adirondack Chair, Am Distraught Over My Decline in Social Stature by Thomas Pease in Jane Austen's Wastebasket. This was published at a humor site, but I'm placing it under short form because it reads like a witty essay and witty essays should have their own place.

'Heart of Darkness' Is All Kinds of Relevant by Jessica Minier in Books Are Our Superpower. When I was in college, I read one of Joseph Conrad's books for class. But I think it was Lord Jim.

What Nobody Tells You About Those Year's-Best-Books Lists by Janice Harayda in Thought Thinkers. In my experience, it's rare for anyone to write at Medium about writing outside of Medium. 

Humor

The Worst Advent Calendars of All Time by Richie Zaborowske in Frazzled. I haven't bought an Advent calendar in years. And now I won't be buying one for years.

The Time Has Come to Tell My Son He's Adopted and Also a Grizzly Bear by Aaron Chown in Jane Austen's Wastebasket. Aren't all kids grizzly bears?

I'm a Dad--Isn't It Hilarious How I Don't Know Anything About My Kids?! by Jeff Bender in Slackjaw. Is it?

Sorry Kid. You Can't Stay Home Until You Can Handle Emergencies The Way I, an Adult, Definitely Can by Lily Hirsch in Frazzled. Please take care of me.

Positive Affirmations For Terrified Public School Teachers by Katie Burgess in McSweeney's Internet Tendency. I love affirmations.

I'm a Thoughtful Drunk by Alex Baia in Slackjaw. "Why do I want to ask so bad whether you ever read--*Hiccup*-- Infinite Jest? HAHAHA. I hate myself."

Ultra Dad Book For Hardcore Dads: Holiday Gift List by Alex Baia in Slackjaw. It took a little commitment to get into this one, but it was so worth it.

While Rejection MAY Mean You're a Terrible Writer, It Could Mean Something Else

Cottonbro Studio on Pexels

I don't submit a lot of book-length manuscripts anymore, especially in the field of children's lit, but a couple of days ago I received an interesting rejection on one I submitted to an agent this past summer.

"I thought this was a really interesting plot (and my dream is to solve murders in an English village!) Unfortunately, MG is so very saturated right now, and mysteries have been really hard for me to sell, so I have to pass"

The book is set in a small Connecticut town and not an English village, but I get her point.

My point is that her message illustrates that manuscripts can be rejected for all kinds of reasons having nothing to do with the manuscript itself. Writers hear that over and over again at workshops and read it in articles and blog posts. But it's rare, in my experience, for agents to explain the reasoning behind their thinking when they reject something.

It's rare, and it's very gratifying.

Time Management Tuesday: Everything You Do Speaks to Everything You Didn't Do

This is one of those flash essays that begins with something that seems totally unrelated to the topic but is in reality a hooky lead-in to what the writer wants to address. You have been warned.

I spent two-and-a-half days of Thanksgiving weekend on a sewing retreat. In my laundry/sewing room. In my basement. By myself, though I found out yesterday that someone I know would have come sewed with me, if I'd thought to ask her. I hadn't done a sewing retreat since 2022. This time I was making shopping bags out of blue jeans and cloth Christmas bags out of remnants of Christmas material from years gone by, as well as some new fabric. I also mended Donkey.

This is what I believe is called unnecessary creation, which I read about in an essay by Todd Henry in a book called Manage Your Day-to-Day. Unnecessary creation involves creative activity engaged in by people who work in some other creative area. An example would be a writer who normally writes regularly who spends some time doing some sewing, a different type of creativity. The theory is that involvement in some other kind of creativity will spur your regular, daily creativity.

I have found this to be the case, particularly while playing with journals and reading during vacations. Or binge cooking. Something else happened with this sewing retreat, though.

But Unnecessary Creation Takes So Much Time!

My sewing retreat was a terrific experience. However, by Sunday I was dwelling on something I once read..."Everything you do speaks to everything you didn't do." There were other things, at least one of them being work-related, that I didn't do that weekend, and by midafternoon Sunday they were beginning to hang over me like death and taxes. I got a couple of them done that evening, but still I was very aware that there had been an opportunity cost for my weekend.

You can read about opportunity cost in an interview with Dan Ariely, also in Manage Your Day-to-Day. (Ariely's work, by the way, is the inspiration for the TV show The Irrational.) When you spend time on Activity 1, you no longer have the opportunity to use it on Activity 2. While I was spending time in my basement creating shopping bags out of old blue jeans, I couldn't spend that time on something else. 

What I Really Want to Write About is My Holiday Hell Projects

What this all is leading to is the Advent/Holiday Hell Projects I've been doing since 2021. You know, the project that involves me starting a different piece of short-form writing every day between December 1 and December 25. The idea being that these were all starts I could pick up and run with the next year.

This year I've been revisiting the starts from earlier years. Anything I like I do some more work on and move to the 2024 file. There have been quite a number of them. I only just started looking at the 2022 starts.

While I did finish, submit, and publish 8 of the 31 pieces from 2021, I did nothing with the other 23. Some of them I think were good and I could have gone somewhere with them. At least 1 I might have tried submitting somewhere as is. Instead, I forgot about them. I did even less with the starts from 2022 and 2023.

Why?

I can tell you why. During those years...years...I was working on an adult novel, 143 Canterbury Road. I was working on it even though I hadn't been able to sell a novel since before 2008, and I've never sold an adult novel. 

I was desperate to finish that book, though, and paid a very high opportunity opportunity cost for it. The time it took me to write that book I couldn't spend on short-form work, even though the last few years short-form work is the only writing I've been able to publish. 

In a lecture last week, author Steve Almond said, "You write about what you can't get rid of by other means." That was certainly the case with 143 Canterbury Road. The setting and some secondary characters were torn from the headlines of my life and writing about them was a sort of therapy. 

But therapy isn't free. My therapy had a hefty opportunity cost, because it kept me from other kinds of writing that I would almost certainly have been more successful with.

I'm out of therapy now, and 2025 is another year.

I Almost Missed Shirley Jackson's Birthday

Shirley Jackson walked up this street. And down.

I learned on BlueSky that today is Shirley Jackson's birthday. In years past, I learned it was her birthday on Twitter. I need to put her birthday in my bullet journal along with family members'. I don't want to forget her day.

To observe this event, here is a list of just a few of my Shirley Jackson posts from over the years. 

I Could Get Inside One Of Shirley Jackson's Homes

Hill House...Book And Series

Happy Birthday, Shirley

My Personal Shirley Jackson Photo Album

Where's Shirley?

Oh, My Gosh! Oh, My Gosh! I'm So Glad I Saw This!

Motherhood

Friday Done List

 Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• I did six starts for my daily Holiday Hel...I mean Advent...project. 
  
• I got a rejection today, but resubmitted.
• I attended a very good author lecture/talk given by Steven Almond through the Office Campus Writer's Workshop. Stimulated ideas and now I also have little slips of paper around here somewhere with things I want to look up. Also, he talked about The Great Gatsby, which I keep hearing about. I have to read it again. I swear I read it long ago. I wasn't brought up in a barn, after all, as my mother would say.

Goal 2. Submit Book Length Work to Agents

• I submitted a middle grade manuscript to an agent I learned about through SCBWI.

•  I got the rejection for that today.

Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding

• One blog post this week.
• Promoted that blog post.
• I've been taking part in a book challenge on BlueSky, which has attracted a few new followers for  me.

Time Management Tuesday: A Holiday Hell Project for Writers

In December, 2021, I went deep into something I called the Advent Project. I like the concept of Advent, because I like temporal landmarks, and Advent, being a roughly month-long season in the Christian liturgical calendar, is very much a temporal landmark. However, not everyone knows what Advent and the liturgical calendar are. Many Christians don't know what the liturgical calendar is. It occurred to me that calling it the Holiday Hell Project instead would not just be better communication in terms of people understanding it, but better communication in terms of what is actually happening here. We're talking about a project during Holiday Hell.

My legions of followers know that I have whined and complained about surviving December for years. And years. But that 2021 Holiday Hell Project kind of turned my life around. At least in December. I described how it came about back in February, 2022. That's not a story to brag about. But I was happy with how things turned out.

How Did Things Turn Out, Gail?

Well, what happened was that I accepted that I wasn't a writer who could write a lot during the month of December. It's all I can do to juggle writing and personal life during regular times of the year. Holiday Hell...I won't say it's beyond me. But it kind of is. And I am aware that I have it easy. Years ago, it wasn't unheard of for me to have a contractual deadline for a completed book draft in January, which meant some under-the-knife work in December. Yeah, that doesn't happen, anymore. Plus, I do not have to generate income in December. We're talking a privileged person here, and still I struggle to get to December 26.

So, in 2021, I accepted that I wasn't someone who could write a lot during December, but I could write some. The writing I did was short starts of flash and humor. And my goal was to do one every day. I found material in old writing journals. Some may have come from working files, things I'd started and revised during December, 2021.

• In 2021 I started 31 pieces. Eight of them were later completed and published. One has been completed and submitted.

That was a major success for me. I actually looked forward to 2022.

Things didn't go as well in 2022.

• I had only 15 starts. One was recently finished and submitted, though I must admit that I'd forgotten that I did anything with it in 2022 and started over again.

Last year, 2023, was a mixed bag, though I was excited about how things turned out. 

• I had 31 starts, but some of them were extremely brief with just a list of writing prompt questions to work on with them at a later time. One of them did become a traditional short story, though, and has been subbed a few times. It's out right now, in fact.

Are You Doing This Again, Gail? Because It Doesn't Look as If You Kept Up with This Very Well

Well, here's the thing. In December of 2022 and again in 2023, we had a family member waiting to have medical tests and/or waiting for results of medical tests. All resolved itself well, very well. But it's called Holiday Hell for a reason, folks. Even this year the cat just started two meds. 

But as Holiday Hells go, this year's is pretty copacetic, as a man I worked for when I was a teenager used to say. I am enjoying my Holiday Hell project this year.

In fact, I'm going through the starts from earlier years, seeing if there's anything I want to continue with. And by golly, there is. I haven't finished looking at the 2021 starts, and I've already moved six to this year. And there's a couple more I've got my eye on. Then there are the 2022 and 2024 starts to look at. And my writer's journal. And my filing cabinet. I suspect I won't even get to that, though.

I'm hopeful that what I'm doing this month will make it possible for me to hit the ground running in 2025 and bring a bunch of these starts to completion. Then start submitting them.

For me the Holiday Hell Project takes a lot of the work burden off December and leaves me feeling very positive about the upcoming new year. It's all good.

Except for that title, of course.

Friday Done List

I spent Thanksgiving weekend on a sewing retreat. In my laundry/sewing room. In my cellar. It was an example of unnecessary creativity, and I enjoyed it a great deal. But it did take a toll on the rest of my week, and it may become a blog post at some point.

Otherwise:

Goal 1. Adult Short Stories, Essays, and Humor

• Received two rejections on humor pieces.
• Resubmitted one of the rejected pieces, and it was published. 
• Submitted a third humor piece.
• I've been working on my annual Advent Writing Project, and it's been going well. It will become a blog post!
• I'm working on reorganizing my short-form To Be Read iPad list. That's going marvelously. I am excited. It will become a blog post!

Goal 2. Submit Book Length Work to Agents

• I learned of a new-to-me agent this morning. I'll be submitting one of my middle grade manuscripts to her next week. 

Goal 3. Community Building/Marketing/Branding

• I did two blog posts this week, three counting this one.
• Promoted the first two blog posts.
• Promoted the new humor piece that published the beginning of the week.
• Have been ever so slowly working on my personal BlueSky literary salon. Yes! If I live long enough, my BlueSky experience will be a blog post!

Some Annotated Reading December 5

 It looks as if I've read a lot since I last did this, doesn't it?

Books

Oona Out of Order by Margarita Montimore got a lot of attention when published. This story of a woman who jumps to a different year of her life each New Year's Eve is very readable. But I couldn't wrap my head around what she knew and when. Sure, it wasn't necessary to know why it was happening. But there were other logistics I couldn't make out. The book reminded me of The Time Traveler's Wife. Also, I wrote a short story similar to this years ago. No idea where it is. Margarita Montimore has a new book coming out in February. I'm interested and just registered to win a copy at Goodreads.

I'm not at all sure why Strange Practice by Vivian Shaw ended up on my TBR list, since I'm not a major fan of fantasy. But if I am going to like fantasy, it's usually going to be in a contemporary, realistic setting, which is what we have here. This was a terrific story about Greta Helsing who is a twenty-first century human medical doctor treating London's supernatural beings, beings the other humans in the city don't know about. Good writing, terrific characters, and the fantasy elements made more sense to me than fantasy elements usually do. It is the beginning of a trilogy, and I am almost certainly going to read at least the next book.

Oh, look. I read some nonfiction. Happier Hour by Cassie Holmes, Ph.D. is about managing time, but not for the sake of getting more done. Holmes is interested in managing time for the sake of being happier. That is a very legitimate take on time, it's just not the one we dwell on here.  Though I'm splitting hairs a bit here, since any effective management of time ought to make us happier, don't you think? Holmes is knowledgeable about her subject. She isn't somebody who's read some articles on-line or a few self-help books. Meaning she's not me. She describes research she's done and how it supports her arguments. The main thing I took from this book is that if you have the means to be able to pay people to do things for you (and I assume a big chunk of the population does not), you're not really paying to have something done for you. You are paying for time, because you now have the time you would have spent doing some task available to you. I'm obsessed with that concept. In fact, I've been thinking about it all day, because this morning the service I'm paying to plow my driveway this winter was here. I'm very aware of what that meant for this day.

Short Form

 Help Wanted: Pre-Emptive Griever by Casey Mulligan Walsh in Hippocampus Magazine This is good, but also, wow.

A Small One Thrown Back to the Waters by Kate Horsley in Fictive Dream. I am not crazy about mermaid stories. You know, like fantasy. But is this a mermaid story? Hmm.

'We Are All At the Mercy of the Cowbell Sketch' by Devon Ivie in Vulture. I have no idea how I stumbled upon this thing. I don't even like the Cowbell Sketch. It's another thing I've been obsessed with recently. It was discussed at Thanksgiving.

Harper Collins AI Licensing Deal at Authors Guild. I'm sure you've all heard about what HarperCollins is doing regarding to AI, because it's a big deal in my world, so it must be a big deal in yours, too. When I first read about it, I wondered, What's in this for HarperCollins? Read this article, and you will know.

The Operator by Michael Specter in The New Yorker. An eleven-year-old article about Dr. Oz. No comment. I just read this stuff.

Food

Kelly Jaggers on cooking for one, etc. etc. by Michael LaCorte at Salon. I'm sorry. That was a long title. I was attracted to this, because I am very into small batch cooking. In fact, I just found an article I started to write on the subject and forgot about.

Why Immigration Was the Best Thing to Happen to Food by Charlie Brown in Rooted. Historically, immigration has had a big impact on a number of things. 

I've Been Intermittently Fasting for 10 Years: Here's What I Learned by Dim Nikov in Tastyble. Here's what I learned--the difference between cravings and hunger and how we came to fall into a three-meal-a-day eating schedule.

Humor

How Losing a Ton of Tennis Matches Helped 'Daily Show' Correspondent Michael Kosta Go Pro as a Comedian by Kevin Nguyen at GQ Sports. This isn't really humor. It's humor adjacent. I am a big fan of Michael Kosta's Daily Show work. It took a while to warm up to him, but I definitely have. I like the not-so-dumb jock persona.

It's Me, Your Friendly Mindfulness App Telling You It's Time to Meditate by Mary Heitcamp in Slackjaw. I'd been thinking about paying for a meditation app, but now I'm not.

This is Your Dentist Reminding Everyone that the Scraping You Hear is Totally Normal by Henry Loe in The Haven. I love going to the dentist.

13 World Famous Inventions Inspired by O. Henry's Christmas Story 'The Gift of the Magi' by Mayur Cahan in The Haven.  I've always had a soft spot for The Gift of the Magi. And Die Hard.

Anthony Bourdain Visits the American Girl Cafe by Heidi Lux in The Belladonna Comedy. I've never read anything by Anthony Bourdain, and I still thought this was terrific.

We Are The Nine Muses, And We're All Exactly Sixteen Years Old by Amanda Lehr in McSweeney's Internet Tendency. This addresses the Cormac McCarthy thing at Vanity Fair. Do you have to know about that to get it? I can't tell, because I do know about it.

My Twelfth Publication Of The Year, Which Means...A Story Behind the Story!

 I managed to have a twelfth piece of writing, this one humor, accepted at a publication on the Medium platform. Mountain Lake Resort Timeshares: You'll Wait All Year to Come Back was published in The Haven. I hoped I'd manage to get twelve in this year, which would be averaging one publication a month. It was not a goal, however, because I believe goals should only involve things we can control, and I can't control editors. Or just about anybody, for that matter. What I could control was continuing to write and submit.

I began writing Mountain Lake Resort Timeshares last January, even taking pictures for the illustration then. As more hordes of rabid fans know, I go away every January for a week for a sort of reading retreat. With frolicking in the snow. Unless there is no snow, then there is just frolicking outside in the bleak midwinter.

Our retreat spot is wonderful. People love it there. And they say so in guest books in our timeshare unit. Guest books that go back decades. I cannot exaggerate the beautiful things people say about that spot. Really, really beautiful things. 

Beautiful things are wasted on me, so I wrote Mountain Lake Resort Timeshares: You'll Wait All Year to Come Back.