Writing is a Socially Acceptable Form of Schizophrenia

I recently received rejection numero four for "To Reign in Purgatory" from The Town Drunk. I don't know why this rejection bothered me while the other ones I managed to brush off. Maybe it's because I'm getting close to the bottom of the barrel as far as places I plan on sending it, and it'll go back in the drawer after that.

Maybe it's because I was horribly sick this week and my mood was already not so bueno.

It's hard to remind yourself that rejection is just part of the process to publication when you're hacking up half a lung and your abs feel like a ninja monkey has kicked them repeatedly from coughing too hard.

Oh, and being heavily medicated probably didn't help.

Right, so fuck it. On to the next place.

As far as the 2YN goes, I think I've fixed some character motivations, filled in a few plots holes, and am very pleased with the two characters I combined into one. I also moved around the order of a good number of scenes, and it seems to have picked up the pacing a good bit. So, all in all, I'm still pretty happy with this project.

I still think I need to write something new. Just for fun. Maybe Justin's exercises might give me a boost.

Right, off to write!

So, I received a really nice rejection from Andromeda today. I'm just glad that I made it to round three, but I'm still a little sad it didn't get chosen. The consensus from the other places that I submitted to seems to be that stories set in Hell are very unoriginal (even though one Andromeda reader commented that my piece was "genuinely funny") and the market is saturated with Hell stories.

Still, I'll get it back out to a couple other places on my list.

In other news, I have OMG SHINY NEW STORY brainworms, which are eating at my brainmeats. The idea's changed a bit from focusing on a genocidal alien cult, to something with many different scopes. The peacekeeping translators. The humans and their desperate bid for power. The main character's gen-engineered memory and her need to find her "brothers" and "sisters" with the same problem.

Mmmm...brainworms.

*brainmeats get eaten*