Writing brain turned on

[hrj]

I've been muttering to myself for the last year that I wanted to get back to writing fiction regularly (and also to playing music regularly) but my environment has been too disordered to make it feasible. Then I learned that there's going to be another Sword and Sorceress anthology and I turned on my backbrain to start stirring up possible continuing "skin singer" plots. Well, something must be working, because my brain has been feeling very creative ... on an entirely different set of set-aside stories that wouldn't really work for S&S. Yes, cat-vacuuming strikes again! But, hey: at least the juices are flowing again.

(The stories that have taken over my brain come from a thread I think of jokingly as "the Mabinogi for lesbians" or "why yes, I've read entirely too much medieval Welsh literature lately, why do you ask?" A fun little romance number using themes and motifs from MW lit., although trying to avoid the archaic language trap. I actually sold the first story in the set to Jinx Beers for Lesbian Short Fiction ... right before it folded. By that time I had a second story halfway written but got stuck on a plot twist and set it aside.)

I'd love to do something for the skin-singers series that's a bit more on the comic side, but I'm not sure I can write comic. And, of course, there's no guarantee that anything I submit will get bought ....

Comments

[gunnora.livejournal.com]

We DESPERATELY need good lesbian fiction!!!!

I keep going back to sources like Firebrand books and very rarely find a book that I love, but for the most part I haven't seen much in the way of good stuff that *I* enjoy as a reader.

And, of course, I am a history-loving, science fiction/fantasy reading, techno geek lesbian... for which subdemographics good enjoyable lesbian fiction is almost NEVER produced!

Heck, I'd love to see the earlier stories! I am pretty sure I have all the Sword and Sorceress series. (Now I see how I am going to spend my President's Day off... rereading the whole series...)

[hrj.livejournal.com]

*grin* Well I suspect you're probably smack dab in the middle of my target demographic. The problem I've found is finding a publisher who believes the demographic exists (and wants to try to aim for it). Back when I was sending my Romano-British bodice ... uh ... tunic-ripper around to all the standard lesbian publishers, the biggest sense I got back was that they simply didn't know what to do with a historical. (This was supported by my observation of what was getting published in the way of historicals.) And when you did find sf, fantasy, or historicals put out by the standard lesbian publishers, a lot of if was just really really bad. (And I mean bad spelling and bad grammar bad, not just bad characters and bad plot bad.) I suspect that they didn't have the background to evalute submissions in those fields and then interpreted negative feedback as being aimed at the genres rather than at the specific executions. (This is all wild guesswork on my part. And quite possibly 50% sour grapes.)

[broider-barones.livejournal.com]

writing is addictive! it is not about the financial aspect for true writers - it is about the creative spirit. You have been pushing a long time to redefine your life - school and then home. Now that those are settled I am not surprised that it is time to write again. enjoy the process and we will enjoy the results.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Hmm, so am I not a "true writer" if the financial aspect is one of the important parts of my writing? I write for a living. Sometimes I'm writing investigative reports; sometimes it's linguistics; sometimes it's fiction; sometimes it's song lyrics; sometimes it's Welsh history. Heck, if I thought it was all about creative spirit and not about money, I certainly wouldn't have written the baby name book. For me, part of the craft of writing is being able to write to order in wildly differing genres and for wildly differing markets. If I just wanted to sit in my room and do creative writing, I could do it till the cows come home. But I want to write stuff -- in whatever field -- where the proof of its quality is people's willingness to plunk down money to read it.

[broider-barones.livejournal.com]

LOL - of course not, but if they took away the financial aspect would you still write fiction?songs? welsh bits?

[mbumby.livejournal.com]

Oooh, good news on the new S&S. I look forward to it, especially if it contains another of your stories.

[mamaalanna.livejournal.com]

Are they accepting slush? Or is this another "by invitation only"? I've got one that I always meant to send in, but didn't get a roundtuit in time.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Are they accepting slush? Or is this another "by invitation only"?

Based on the announcment on the web site (http://mzbworks.home.att.net/s22.htm) it looks like it's an open casting call. The one caveat is that it's no longer a DAW publication but a small press one, so there's no telling what sort of long-term legs it's going to have. I've only heard about it by the rumor mill -- if they're doing any direct contact of previous contributors, it hasn't gone out yet. And according to the announcement EW is editing it, so it's quite possible that the selected material will have a different flavor than previous volumes. (There were basically two volumes based on material that MZB had pre-selected before her death, and then one volume that was invitation-only edited by DP -- presumably because she simply didn't have time to sift through slush. And since the invitations were to previous contributors, it maintained a similar flavor. So this will be the first real post-MZB S&S.)

[mamaalanna.livejournal.com]

Thanks much! Working on it this evening.