Who is the hunter? Who is the prey?

Time Enough at Last

Alas, now that I have the time to work on my writing, I'm not sleeping. It hasn't affected my production, and I'm very happy with where my manuscript is, but I feel burned out for a lack of sleep.

I can't put my finger on why it happens, but I tend to go through cycles of insomnia. I'll be fine for four or five months straight, then I'll have a week or ten days where I can only get a few hours of shut-eye a night if I'm lucky.

I've been up until all hours of the morning over the last three days, reading and playing stories over and over in my mind. I keep paper and pen near my bed and I've had some neat ideas, which is always good. And I've risen a few times and gone to the word processor to flesh out a couple of passages.

But all in all, these stretches of fatigue zap me hard. I feel like a shell of myself a bit right now, and all the capillaries in my eyes are showing. Oh, well. I'm going to take a long run today and watch those Florida Gators tonight and here's to hoping that the sleep gods shine on me and I snatch ten hours of rest between now and tomorrow.

And the truly asinine part of this lack of rest is the vast amount of time I have in which to collect it. I don't have any responsibilities at the college for months!

Sheesh. I feel like poor Henry Bemis, that "charter member in the fraternity of dreamers" who only wants to read and, when the chance finally presents itself, finds it blocked by cruel fate.

Enough belly-aching. I finished the edits for my story "9 Curzon Place" yesterday. This tale is fairly strong, I think (hope), and will appear in the February issue of Something Wicked. I also received a very kind and helpful rejection (with an offer to re-submit) on a story I finished over the Christmas break. I'll visit that one first today, then hit the novel with an important plot sequence that needs some fine-tuning.

Any tips on dealing with insomnia I'll accept with gratitude in the comments section below...

Publishing Stimulus: Investing in Education

Galleycat had an interesting post today on Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and the company's faith that the Obama administration's investment in education will bolster its bottom line in the months to come.

This quote says it all:

"Given the stated objective of the incoming Obama administration of the importance of education to the US global competitiveness, we are hopeful that school districts will have the necessary funding available to ensure students have the appropriate instructional materials to use in the classroom and to take home."

I looked at this post not an hour after reading an article in today's Florida Times-Union. The T-U article, titled "Books may help schools' budgets," outlines the legislature's plan to potentially allow cash-strapped districts to use textbook funds to pay bills in the current budget cycle.

That headline is misleading. In actuality, it means no new books for writing students.

"It is still a verb, so we haven't changed the language arts that radically," Broward County School Board member Maureen Dinen told a House education committee Tuesday (Patterson).

I'm torn on this one. I use Blackboard as an instructional platform in most of my classes. The software allows me to link, fairly liberally, to both grammar content (theory and exercises) and essays, short stories and current events. It's all I need.

That said, these are college students I'm working with. Many have a firm grasp of composition fundamentals. Those are the skills they learned in high school, the skills that are directly impacted by the use of solid textbook.

Part of me feels that the schools could go without the texts. Another part of me insists that they purchase them in an effort to better prepare their students for life after high school.

My wife works at Forrest High here in Jacksonville. The language arts curriculum in Duval County uses workbook-style texts, so they are certainly reliant on replacement materials for the coming school year.

I don't know that there's a clear resolution to this debate, but it surely underlines a truth about education in America: our kids are getting the shaft.

Market Update: Shock Totem

Shock Totem looks like a great market. I like the fact that it bills itself as a straight-forward horror market; there are far too few magazines and publishing ventures that are willing to hitch their cart to that term.

The production quality of the sample issue on the website looks great, and this statement clearly speaks to a sense of self confidence:

The Golden Age of Horror Begins in 2009

Shock Totem pays a professional rate of a nickel a word, up to a $250 maximum payment. I think one of the things I'll be doing in 2009 is changing the complexion of my magazine subscriptions. To that end Shock Totem and Doorways are the early favorites for inclusion in my meager (four subscriptions) list.

By the way, those of you looking for a high-quality magazine of dark fiction should take a look at Something Wicked Magazine. It's consistently bursting with fresh fiction and interesting interviews. Also, John Connolly has written for the magazine. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Nocturnes (the collection I'm working on currently; cover at the right of your screen). Connolly's work is strong--vivid and chilling and beautifully written. "Some Children Wander By Mistake" is the best story I've read in a long while--up there with Gaiman's "How To Talk to Girls at Parties" and Joe Hill's "Involuntary Committal."

Great stuff. So, long story short--try Something Wicked and Shock Totem. Read John Connolly.

Enjoy your day.

Writing Process: A New Routine

When I went to the gym today, the place was packed. Gyms do their best business in January, thanks to all of those pesky resolutions. So why is January 1 such an important day for renewing promises to oneself? Why is it any different than March 22 or September 9?

Threshold, I suppose. A fresh start holds promise. And since our time here is finite (at least in this go-round), each new year represents a chance for improvement.

Anyone fall off the horse yet on his or her resolution? Just curious...

I didn't make any hard-and-fast resolutions, but my wife and I made a deal to limit eating out to once a month. I did set some goals, and I've adjusted my writing schedule to hopefully become more fruitful.

In On Writing, Stephen King says that he keeps regular business hours. He takes four days off each year, otherwise he works on two or three projects at a time, writing each day in the morning.

I'm not working at the college in the first two months of 2009. I'll teach a couple of night classes in March and April, giving me a four-month window in which to harvest a respectable word count. And, rather than put a limit on that word count, I'm going to try to sit at the computer, Monday through Thursday, from 9:00 until noon each morning. I'll jog, fish or read in the afternoon and then get back to the word processor around 3:00. I think I'll take Fridays off and work on short fiction during the weekend.

These are all guidelines, of course, and I want to remain flexible. I mulled over the opening chapter of book #3 last night for an hour before nodding off and, while I jotted notes on it, I want to get the re-write done on book #2 before I move on. My hope is this approach will distill the work, allowing me to focus on a project at a time until I knock 'em out.

I've written before that I'm pretty interested in the creative process. I like thinking about how these stories come to maturity and, while there's no direct road map, any number of methods lead to the same place.

Well, rather than focus on a weekly word count, I'm going to try this routine. It's more regimented than anything I've done before; I'll confess that part of my attraction to the uniformity of such an approach is guilt. I want to associate the morning hours with writing. I think that'll help keep my ass in the chair.

So what say you, sparse posters? Word count? Page count? Time limit? Strike while the iron is hot?

Make up stories about romances forged at prison camp fences?

Sorry, had to get that last one in. My faith in memoir as truthful commentary is slim to none right about now, so please forgive my cynicism.

But the question remains: how do you create art?

Good Things About 2009: Tiger is Back

When I was a kid, I couldn't stand golf. My pop used to love it, and it seemed to go longer than church on those Saturday afternoons. I didn't like any of it: the announcers whispering as the players lined up putts, the eight hours of coverage that seemed to grind on for days and years, the fly-away shots of the course and the obligatory lavishing of praise for the aerial blimp shots.

The whole thing was exhausting.

Well, my attitude has changed, friends. I love golf. I love to play it, and I love to watch it. During golf season, I tend to camp in front of the television for hours at a time from Thursday through Sunday evening. There has never, to hear the pundits evaluate it, been this much depth on the tour.

And there has never been a player like Tiger Woods. Not in the history of the game. Sure, Jack is the man and he still holds the record for majors. But no golfer (maybe no athlete, save M.J.) has so thoroughly revolutionized the game as has Tiger.

That win last year in the U.S. Open was the best sports story of the year in 2008 (sorry Phelps fans--that's just the way it is, to quote Bruce Hornsby). Better than the N.Y. Giants Super Bowl win. Better than that awesome Nadal-Federer Wimbledon final. Better than that Baltimore Orioles win over the Yankees back in May.

And, from all accounts (Garry Smits is the golf writer for the Florida Times-Union, and he is excellent), Tiger is rebounding well from knee surgery and is looking to take the tour by storm again in 2009. I doubt he'll play more. We can probably count on his usual sixteen to eighteen tournaments. But I can't wait to see his approach. Tiger's mental game is the strongest part of his make-up, and I think it'll be fascinating to see how his strongest opposition (Kim, Villegas, Mickelson, Harrington, Choi, Sergio) sizes him up this year.

Golf is really a great example of blending the physical (muscle memory, power, precision) with the creative (shot making ability) and the mental (come Sunday, short putts often decide monetary values in the hundreds of thousands). And no one does it better than Tiger.

As an aside, I've been reading Arthur Machen in the first days of this new year. He's a good writer, and the volume on the right of your screen is more than a little creepy. Hit your local bookstore (Chamblin Bookmine Downtown, if you're in Jacksonville) and grab some of his stuff if you get the chance.

2009: Transitions

Word to all of our various mothers, and Happy New Year, ya'll!

2008 was a difficult year on our planet. China was laid low by a devastating earthquake. Terrorists wrought havoc throughout India and Indonesia, among countless other locales. Israel and Palestine finished the year off by trading missiles and rockets like blushing fifth graders swapping notes in class. The American economy tanked, leading to record home foreclosures and the worst year for the financial markets since 1931 (!). The publishing industry finished '08 on shaky footing. California might be sending out I.O.U.s this year instead of state tax returns.

Sheesh...

It was a trying year and a tiring year, but it wasn't without its merits.

I think the financial situation in America was a necessary correction. Years of deregulation in the lending markets artificially inflated housing. Many who shouldn't have leveraged themselves did (and were permitted to in this new lax economy), and our current financial situation rests wholly on that bedrock of poor decision making in the housing sector. Things will improve as the market adjust over the next year. And this had to happen. We need to get in better touch with ourselves and our needs, and stop catering to our desires. I think things will get worse before they get better (I've heard the idea of 10% unemployment bandied about for this year, and it wouldn't surprise me at all), but that we will adjust our attitudes about debt and come to terms with living within our means. Americans have already illustrated this in terms of our driving practices over the past six months.

I am encouraged by America's decision to honor intellect and optimism in its choice of our new President. While President Obama faces a litany of nearly unprecedented challenges, I think he's up to the challenge. The partisan political bashing will, I hope, subside in 2009 and our country can make positive strides as a whole.

From a personal perspective, 2008 was good to me. I enjoyed my work at the college. I think I worked harder than I ever have in higher education and, as always, my students inspired and surprised me with their growth and intelligence. My colleagues at Deerwood kept me on my toes intellectually, and we saw our school go through some phenomenal physical changes as the renovation ran its course.

I can't wait to use the new theater for our cinema course. If you're a student reading this, look for the summer offering. Lots of changes in store for that little beauty.

My wife continues to amaze me with her strength and spirit. She spent 2008 as a tireless advocate for the students she works with at Forrest High, and she's done it all while adjusting to her first pregnancy.

That's right, we were fortunate enough to conceive a child in 2008! She'll be joining us in about ten weeks.

I read a lot of books (roughly seventy, if you count cookbooks) and had a great time with the writing. I think I matured in my ability to tell a story this year, and I'm thankful to editors Lyn Perry, Emily Thorp and Joe Vaz for accepting my work for publication. Your confidence is much appreciated, and I'll work hard to get the word out on these magazines and venues.

I finished thirteen short tales in 2008. I'd like to complete at least fourteen in 2009. I wrote a novel last year. I want to polish it in 2009 and find a publishing contract for it before this time next year.

Book #3 begins soon.

2008 was dim in some ways, but luminous in others. I hope those who read this will embrace 2009 as a year for positive growth and development. Best of luck in the new year to all of you, and thanks for reading.