Month: January 2019

Cars

Thursday already? This new year sure is zipping by–oh, wait. 

I cannot believe it’s almost Twelfth Night and another Carnival season–and a rather long one, at that–is almost upon us. YIKES.

I managed to get another three thousand or so words written over the last two days, so I am calling that a win. I usually try to get three thousand a day, and see anything less than that as a failure. But averaging fifteen hundred a day isn’t bad, really, and if I only do fifteen hundred words a day this first draft will be finished by the end of January, as hoped and planned. So, I am looking at it as a positive, and putting it in the win column.

Welcome to Greg’s Bizarro World, where writing three thousand words a day is considered to be the standard by which all writing days are measured; where any day where the word count falls below that is considered a disappointment; where standard also means minimum, so even a standard day can be considered a disappointment and a crushing failure.

I also started editing the Scotty last night. It’s not as bad as I thought, but the manuscript is pretty sloppy. If I commit, I think I can get that taken care of by the end of the month as well. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to start doing this work, you know? Once I start, it’s never as bad as I thought it was going to be and never seems to take as long. I want to be a lot more meticulous this time, though–it would be lovely to get a relatively clean manuscript turned in that doesn’t require much more work.

I am up way too early this morning for work. I have to be there relatively early to make up the hours I lost over the holidays; so here I am up while it’s still dark outside and drinking home-made cappuccinos and hoping that I’ll be fully awake by the time i need to get in the car and drive.

Stranger things have happened!

We finished watching the first season of Killing Eve last night, and really enjoyed it. It was so much better than the previews ever showed–which left Paul and I with no desire to watch (although the raves from friends and people whose opinion I value had me curious)–and Sandra Oh was fantastic, as was the entire cast. I’d like to read the books now–because I have nothing else to do–but I am going to definitely add them to the list while we wait for another season.

So, the new year seems to be going pretty well for me so far; how’s about you, Constant Reader? I was very pleased with LSU’s season (most people had them forecast to be, at best, 6-6 or 7-5 on the year; 10-3 and probably ranked in the final Top Ten is no disgrace, and at least the three teams that did beat us–Alabama, Florida, and Texas A&M–were all really good teams) and am very excited about next season. And of course, the Saints, just like in the season they won the Super Bowl, have the number one seed and home field advantage for the play-offs. Another trip to the Super Bowl for the Saints may be in the offing; how exciting would that be?

Oh! You can also preorder Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories from my publisher right here at this link.

Seriously, it’s a wonder I have a career.

And now back to the spice mines.

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Coming Up

Happy New Year!

I chose to take a break from the Internet yesterday; no checking social media, no checking email, no hassling with anything on-line at all. Sometimes I think we forget how much the Internet has taken over our lives in the last ten years or so–at least, since the smart phone changed everything along with social media. It was, quite frankly, lovely to just relax and pay no attention to the rest of the world. I worked on the WIP for a good while yesterday, and thought about the fixes Scotty needs; I watched the LSU game (GEAUX TIGERS!) and some of the later bowl games as well. We’ve finally started watching Killing Eve, which we are loving (we might always be late to the party, but we always are most enthusiastic once we arrive). I wonder–has anyone read the books the show is based on? I might have to add them to the TBR pile.

Which, of course, is enormous.

I am hoping to finish my reread of The Shining this week; it’s a short work week, of course, because of the long holiday weekend, and I am working my usual half-day on Friday. We then work two full weeks before yet another three day holiday weekend for Martin Luther King Day, and of course, Carnival begins on Sunday with the arrival of Twelfth Night. I am going to have to take vacation time for the parades, because I can’t get to and from work with my car on parade days, so for the first time in years I can actually enjoy the parades without being exhausted from everything entailed with getting to and from work and passing out condoms in the Quarter. Plus, it will be a lovely little break as well, as well as not having to plan my days thoroughly to make sure I can get all the errands in around street closures and so forth.

Which is an enormous relief, quite frankly. I’m getting too old for all that stuff.

It’s also amazing how much email can pile up in your inbox when you take a day off to unplug. I think I might have to make that a Saturday or Sunday thing every week, to be honest. It was most lovely.

I also managed to re-initialize my old back-up hard drive that ceased working during the Great Data Disaster of 2018. Much as I hated seeing all that data and work lost, most of it had been reconstructed by now anyway and so whatever is gone may as well be gone forever; there was no guarantee the Apple Store would have been able to retrieve any of the data and I think that the loss wasn’t really that big of a deal. I no longer feel discombobulated by the loss of data, and I think I’ve finally reached the place where I can focus and get back into everything that needs to get done without worries or feeling disconnected from everything. It’s kind of lovely, really; I’ve felt so out of it ever since the Great Data Disaster of 2018 that I wasn’t certain I was ever going to get to a place where I would feel organized again.

And with me, organization (and being on top of things) is vitally important otherwise I won’t ever get anything done.

And it’s a new year, the one in which I turn fifty-eight. Huzzah! I am still feeling like I can achieve all my goals this year; I just have to stay focused and practice self-care.

And now, back to the spice mines.

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New Year’s Day

Ah, the annual setting of goals.

1. Getting in better shape. Self-care is important, and there are fewer, easier ways to take care of one’s self than taking regular exercise. But self-care isn’t just the physical; it’s also the mental. So, I need to focus on taking care of myself mentally and emotionally as well as physically. I want to try to get a massage at least every other month, to help with that; and I also think I’m going to start practicing meditation and yoga. I’ve always liked doing yoga, and I need to stretch more regularly. The yoga-toes have already helped with my feet and leg-joint issues, and I need to use techniques to keep myself from feeling pressured. One of the reasons I stopped signing book contracts without having written the book already is because of the pressure deadlines put me under; I still don’t deal with those too well and I simply need to work on my own patience.

2. Finding an agent. This is still incredibly important; I cannot move to the next level of being a professional writer without an agent negotiating for me. I should have done this long ago, and I need to take this all very seriously going forward. I’ve been collecting names of agents and agencies over the last couple of years, but I still don’t have anything to show them. I sent the first fifty pages of the Kansas book out to some agents last year, and got no interest. Which is fine, it was more of a if you don’t ever start doing this you never will thing. But now that I’ve taken the Kansas book back to the drawing board, I think it’s time to accept that trying to make the Kansas book work is like trying to make fetch happen; it’s probably not going to ever be a thing. Which, while sad, is okay. I can always reuse what I’ve done for something else. But it’s also kind of freeing to let it go and think, okay, what else have I got up my sleeve? It’s only failure if I choose to view it that way, and I’m choosing not to; I did some good work on that manuscript and it may work out in some other way.

3. The Diversity Project. I had a lot of success with the Short Story Project, so I’ve decided to add a new reading project to my 2019: reading diverse books by diverse writers. First off, it’s a shame that I am having to make this a project in the first place; I should already be reading diverse authors. I’ve been buying books by minority writers for quite some time now and adding them to the TBR pile…and yet somehow those books never seem to manage to make it up to the top of the pile. What is that about, I wonder? But it’s definitely a thing, and I need to do something about it. I live for the day when I don’t even have to think about my choices because diversity has become commonplace; but I can’t talk the talk if I don’t walk the walk. How can I expect non-gay people to read my gay books if I don’t make an effort to make diverse reading choices myself? And I have a lot of these books on hand already. So why buy more books (always the question) when I have so many to read, so many to choose from? I will blog about these books as well, and I am going to do my part to try to diversify the crime genre and my own reading.

4. The Short Story Project. Let’s face it, I wouldn’t have read nearly as many short stories in 2018 had I not made a point out of doing so, and I have not come anywhere near reading all the anthologies and single-author collections I have on hand, so I am going to renew this project for 2019. I think it’s made me a better short story writer, and I’ve certainly enjoyed all the stories I read (with a few exceptions, of course; there are always exceptions, aren’t there?). I am, however, going to try to loosen the pressure on myself and limit myself to reading at least three per month as a goal, which would be thirty-six stories for the year. I think that’s do-able without creating any added pressure for me….because everything creates pressure for me, even things I start out doing as fun, if I’m not careful.

5. Writing more short stories. This is part of the Short Story Project, of course, but it also (without adding more pressure) was part of the point of the entire project in the first place; reading more short stories was meant to be a master class in short story writing, and therefore teaching me how to be better about writing them. I’ve come to the conclusion that part of my issue with revisions and rewriting and editing my own short stories has everything to do with my own stubbornness and my own refusal to admit a story isn’t working while still trying to force it to work. I have several of those; great concepts that I simply can’t pull off the way they currently sit, and I need to figure out some way to make them work as stories. My goal is to finish two collections within the next two years (Once a Tiger and Other Stories and Monsters of New Orleans),  as well as continue trying to get stories published as the year pass. I am very excited for the release of Survivor’s Guilt and Other Stories this coming April 1. I definitely also want to get “Never Kiss a Stranger” finished and up as a Kindle single sometime this year.

6. Writing more personal essays. Yes, yes, I know the blog sort of counts as writing personal essays on a daily basis, but I’d like to start seeing them published in other places, and there are some blog entries that are more abstracts of what could be more in-depth, more introspective, and much longer. The goal is to ultimately come up with a collection of said essays called Gay Porn Writer: The Fictions of My Life, and again, this is a long-term goal; I’d like to have this collection ready in about three years.

7. More research on New Orleans history. This is also necessary for, of course, the writing of Monsters of New Orleans, which is a terrific project I am terribly excited about, plus I am kind of excited about reading up on New Orleans history, lore and legends, which will only make my writing about the city stronger and better. I am also looking forward on teaching myself how to do research, and making use of all the amazing local resources, such as the Historic New Orleans Collection, the Tennessee Williams Research Center, the public library resources, and of course, the Louisiana Historic Research Collection at Tulane University. (The Tulane library alone!) I am still reading Herbert Asbury’s The French Quarter whenever I get a minute, and there are so many others to read–currently in my research pile on my desk I have that and three Robert Tallant books (Voodoo in New Orleans, Ready to Hang, and The Voodoo Queen) along with Alecia Long’s The Great Southern Babylon and the ever classic Gumbo Ya-Ya.

8. Clearing out the TBR pile. I wasn’t able to read as much for pleasure this past year as I have in other years; primarily because I was judging a book award again (I think this will be the last time I actively participate in judging a book award; it’s just too time-consuming, not to mention all the books piling up in the house), and of course, all the research. I’ve also decided that books I want to keep to reread no longer need to be kept; if I need to read again or use it for research for another project (I still want to write about the romantic suspense writers who dominated the bestseller lists from mid-century through the 1980’s) I can always simply get an ebook version of it, which I can access and make notes easily on with the iPad. I also want to declutter the Lost Apartment, and let’s face it, the books are the primary problem.

9. Keeping a positive attitude. This is the hardest of all goals; because my mind is already trained to default to the negative. But negativity derails everything; and keeping belief in myself, no matter whatever career disappointments might lie around the corner for me, is necessary in order for me to do the work I need to do, not only on my writing but on myself, to be the best Gregalicious I can be. And ultimately, that’s the bottom line of all the goals, isn’t it? To be the best me I can be?

And now, back to the spice mines. I am taking a self-imposed exile from the Internet for the rest of the day, to get things done around the house, to write some more, to do some reading, and just get ready for the return to work this week. Happy New Year, one and all!

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