slurpslurpsnapcrunchslurp

Not much to discuss for writing news today...I had a couple of 1500 word days this week, and a couple of 300 word days, and a couple of 0 word days.

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Cemetary Dance is making some changes, but it sounds like a lot of it is TBA...and a mea culpa of sorts from the chief. I don't know the full history, but it sounds like he may be a bit hard on himself for not bringing his A game the last couple of years.

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Dog Oil Press is accepting dark humor up to 981 words. This is one of the few market-focused stories I might go for, just because it sounds like so much fun (although I was jettisoned by Dark Jesters last year...). At this point I feel strongly compelled to focus much more on finishing one of these damn novels than doing any more short stories, but writing short stories are like having a bag of lime n chile tortilla chips in the cupboard. One can only walk by that door so many times before it finds its way open somehow...

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To further perpetuate the stereotype that writers are generally social misfits, I am publicly declaring (admitting?) that I haven't watched a football, baseball, or anything-ball game in probably fifteen years, but I religiously watch the Academy Awards ceremony every year. I don't know why I like it; I think the pomp and glamour is hokey, most of the participants are more hung up on themselves than any human should be, and the thought that there should be a first-past-the-post contest for art is crap. 

But I still watch; and every year I've watched, it made me want to sit down and write. Jealousy? Desire to stand on stage someday and win a little gold statue? To be accepted? I don't think so...a psychatrist may say differently, but I think I mostly enjoy it because it's a recognition and celebration of a bunch of people using their unconventional talents to make a living, and in the process making the world a more interesting place to live. It's not really that much different than what we do, I guess.

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Lastly, a disturbing video my wife took last weekend: she took her parents to Lake Mead to feed the fish by the dock, and this is the footage she captured. I get a weird, primative chill when I watch this clip; anyone stuck for ideas for the Dead Bait antho may be inspired. She thinks they're catfish. I think they need a more sinister name, like Bonecleaners.

Nice Problem to Have (I guess)

Still grinding away on Mojave...I'm really getting the urge to stop and work on a short story or two, but I'm moving toward a deadline and don't want to stop.

No acceptances of rejections yet this year, but I still have 3-4 weeks on the four pending before their self-stated SLAs are up (I'm not counting Hotel Guignol's screenplay sub...at the time they were getting 300 per day--yes, day).

I just got the latest issue of Cemetary Dance, and there was an interview in there with Brian Keene. The interviewer asked him if he considered himself a sell-out because WalMart asked Random House to ask Keene (insofar as WalMart "asks" a potential supplier to do anything...they say sign here or find another channel to sell your crap in) to make a major change to his story because it might be offensive--I haven't read the book (Terminal), but apparently there is a child character who is the second coming of Christ, and the MC caused his death. Walmart didn't like it--so Keene changed it.

My wife said that's ludicrous, you wouldn't do that...would you? And I hesitated. I had to think about that, and I still haven't decided. Given my station and goals, I would have to consider it long and hard, but my gut tells me that I would probably toe the line on that. Keene's defense was that mainstream fiction is not art--it's entertainment, and must meet the demands of the supply chain. But, as the title of this post suggests: how great would it be to even to have the chance to answer that question?

Highly speculative (but hey, that's what we do!), but, what would you do in Keene's situation? If you had a rock that said "my writing is..." and two buckets, one said "demand-driven entertainment", the other "my artistic expression", which bucket would you toss into?