Ridiculous Cute Crow

On my mind - ridiculous cute. To manage migraine, I do yoga nidra at noon each day. Most of the time, this is a solitary endeavor. Yesterday, it was not. I developed -- a growth.

Crow decided to climb into my tee shirt with me. My fluffy black 17lb marshmallow cat flopped over between my side and my arm. He pillowed his head on my shoulder and 'assisted' with my  nervous system reset.

Except.

When my session ended and I need to get up and go back to work, we came to disagreement. My furry son declined to rise. He also declined to relinquish my shirt.

Thus it is that rather than distress the sizeable feline, I risked an indecent exposure charge. Only briefly. I was outdoors, but  inside the lanai when I shimmied out of that tee shirt and grabbed a blanket from the porch swing and got it around me to get inside. Good thing it wasn't yard work day.

I found myself another tee shirt to wear for the rest of the day. 

My first one remained a place of feline refuge.

I suppose there's something to be said for being someone's sense of safety. 

One final photo of a happy, ridiculous Crow cat below.

Four-Footed Writing Companions

It's hard to see the void who's positioned himself between me and the keyboard, but that's Raven. He's appointed himself my newest furry writing companion. Provided it's not too hot. Or there's nothing interesting happening on the back deck.  He's not as experienced as the editors and writing companions who filled the position before him, but I'm confident he'll learn. Perceval and Arya want to be my editors. They've perfecting the art of walking across my keyboard. In Arya's case, she particularly likes to stand on keys. Just to make sure she really gets her point across.

 Crow likes to be in the same room so he can offer moral support while I work, but he's more of a thinker than a doer. He looks on from his sunny spot on the cat tree while I write. I'm required to pay a pet tax by skritching his chin if I get up to grab tea or a snack. All of this four-footed company is most welcome as our senior editor died on Monday afternoon. Miss Cuillean had retired from her position about four months ago, but out of respect, no other cat would take her place while she battled her final illness. Now that she's moved on, the younger cats are seizing their opportunities and I have all the furry contributors in the middle of what I'm doing that I can handle. 

The Good versus the Development Opportunity

Crow wants you to know he has a tough life. (That's a stuffed lion he's resting against there.) So yeah, even the cats have stuffies.

I suppose in a way this leads reasonably well into what I feel like I do well in fiction. I over invest. Kidding/no kidding. My plots and details tend to be a little involved and I have a disturbing tendency to obsess over them. I'd like to believe that creates an immersive read - one that draws readers into the characters and their world. The other thing I'm really good at is editing. Once I've finished a draft, if you tell me something is broken, I may whine and complain, but I will wander off, deep in thought and then come back 24 hours later with a bunch of possible solutions. So while I'm not glib or clever when I'm on the spot (one of the reasons I'm kind of bad at Twitter) I do like the fact that I have some problem solving skill.

Which leads us to what I'm working on getting better at and that is drafting. I'm not fast and I want to be fast. I do better work, I think, when I'm going fast and don't have time to second guess what's going on and/or get too inside the characters' heads. It's a work in progress. Aren't we all?

I want to take a second to say Welcome Aboard to Alexia!

Rejection Stories.

Today's photo brought to you by He Who is Fussed By Nothing. This is Crow, 'helping' me get this manuscript finished.

As to godsawful rejection stories. Mine is pretty tame, but I do still hold a grudge. So there is that.

One of the great benefits of having gone through an acting conservatory program was that we actually had training in how to handle rejection. There were rules. First rule was: It's never, ever personal. It may FEEL personal, but it's not. It could happen that you'd walk into an audition situation and a casting director would stop you and send you home before you'd even opened your mouth. How was that not personal? Easy. You had to realize that you probably look like that casting director's ex and there's not a damned thing you can do to counter that.

So when I screwed up the courage to start submitting my writing for publication, I figured I was pretty well adjusted for handling rejection. And to be honest, for 99.9% of the time, I absolutely was. Mainly because the rejections were all so professional and nonjudgemental. It's all been stuff like, "I just bought a story on this same theme. Sorry." That was my very first rejection and was from Marion Zimmer Bradley. It was a sweet way of laughing in my face and not saying, "OMG, this tired theme? Again? Did you not read or pay attention to my guidelines at all??" It's only after years of rejection letters that I've learned to read between the polite lines to the core of what an editor wants to say with their carefully worded 'thanks but no thanks' letters.

And then.

I subbed a story I very much loved to a small house that still exists (and which, will therefore not be named.) I'd talked to the editor at conference and been invited to sub. The rejection letter I received straight up said, "Writing's not good enough." Those exact words. You may deduce from this that the editor was male and you'd be correct. At the time, other writers shrugged when I raged over it. "Eh. It's the business. Get over it." No. It isn't the business. That's the point. It's an opinion. It's a value judgement in a business were editors have no professional business telling writers their work isn't good enough. Do it on Facebook and people will call you out for shit posting. Professionals stick to facts. The facts were that my work wasn't appropriate for this editor's line(s). Fine. Say so. That's a professional, business oriented rejection. I don't require a break down of what it is about the work that doesn't work for someone. That input is ALWAYS appreciated, but never expected.  The professional, no value-judgement rejection is what the romance industry has pretty much mastered and has been the standard rejections I've received. Except for this one editor (who no longer works in the business, much to my satisfaction.)

Does that make me petty? Good. I'm comfortable with that. The best revenge is to have been published, won awards, AND outlasted the jerk judgy.