Jackie Is In the House

Back again from the hell that was the beach with no internet access.... Okay, so it wasn't entirely hell but being separated from my lovely net was definitely no picnic. At least I had the iPad. You do know how much I love this thing right? I'm calling it Brad on Twitter since every time I actually mention the word, 'iPad' on Twitter I get inundated with spam. So, Brad and me...well, we go together like toast and jam. I extolled his virtues to all who would listen and indeed, I even got a sale. I should work for Apple really.

But anyway, the really good thing is that Brad is a joy to write on. I have a special keyboard I plug Brad into and Robert's your father's brother. You just write, you don't even have to save because it saves automatically. No worries about stupid technology crashing. It's awesome. And the games...

Ahem, sorry, I didn't want my first blog post to be about Brad. What I meant to say was that the Hammer Pants ms is now a complete ms should I have a request for more. I probably shouldn't have written it because the Voice of Doom keeps telling me they won't want any more but hey, the OTT optimist told the VoD to stuff it. And I wrote it because I was having fun writing it. Which leads me to the point of this terribly rambly post.

New Year's Resolutions. I have decided, since I am an ornery, contrary beast, that I am not going to have any, at least not to do with writing. I don't need to write more since I'm obssessed enough with it as it is so that's not it. A contract would be nice but that's something I can't control so I can't have that either. Though, that being said, I guess there's one thing I could do for 2011 and that would be to enjoy my writing more. I hated 2010 to be honest. It was sucky from a writing perspective (except for the end) and I felt that I'd lost all the pleasure I got from writing. I worried about everything, whether I had the romance, the right turning points, whether I'd over complicated the conflict, made the characters too self aware, whether it was too much about sex, were my characters active enough....blergh!!!

Enough I say. This year I want to enjoy what I write and stick all that craft stuff in a big box and only open it when necessary. So, my dear blog friends, if it looks as if I'm in any danger of worrying too much about the crafty stuff, feel free to kick my butt and remind me that I was supposed to be enjoying my writing this year! :-)

Right, so, anyone else with some resolutions for 2011 that I am jealous of and wish I'd thought of first? ;-)

Angry Birds

Okay so no, haven't had any news since that email from the ed last week. And am feeling frustrated today. The progress of this story feels somewhat akin to Chinese Water Torture and I'm wondering whether in April, when they told me the story needed to be rewritten, I should have just accepted the story wasn't right and subbed something fresh. But no, I had to go and prove that I could rewrite if they wanted me to. Just to show them I could. And what did I do? I wrote a good first chapter - yeah, they liked it - but somehow, in chapters 2 and 3 I broke it. I really, really thought that whatever failings there might be with the partial, at least it would warrant a request for the rest of it. But not even that is forthcoming.

Eight months on since I first subbed the synopsis to this story and I really wish I hadn't bothered rewriting it. But because I did, I've just prolonged the agony by another four months. The VoD is, of course, telling me it's an R. The VoD is telling me I can't rewrite, and not only can I not write a story they'll want to buy, I'll NEVER write a story they'll want to buy.

Honestly, today is a 'why on earth am I bothering with this sh*t?' kind of day.

Anyway, why the Angry Birds? Okay, well, this morning as I checked the email on the iPad and realised that there was no email from the ed (again), in my frustration and in a desperate bid to NTAI, I started up a little app called Angry Birds. It's a game where you have to fire a little bird from a catapult at an edifice that protects a little pig. Your aim is to crumble the edifice and pop the pig. It's horribly addictive and quite ridiculous. Sometimes the edifices are complicated and it takes forever to pop all the pigs and complete the level. Very frustrating. You see where I'm going with this? Yes, this stupid publishing journey of mine is a lot like playing Angry Birds. No matter how complicated the edifice you have to collapse, no matter if you've popped all the pigs but one, no matter how close you are, you still fail the level. And so you have to try again if you want to complete the game.

So here I am, still trying to complete the game. And I'm going to pop all those pigs if it's the last thing I do.