Noise in the Attic

I keep getting very good rejections on my short stories.  Everyone loves my writing.  They also think my stories suck wind.  This brings me right up against a couple of issues involving self-confidence and the integrity of my stories.

The self-confidence part is easy.  Maybe my stories do suck.  Maybe I’m deluding myself into believing they don’t.  Maybe the things that concern me are just petty issues that nobody else caes about.

Maybe not.

The integrity part involves the relationship between my stories and my (still very potential) readers.  Maybe I’m being too subtle, hiding meanings in subtext, using images, symbols, and metaphors instead of laying it out in the sunlight for everybody to see.

I don’t think so.  I like to think that there are plenty of people out there who read carefully and thoughtfully and see the hidden things.  Those are the readers I’m trying to reach.  I don’t want to dumb my stories down just to get some publication credits.  I won’t.  If it comes to it, I’ll self-publish e-books and screw the money, glory, fame, or whatever it is that goes with publication.

That particular briar patch is a long way off yet, though.  For now, I have to figure out how to get my stories in front of people who appreciate them.  Magazine and e-zine editors are for the most part far too busy to look for hidden meanings.  I have to find a way to put some obvious wowie-zowie on the page without feeling like I’ve sold out.

On the medical front: my body is now fine, my mind is not.  Further developments loom on the horizon, and I will report as the situation warrants.  Right now, I remain in medication Hell for about another week.  Then, we’ll see.

P.S. I showed the poem below to my therapist.  He said it was disturbing.  I said that’s why I showed it to you. Ah, the joys of therapy.

I guess most people are aware of the hoopla over the early change to Daylight Savings Time this year.  Some so-called “experts” have created a mini-Y2K crisis out of this.  Pay them no attention.  They are idiots, and their concerns are bullshit.

Computers are profoundly stupid machines that neither know nor care what time it is.  “Time” in this sense is a purely human construct, and only humans have any awareness of the concept at all.  Let me say this again: THE COMPUTER DOES NOT CARE!!!

If it bother you, change the clock on your computer at the same time you change the rest of your clocks.  Otherwise, don’t bother.  The clock on my computer is always so far wrong it doesn’t matter anyway, so I probably won’t waste my time and let it change over whenever it thinks it should.  My computer’s idea of time has no bearing on my life.

FWIW, the only thing the computer knows about the time is the number of “clock ticks” since a certain date.  In a lot of microcomputers, there are about 8 clock ticks in one human second, and the start date is most often January 1, 1980.  The clock ticks are based on the oscillation of a quartz crystal, similar to the one in your watch.

Experts: human concerns do not carry over into inanimate objects or most other animate objects; you’re not as smart as you think you are (and we know it).  Sit down, shut up, and leave my blood pressure alone!

Thank you for your support.

Those of you who can’t get enough bad poetry can watch as this one get worse over the next few days. Enjoy, you sick bunch of…

Something there is that doesn’t like a wall.
Something there is that does.
Good walls make good prisons.
I build them strong:
Blocks cut from the living rock
of my heart;
Crushed hopes and brimstone
lovingly mixed just right
with blood for mortar;
Troweled with care,
Leveled with precision,
Cured through year after hopeless year
to seamless perfection,
stone and cement melded into one.
Cured with the pressure
of year upon wearisome year
to one seamless sheet.
No doors, no windows,
only four walls,
ceiling and floor.
My stone, my walls, my prison,
my life.

I batter my walls with
eyes clenched in fists of tears.
The walls ignore me.
They stare imperturbably
into nowhere, nowhen, nothing.
I am nothing to them.
Sadness licks my wounds,
helps them bleed.

Edited 03/07/2007 10:59am
Edited 03/09/2007 15:08pm

Things have been a tad unpleasant around the old homestead lately.  That sentence is in the same league as the astronaut who said “Houston, we have a problem.”

Depression, diabetes, and intestinal viruses make for an unhappy camper.  The DD twins depress my immune system enough for the IV to sneak in.  On the other hand, I am still healthy enough to fight it, which means I have been living in one of the upper levels of Hell for the past 3 weeks or so (time flies when your heaving).

I do have some post ideas, one of them is actually about writing (YEAAAHHHHH!!!!) and one about tornadoes and Ecclesiastes, but they will have to wait until I feel up to giving a … well, until I feel better.  I sure hope that won’t be long.