Another rejection, but personalized. I am still on the plateau of writing where people apologize to me for rejecting me. This time I have “strength of writing.” Is that like “strength of heart” in a Final Fantasy like quest? Where is my chocobo in that case?

So back to the submitting slog goeth I.

Recognizing that the likelihood of me having all the quiet free, time I need stretching out in front of me, uninterrupted, is nil, I put it to myself to write today and yesterday with life going on. A playdate, MLP:FiM, Arsenal vs Manchester United, low-grade cats fighting in the background, and I wrote a story about buying a Chagall. So, obviously it is about rich people, but it’s also in the Kawarthas, and it’s short so hopefully no one will notice all the mistakes since I am neither rich nor living in the Kawarthas.

I think I’d like to live in the Kawarthas some day. Then I could write about them all the time.

On to typing and proofreading. The worst parts.

I’d forgotten about this until today – on a message board I frequent, someone had asked me about Ethiopia and I remembered I had written this. It’s micro micro, not even a story, just an image. But I had to search and search to find where I’d written it down, so I’m going to write it down here too so the chance of me losing it again is slight.

Here is something I wrote while riding on the bus. It was a bumpy bumpy ride that took us two hours to go 40 km.

In the fields outside the city, the land is populated by men in green suits. Always green, faded from sunlight, dust, and the harshness of living here. But always green, same cut, same style, same shade. The hems have always fallen. The pants are always held up by a rope acting as a belt. I wonder why this level of conformity which I have seen only once before in the salarymen scurrying around the commuter trains in Tokyo. I think the Derg must somehow be involved, some command economy scheme to outfit Ethiopian men in misfit olive green suits as protection against the bourgeouis excess of Western capitalism. The green clashes with the dried yellow grass of the hills surrounding our town. You can spot the men from miles away, like fireflies in an inverted landscape. I wave but they never wave back. Only the children who chase behind me on the street yelling “Ferenj, ferenj!” (always twice) wave at me. To them, I am an oddity, an amusement, a novelty. To the aged old men in the dusty green suits, I no longer exist.

So, anyone want to publish a paragraph of what I thought on a day in October 2007?

You know those Inspired by a true story provisos movies put at the beginning to say that they stole a little from someone’s life and then imagined the rest. I wrote myself an Inspired by a true story last week. I like the story I wrote. But I can’t do anything with it. How much can I do with a story inspired by true events, especially true events in the UK where the libel laws would like nothing more than to smack me down. Even though I don’t use any names or times and I change details grossly, I don’t think I can do anything with this story. Here, in Canada, the story gets no coverage. I can’t imagine a Canadian journal taking a chance on my stream-of-consciousness story about a forty year old Irish murder.

So what do I do? I guess I just put it aside as a study in writing I did. But that feels like a failure. Each story I write should be better than the last. I should be getting better the more I write. This, the newest story, by that measure, should be the best and I’m condemning it to rest forgotten on my hard drive. Until I write another story which then becomes the best. Then maybe I can look back at this one and realise, with disdain, how puerile it is.

When I was younger, I always wanted to write a story about The Troubles in Northern Ireland. I don’t know why. But now I have. So at least there’s that.

Trying to be productive before the threat of summer.

Wrote a draft zero (in longhand in notebook) thinking about Jean McConville’s murder. Likely not a very convincing story, but I did it so it counts. Still have to type up last week’s schnitzel house story, as well as newest faerie chapter. The two stories are shorter, under 2500 words for those under 2500 words please submissions. Would be nice to write another 5000 word piece though, but the fan story wore me out. My focus is not that I can do 5000 words of anything any longer.

Maybe story six of my twelve stories of 2014 will be micro. Maybe I’ll give myself one hundred words and see what I can do.

Yesterday, after feeling bad about not getting anywhere with stories, I sat down (well, laid down actually, I was sleepy), and wrote a story that is not complicated and sort of just there for the sake of being there. Like technique exercises in piano. All plunky and wrist hurting (writing while lying on my back and holding the notebook up with my right hand and my pencil in my left was not too clever of me. Frida Kahlo painted in bed using a special easel. Perhaps I need a special bed-writing-desk.)

We went to Schnitzel Haus on Wednesday. So on Thursday, I wrote a story about people going to Schnitzel Haus. To make it not so autobiographical, I made the story people go to Schnitzel Haus on a Tuesday and not on a Wednesday; actually, the story isn’t autobiographical at all other than the characters in it have been to Schnitzel Haus and I have been to Schnitzel Haus and so has pretty much everyone who lives around here so maybe my story is about them and not me in any case.

I wanted to do one short story a month this year. I missed January because of my failed attempts at satisfying my mentor for my course. So I’m only one behind now. So far, I’ve written about an ad for a psychic in a newspaper, a lifeboat, yelling into a fan while it’s on, and now Schnitzel Haus. But it’s only May 9. Maybe I can fit two short stories in in May and catch up. If I can think of something new to write about now. I’m out of ideas, which I always say when I finish a story. I announce I will never write again, and then write a new story. So maybe tomorrow. Tomorrow I’ll write something new.

Due to having a lot of my stories published in the last two years and the ones that haven’t been just keep kicking around, rejection after rejection trailing behind them, I recognize the need to rebuild my short story arsenal. So I decided, in March, to write one short-story a month for 2014 (minimum). I kind of wish I’d decided this in January, as I wrote a story in February, I’m writing one in March, and January I spent on Come From Away and How To See The Faeries, so I’m already a story behind (not that I’ve finished the March story either).

So twelve stories. Seems manageable. There’s even one section of Come From Away I don’t mind. I might cut that out, pad it a bit, and use that as a short story so January wasn’t completely wasted.

The Fieldstone Review will be publishing my story Ana’s Cupcakes in their upcoming edition. So yay me!