November 14th, 2005

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Flex Time

If you are an adult and work at an adult workplace, it's common that you might go home early one day, or take an extra-long lunch hour to run some errands. The next day, or on a day when you have a very large number of tasks, you might stay at work very late. It all sort of evens out.

What I want to know is why can't every day be like that? The day itself. How many days have you thought, "I just need another two hours because I have all this work to do and I need to get it done today." Conversely, how often have you looked toward an event in the future and said "I wish today were already over, because I want it to be tomorrow!"

I really want the option of having one day end at, say, 6:00 PM, going to sleep for eight hours, and having it be the next morning when I wake up again. And on other days, I want to be able to work until 2:00 AM, get a full eight hours' sleep, and wake up at 6:00 AM for work the next morning.

That should be possible. It should.
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Let Down Easy

I got another rejection for Mitos del Pueblo. This from a manuscript that I sent off probably a year ago. The rejection letter itself was a form letter, but a very nice form letter - one that acknowledged the very subjective nature of literary judgement and said that it was not necessarily a reflection on the writer's ability. The form letter also said that they regretted that it wasn't possible to give a more personal reply.

At the end of the form, there was another half-page of handwritten notes.

"I'm sorry to have hung on to your submission for so long. I had another reader in the agency who is more familiar with magical realism read it as well. We both found it well-written and intriguing, but not something that we felt confident that we could place. It may be that we're not the right agents for this particular work. I'd certainly be happy to see another book from you and encourage you to try us again. (Plus we'll be quicker, I promise.)"

So, with that very kind let-down, I'm sending her off my second offering - Genius of Want (formerly Leif).