Maegan's Musings

So today I was a bit apprehensive. I’d submitted a story for critiquing to my writing group (Critters.com—if you’re a writer and you want to improve and get feedback, these guys are great. I think I’ve grown my writing more in my two years writing and critiquing for them than I did during college). Usually I run my stories past friends first (because they’re nice to me), but the problem with that is just that—they’re my friends, they’re not just going to rip me a new one because they’re too nice (and also, I can withhold brownies). The people at Critters are polite, but pretty much supremely objective. They’re there to tell me why my writing sucks (or doesn’t) and how to fix it (or not).

So I opened my e-mail and saw two critiques. Cool, this could hurt my ego. Fun thing for a friday (but truth is you need to develop a tough hide as a writer, you’re a commodity in an already swamped market and if you don’t get better you don’t get published). I was pretty stoked when both of them said “I like your story a lot” (and then proceeded to tell me how to make it better, but that’s expected and pretty cool). So far, three for three liked the idea and most of the execution. It gives me hope because before it’s pretty much been 50/50 “I like it” and “do you know how many times this has been done before, and also, learn how to use hyphens.”

So hopefully I’m approaching the day some editor will throw a bag of money at my head and run off with one of my stories.  And hopefully I’ll never get another “this just isn’t original for us” rejection (to be fair, they were right, so very, very right).

If you’re a fan of high fantasy, epic tales, and world-changing events, but you want it all condensed down into one nice, easy to read story which won’t take you the better part of a week and suck up all of your free time (thank you Mr. Martin), then try out Beneath Ceaseless Skies (beneath-ceaseless-skies.com/toc.php). Especially Kraken’s Honor by S.A. Bolich. I really like that one. I really like almost all of them. It’s a bi-monthly zine you can’t really go wrong with if you love unique, well-written fantasy.

Sometimes just going shopping is full of fail. First, Walmart didn’t have the Christmas tree I wanted. Then when I was trying to leave the people in front of me decided it was more important to stop and chat with their friend/enemy (wasn’t really clear) while in the turn lane. Yes, one of them got out of their cars. They sat through the whole light.

Then I grabbed some stuff at Home Depot, not so bad—grab the towel bar, in and out.

Get to the grocery store and they’ve sold out of blackberries and there’s only one sad bag of red grapes left—you know, the kind that’s all individual grapes that have been grazed so hard there’s only half a bag left. They sold out of the cheap kind of flour, and the cheap kind of sugar they advertised was the scary stuff, not the normal one. And I ended up spending more than I wanted to because I bought half of everything at Walmart and you can’t very well make dinner with only half the ingredients.

Then I got home and realized I’d boughta toilet paper holder and not a towel bar because apparently the English degree didn’t help with reading comprehension.

Blargh.

So today I went through part of my novel and edited for any extra words I didn’t absolutely need. So far I’ve shaved off something like 1500 words. Hopefully this will make the thing a little more marketable. Kind of weird how I went from 40,000 words absolute-lowest-acceptable-total-really to 100,000 editors-will-nuke-it-from-orbit-it’s-huge. Ah well, snip snip.

Also, Kiri hates vacuum day. It is the most traumatic day for kittens. Probably even more traumatic than bath day, though vacuum day involves more hiding and less crying like I’m gonna kill her. Silly beach ball.

So anyway. It recently came to my attention that anglerfish are quite possibly the most unfortunate of fish. At least if they’re male. I don’t know how the females feel about the situation, but at least they get to keep swimming around attracting things into their horrible, fanged maws with bright and deceptive little lights. The males don’t even get to eat after they hit puberty.

Anyway, on to the unfortunate fate of male anglerfish and why they get to stop having the munchies. Male anglerfish are much smaller than female anglerfish, and it’s probably a good thing, because once they become adults, they get to attach themselves to the undersides of a female fish. They find the female through their super snazzy ultra-good sense of smell.

Once the male has attached himself, he secretes an enzyme that dissolves his and the female’s skin and he fuses with her on a blood vessel level. Then he proceeds to atrophy into nothing other than a pair of nads. Weak.

However, this does mean that the female had a ready-made mate available anytime she wants to pop out more baby anglerfish to terrify unsuspecting tiny deep sea fish. Dimorphism in the extreme.

Seriously guys, be glad you’re not an anglerfish. And well, me, I just don’t really want ridiculous giant fangy jaws anyway. Though a weird little light lure might be kind of cool. You know, for the days I want to attract moths for the cat to eat or walk to the mailbox in the dark.

Hey guys! I have a blog now. So in theory I can post things, and stuff. And stuff that is things.