I need to get the submission guidelines for Story, so I can send "A Gentle Man" out; I'll feel better once that's done. I need to revise "Sister Mary" a little bit, and then send it to various people for more detailed critiques -- I don't want to do it until I fix one problem I know is there, 'cause it'll either waste their time to tell me again to fix it, or it'll send them off on the wrong track. Class was helpful last night about "The Emigrant" -- I knew it was only a first draft and needed a fair bit of work, but I wasn't sure what work; I have a much clearer sense of what to do with it now. Of course, the question is when I can do it. :-) I think this week is going to be devoted to working on story stuff, assuming I can keep up the energy/interest -- Wednesday and Friday I should have time to work on revisions. Saturday, I'm going with Jenn to the library to start research on my post-co paper. I'm hoping to get a good idea of what I want to do with it Saturday, so I can work on it over Thanksgiving. (What, a holiday? Don't be silly...I'm in grad school!)
I am having a few people come by for a Thanksgiving potluck on Sunday. I like T-giving food too much to only do it on one day (and there's no real guarantee that my family will be doing American traditional food; when I was a kid, my mom made turkey curry instead of chicken curry...). So I'm not completely without a social life. Hopefully it being potluck will mean that I can actually do some work Sunday morning as well; I need to figure out how much food I can fit in my itty bitty oven...
7:45. Four left! I think I may actually finish in time... It's funny how the really good ones and the really bad ones don't take so much time to deal with; it's the B papers that cause trouble. I'm being so nice to these kids; I hope they appreciate it. I suspect it's only because I'm feeling so frantic myself; I have sympathy for them. Although Paul keeps telling me that I shouldn't feel sympathetic, that we work ten times as hard as they do. I suppose that's true in many cases, but that doesn't mean they don't feel just as panicked. Perhaps more so; at this point, I have a pretty decent idea of just how much work I can do if I really buckle down -- and I have an ability to buckle down that I just didn't have in college. What's that song from Gigi?
"The fountain of youth is dull as paint,
Methuselah is my patron saint;
I've never been so comfortable before...
Oh, I'm so glad
that I'm
not young
anymore..."
:-)
6:30. Well, it turns out that Story has folded -- I forgot! Dangit. Now I need to figure out where else I should send that story. Despite the work I did a while back to put together a listing of literary markets, I find that I don't really have much of a sense of which markets to try. I have to wait until January for the next Glimmer Train reading period; any suggestions on where to try in the interim? I could just try for the most money, but I'm more interested in prestigious markets at this point -- what's the top of the line? I should be reading these magazines, I suppose...
Pretty decent day; only one group of students was particlarly unhappy with their grades, I think. That one was a bit of a mess, but I'd feel odd going into details here. Even though it's highly unlikely that they'll run into me here...you never know. Hopefully it'll all sort itself out soon. Good post-co class; Vince read to us from his new unpublished work on Irish nationalism; interesting stuff! It's exciting being taught by one of the foremost scholars in the field; it really makes you take it all more seriously, y'know? I felt the same way doing Renaissance drama with Bevington back at Chicago, lo these many years ago. Sometimes I feel like I took a wrong turn after Chicago, and that it's taken me six years to get back on track, back into the kind of environment where I belong, a place that feels like home. Then I remember Torn Shapes, and Clean Sheets, and Aqua Erotica, and even Strange Horizons; somehow I don't think any of those would have happened if I hadn't taken the trip I did. And if I'd gone straight to grad school -- well, I'd probably be a tenured professor now, but I might not have ever really worked at my fiction, might have never taken it seriously. How strange...I guess I should be grateful to all those schools that rejected me back in '94. (Would have been more fun rejecting them, though :-).
After staying up grading, I'm feeling a bit too brain dead to do any real work. Buffy will be on soon, and I'm writing Christmas cards while I watch tv. A few candles lit, and at least the living room is clean even if the rest of the house is only half clean. It's good enoough. I'm going to take it easy for the rest of tonight; tomorrow will be another day to work like a fiend, but tonight I'll just rest. I hope y'all aren't quite as tired as I am.