Yesterday was an…

Yesterday was an insanely domestic day -- I cooked curries; I did laundry; I pruned and watered plants -- that kind of thing. It's nice to be home. It's nice to enjoy this stuff because I've been away, rather than being annoyed at having to do it. :-) Though I usually do like cooking, and even laundry has its charms. Mmm...fluffy warm clothes to fold in front of the tv. That's nice, it is.

I did also e-mail masses of temp agencies (though the phone book contains masses more, which I will attack today). My resume for that kind of thing looks funny -- two teaching jobs, preceded by two tech writing jobs, preceded by two executive assistant jobs. Not sure what employers will make of it, but I figured I shouldn't just list the executive assistant things, given that they're from back in '95 or thereabouts. I wish I could think of other good part-time or temporary jobs. I'm not looking for full-time work; I'm just looking to earn some money part-time, in between working on the dissertation, so I can pay off my credit card bills on my ownsome, rather than asking Kevin to help. Somehow, it seems important to try, at least. Even though it's a bit silly in some sense, since I'm certainly not contributing to rent or food. I love grad school, but I'm getting a bit tired of the lack of income. Who would have thought I'd be longing for the days of a bi-weekly salary?

Eh. I'm not worrying about it too much. Today I'll spend another hour or two doing that at some point, but the bulk of the day will be given over to the Oregon workshop. Writing up my teaching notes, re-reading the stories and writing up my comments. I don't want to leave it until tomorrow. At some point today, I also hope to get up some of my England photos.

Tomorrow, back to Blowfish subs, I think. There are masses of them, and I'm actually hoping to send out at least one set of rejections soon. Just a note for future reference -- the most common problem I'm seeing is one of erotica scenes, with no actual story or plot tension. Sure, they can be sexy, but they're not stories. Something needs to happen. And given that it's erotica, if your only plot point is the question of whether or not they're going to have sex -- well, there's a certain tension lacking there, unless you do something more with the idea.

Oh, and one more thing -- it is *not* surprising to read a BDSM story where you discover at the end that the scary guy who kidnapped and blindfolded you (or whatever else the scenario is) is actually your spouse and you set it all up in advance. It's a) almost impossible to do without the editor noticing it partway anyway, because b) we've seen this kazillion times. It's a fine way to play with the concept for yourself, but it's not a new story idea. Heck, I did it myself. See Blind -- if you can't do something more interesting than what I did (which wasn't all that interesting), then I recommend abandoning the idea and trying something else.

3 thoughts on “Yesterday was an…”

  1. Heh. Thanks, Jim. Heck, I like Blind too, and I do twist the idea some in the story. But as an editor, you see that base idea remarkably often.

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