April Fools’ and…

April Fools' and Daylight Savings

Morning, guys. In a bit of a rush, with people coming for brunch and a still-messy apartment. Will probably come back later, but wanted to stop in and finally post the call for Bodies of Water here, in case any of you were interested in taking a shot at it.

5:00. Had a nice brunch (though I didn't quite manage to finish washing dishes before people arrived). Got into a big discussion at the tail end of it about e-books and print books and all that; I'd recap for you here, but it was long and complicated and tiring! It did put me in a good mindframe for my main task today -- finishing revamping my ICFA presentation into an editorial for Strange Horizons. This is my current draft -- I'd really *love* any feedback I can get on it in the next 3-5 hours or so (yes, I'm working on this one up to the wire). Do I say anything egregiously stupid? Do I miss anything obvious? Do I miss something not so obvious? Am I a raving optimist? (If you read this after 4/1/01, the draft may or may not still be here -- check SH for the final in any case). Are there too many commas? (Would especially love comments from Tim Pratt and Timprov and others in the web publishing community who may be reading this journal).

I'm kind of anxious about the piece. It presented well at ICFA, but an oral presentation is very different from a text piece that people can quote from as they point out what a silly point I made (or missed). And as editor-in-chief of Strange Horizons, I feel an uncomfortable weight to my words when I talk about online publishing these days. I'm not positive I know enough (or say it clearly enough) to be taken as seriously as people seem to take me. (It's a perpetual academic problem too -- feeling like a fraud (probably because the more you know, the more you're aware of how very much you don't know). I'm told that the feeling lasts for decades.) Jed and I got into a minor fight about it yesterday; I'm not sure why he got stressed, but I know that I was being unreasonable about it because I was anxious. We sorted ourselves out relatively quickly, but it was annoying to be so bothered by a piece of text.

And now I'm feeling fretful and having trouble concentrating on anything else, but Jed and David aren't available to look at this draft yet. I've roped Kevin into looking at it -- he may catch logical problems, but won't be able to do line edit-type stuff. Which is okay. I just want it to be done, and done now! :-) I think I've had too much caffeine and sugar (Steven brought an Easter cake to brunch, which I had a big slice of -- I think it was mostly frosting).

Okay okay. I'm going to go read Nabokov for a while. Hopefully I'll be able to concentrate on it. And if not...I dunno. Maybe I'll go pull weeds in the garden. The bulbs from last year are unexpectedly sending up lots of green shoots -- that was a surprising delight. I should probably nurture them a bit.

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