Gray

I DO NOT WANT to write this paper. It's nothing to do with the topic - I love the virgin martyrs generally, and I love St. Katherine (although my favorite is St. Juliana, who whipped the devil with her own chains) - it's just the end of term, and close to Christmas, and I either want to go home or go to Paris or go anywhere (my medieval history professor made the mistake of showing us pictures of medieval wall paintings of St. Katherine in a church in Pickering, not to far away. Do want) - anything, except study.

I wish I had some chains to beat my restlessness. Where's St. Juliana when you need her?

Does anyone know how to fight off this sort of failure of will?

***

In other news, I've been reading Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey in preparation for going to Haworth this weekend.

So far, the heroine is mostly bemoaning the fact that she can't beat the children she's governessing as they deserve, the little brats. This is hilarious (in a horrible sort of way - it was a different time), but does not incline me to the sympathy that I think I am supposed to feel for her predicament. Children who don't hop to obedience instantaneously! Imagine that!

Publishing things

I've been reading with some interest the recent hullaballoo on the internet about the rates magazines pay for short stories, because I've decided - now that I've reached the venerable age of twenty-one - that it's time to stop mentally murmuring, "Oh, I'd like to be a writer when I grow up...", admit to myself that despite my best efforts I am grown up, and start submitting things.

I do think the authors linked have missed one possible use for markets that pay pin money: they can act as a psychological boost for writers who still sort of think no one would want to read their work without a bribe. Hey look! This time the reader gave me cookies instead of the other way around!

(I suspect this is one of the reasons that vanity presses do such big business. The idea that I might theoretically be paid for writing feels like so much fairy dust. I'm sure to the unwary, paying publishers seems like the way the money ought to flow.)

(Incidentally, I am planning to send my stories to the places with higher pay rates first time round, but when they get rejected I'll send them lower. Eventually someone will want them. Probably.)

***

Anyway, to this end I've been looking through magazines, and I found this story that I quite like: Brass Canaries. Steampunk canaries! It's quite short and it's got a bit of a punch at the ending; I hope you give it a spin.

ETA: asakiyume reminded me of this story from the same magazine: Suddenly Speaking. It's - well, it's hard to describe, because it's so bizarre, but utterly satisfying. It starts with the main character suddenly discovering that he has the ability to speak Japanese, and it goes all over the place from there.