Collateral Light

You were all forewarned -- scarab attack!

In 2006 I only earned four story rejections. In 2007 I received 19 rejections, 12 of them during the last two months of the year, which isn't bad at all considering that was a busy-as-hell (bah, going forward) time at work. During 2007 I wrote twice as many stories as during 2006, and poems as well.

2008: Goal is to earn at least 50 rejections (of course, always hoping for a sale!) and write at least 20 stories (which means again doubling 07 production).

2007 saw me read a disappointing baker's dozen complete books, with parts of others and a few dozen short stories.

2008 goal is to read at least 50 books (easy to remember this arbitrary number since it's the same as the amount of rejections!).

I've started by plunging into Shakespeare. Yesterday a friend and I watched the BBC production of "All's Well That Ends Well". Today I read the play. That counts as my first book of 2008! Sweet!

Part of the advice the Countess gives her son Bertram in the first act is good stuff indeed, and highly quotable:

"Love all, trust a few,
Do wrong to none: be able for thine enemy
Rather in power than use; and keep thy friend
Under thy own life's key: be check'd for silence,
But never tax'd for speech."

Imagine if we could all adhere to that pithy prescription! I specially love the last bit of advice: "Be check'd for silence, but never tax'd for speech." Damn.

And also (Helena):

"Our remedies oft in ourselves do lie,
Which we ascribe to heaven: the fated sky
Gives us free scope; only doth backward pull
Our slow designs when we ourselves are dull."

Why, that doth appear a foreshadowing of Transcendentalism, by the proxy of four centuries! Ok, I realize mock Elizabethan English is really irritating, and I'll stop now (until the next time).

Hope the New Year is finding everyone well :-)