Rangergirl garnered her first rejection yesterday. The editor(s) liked it, but couldn't figure out how to market it (probably because the horror/dark fantasy elements made it something of a mismatch for their imprints).

Alas, alack. We'd given this editor an exclusive first look in exchange for a quick response (which, for various reasons, none of them the editor's fault, turned out to be not particularly quick). So next week it'll go out to a handful of other editors.

I'm not depressed; it's just one rejection, and it was a nice rejection at that. And at least it's movement.

I did realize this morning that I've been investing a lot emotionally in external validation of my writing, riding high from a couple of good recent sales, the Year's Best thing, etc. And while those things are nice, I seem to have wandered a bit from the joy of the writing process. I'm going to try to remedy that tonight by bringing a bit of discipline back to my writing, sitting down at an appointed time, for an appointed duration, and actually working. (Not that I haven't been working. But I've mostly been revising, editing, and doing layout for Flytrap, rather than producing new fiction). I'm going to start with the three-way collab I've had sitting on my desk for a while, and then move on to other things, gearing up for the week-long scribble-fest of Hidden City in a few weeks.

I've been a promiscuous-but-uncommitted short story writer lately, beginning things, writing on them for a bit, and then abandoning them in favor of some other, more immediately titillating story idea. As a result, I have three stories in various stages of completion, all of which I'd like to get done, and I have ideas for a couple of others. I never used to have this trouble finishing things. Sure, sometimes I'm not ready to finish a particular story, and need to let things percolate more, but for at least a couple of these stories, I know how they end -- I just need to sit down and do the typing.

So, starting tonight, I'm going to sit down and do the typing.

It's apparently a bad idea for me to write several stories concurrently. I don't give any of them suitable attention. I can't be polyamorous when it comes to writing short stories -- I need to be a serial monogamist.

I'm also trying something new at work (which may not ultimately work out, but we'll see). I'm going to be working a bunch of 9-hour days and taking a day off every two weeks -- that way I get the same number of hours on every paycheck, but I get two extra days a month to focus on writing. I think it'll help a lot.