Dear Readerers,
Well, we've been living in our new three-bedroom apartment in Gangnam for four weeks now. Normally I'd have taken some "after" pictures of this place and put them up on Facebook and this blog already, especially after the herculean effort Miss H and I put in to cleaning it. But between the two of us unwed slobs and our trouble-making cat, we can't keep our domicile photogenic for longer than five minutes.
I'd also have taken some pictures of the apartment building and the surrounding neighborhood of Gaepo-dong and shown you those as well, but I'm waiting for the dang yellow dust to depart. It's been bad this season. It got started early, all the way back in February, and March is the peak season. Miss H and I have been keeping ourselves busy this month: social engagements, baseball games, trivia contests, and the like. I've managed to sneak in some more brewing with the guys, too—we should be bottling our latest creation, a robust honey-molasses porter, this very weekend. Last weekend I went out to a preseason baseball game (LG Twins vs. Kia Tigers) with some other Sejong professors, and the weather was gorgeous: warm, sunny, and clear. Today, however, we're planning on meeting our army doctor friend, Miss B, at Jamsil Sports Complex and watching another game (Twins vs. Doosan Bears) at 2:00. I just peeked outside and I can barely see the other apartment buildings, let alone the mountains in the distance. It's going to be another moist, hazy, yellowish—and therefore quite warm—day. Blurgh.
The April showers should wash all of this crap out of the air and leave everything nice and squeaky clean...before the summer humidity and the omnipresent Seoul smog creep back in, anyway. Maybe I'll get some pics of this apartment then. I should also have some news about my travel plans in summer and autumn and will tell you how our honey-molasses porter tastes. Until then, though...you'll just have to savor the mystery.
Sincerely,
The Postman
P.S. As bad as the yellow dust is here, it's still worse in China. This is what it looks like there this time of year. Tragic that the poor people living there (and here) have to suffer for the Chinese government's mismanagement of the environment...
I haven't touched Novel #3 since mid-February. I was compelled to shelve it during the Big Move to Gangnam. Moreover I don't really like the way it's going. Do you have any idea how tricky it is to write a party of twelve hardy adventurers out of a collapsing subterranean green-quartz temple without using every cliché known to humankind? I thought I had a pretty original idea, but (as has happened to me so many times) I'm getting that nasty, familiar, I'm-such-a-hack-writer feeling. Speculative fiction/alternative reality writers are more susceptible to this feeling than the more mainstream scribblers, I suspect. (Crime writers, too, probably. Jeez, they have a tough row to hoe. I'm glad I'm not one of them. Novel #14 or #15 is slated to have murder-mystery overtones, so I might have to brush up on my skills before then.)
Anyway, that's not what I came here to talk to you about. I came to talk about my short fiction writing. Every resource I turn to tells me that I need to establish myself as an author of short stories and novelettes before I can even start thinking about publishing a novel. But every short story I've submitted has been rejected. Here, take a look, I've kept records. In this digital age, an aspirant writer doesn't get paper rejection slips anymore; we just get e-mails. Or nothing at all. But I've kept electronic track of my submissions and this is the long (er, short) sad litany:
1. Tues, 12/11/12 - Daily Science Fiction ("The Maze," 770 words) - REJECTED
2. Sun, 12/23/12 - Andromeda Spaceways Inflight Magazine ("Incommunicado," 3,440 words) - REJECTED
3. Fri, 1/4/13 - Daily Science Fiction ("Liquid Courage," 1,140 words) - REJECTED
4. Wed, 1/16/13 - Fantastic Frontiers ("Liquid Courage," 1,140 words) - NEVER HEARD BACK
5. Fri, 2/8/13 - Daily Science Fiction ("Plea Bargain," 1,130 words) - REJECTED
6. Fri, 4/19/13 - Daily Science Fiction ("The Time Gun," 2,830 words) - REJECTED
7. Thurs, 6/03/13 - Daily Science Fiction ("The First Twenty-Five Years," 1,740 words) - SECOND ROUND OF REVIEW - REJECTED
8. Fri, 6/26/13 - Daily Science Fiction ("Only One Boot," 980 words) - REJECTED
9. Wed, 8/14/13 - 3LBE ("Liquid Courage," 1,140 words) - REJECTED 9/11/13
10. Wed, 8/14/13 - Space Squid ("The Time Gun," 2,830 words) - REJECTED 11/15/13
11. Thurs, 1/23/14 - Asimov's Science Fiction ("Plea Bargain," 1,130 words) - REJECTED 1/29/14
12. Wed, 1/29/14 - Asimov's Science Fiction ("The First Twenty-Five Years," [R] 2,700 words) - REJECTED 2/1/14
13. Wed, 1/29/14 - Ace and Roc Science Fiction & Fantasy ("Revival," 112,000 words) -
14. Mon, 2/10/14 - Daily Science Fiction ("The First 25 Years," [R] 2,700 words) - REJECTED 3/4/14
As you can see, I'm still waiting for word on my novel manuscript. I submitted it in late January, and the Ace & Roc website informed me that I can expect to wait five months for a response. In the meantime, I'm shopping for agents. I should really start doing that more energetically, actually...
But getting back to the main point: I haven't written nearly as many stories as I should, much less submitted them anywhere. I just keep sending in the same tired old drivel that seem puerile and stale when I look back on it now. Some of them I've rewritten (that's what the "[R]" means in that last entry), but that doesn't change the fact that they suck—as the continued rejections indicate. Only one of my stories has even made the second round of review. Granted, I haven't submitted that many, but that opens up a whole new can of worms: I'm working a job that gives me four months off every year. Most writers would kill to have a schedule like that. What use am I making of it?
I need to write some new stuff. A lot of it. Short stories, novelettes, even a novella or two, maybe. Good stuff. Fresh stuff. Mature stuff. Stuff that gets me published and makes me into the sci-fi writer I think I am.
So I've got an idea. One of my other writer-blogger friends posted an exciting article on Facebook the other day. Amtrak is going to start offering free rides to writers. Imagine that: a snug berth, a bottle of wine, a good view out the window, and a laptop (or a notepad and pen, if you're Paul Theroux). Intoxicating idea, no?
That's far in my future for now, but it did get me thinking about having a "writer's retreat." It's plausible now that Miss H and I are in a three-bedroom apartment. We've elected to have one master bedroom, one guest room and one office-cum-den. I could readily commandeer the office-cum-den for, say, a week of successive evenings and just bang out some good writing. I'm all fired up now that I've read Arthur C. Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama. Absolutely spectacular hard science fiction never fails to inspire, and Clarke's got me wanting to to follow in his footsteps.
So I'm going to do it. A "writer's retreat." Instead of spending my evenings plugging defenseless animals on Deer Hunter 2014 or watching Almost Human, I'm going to write. For a week. For as many hours as I can. If I get stuck on one story, I'll start another. That's one thing that, thankfully, I'm never at a loss for: inspiration. Give me a pen and a notepad and in five minutes I'll come up with some killer ideas. It's executing them properly, with fresh angles and unique perspective, that's more difficult. Hell, not all of the stuff I churn out may be science fiction, either. I might try some historical fiction or even straight-up mainstream contemporary fic. Who knows? It'd be good to take the shackles off, remove the filters between my brain and fingers, and just see what flows out from under my fingernails. Worth a try, right? Then I'll have a fresh batch of stories, character-driven and lyrically written, which will perhaps be more along the lines of what DSF or Asimov's are looking for.
I'll let you know when I begin.
Wish me luck...
This is my first official post from our new three-bedroom apartment in Gangnam!
Okay, I'm sorry. I had to.
Anyway, it was a heck of a move—much more difficult than last time. The mover was a great guy named Jho whom I found on Craigslist and he showed up on time and was very chatty and told me what the name Jamsil means (magnanery) and discussed his favorite dish daegutang (codfish stew) and was just generally helpful.
No, the complications arose when we arrived at our new high-rise apartment complex in Gaepo-dong, Gangnam-gu. The building security officer came out of his little cave-like office and promptly informed Jho and me that I'd have to stump up ₩50,000 if I wanted to use the elevator to take the thirty-odd boxes up to the 13th floor. Jeez. Apartment complex policy or something like that. So I paid the man and Joseph (the friend from Sejong that I brew with) helped me move everything off the truck. I tipped Jho ₩20,000 on top of his ₩100,000 fee and he left, all smiles. Then Joseph and I began the backbreaking hour-long process of moving everything Miss H and I own in the world from the sidewalk to the elevator and from the elevator to our apartment.
Whoof.
Anyway, the work was soon finished, and Joseph departed. I now owe him the biggest dang samgyeopsal dinner ever.
Then I went back to the Gwangnaru apartment to clean it, and discovered that there was a whole freaking pile of stuff under the bed that I'd forgotten. Miss H was done with her new job training by now, and joined me in Gwangnaru for a moment of panic. The poor woman who was set to take over our apartment was currently sitting in the other new girl's apartment one floor above, waiting to take possession. In a frenzied flurry, Miss H and I cleaned, called two taxicabs, loaded our remaining truck into the trunks and backseats, and then hared off for Gangnam after handing over the keys. We traveled through the gathering dusk and the rush-hour traffic, the whole city cloaked in a broiling fume of Chinese yellow dust, gagging and coughing and cursing the day we were born, and moved the final two loads up the slow-ass elevator and into our new home.
Move accomplished.
This apartment is five rooms: three bedrooms, a bathroom and a dining room/kitchen. Two single guys had been sharing it before we arrived. The place was an absolute wreck: stinking of unwashed bedding and dirty dishes, grime covering every surface, the bathroom clotted with mold, dust bunnies and grit and loose change littering the floor. We called up our old friend Miss J from Bucheon, and the three of us spent all Sunday cleaning. We bought her Papa John's pizza as compensation (thank goodness we live within range of their delivery service; that was the first thing we ascertained).
The apartment has slowly become livable over the past four days. Every night Miss H and I clean and unpack some more, and by this weekend we have high hopes that it'll be fit for company. It'll be bare and spartan and rather sparse, but we plan on a few runs to Homeplus for area rugs and perhaps to Insadong for Korean-themed decorations. With any luck, the apartment will have become a home before another week is out.
...which is good, 'cause my lady and I need a clean, comfy place to crash after work. I love my new schedule, but dang, my Tuesdays and Thursdays are intense: composition classes all day, and a 90-minute listening class at 9:00 in the morning. Yikes. Miss H's kids already have her on the hop, too. Both of us are looking forward to the first weekend when we can relax in Daejin Park or go for a craft beer at Hopscotch or the first preseason baseball game at Jamsil Stadium on March 22.
Pictures will come as soon as we finish cleaning. Postie out.
