I’ve been a little depressed off-and-on because I have to write on my desktop computer, and I keep getting distracted by games. I talked to Alex about that “getting a laptop before I’m published” thing, so I can get back in my writing groove, and he said that we’ll get one if we get a good tax return.

Well, he did taxes this morning, and the preliminary report is that we’re getting a return that will amply cover a (tax deductible!) laptop for my writing and get me away from my gaming computer.

I wanted to get a used, last-year model off of ebay, because it’d be cheaper, but Alex can’t repair laptops like he can PC’s. So, new it is.

Now we just have to wait for the return. I’m very excited about this, because I need to start working regularly again. This laziness is driving me up the wall.

—————

Buying Big Items

Dave Ramsey is a Christian finance radio guy in Houston who tells you how to manage your finances with savvy and ethics.

And he insists on haggling over prices.

He says, when buying a big ticket item, you should always know exactly what you want and how much the fair market value for it is, and you should always have enough money to buy it in your hand and in cash. (The only big item you don’t need to do this with is a house, for obvious reasons, but he has some cost-cutting rules for that, too.)

He says that when you walk into a store for furniture/appliances/cars, and you wave a wad of hundreds in the salesman’s face and you say “I want that $10,000 car for $8,000 cash right now,” they’re usually willing to deal. If they say “Only my manager can approve that,” you say, “Get me your manager, then.” If they won’t cut the price down to your standards, you walk out and go to their competitor. (He says that the willingness to walk away is key. If they know you’re gonna buy it no matter what, they won’t cut the price.)

Everyone says the first step to getting publishing credentials is submitting stories/articles to magazines.

My problem: I’m no good at writing short stories.

Everyone says that in order to find out what magazines want, you must read them.

My problem: I don’t read magazines and don’t really want to.

Ah, well, I sent one of my stories to the Annie Dillard Creative Nonfiction contest. You send an SASE and a small entry fee (compared to what I saw in Writer’s Digest, a very reasonable fee) and they send you the results. Annie Dillard, for those of you who don’t know, is a spiritual creative nonfiction writer, and one of my writing teachers in college raved about her.

Winners announced July 2007.

I haven’t been reputably published. Sad, isn’t it? I was thinking about it earlier. All this nice, fancy domain space and two dinky blips on my bibliography.

Well, I’m working on it. I could be working harder, but it’s been difficult since we got Warcraft. Distractions. *shakes head* Anyway, Alex and I have been talking about getting me a laptop before I’m published, which would move my work station back to the living room and away from the “Warcrack” as our friend Tom calls it. And I’d get back on track.

In the meantime, I’m going to try and make a list of agents to query for when my manuscript is edited.

I posted chapters 7-9 of the Isabelle story to my writing group, edited three chapters for someone else, and wrote a third-draft query letter.

Haven’t gone through all of the critiques yet, because I want to look at them as an overall group once the whole story is posted.

Query letter is looking nice. Doesn’t inspire feelings of hopelessness or terror.

I’ve gotten some critiques on chapters 1-3 of the Isabelle story, and I just posted 4-6. I plan to wait and edit after I get critiques on the whole thing, so I can prioritize changes — and because I’d like to compare overall edits with the as-you-go edits and find the happy solution.

Also, I’ve learned that Word does some infuriating things if you double-space a 40+ page document. Very, very annoying.