A week ago today, I received my first ever acceptance from a pro-rate market (yaaayyy). "Picking Roses for Chateelet"-- according to the brief letter, stating that I would receive a contract in the near future-- is slated for about March-ish 2011? Cool stuff, anyway. Lore shut down a few years back (I was eleven years old), and now they're reopening. I've never read anything they've published, so I feel extremely lucky to be there. Moving on. "How to Cook Like Jane Austen" is available over at Bartleby Snopes, which I'm happy about. I had a lot of fun writing this one. Moving on again.
In the past, I've had trouble with the word "as" when used as a conjunction. More specifically, when it is used to indicate that something is being done while something else is being done. "As she walked, this really crazy descriptive clause happened." And: "He lit a cigarette as he did such and such and then some really wonderful things happened." The use of the word always came off as sort of amateur. But I think the reason I felt this way is because I never could use it smoothly enough, it just didn't flow with my sentences, it was obvious, stuck out like a sore thumb, and distracted me, personally. I've learned to ignore this, now. And I've also learned to not be so bitter when other people use this word, successfully. I make large problems out of small words. Mountains and mole hills.
I also used to really hate the use of cigarettes in stories. I love smoking, but cigarettes always came off as sort of a cheap descriptive device to indicate mood, or smell, or whatever. I'm still not sure if I would ever use cigarettes in my stories, mostly because there are a million other things I could do to indicate the same sensation a cigarette can induce. But I'm trying to look past the fact, in the works of others. Mostly successful. Still, sometimes, they bug me. And that is all.
