discouraged

Because I'm getting so many rejections of flash fictions that I like, and I can't decide whether to persevere or to retire them. And because I decided to put together a very tentative draft of THE LUNATICS' BALL (five of the flash unfinished or barely started) and it seems very bumpy to me. Even with intervening illustrations, at least four of the transitions seem dubious, the overall chronology unclear (though I like the arc). It's also too long for the one chapbook contest I was considering (which goes up to 75 pages, very unusual) and too short for a book. No one said writing was easy.

Oh, but some good news, just as I posted this. Robert Vaughan tagged me in a Facebook post about the ongoing Bending Genres workshop at Synergia Ranch in New Mexico (which looks beautiful). Apparently something of mine was in their readings for today. 

Another lunatics' ball, this one a masquerade at the Brookwood Surrey Lunatic Asylum in the UK in 1881.