Sandra Gail Lambert

The Inbetweens

The inbetweens nerve-wrack me.  Four days ago I tucked away a revision, pulled out the next chapter, copied Draft 4, renamed it Draft 5, and then closed everything - the computer files, the physical folder, the yellow pads. 

Since then I haven't written anything.  Part of it is having a somewhat workable wheelchair again and needing to fly around town doing things.  The other part is that same part that always happens - the I'm not a real writer, there's no point in continuing, I can't do this thoughts.  

This morning I woke up early, brushed my teeth, splashed my face, and instead of going to my writing bed went back to my sleeping bed.  When I woke up again, I had all sorts of thoughts - how to do the omniscient thing after the 1858 chapter, what the lady would be thinking about the tailor, and how the word "thicken" will be perfect in that problematic sentence in the 2006 chapter.  

Whew.   

Too cool

73.5495%

My wheelchair is in the shop.  There are parts to be ordered.  Who knows when I'll be getting out of the house again?  After the anxiety, claustrophobia, and bouts of bureaucracy-induced rage, there is the part where I get to write more.  

So, here's the revision update.  According to the calculator on my cell phone, this go through is 73.5495% done.  It's inescapable.  If I keep working, I'll get to the end.      

Dancing with a twist, hitch, and tremor.

I went dancing last night.  It wasn't like this.  I'd like it to be like this.  I'd like to watch this.   

Revision Update

It's been a week of rejections.  Sigh.  But, it's also been a week of finishing another chapter of revisions.  (Need I say it.  Not finished, finished.  Nothing is ever finished, finished.) 

I wasn't quite ready to delve into the next chapter so I did math.  I've revised 47,674 words.  The remaining,unrevised chapters add up to 28,797 more words. (So far.  That could go up or down, and then there's this little, interim, maybe omniscient voice segment set in 1703 that I haven't written yet.)

Anyway, that adds up to a novel of 76,471 words of which I've revised (this go around) 62.3426 per cent.  Okay, enough.  I'm going to open that next folder.    

Gainesville - Vote No on One

This is a reason why.  http://equalitygainesville.com/

And here's another. MassEquality.org || Take Action | Everyone Matters: Dignity and Safety for Transgender People  

Early voting starts today.  It ends on Tuesday, March 24th. 

Dzanc Creative Writing Sessions

Do you want your writing to receive affordable, right in your own home critique by skilled, generous authors?  Do you want to support Dzanc Books' writing education program for school students? Dzanc Books' creative writing sessionsare a fundraising effort for their educational programs.  Writers donate their craft, some of us pay for the help, and the money goes to fund writing classes for fourth through twelfth graders.   

I've already signed up for two hours of Laura van den Berg's time.  I met her at this past summer's workshop with Connie May Fowler.  She spoke to our gathering about literary journals in the most helpful of ways, and one night she read to us from her upcoming collection What the World Will Look Like When All the Water Leaves Us.  I would like my writing to be that gorgeous. 

Check out the list of available writers.  For the price of the pesto gnocchi with tuna at The Top Restaurant followed by a cup of vanilla espresso gelato, these authors could be critiquing your poetry, editing a short story, or answering questions about form and voice. 

Collective Fallout - Short Story Excerpt

Collective Fallout has published an excerpt of my short story "The Swamp Goddess" on their website.  It appears in it's entirety in Volume One.   

One Hundred Years of Solitude

All those lists people put out of "important" books and people pass them around on places like Facebook, and you say how many of them that you've read - well, every single one of them has Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude listed. I never have, but I've always wanted to lie and say that I had read it.  Or when if came up in a discussion, I would nod knowingly and murmur things like "oh yes, so many people love that book."   

Friday was his birthday.  I started reading it.  So far the second sentence is my favorite - the words are like water tumbling down a stream.  Soon, my life of Marquez obfuscation will be over.

But not tonight.  Tonight is the season premier of "Dancing With the Stars!" 

     

 

Atlantic Center for the Arts, Below Sea Level, and Writers in Paradise - Revisited

I'm revising a novel.  The first chapter was critiqued at the Below Sea Level conference with Connie May Fowler, the second at Writers in Paradise with Thisbe Nissen, the third has had to just make it on it's own, and now I've started in on the fourth.  This one has a fat folder of feedback from this past November's residency with Kelly Cherry at the Atlantic Center for the Arts. 

Yes, last year I was a bit of a conference slut.  Which is why the paint on the side of my house is peeling and my ramps still need to be power-washed and I'm making do with a frig whose freezer won't freeze. (I embezzled the registration fees out of my house repair funds.)  

Anyway, here I am opening these folders with check marks, exclamation points, cross outs, and arrows pointing sentences this way and that.  It's as if I have everyone back around the table with me.  And comments are making sense that didn't at first.  

So, to all of you who have taken a turn stirring the pot, kept it from bubbling over, suggested I try adding more roots, helped grind out a solution when it was too bland, or whipped up a spicy masala that I could swirl in at the end - Thank You.      

Collective Fallout is out

 

I arrive home after a 14 hour day of tucking my mother's whole life of belongings into one small room and leaving her for her first night in the new place, and in the mailbox there it is - a journal with my name in the table of contents.  It was such good timing.

Collective Fallout, edited by Eric Crapo, is a twice yearly journal "dedicated to queer-themed sci-fi, fantasy, horror, and mystery fiction and poetry."  It's available in print or as an e-download.  Just click here to order.  

Now, here's the place where I would talk about the other contributors.  However, I came home that night, my arms full of old papers of my mother's, tired into stupidity, and after flipping through the journal, I fell asleep.  I woke up, went right back to moving chores, and now, I can't find the journal.  I've looked everywhere.  It might be in that box with my dead father's Army Air Corps enlistment records from 1938 or maybe under the stacks of old checks from just decades ago. 

Looking obsessed me for awhile, but I've given up and ordered a replacement copy.  I can tell you my story has lesbians, the Everglades, a swamp goddess, a serial killer, and infidelity with a park ranger.