No time but the present

I mean that literally. I have no time but the present. If the earth's rotation ever slows, and our days extend to 30 hours, I'll rejoice. After the tidal waves and earthquakes subside, that is. But what the hell. There's always a small price to pay for convenience.

I've been doing a good job of waking up early to write. My body no longer threatens to kill my alarm clock. The main drawback is that its getting harder to sleep in on the weekends.

I signed up for a website called "the Next Big Writer" and I like it so far. It's a quid pro quo post and review site...you post your material for others to review, but to post more material you need to review others' works. I posted Fate's Guardian a few evenings ago (the first 4,500 words, there is a 5,000 word cap per post). The next morning I had three reviews, and the end of the day I had 4. They were mainly favorable, and there was some great feedback, from minor plausibility for one sequence, to typos that I didn't find, even through multiple rounds of revising.

I've reviewed a couple pieces, too, and that's quite an eye-opening experience, especially when you hit a good premise, but poorly constructed sentences. It gives you a feel for what an agent might go through when they received some queries and manuscripts. Another piece I read made me laugh out loud, which is good because it was in the humor category.

Speaking of queries, I got a new rejection yesterday. Same theme as the other recent rejects: "your material is not right for us, but that's just our taste."

I guess that's better than a Simon Cowell-ish "You're a nice person, but please, don't ever write another word again."

And yes, the reference to Simon Cowell does mean that I have something to say about American Idol. Or rather, the contestants.

Last night we let our boys watch the episode from Wednesday. It was cached on the DVR...LOST won the coin toss for Wednesday night viewing. The kids are only seven and four, but they know talent; or rather, the lack thereof. They laugh just as hard at the first notes of a crappy singer as they do at a solid nut-shot on America's Funniest Home Videos.

There was one singer, who was very, very good, whose intro said that "she struggled with poverty..." That's so cliche. Why don't we ever hear about anyone who struggled with prosperity?

Oh wait, we do. Paris Hilton. Never mind. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...