Writing is hard enough without adding stupid limitations to the process. Or at least, that’s how it seems to me as a bystander. For that reason, I’m a little bit skeptical about Nature magazine’s series of short-shorts, ‘Futures’. Surely a writer has enough to cope with, without trying to squeeze his story into a few hundred words. That said, some have done it extraordinarily well. The magazine has offered up six stories so far. Of these, I think the McIntyre is particularly good and well worth checking out.

• Ian Stewart, “Play it again, Psam“
• Stephen Baxter, “Under martian ice“
• Ken Macleod, “Undead again“
• Penelope Kim Crowther, “The party’s over“
• Vonda N. McIntyre, “A modest proposal… for the perfection of nature“
• Norman Spinrad, “A Man of the Theatre“

Let me tell you what’s happened and what I’ve learned, nigh on these past five years or so. I flew to Staten Island in New York in January of 1999 to get married. It took a while, but in May of 1999 we got past the immigration hassles and Marianne moved to Australia. Jessica, my first daughter, was born in June of 2000. At that time, I had a normal day job, an ok house that we rented, and I wrote a regular book review column and did some proofreading for Locus. I had no real aspirations to make reviewing or editing my day job (and still don’t), or even to devote a lot more time to either pursuit.

Somehow, with expressly planning it, things changed. We now own a nice home (well, a percentage of it), have two children, and I have edited six anthologies in the past two years, sold two more, review occasionally, proofread and am Locus’s reviews editor. All of these things are good things, let me assure you. The only legitimate complaint I have is that 24 hours in a day just isn’t enough.

But, I was talking about what I’d learnt in the intervening five years. Mostly what I’ve learned is how little I know and how little I understand about why I do things. I’ve discovered I can sell a book to a publisher, which is a surprising thing. I’ve discovered I can edit a reasonable book, which is something that still me. I’m still working out why I’m doing it, though. I enjoy it, get a real thrill when it goes well, so that’s part of it. I also love science fiction, fantasy and such, so that’s comes into the mix. And I love short stories, which helps. But I don’t have an agenda, which I think I probably should. I don’t strongly prefer one kind of non-realist (for want of a better term) fiction over another. And I’m appalled by how little I know about the business side of editing and publishing anthologies. I don’t know that much about sales figures and publishers inside processes and all of those things. Something to work on.

On reflection, most of what I do is instinctive, unconsidered. I mean, right now, I have this incredible urge to do an original fantasy anthology that’s running round in mind. I can’t stop thinking about it, even though it’s a very incoherent notion right now. Need to work on it. Enough rambling for the moment.

Oh, and thanks to those who have posted in the comments section so far. I’ll reply a little later, but I appreciate your taking the time.

This is a dumb rant. I am a happy camper, but sometimes the world does exasperate just a little. I love slipstream stuff. Honest, I do. But keeping up with the publishing side of things is driving me nuts. I mean, there was a time when you could feel like you were keeping up when you only had to look out for great stories in the genre majors, some collections and anthos, and such. But now, stories are everywhere. Conjunctions always has stuff (I think they’re even doing a YA issue this year), and I just saw that there are two issues of McSweeney’s out already. And I haven’t seen them, and they don’t send out comp. copies, which means you have to buy them. Which is ok, except editing year’s bests is a fairly frugal enterprise. Arg.

I should have added this to be post below. You can find Ayelet Waldeman’s column, Living out loud over at Salon.com.