Progress Report, April 20^th, 2024; Oscar Wilde’s Comma

From Jeff Baker

(Posting a bit late!)

Did the usual monthly and weekly flash fiction stories, piddled around and wrote on a few other things and plotted out a few others.

Wrote a Queer Sci-Fi Column for later down the schedule. (I like to have a nice backlog.)

Wrote a lot at the downtown library and tried to keep the cats off the keyboard at home!

Worked on “Love’s Not Time’s Fool,” the longer story I told myself I would finish before starting any other long story. I wrote a page or two this month as well as little paragraphs or sometimes just a line. Keep remembering the story about Oscar Wilde showing up at a cafe for lunch and he told a friend “I took a comma out.” When Wilde showed up for dinner he told his friend “I put the comma back in.”

Sometimes, the little stuff is progress too.

Actually wrote a poem here in the Library (where I’m writing this report) and grabbed a bunch of books to quote the Dewy Decimal numbers in the poem!

And earlier in the month, I went on a tear and did a mass submission one evening after reading that Ray Bradbury had suggested a writer should submit stories “to the least-likely market.” He told that to Dennis Etchison and Etchison sold a story in High School! So I submitted about six of my stories to various markets I scoped-out. Got a couple of rejections from that set but the rest are still out there.

“Don’t try to anticipate an editor’s needs, send it to the least likely market.” —Ray Bradbury.

And in related news, I found out that the Magazine of Fantasy And Science Fiction has not gone under, it’s still publishing! Hooray!!

That’s about it for now!

—-jeff baker, April 20, 2024