I'm a 1930s Wife!

So I found this little survey.

http://www.magatsu.net/maritaltest/

It took maybe 5 minutes.

Turns out I'm a VERY SUPERIOR 1930s Wife.

Now, some people might look over that survey and call me a prude, but I'm proud of my "Very Superior" rating. It means I'm a kind, compassionate, loving, involved wife and mother. Why is that bad? Why is that not a valid choice in our society anymore? I'm not oppressed. I'm not a pawn under my husband's thumb--actually nothing could be further from the truth. If what this survey tells you about being a wife in the 1930s is accurate, then what happened between 1930 and 1960 to make women believe their lives were seen as inferior to men's?

Apparently, the 1930s wife is thrifty, a good conversationalist, active in church and social organizations, active in the education of her children, a tender, loving mother, courteous, clean, attentive, self-reliant, maintains a loving and considerate relationship with her husband, enjoys "marital congress," (I liked that one. I VERY much enjoy "marital congress."), modest, avoids bad habits, etc.

Maybe it's my highly conservative upbringing, or the strength of my belief that a mother's greatest work is done in the home in raising and teaching her own children, or perhaps I'm spoiled by the extraordinary power of the relationship I share with my husband, or maybe I'm a sheep, blindly following the tenets of my religion (and if you believe that of me, you don't know me well enough to comment).

Whatever. I'm proud to be a 1930s wife!

A Review!

I got a review today!

It's only a paragraph in a rather long review of Flash Fiction Online, but of the 30 some stories that have been published on FFO, the reviewer made mention of his favorites. Here's what he said of mine:

"From December, I enjoyed Suzanne Vincent’s “I Speak the Master’s Will.” It’s a story recounting the fate of damned souls from an apparently Hindu perspective. Ms. Vincent, who later joined FFO’s staff, is a most competent and erudite writer of an apparently philosophical bent. “I Speak…” is a first-person piece recounted by a most unusual character with an equally unusual perspective."

You can find the whole review here:
http://wwwdnschneidercom.xbuild.com/#/literaryreviews99/4529614684

A Story, a Story

I actually started and finished a story today. First time in a long time!

It started out as an exercise in writing fantasy flash fiction. That was the intention.

But you know how it is with stories. You get an idea or start working on story generation and the end result is seldom what you had in mind from the beginning.

It still turned out to be flash length. That part is easy. You simply control the number of characters, conflicts, and scenes and you can't hardly go wrong.

It ended up at around 970 words and MIGHT be considered fantasy, but was probably more along the lines of mainstream as the magic isn't necessarily really there, depending on how you look at it. So my fantasy ended up being a story inspired by the recent events at that FLDS ranch in Texas.

I think I'll post it at Hatrack to see what kind of feedback I get there, then see what happens.

To my Hunny

I big HAPPY FATHER'S DAY to my main squeeze!

I just happen to be one of those extremely lucky girls who snagged the right guy the first time out. He's the kind of guy other girls wish they had. He and I are a team, through and through. We think alike, enjoy the same things, enjoy each other, and are absolute best friends. I couldn't ask for a better example to my children of a man, a father, a husband.

I love you, Mein Man!

I'm POPULAR!!

Just received a stats update from Jake, my boss at FlashFictionOnline. Check this out!!

"In May, people read stories 3051 times (2568 HTML, 483 PDF).
2373 of these (78%) were new stories, while 678 (22%) were Classic Flashes.
Interestingly, only 1759 of the stories (58%) were from this month's issue; the rest were from previous months. The most-read stories were, not surprisingly, from the name-brand writers: Carl Frederick got 154, Jim Van Pelt 84, Eric Garcia 78.
Suzanne Vincent is rookie of the month with an anomalous (but happy) 126 reads, beating out pros Bruce Holland Rogers and Dave Hoing. ("Master's Will" has been read about 580 times since it was published, not counting March, for which there are data errors. If we normalize March to be the average of the other months, it's probably around 660.) The rookie behind her was Rod Santos with 69."

So then I Googled "I Speak the Master's Will" and got this:

From Christopher Kastensmidt's (a talented writer I met at Zoetrope) website http://www.geocities.com/ckastens/ck_lists.html From his LISTS page, under Speculative Short Fiction, with the byline, "Here are some of my favorite speculative short fiction writers."
"Suzanne Vincent - Stories filled with emotion. One to look for: "I Speak the Master's Will""

Thanks Chris!

Motivation

I have not written regularly in a very long time.

I tell myself that I'm busy. I tell myself that I don't have the opportunity. I let myself get distracted.

All of these are valid. I am busy. It's hard to find the opportunity to write when the only place for your only computer in your tiny house is in the family room where distractions never cease. And I do let myself get distracted by the many other activities that I enjoy and need to do.

I wonder what happened to that drive that got me writing in the first place and how I can get it back again. Do I want it back again?

I don't know.