Advertisement

Even if the first month is nearly gone, you just might consider getting yourself -- or an aspiring writer you know -- one of these calendars. Granted, like many other wirebound weekly calendars out there, it has got the basic 2 page/week format in a 5x8 package: days of the week on the right, with US, Canadian, and UK holidays marked, and thematic material on the left -- but it's the thematic material, of course, which makes this calendar worth considering.

Each week is accompanied by quotes from various SF and fantasy authors -- quotes about not just writing, but editing, submitting, marketing and selling short stories and novels. Julie Czerneda gives some friendly advice on Getting Started with your project. Victoria Strauss talks about World Building, and Lawrence Watt-Evans gives pithy suggestions for dealing with those pesky Second Drafts.

There are "First Sale Stories" from Jay Caselberg (Wyrmhole, Roc, Oct 2003) and Diana Pharaoh Francis (Path of Fate, Roc, Nov 2003). Perhaps best of all, for writers who need that extra kick in the pants to get going, there are "Snippets" from 25 different works, from Esther M. Friesner's "Ilion" to Elizabeth Moon's The Speed of Dark, from Anne's Harris' Inventing Memory to Laura Anne Gilman's Staying Dead.

Website and SFF.net forum information is included in a list in the back for each contributing author. So are the websites of many publishers; and a special list includes the Editor's Pick: Top 20 sites for SF/F/H, with everything from market listings like Ralan's Webstravaganza and Spicy Green Iquana to Holly Lisle's Forward Motion, SFWA, and the SF Site.

But the best item of all might just be the smallest item in the calendar: each day of the week has a little blank space labeled "words/pages written today". Yes, you could just keep track of that on any old calendar, but some of us -- and we all know who we are, don't we? -- could use a little prompting from time to time. Think of it as a small guilt trip, one for which you didn't even have to talk to your mother, or your writer's group.

Charlene's sixth grade teacher told her she would burn her eyes out before she was 30 if she kept reading and writing so much. Fortunately he was wrong. Her work has also appeared in Aboriginal SF, Amazing Stories, Dark Regions, MZB's Fantasy Magazine, and other genre magazines.