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Stuck Again?

Heh, it would figure that I would post about goals and dreams and then… get stuck.  Yeah, it happens.  I don’t get idea block, I get too many ideas and they make it hard to focus.  That is what usually happens when I’m stuck, anyway.

This time is a combination of too many ideas and just plain old self-pity/loathing.  A bunch of rejections came in, every single one of them with the general message “close, but no thanks, please send more”.  This is good on one level.  I’m close!  On the other hand, I’ve been there before.  I don’t want to have a story come close, I want the story to sell.  Close is just frustrating at this point.  The other reason I’m stuck is because I wrote a story that failed.  My writing brain was fighting me the whole process and then I made myself finish the story (and send it out, because I knew if I let anyone read it before I did I would never get the courage to mail it).

What did my first reader say?  “Awesome setting but I don’t care about the characters or what is happening until page 11.”  Ok, I could cut the first ten pages, but wait, it is only a 12 page story.  Yeah. Sigh.  So what I was trying to do didn’t go well.  But hey, setting!  Maybe some editor out there will love the feel of the story enough to ignore the rest.  Who knows?

But inside I feel a bit down.  I wrote a story last week that both my first readers thought was the best thing I’ve done yet.  Then this week, I fail.  It makes getting back on the horse tough.  I’ve made myself start another story and gotten about a thousand words down, but I keep finding reasons to walk away from the keyboard.  Like posting here. And doing house chores.

So I failed at the story I was trying to tell. So what? I need to pick myself up.  It’s just a story. I still have the idea, I can always write a better version knowing what went wrong with the first one.  Meanwhile, I have other projects that have deadlines (at least, the places I want to submit them close very soon, so it is kinda like a deadline).  I can do this.  Write, finish, mail.  Fire and forget.

It’s going to be a scary day when I get up to 80 stories out.  If the stars align, I could technically get 80 rejections in one day.  Yeah. Scary.

(Flip side is that I could also make 80 sales in one day.  I think one is about as likely as the other, so I should stop tilting at windmills and get writing, right?)

On Dreams and Goals

I have a friend who decided that she wasn’t happy with her life.  She has a MFA in Art, has been at her job for 9 years, has pets and friends and family where she is.  But she wanted a change.  Her dream, ever since becoming a huge fan of the TV show “Deadliest Catch”, is to work on fishing/crabbing boats.  That is her big dream, and I know plenty of people were skeptical that she could achieve it.  She has no experience with fishing or boats, she’s strong, but really short and hasn’t ever done truly heavy labor.

Did she care that many of the people around her thought it was a crazy dream? No.  She started reading about it, checking job sites, absorbing anything she could about how to get started.

Last weekend I drove her out to an interview with a crab boat captain.   Before she’d even flown back home, she had the job.  In a month or so, she’ll be on a boat, living her dream.

What does this have to do with writing? Plenty.  Dreams are important.  I know I tend to bog myself down in the nitty-gritty of the actual process.  But it isn’t just for the process that I’m writing.  I have a dream, too.  (That phrase is like “who you gonna call”, tainted by fame forever, hehe).  I don’t really talk about my bigger goals very specifically because frankly, I get a lot of criticism for them, both from fellow writers and from my friends and family.  The last time a friend asked what I hoped to do with my writing and I told answered, that friend then scoffed and said something like “yeah, I’d like to win the lottery too.”  That sort of talk is discouraging.  But I try not to let it get to me.  As I said, dreams are important because they provide something to work toward.

What’s my big dream? To consistently make 6 figures a year writing fiction.  I’d love to have a career that is a blend of Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, and JA Konrath.  (If you don’t know who JA Konrath is, go here and read his blog.  If you don’t know who the other two are, get out from under that rock already!)

How am I going to go about reaching that dream?  That is where goals come in.   My friend couldn’t just decide to go work on a fishing boat and then bam! it happened.  She had smaller goals that got her there (ie post on job boards, network with people, read up on the industry etc…).  My goals are all things I can control.

So here is my game plan.  By Jan 2011 I will have 6 novels and 80 short stories out on submission.  (I’m at 1 novel and 24 short stories thus far).  That is just to get my butt in gear and because I’m practicing writing a bunch of different stuff.  Starting next year I intend to write four novels and at least 30 short stories a year which is about 550,000 words.  Half a million words seems like a lot.  Ok, maybe it is a lot.  But I broke that down into even smaller goals.  (I did this before in December, but I’ve revised what I’m doing, so now I get to toss different numbers out).

To get to 550,000 words in a year, I intend to spend at least 30 weeks a year writing 5 days a week (or really, knowing me, the equivalent time to that, probably spread out a little differently).    That’s roughly 18,300 words per week, which for a five day work week means 3,660 words a day.  Three to four hours of writing a day.  Not that scary when it is broken down like that, and it means I have time to take care of all the other stuff that crops up (like mailing stories back out: the more I have out, the more rejections that come back.  Who knew?!).

I write because it is what I do.  Getting paid for what I would do anyway? Awesome.  And that is why I have a dream, a dream that is possible, a dream that will allow me to keep doing what I do already.  And every time someone shakes their head at my dream, I’m going to remember my friend and think about her on the boat pulling crab pots.  And then I’ll smile.

Whew, Back to Work!

Got home from my trip to find two rejections waiting for me.  The one in my mailbox was a nice fat envelope from Analog, but alas, it faked me out.  It was fat because they’d folded up a couple pages of my story to send back, along with the longest form letter rejection I’ve ever seen.  Two single-spaced pages outlining guidelines and with check boxes next to things (none of which were checked…).  Oh well.  That story has space squid and FTL travel, so I figured it was a long shot story for that market anyway.  But in the name of not making decisions for editors, I sent it anyway.

Both stories are back out, one to a brand new market I’d never heard of (they aren’t that new, just my knowing about them).    I also managed to get two more stories out, one is new, one is the story I sold that has reverted to me, so I figured why not try to sell it again?  This brings me up to 22 stories out to markets.  Not quite up to 80 yet, am I? Oh well, there’s plenty of time left in the year to get there.

I’ve been doing a bunch of targeted reading lately as well.  If I’m going to get 80 stories out, they can’t all be spec fic.  I have 4 “literary” stories out at the moment and an idea for another one.  I went to the bookstore and got some mystery and thriller short story collections to pick through and dissect.  So far I’m really enjoying reading the stories, so hopefully that means I’ll enjoy writing some as well.  Meanwhile I’m trying to decide which novels of the ones I’ve read lately I want to reverse outline.  I’ve read about 15 books in the last couple weeks, hence the needing to decide which to focus on picking apart to see how they work.   The best part about this stretching and trying new genres is that I’m discovering authors and stories I’d never even heard of before (though I’m reading and re-reading some best-sellers, too).  I’ve been trying to focus on books by authors who have a long track record, since I figure if they’ve sold 10 or 30 or more books that something in all those books has to be working.

Once again, Dean Wesley Smith has a great post up about writers and practicing.  His comment about knowing what you are focusing on and working on with each piece of writing really hit home for me.  Sometimes I remember to figure that out, but lately I’ve been working on so many things I hadn’t really given it a ton of thought.  So I sat down and looked at my various projects and decided what I was going to work on for each.  So, because lists are so much fun, here they are:

Menagerie– not researching, ie just making shit up.  It’s fantasy and supposed to be fun and weird.

Hunting Delilah– pacing.

The City is Still Hungry– setting and noir pacing/feel.

To Honor and Obey– sex scenes, writing to a particular historical feel and tone.

The Weapons Master– sex scenes, not censoring myself.

And that’s just the novels.  Each short story I’m working on has its own practice goal as well. I’ve got about five lined up that need to get done in the next few weeks, one of which is about an hour from done… still. Sigh.  Need to stop poking at it and just get it done.  I think my practice failed with this one because man is it being stubborn about getting written, but oh well, I’ll keep the idea and re-do it at some point if I want.  Meanwhile, the story can go out into the wide world and get off my desk, so to speak.

Well, back to work.  Between family obligations, trips, and car issues, I’m feeling quite broke.  Need to write more, because no one can pay me for work I don’t do.

Vacation!

I’m on vacation.  Because I work for myself and can go on vacation when I want.  Seriously.  Also, I was stressing myself out with made up deadlines because I knew I was going to be gone for almost two weeks in the beginning of April and the writing was starting to be very very not fun.  When I did my writing schedule at the start of the year, I left room for 6 months of “off” time because I know how I write and function.  I wanted to make sure I worked out a schedule that left me time for the rest of the things in my life I enjoy doing.  I’ve gotten a bunch accomplished this year already, I can afford a couple weeks off, especially if I return to the writing revitalized and ready to tackle it.  (And I’ll admit, I haven’t totally been on vacation, I’ve clocked a few hundred words on a story because it was there and I wanted to.  And my brain is full of scenes and ideas for one of my novels, plus I’ve been reading a lot of thrillers and looking at pacing and mood in them.)

I’ll be at Norwescon from the 1st through the 4th.  I imagine it will be a different experience than last year.  I’ve sold a story, have a lot more knowledge about publishing and writing, and will actually know people this year.  I’m looking forward to it, as well as the workshop portion.  I’m curious how the stories will go over, both have now garnered a few very nice rejections from various places, so I’m interested to see what this batch of pros has to say about them.

Then I’m down to Cali to see family, during which I will ride lots of rollercoasters and get zero writing done.  But I’m back and resuming mad writing plans as of the 12th.

So, to restate my crazy plan.  Get home, write five novels and 16 short stories.  That’s it. Though it looks like two of those novels will be done first, since they are getting the most brain time.  Also, once I get back I’ll be making my first ever submission to the market that started the whole wanting to be  writer madness: “MZB’s Sword and Sorceress”.  Finally have a story I think might work, after about 19 years.  It’ll be an historic moment.  Or something.  And if I get accepted I’m pretty sure my head will explode.  Good times.

Evolution of a Blog (and a writer)

It’s funny.  When I started this blog, I had little idea of what I wanted to put here.  Then I ran across an article in one of the Writer’s Market books.  In it, the author was talking about “how do you know when to quit?”.  He proposed that a person might be best served by writing a novel a year for ten years, and at the end of each year sending the finished novel out and moving to the next one.  If, after ten novels and ten years, you are unpublished, he suggested that then you might consider quitting.  Looking back, I’m not sure he, and I say he, because I recall the author being a he, but I’ve donated that book now, so I don’t have it to reference.  If I’m wrong, I apologize!, anyway, he probably knew that by the time a person got a few years and books in, they would likely never think of quitting.  When I first read the article, however, I thought “okay, I can do that.  And then I’ll know if I’m no good at all.”

I’m technically two years into that plan.  I’ve learned a ton (not the least of which was that hey, I can write a novel).  And the plan no longer works for me.  This blog was originally my ‘ten in ten’ record.  Now it has evolved to something else.  It’s just about me, as a writer and my plans to make a living (and a good one, hopefully) at writing fiction.

I had some funny realizations at the Dean Wesley Smith workshops I went to, things I have spent the last few weeks processing.  One was that even a year ago, I wouldn’t have been able to get all I got out of that experience.  It would have terrified me, froze me up.  Not because a year ago I felt that differently than I do now (I still feel like a rank amateur and imposter).  I’m not even sure why or what changed.  Somewhere I got serious about this.  And even I hadn’t realized that until the end of the week when a bunch of us at the workshop were sitting around and Dean asked if anyone was actually following completely Heinlein’s writing rules.

That is the moment it hit me, the moment I’ve been thinking about and using to put everything else about myself as a writer into context.

I am. I am following all of the rules now, almost completely by accident.  And I think this is what feels different.  A year ago, I wasn’t following the rules.  I had a lot of issues making myself mail things out.  I mailed some things but not others.  I was slow to get stuff back out.  I rewrote over and over and over on a few stories, worried that they were “bad” and “not perfect”.    I started a few things and had trouble finishing them (the novel currently out on submission, for example).  And then somehow I started following the rules.  I started pushing myself to finish things, even if they felt “wrong” or “bad”.  I gave myself permission to suck.  To fail.

And I finished a novel.  And I sold a story.

Ever since about October, I’ve been following the rules.  Stories that come back go right back out.  My novel is out to people who can pay me for it if they so choose (ie editors, not agents).  I’m working on five more novels and a bunch of short stories.  I finish something, it goes out after a clean up pass.  No multiple drafts, no crazy rewriting and agonizing because it isn’t “perfect”.

And that’s how I managed to survive a week surrounded by “real” pros as a complete impostor who sucks (so says the evil voice in my head), and still learned things.  I was ready to hear what they all had to say because I’m really doing this.  Having a name for it (Heinlein’s Rules), helps.  But in the end, it just is a way for me to see that I’m truly working at something and going for what I really want. And that feels really really good.

It’s easy to get discouraged.  The downside of having a lot of stuff in the mail is that sometimes I get two or three rejections in a day.  It is easy for me to get frustrated and feel like I have no control over anything.  That’s why I like rules.  I think it is what attracted me to the article about ten novels in ten years.  That in a way was someone else saying “do this! see what happens”.  Heinlein’s rules are the same way, but without an end date.

I can write and finish what I write.  I can rewrite only to editorial order (and only if I agree).  I can send what I write out to someone who can pay me for it and keep it out until it sells.  I have control over these things.  That’s a job description I can live with.

I’m not exactly sure what I’m trying to say in this post is coming across, but basically I’m ditching (have already ditched) the ten in ten idea.  I’m going with the unending plan of writing, finishing, mailing.  That’s what this blog will be about (and has really been about for a while, even though I was too wrapped up in the process to tell).  I’m following a simple set of rules, and I’ve never felt so free.  Which isn’t to say there won’t be hiccups, because fear gets me all the time.  I imagine that if I start selling more I’ll likely face a whole new set of fears since success has always been one for me (that’s another post for another time, for sure).

So yeah. That’s where I am right now.  Now, back to my job.  *grin*

Lists and Motivation

Spent all afternoon not writing because I was scrubbing my hard drive of a nasty virus.  Very frustrating.  Fortunately, I seem to have obliterated it.  Whew.  Nothing is scary like thinking about trying to type five novels on a netbook screen. Seriously.

Spent another chunk of today brainstorming titles (I like to have a working title for any project, it helps gel it in my head) and looking around at what is out there already.  I also secured three website domains for my pen names after making sure the names weren’t anything famous already.  Don’t have a YA pen name yet, but not actually sure I can write YA type stuff, so screw it.  I’ll cross the bridge when I get there.

I did some maths.  Cause I like maths.  I find doing simple math like finance spreadsheets and word count goals relaxing.  (I also find watching friends shoot zombies relaxing, I’m weird.)  In order to complete things on a schedule I feel comfortable with, I need to be writing about 105ppw (pages per week).  That’s an average of six hours of typing each weekday, five if I’m really on a role.  Over 5k words a day.  Possible.  I think I might add a weekend day to this though, just a couple of hours.  And I’m allowing in this page goal 25-30ppw for a short story, because if all I work on is novels I will go crazy from lack of completion.  Especially working on five novels.  I’m not structuring it beyond this.  Whichever novel is dominating my thoughts when I sit down to write will get the pages for that day.

My goal is to have all the novels done by September, along with at least 17 short stories.  I say 17 and not 25 because I’m giving myself room to take days and weeks off if needed.  105ppw puts me at completion of novels by about 17 and a half weeks in.  So I’m leaving wiggle room.  It would be stupid not to. Life happens.

But I’m poor.  Poor is a great motivator to write and submit things.  My dad always used to say he liked it when his kids were broke, because it meant we’d be practically begging to do farm work for cash.  And every time I’m tempted to throw my hands in the air and not write cause I don’t feel like it, well, I’ll keep in mind that this sure as hell beats 70 hour weeks and having to deal with stupid people or drunk people or dead people or things on fire.  Just in case that wasn’t enough motivation, Final Fantasy XIII comes out tomorrow.  And I’m not allowing myself to have it until these five novels are all done and in the mail.  I’ve been waiting for that game for years now. YEARS.  Sooner I get this stuff done, sooner I get to disappear for two months into video game heaven.  Yesh. Will…be…Mine! (I’m 4 years old inside, seriously).

Oh, I promised lists!

What’s out:

20 short stories.

1 novel (to five editors and an agent).

To be done list:

The City is Still Hungry, 90-100k words

Hunting Delilah, 90-100k words

To Honor and Obey, 60-80k words

The Weapons Master, 60-75k words

Menagerie, 30-50k words

Write 17 new short stories and get them out to markets.

Continue to keep existing stories out to markets.

~350,000 words stand between me and Final Fantasy XIII.  I will be … victorious.

Writers of the Future Q1 2010

Honorable mention. Again.  About all there is to say about that.  I keep joking with people that I’m going to make it as a writer “the hard way”, ie never winning a contest, never getting into one of the big workshops.  Who knows, I might actually end up having to do that.  Hell, I’ve got contingency plans for if I’ve written 20-30 novels and they never sell to NY.  It could very well end up I do this whole damn thing the hardest way possible. Sigh.

Meanwhile, I’m not even close to that point yet.  This week I’m giving in to my brain’s desire to write five novels at the same time.  Well, the five that it will let me outline.  Sindra’s Storm is being back-burnered until it grows a cohesive form.  Take that, novel.  I’m hoping that as I get going on the various projects that one will take over.  But worse comes to worse, I’ll have five novels done in the next few months.  It’s not as much work as it sounds like.  I imagine three out of the five will be short novels, one possibly very short since I’m going to try writing it as a middle grade.  So even being written much at the same time, the finishing dates should stagger out nicely.

I also am going to try to work in more short story writing time.  I’m feeling incredibly poor, and as my father always said, poor is motivating.  The more work out to markets, the more likely I am to get a sale.  Never thought I’d empathize with Dickens.  Life is full of surprises.

Also, my blog seems to be doing weird things.  Catagories and links are apparently missing, but yet they show up in my admin pages.  Sigh.  Not going to worry about it right now.  Hopefully Word Press will get around to fixing whatever is broken.

Home and House Cleaning

Added a link to my story at AlienSkin Magazine.  As I get things published (hopefully!), I’ll toss up links there in the side-bar if the story is available online.

I have a ton of new information and ideas swimming around in my head from the workshops.  And three new stories to get out on market.  I’ll probably talk more about the workshops when I’ve managed to settle back into routine and had some time to think about things.

Meanwhile, this week is going to be for some basic tasks I should have done but hadn’t yet.  So, here, have a boring list of things I’ll be doing this week:

-get all four stories (three from workshop, one that came back this morning with a nice rejection) into the mail.  This will bump my race score to 23 (20 from short stories alone, wee).

-write 10,000 words of new fiction.  I’m ditching the novel I’ve been piecing together and going to write a different one this month.  The other one needs more time to solidify in my head.

-put up static websites for my three pen names.  All three domains are free, just need to purchase them and code a very basic site for them.  I’ll probably link to this blog for now at least on one of them.

-expand and update my submissions spreadsheet and make a new one for novels.

-mail two more packages to editors for my novel.

-join twitter (groan).

Boring stuff (except the writing part), but necessary.

I think I am also going to return to doing short story Mondays, and add short story Thursdays to the mix.  The workshops proved I can get off my ass and write a decent short story in a small amount of time, so I should do that.  Next week the word count goals will improve, I’m giving myself a break this week to get other stuff done and recharge.  Being away from home is tough for me and I get pretty drained having to interact with strangers.  But to get a novel done by Norwescon, I need to write about 20k a week after this.

Workshop Week

I’m headed out shortly to go the Coast for two Dean Wesley Smith workshops.  First is a novel workshop, the second a short story one.  I’d be lying through my teeth if I said I wasn’t totally nervous, but hey, worst that can happen is … wait… let’s not think about that. *grin*

I imagine in reality I’ll just learn a ton, and at the end of the novel workshop at least I’ll have my novel wending its way to the desks of editors, ready for the cold harsh evil world.  And I’ll get to meet a lot of interesting people.

In other news, I’m back in nail biting territory on a couple of submissions.  Having a nice spreadsheet that tracks what is where and how long each rejection took etc is very nice.  Having all this information so that I know when a market is behaving differently from the 5-10 times previous that I submitted? Not as nice.  Right now two, yes two, markets have held stories far longer than they usually do.  And a third is right at the query point, which they’ve done to me before (last time I got a very nice, detailed rejection on the day I was going to query).  So either somehow all three stories were lost in transit (I know that at least one wasn’t because of the email auto-reply), or they are all maybe getting real consideration.  Yeah, yeah. I know I shouldn’t even be thinking about it or trying to dissect what it all ‘means’ because it probably doesn’t mean anything.  But I can’t help getting anxious.  Le sigh.

I’ll take notes and hopefully have something more interesting to say after the workshops.

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