Story Up At AlienSkin Magazine
The subject just about says it all. My story is here: http://www.alienskinmag.com/flash11.htm
Enjoy!
Author Archive
Strangely Stuck
I don’t generally start short stories and not finish them in one or maybe two sittings. Usually by the time I’m sitting at the computer and writing I’ve spent weeks or months working on the story in my head and it is ready to hit the page.
I currently have four short stories and one novella sitting between 200-1000 words on each. 1-4 pages, basically, on each one. I can’t seem to finish them. It isn’t that I don’t know exactly what happens (in fact, if we count scribbled notes and scenes, the novella has a few thousand more words on it). I know all of these stories beginning to end. Which is maybe the problem. I already know what is going on, so somehow the urgency to ‘tell’ the story is gone. My brain has moved on. I’m in novel mode (specifically Sindra’s Storm), and I really need to finish up the other bits before I spring into that. And on top of it all, I have to write a story this week for the workshop I’m attending. I have that story figured out too, though a few details came to me today while I was walking that will help refine the plot.
I know I just need to buckle down and get it all done. Not just the writing, but the reading and other parts too. But the writing is foremost. If I get these stories done by the time I’m out of town for a week, I’ll have five more things in the submission launcher to fire and forget. Five more things that can start collecting rejections. That would put me at 16 stories out on submission, which is halfway towards my goal of at least 30.
But mostly, at the moment, my brain wants to be writing “Sindra’s Storm” and doing pretty much nothing else. Maybe I’ll just stop fighting it (after I fulfill my workshop obligations) and go with that. Though I truly hate leaving a short story sitting in a file unfinished. Grr. Welcome to my crazy process, heh. There’s the insane part of me that wonders if I could finish all five in a giant push this week, which would mean finishing about two a day. Also, of course, wondering if the stories would end up any good that way. Can I jump through five totally different voices and worlds that fast? One is first person from a macro-biologist’s POV and is sort of survival/thriller sci/fi, one is about an aging militia facing its final battle, one is about a damaged bounty-hunter set in a re-imagined Ukraine, another deals with Munchhausen’s by Proxy and sort of a Cinderella myth, and the final one has a man dealing with an unwanted gift. Five stories. One a novella, so it’s sort of like two stories length-wise. But to have them done, that would be nice. We’ll see how crazy I feel.
Guess it is time to stop blogging and start writing. I think I can get a couple thousand words in tonight. Must. Get. Unstuck.
Cleanup Week
Novel editing is done. Novel bits are mailed and emailed off to appropriate places for the workshop. Now to get the rest of the stuff done this week that should get done.
I have two stories I need to mail off. I’m discouraged in that I’m fairly sure I’ve sent them to the most ideal markets for each, which means now I start sort of shooting in the dark. One of the stories is pretty much hard sci/fi, in that there is nothing in it which isn’t utterly possible in the near future. But it’s a love story, not a traditional hard sci/fi story. So I’m not sure if the harder sci/fi markets are right for it. Never know til I try I guess, right?
The other story is sort of fable/fairytale-esque and has gotten some really nice rejections, but now I’m low on markets for it. It has eight rejections, which isn’t enough for me to trunk it, but the next two most likely markets for it have other things subbed to them already. So I think maybe I’ll sit on this one, much as I hate to, and wait for one of those markets to open back up again. Or I could send it off to a major long-shot. Hmm.
I have four short stories and a novella to finish, hopefully this week. Then, next week, I start “Sindra’s Storm”. For real. Outline or no outline. Who knows? Maybe one will miraculously come to me this weekend to be written down hurriedly on hotel stationery. If not, well, I have enough to get started. I know the general plot and have the shape of the first few chapters. I even have villain motivation and all that good stuff. It might be that I just have to sit back and let the book write itself, so to speak. Not something my control freak brains are good at doing. Normally I have to be inside everything, figuring out what is going on and what is going to happen next, and I prefer to work from an outline that tells me where the story is going (even if I generally end up revising this outline four or five times while writing). This time, maybe not. I’ll know in a week.
I’m setting a totally arbitrary deadline for finishing the rough draft of this novel as March 26th. Eight weeks. 110,000 words. About 2,000 words a day. This’ll be fun!
Grind Grind Grind
After elation of making a sale, I’m back to grinding away. Rejections keep trickling in, though some have been very nice. I’m trying not to get too down about having so many nice rejections. I know it’s a good sign, I just wish I knew what I could do to push the stories over the edge of “good” and into “sold”. I’m hoping that the workshop I’m attending in Feb will help shed some light on how to do this. I plan to work my ass off at the workshop, and to try to absorb everything I can, and be as open minded as I can.
I’m more nervous in some ways about the novel workshop. I’m almost done on the editing pass of “A Heart in Sun and Shadow” and have been riding the rollercoaster of “this is good” and “zomg, how did I write something this bad?” I really have no idea if it is any good at all.
The hardest part of the editing has been the fact that my brain has moved on. I am no longer living and breathing this world. My mind is out of Cymru and running around the mountain kingdom in “Sindra’s Storm” (which still refuses to be outlined). So the few parts I added to might not really work with the whole. I’m not sure. I guess I’ll find out in Feb, for it will be interesting to see if anyone can even tell where I added things. I didn’t end up adding as much as I at first thought I might, and I’ve cut a few things, so the novel is still quite short and will likely top out around 87,500 words. The final 50 pages should be quick to finish. Just a few tweaks of some scenes, and of course the copy/paste of the proper spelling of my main character’s name. The first half took so much longer because I hadn’t started bothering to use proper dialog punctuation yet. Never. Doing. That. Again. From now on, I am not going to be lazy on the first draft. Nor will I EVER take 8 months off in the middle of a novel. Ever. Again.
So that’s my project for today. Then next week I’m going to finish the three short stories I’ve started, finish the novella, and then get it out the door for Q2 WOTF. Then, then it’s time to write “Sindra’s Storm”. For better or for worse, outline or no outline.
On a side note, I should really look up a market for the erotic non-speculative story I’m part way done with. Yay for trying things totally outside my comfort zone. Now, if only it will sell. Sigh.
Writers of the Future Q4
I’m on the HM list that was just posted tonight. I won’t pretend I’m not disappointed. I thought my story really had a chance, given the feedback I’ve gotten on it. It stings to just get another HM. And yes, I know that this is better than a straight rejection, but at this point I’ve been pretty much spoiled by the fact that a form letter is actually a fairly rare occurrence for me. I’m at over 2-1 on personal vs form. I’m aiming for the stars here, not for “almost”.
Oh well. Keep writing, keep sending out, keep hoping I win before I’m disqualified (it only takes one novel sale, and as much as I’d love to have that sale, winning WotF seems to be a huge advantage/door opener).
Going to finish my novella this week for second quarter and send it in. Then finish edits on novel. Then, I’m going to write some erotica novellas I think. I need to give my brain something new to do and I have some markets in mind for that sort of writing. Besides, I’ve always been curious if I could actually write a coherent erotica/romance story. Time to find out, and hopefully they’ll sell, cause this whole poor artist thing pretty much sucks.
I’m starting to get super nervous about the workshops in Feb. I keep looking at my novel and thinking it is going to be the worst one there. Sigh. The short story workshop also makes me nervous. What if I’m the only one whose story doesn’t get chosen for an anthology? Or what if after reading my sample (of the story or the novel…) I get told that I’m not right for the workshop and should work on things and come back another time?
Bleh. I’ve just had a pretty awful week so far. Clearly I need to just stick the whining, insecure bits of my brain in a ditch and get back to work.
And Congrats to Oso for being a finalist. I might be biased (having read his story), but damnit, he better win 😉
New Year, Specifically
So first, more info on my short story sale. It’s to Alienskin Magazine and is (of course) a flash fiction piece. I’ll be posting a link when it is up, which will be for their Feb/March issue. I’m really excited.
Secondly, I figured I’d post a little more specifically on my goals for this year.
1. Write 4 novels and submit them
2. Have at least 30 short stories in my folders and keep them out on markets until they sell or have nowhere to go
So, both of these goals require writing more stuff. I broke it down to wanting to write about 465k words this year. Which seems like a huge number of words. But if you break it down, it’s only 1,275 or so words a day. Which would take me maybe an hour to an hour and a half to do. Not so bad. But… I can’t write everyday. That’s just not the way I or my life works. So I decided I’d calculate what I need to write a week to reach my goal, which works out to about 9,000 words per week. I can’t write every week either though, since stuff comes up or I go away places, etc… So I decided what if I write 35 weeks (or so) out of the year? That gives me plenty of time off if I need it. This works out to about 13,000 words per week that have to get done to meet my goal.
Then, I don’t write everyday, remember? I take weekends off most of the time. 13,000 words 5 days a week is 2600 or so words per day. 2-4 hours of writing a day, 5 days a week. That, that I can do. See? Now it’s manageable.
I think I’ll start… Monday 🙂
Dancing on Rooftops
I just made my first sale. It works out to about 1.5 cents a word, so semi rate, not pro, but eh. I’ll take it. I’m singing inside. It’s crazy.
Not sure when is appropriate to say what/where, so I’ll just leave it a mystery for now until I’ve had a chance to confirm that I can tell everyone and their dogs.
But yeah. Sale. The funniest part is I thought it was a rejection and had to stare at the email a lot. Go me.
End of Year Wrap-up
This year was my first for submitting my work for publication. Over all, it was frustrating, but I think I made a lot of progress as a writer, so it could have been worse.
My ‘stats’ for the year:
8 short stories written.
1 novel finished.
38 rejections, 26 of which came with personal and generally positive notes (only one neg note).
1 novella finished, 1 started.
1 novel started and not finished.
Multiple writer friends connected with, and a ton of information and good advice gleaned (hard thing to quantify, but man I’ve learned a lot this year and really expanded my support/information network).
All in all, not that bad considering that grad school hijacked by time and energy for a while, as did family/obligations for much of last summer.
So I close out 2009 still unpublished, but a better writer. I’ve learned how to finish things, I’ve stopped being afraid of writing dialog, and I have some idea of what I want to accomplish in the future and how to start doing it. I also developed some pretty good writing habits, which I hope to continue and improve upon in 2010. And I seem to have more or less gotten over my crippling fear of submitting my work or letting other people read it at all. Go me.
Update: I do not, in fact, finish 2009 without selling a story. Sweet.
New Year’s Resolutions, Early!
That’s right, I’m bucking the trend baby. I’m posting my writing resolutions early. Sit back and be amazed at how high my expectations can soar. Though I am keeping the goals/resolutions limited to things within my power.
1. Write 4 novels and submit them
2. Have at least 30 short stories in my folders and keep them out on markets until they sell or have nowhere to go
3. Finish everything I start
4. Submit everything I finish
5. Keep track of receipts and other things for taxes (I was abominable about it this last year, sigh)
6. Try writing at least three things outside my genre comforts (mystery, horror, erotica, something…)
7. Keep going, never look back, never surrender and all that
That’s it. Well “it” is pretty relative here. That’s a lot, I think, but not out of the realms of possibility. And it will get a lot of things out there were someone might see them, which is a good thing if I want to ever actually make any money at this whole “my job” thing. Yep.
Holiday Blues and Sundry
Had a small slew of rejections come in, and while I’d love to turn the stories around and submit somewhere else, most of the markets next on my list are closed right now. Stupid holidays. I guess I’m taking a couple weeks off submitting until things open back up. In some ways this isn’t so bad. It means that I three stories I can choose from for the first quarter of WotF if I decide I can’t get the novella formerly known as Werewolves in Space done in time to send it in.
Made a new spreadsheet for tracking submissions as well. Before I just had a single rather messy page in excel with stories down one side and markets across the top. But I kept adding stories and markets and it started to look like a giant mess. So now there’s a master list of stories on the first sheet, and then each story has its own sheet with markets listed down the side. Each row has room for date submitted, date rejected/sold (wishful future-thinking there), and a place to put any editor comments that might come back with it. (“graceful” “unexpectedly moving” “writing is top quality” always followed by some version of “this ultimately didn’t work for me, good luck elsewhere, send us more!”). I have about 25 markets listed, not all pro-rate of course, but the few that aren’t are either damn close or else highly regarded. This means that even if I wrote nothing new (which is practically impossible), it’ll be more than a hundred rejections before I run out of markets for my current 12 stories. Not every story fits every market, of course, but each has at least 10-14 it can go out to.
In more thrilling news, or not, I finally have a working title for Chwedl that actually sounds readable. So novel project #2, formerly known as “Chwedl” is now called “A Heart in Sun and Shadow”. That sounds appropriately fantasy I think and somewhat captures the themes/images within the novel. If I manage to sell this thing, I doubt that will be its final title, but hopefully this new title will catch the eye better than “incomprehensible word” did.
Now, if I could just figure out the title to novel project #3, and a good title for formerly “werewolves in space”. Originally that novel was going to be called “Predators”, so I suppose I could title the novella such until its written at least. Titles are funny things. A good one makes me want to read something, a bad one might turn me away (though rarely). This is even more true with short stories for me than books. And yet titles are my least favorite part. I suck at them. I have a hell of a time thinking them up and always feel like I could have done so much better. Just part of my process I guess.
Well, happy holidays. I’m going to be right here, at the computer, busting my ass to try to make “A Heart in Sun and Shadow” into something someone might want to buy someday. “Busting my ass” of course might also mean “working on novel project #3”, but hey, it’s all work, right? Right?