Clarion Funding: Kickstarter

Well, I took the plunge and planned out a Kickstarter project for Clarion.  I’m going to make a book of the best stories I write while there and distribute it to the internets.  But first, it will go out to people who donate via my project.

Here’s the link:  Souvenirs From Other Worlds: stories written at Clarion UCSD

The nice thing about Kickstarter is that if I don’t make my goal, nothing happens.  Of course, that’s the bad thing too.  But nothing tried, nothing gained.

And, of course, there are always my ebooks to purchase (under Read My Fiction in the sidebar).  Every bit helps.  I’m already blessed to have awesome friends, both in real life and here on the internet.  Thanks to all of you for the support and good wishes that have already been sent my way.  You guys cheer me up when I falter and help me keep pursuing my dream.  Thank you.

April in Summary

April was a wonky month due to life rolls (my husband lost his job) and workshops.  But it was a good month for learning and a decent month for writing, though I fell short of my ever lofty goal of 100k words.

Here’s the stats:

Ebooks published: 2

Money earned from writing: 68 (48 from ebooks, 20 from reprint sale of a short story)

Words written: 52,307

May is going to be a busy month. I have another neo-pro interview lined up (should be up in the next week), I turn 30 (oh noes!), and I have three novels to finish, two of which should go up in May depending on cover art.  I will hopefully have a couple more short stories online as well as possibly a collection.  Clarion funding is coming together thanks to a couple of angels in my life, but I’m still going to try a Kickstarter project to get the rest of what I need so that I can maybe lean on my angels a little less.  Besides, my Kickstarter project idea is just neat, it’d be a shame to not at least try it.

That’s that for April.  I learned a great deal this month and I’ve learned some new ways to study as well.  I hope that going forward my writing will be even stronger.  My toolbox certainly has some new additions for me to play with.  May will be a good month.

Brainz Fried

First order of business, I finally have paper copies of A Heart in Sun & Shadow.  They are up in the Createspace store and available directly through Amazon.com as well.  I will probably be offering signed copies of this directly as well, so if anyone wants a signed trade paperback, let me know.

I have been basically MIA online this last week since I spent the last eight days out at the beach working my ass off in a Character Voice workshop taught by Dean Wesley Smith with some help from Kristine Rusch.  I am still processing all I learned this week. I am not even sure where to begin.   The entire focus of the workshop was on how to build characters that have dimension and feel like whole people who leap off the page and suck readers into books.  You know, basically the most important thing a writer can learn.

Each day looked basically like this:

9am, meet for breakfast.  Noon- meet for first session, turn in our coloring assignments (basically a few pages by a best-selling author that highlights what we were focusing on that we had to go in and mark up) and sometimes we turned in big assignments in the mornings as well (especially as the week went on).  We’d break generally by 1:30 or 2 and then have to be back at 7pm with our big assignments. We’d generally break again for the night between 8:30 and 9pm.  Rinse, repeat for 7 days.

The big assignments were 3-4 story starts, 2 pages each, working specifically on whatever character voice technique we focused on each day.  (So 6-8 pages of writing each day).  Then we also had two short story assigments, 3-6k words each, one was due Tues evening (we got that assignment on the first Sat) and one was due Friday evening (we got that one on Tues night).  We also had to all read everyone else’s assignments so we could see what others were doing that might work and or not and learn from that as well (there were 10 of us in the class, so about 50-70 pages of reading a night plus whatever our coloring assignment was, plus all the short stories once those were turned in).  In the middle of the week the class as a whole basically flubbed an entire assignment and had to re-do all the exercises with whole new story starts and characters, so that added even more work on.  But we did better on the re-do and I, for one, feel that I have a better grasp on what we were supposed to be learning in that exercise.

The things we focused on were: Accents, Attitude, Content through dialogue, Opinion, Actions, and Structure (look & flow of manuscript as it relates to characterization).  We also covered some more advanced tips and tricks at the end of the workshop, but those were the biggies.

Let me say this: One week was NOT enough.  It was a good, intensive start, but I know I’m going to be working hard on this stuff for probably the rest of my writing life.  So much of it can really only be put into practice through subconscious feel, but I’m glad that we did the exercises we did.  They are ones I can do at home if I feel I’m struggling with something.  There were also six major things, and there are six weeks of Clarion.  I know what I’m going to be working on while at Clarion.  Getting characters to look, feel, and sound like breathing, interesting, full-dimensional people is a HUGE part of writing well.  Ideas are neat and all, but people won’t keep reading books with flat characters.  I’ve got a great opportunity for focused practice while I’m at Clarion, and I’m going to make use of it.  I have new tools in my tool box now, and I’m certainly not going to let them get rusty.

I am exhausted, still.  I hit the wall on Saturday morning, on the final assignment.  I opened up the blank page and my brain just said “no”.  Guess what? I wrote the three assignments anyway and made two out of the three really work.  That was me brain-dead.  It’s good to push and push sometimes because I really learned what I was capable of even when it felt like my creative muscle had finally stopped moving.  I literally had no ideas. None. I needed three story starts on Sat morning and my brain just said “no”.  And I, writer me, said “yes”.  Out of all the story starts we did that week? One of mine on Sat morning is probably the only story I’ll actually go back to and finish.  A story start that came out of the dregs of my exhausted brain but the character when she started speaking was there, ready to go and I just let the two pages happen.

So I’m really glad I went. Despite the problems that cropped up in my life right before, despite the frustration and exhaustion, despite it all, I think I’ve grown as a writer in just one week and I think I’ll be able to use these skills going forward.  And again, if you are serious about being a professional writer and don’t mind being made to work, the workshops on the Oregon Coast put on by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Katherine Rusch are worth every penny, every tear, every moment (as any of my fellow writers who have come through that crucible can tell you as well).  I’ve learned amazing things from them and met some amazing writers who have, I hope, become amazing friends.

Now, I’m going to go read a book, drink some tea, and let my brain rest.  But not for too long *grin*

Clarion Funding Part Deux

All right. A couple weeks ago my awesome blog readers chimed in with funding ideas for how to get me to Clarion.  I then hung out in limbo waiting to see how much (if any) scholarship monies I might get and to find out what my final bill is.  In that time I’ve been putting together some plans for how to raise money that now I get to put into motion.

Limbo is over.  The bill is in and my life becomes like the plot of a bad TV movie. *movie voice-over voice* One girl. A dream. A career-changing experience. 2 weeks. 4,107 dollars.

(Of course, if this were a bad TV movie, some guy named Bruno or Hutch or Segei would come break my legs if I didn’t come up with the money, so I’m a step up on that one I guess).

In the immediate short term, I will probably have to take out a loan or something to that effect.  Which would cure the initial issue, but won’t cure the whole “don’t actually have the money” problem since loans have to get paid back.

So, initially what can be done to help are these things:

Buy my books! I have a fantasy novel which was professionally edited and is pretty darn good.  You can find the information for it here:  A Heart in Sun and Shadow.  If I sell 1300 copies of that, I’m golden.

I also have a science fiction short story collection which contains mostly stories that got honorable mentions in the Writers of the Future contest.  And I have a near-future science fiction novelette/novella (14,000 words) that also got an honorable mention in the contest.  If I sell about 2000 copies of those, I’m golden as well.

If you’ve bought my books or they don’t look like your cup of tea, a boost in my signal would be appreciated.  Maybe a friend reads this sort of thing?  Please though, don’t spam on my behalf.  Annoying people will not make them want to help me (which is why this blog post and the one on my Kickstarter project will likely be the only mention I make about this besides a Thank You! follow-up if/when I hit my goal)

I will also be starting Kickstarter project, mostly likely involving making a book out of my Clarion stories (the ones I’m going to write while there) and perhaps some extras.  I will make a separate post when that happens.

To everyone who has boosted my signal already, or offered up ideas, or bought my books, you have my sincere thanks.  With your help, I’m closer to my goal of going to Clarion than I would have been without it.  Thank you for your support 🙂

Two Sales and an Interview

It’s nice to have good news for once coming in multiples.  Most of the neo-pro writing life is being told no in varying ways, over and over and over.  It’s good to hear a yes on occasion.  It’s even better in pairs *grin*

So. A couple sales to announce.  First is a reprint sale of my story “No Spaceships Go” (originally appeared in Daily SF in Dec 2010).  The wonderful people at Scape– The e-zine of YA speculative fiction loved it so much they want it even though they don’t normally do reprinted fiction.  So soon it will be available there as well.

Second sale is an as-yet-untitled story for the anthology Mirror Shards: Exploring the Edges of Augmented Reality (Volume One) being edited by my writer friend Tom Carpenter at Black Moon Books.  The anthology is open to submissions until July, so get on it if you have an augmented reality story idea.

And finally, another interview for my indie-publishing side (I’m like the Hybrid Author of Doom here I guess) is up on Indie Reads.  You can find the interview here.

Whew. Now back to the grind.

Learning and Spring Plans

I’ve been reading some really good stuff on story, plotting, and outlines lately.  I have always felt, personally, that plotting is where I run into issues.  I can handle simple plots (straightforward quests, zomg must run or die now sorts of things) but don’t really have a handle on how to write something super epic or how to keep things so tight the reader can’t breathe for fear something will happen in the book and they’ll miss it on the exhale.

But I’m learning.  I don’t like not knowing things so I’ve set out to fill in some of my writer knowledge gaps.  As always, I have a plan. (Am I the only one who hears Black Adder in my head whenever I say that or hear someone say that? No?)  Book 1 in my Law & Order with swordfights series is almost done.  After that, I’m going to try to get the other three done and to the editor before Clarion.  Hopefully I can manage to get the second book in the Chwedl duology finished by Clarion also, because I’d like to focus solely on short fiction while there.

So here’s my modified schedule for this spring:

Avarice – finished by April 10th
Wrath- finished by April 30th
Hunger- finished by May14th
Vainglory- finished by May 28th
The Raven King- Finished by the time I leave for Clarion (around June 25th)

As for plotting, here are some of the books I’ve been reading:

Save the Cat and Save the Cat Goes to the Movies by Blake Snyder

The Fiction Editor, the Novel, and the Novelist by Thomas McCormack

Story: Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting by Robert McKee

How to Write Killer Fiction: The Funhouse of Mystery & the Roller Coaster of Suspense by Carolyn Wheat

I got Donald Maass’s Writing the Breakout Novel and the Breakout Novel Workbook out of the library as well.  I also picked up The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction by R. A. Salvatore and Philip Athans because I heart Salvatore and wanted to see what he said about writing the fantastic.  So far the book is very basic, but interesting.

I mention all this because I know that when I do bother to blog, I tend to talk about goals and numbers more than the actual work itself and what my daily job entails.  But, personally, I find the details of what I do pretty boring.  I mean, I get up, I read some stuff, I write some stuff, I read more stuff, I might make notes about things I want to work on or some such, etc.  It’s… well, a job.  Writing is fun, but the creation part is the fun part and it’s hard to talk about that in any real way because it’s easier to just point at the created work and be like “yeah, I did that”.  But I think just posting goals and such leads to it looking like I’m sitting in the dark beating up a keyboard.  There’s a whole lot more that goes into me writing and improving my craft besides the practice part.

Now, mind you, all the study in the world won’t improve my writing if I’m not doing the practice and putting in the writing itself as well.  It’s like what I pointed out with Starcraft 2 a while back.  I watch tons of SC2 games and can talk the theory with the best of the best (you know, same as any dedicated sport fan *grin*) but I can’t PLAY SC2 worth a damn because I haven’t put in the practice.  Writing is the same way.  Read books, soak up knowledge, and then GO USE IT.

That’s why I’m trying to get four books written before the end of June.  I want to take these things I’m studying and put them to use.  These books are a good way to do that since they all will require tight plotting, are set in worlds I already have mapped out and researched (so I don’t need to lose any writing time on world creation) and I’ve got the basic stories in my head already with characters and structure, so they should be fairly quick to outline once I get my new methods worked out.  The books are for study, the novels I’m writing are for the practical part.  I think of it as Class Time (reading about writing and studying other novels that have worked) and Lab Time (putting what I have learned into practice through practical, hands-on application).

So that’s the plan and I’m (maybe) sticking to it! 😉

Neo-Pro Interview #4

Here’s the fourth in my neo-pro interview series, as promised.

Today, please welcome David Steffen.

Q: Who are you? What’s your genre/history/etc?

David: I’m David Steffen, and I’m a writer. (Hello, David)

I’ve pretty much always known that I wanted to create, but the medium
has changed as I’ve grown older. When I was a kid I wanted to be a
cartoonist, and I still like to doodle cartoon animals in my spare
time, but I never really stuck with it long enough to get really
proficient. Around junior high I decided I wanted to make video
games, and that stuck with me for quite some time, and I chose to
pursue a bachelor’s degree of computer science toward that end. Then
I met some people who worked in the gaming industry and found out that
they worked 70-80 hours a week during a normal week, and I decided
that maybe that wasn’t right for me. I like to be able to leave work
at some point. But I kept on with the computer science degree and now
I write computer vision programs for traffic control
applications–automatically detecting vehicles in the turn lane to
activate the green arrow, for instance.

I’ve always liked to read, and my favorite genre has always been
science fiction and fantasy, simply because there the stories need not
be limited by little things like the laws of nature or the framework
of human history. But until 2006 I never really considered that I
could be someone who wrote those stories. Somehow, those writers had
always seemed like post-human entities who had always been famous. I
mean, I knew that wasn’t the case, but despite the rational truth
that’s sort of the feeling I had about writers. Then in 2006, I
talked to my buddy Travis, who told me that he was writing a fantasy
novel. I mulled over this for a while and in 2007 I decided I ought
to give it a try.

So I started writing, first on a novel. I finished it in June 2008
and sent it off to Tor. Their website suggest 4-6 months turnaround
so I started work on the next novel. 12 days later, I got the Tor
rejection and decided that if markets would respond so quickly I would
need to try short stories that I could write more quickly. I sent the
novel off to Elder Signs Press, who I never did hear a response from.
From there I visited writing forums and met the friends that I met.
More than anything else, Baen’s Bar critique forum was the greatest
step in my learning, as I posted and critiqued short stories and grew
in skill in leaps and bounds. My story would be very different today
if I’d sent that first manuscript to ESP first instead of Tor.

Regarding genre, I write whatever moves me on that given day. I
occasionally write mainstream, but I regularly write SF, fantasy,
horror, just whatever pops into my head at the time.

Q: What’s your Race score?

David: My race score is 34 at the moment, 31 short stories and one partial
novel manuscript.

Q: When did you “get serious” about being a writer?

David: Serious? I can’t afford to get too serious about it, or I won’t enjoy
it anymore, and then I may as well just quit. I write what I like and
I I try to make each story my best story yet. Like I said I started
in 2007 and I’ve been going ever since. I made my first sale to
Pseudopod in 2009 (“The Disconnected”), which was a huge boost in
confidence, and my first story hit the masses with “The Utility of
Love” in Northern Frights Publishing’s Shadows of the Emerald City
anthology. It seems like I’ve gotten a lot of “almost, but no” type
rejections lately so I am hoping that that is a good sign of my
chances in the near future.

Q: What are your goals with your writing?

David: Oh, I have lots of goals at varying levels of difficulty. Here’s a few:
–Make a SFWA qualifying sale. (Bull Spec may be qualified soon in
which case I have a story that would be grandfathered in).
–Submit to Writers of the Future every quarter until I win or until I
disqualify myself with pro sales.
–Make a profit. I keep a tally of all my writing expenses (postage,
instructional books, etc) and all of my writing income. If I were
paid for a couple pending sales today, I would come within a few
dollars of paying for my expenses. This is very exciting!
–Qualify for SFWA
–Break into certain of my favorite markets (F&SF, Fantasy, ASIM,
Necrotic Tissue, Drabblecast, etc…)

Q:  Where do you see your career in 5 years?

David: There you go using “serious” words again. 🙂 I am no good at
predictions, and even less so in writing because so much of it depends
on random chance and on the whims of individuals’ taste in fiction.
All I can control is what I write, and I intend to keep at it. So, in
five years I intend to still be writing and I intend to be writing
better than I ever have before. It would be nice to have finished
another novel or two, but so far my Muse seems to prefer short stories
so we’ll see what happens.

Q: Do you have a particular story or idea you are dying to write? Or, if you could write a tie-in to any established universe/franchise, what would it be?

David: I’ve got a few that I’d like to write that I haven’t seemed to
actually wrap a story around. In particular, I keep coming back to a
Pinocchio retelling novel but so far I haven’t pulled it off yet.

As far as established universes, there are no current ones that I’d
like to get into. My first published story, “The Utility of Love”, is
a horror retelling of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Oz has always been
one of my favorite worlds and I was very excited to take it and focus
on the parts of the original story that really bothered me. I’d love
to do a Wonderland retelling too, but the original is so meandering
it’s hard to do a coherent retelling. And I’m not good enough at
nonsense to do Lewis Carroll’s story credit.

Q: What are your hobbies outside writing?

David: Oh, all things media, mostly. I love to watch movies, read
books/magazines, play video games. I’m trying a bit of sketching on
the side. Going hiking with or without the dogs is always fun.
Watching hockey.

Q: What’s your writing process like?

David: A lot of things vary about my writing process, but I try to keep at
least some constants. On work days I can get ready for work in about
30 minutes, usually. But I make a habit of getting up an hour earlier
than that and I sit at my desk for most of my time and write whatever
I can. That’s the time of day when my brain is the sharpest, and when
my wife and dogs are zonked out sleeping, so I can usually get a chunk
of writing time in there. I might get a bit more in at lunch on some
days, but that’s no guarantee. And then I do what I can.

Generally I only work on one project at a time because if I switch
projects in the middle I tend not to return to them. And I’ve learned
that on the first draft I’ve just gotta write it as fast as I can or I
will lose momentum. Plot holes, bad wording, that can all be fixed
later and once I type THE END on a rough draft I have never neglected
to go back and polish it, but if I agonize over every word choice as I
go I lose momentum and then I get frustrated and sidetracked.

Q: What’s been toughest about your journey so far as a writer? How do you keep yourself going?

David: For me I think the toughest thing is just trying to go with the flow.
So much of writing “success” is just plain out of my control and when
I stress out about it I gain nothing but ulcers. Everything hinges on
editorial choices. No matter how good you are, there will be editors
who just don’t dig your style. When you’re a relative unknown you
don’t have Name Fame working in your favor and you’ve just gotta live
with the fact that if you submit a story of equal quality to a Big
Name writer, your story will not be accepted. And probably won’t be
accepted even if your story is better (for some definition of better).
It sucks, but it’s true.

I also have learned that my “ideal writing conditions” seem to flux
every few months. Right now I am writing slow but steady, other times
in a frenzy, other times I may go a month without working much on
anything. My Muse is fickle and likes to change her pattern. If I
get worked up about it, I get nothing but worry. All I can do is make
sure that I sit in my writing desk every day and do what I can.

Q: Any tips or tricks you’ve figured out for improving your writing?

David: I have very strong feelings about point of view and how it is best
used in a story. Many of these feelings are outlined in this article.
The base of the ideas I got from the amazing book “Self-Editing for
Fiction Writers” by Browne and King, the only instructional book I
recommend. It’s not geared specifically toward speculative fiction
but is an amazing tool for learning some aspects of writing, with
concrete examples, excerpts from real books of good uses and bad uses.
I added some of my own stuff and my own examples but I recommend that
book for anyone who wants to write fiction.

Q: And finally, got anything you want to pimp?

David: I co-edit a nonfiction zine focused on everything related to
speculative fiction: http://www.diabolicalplots.com . I post
interviews of writers and editors, reviews, “best of” lists, website
recommendations and so on.

I have my second Pseudopod story coming up, a reprint of my most
well-received story “What Makes You Tick.” Watch for it some time
soonish.

If you want a full bibliography of my published work (4 short stories
in various formats plus some nonfiction articles), check out my biblio
page .

 

Writers of the Future Q1 2011 Results

I got a Silver Honorable Mention for my story. My first Silver HM, so that’s something I suppose. I figured this story was HM level sort of thing, so it did better than I expected. My story for Q2 is, I think, going to be a Semi-finalist. I believe it is really good, but it might have a flaw that won’t work for the contest. We’ll see.

I have a couple more neo-pro interviews to post this week so the blog won’t be totally neglected while I finish this novel. I’ve been reading books on writing and reading tons of short stories lately. I have all sorts of plans, but I’m torn between what to do and what order to do it in. We’ll see. I might be posting a revised writing schedule for the year here soon.

March in Summary

This month was terrible for writing.  Terrible.  Good things happened (like getting accepted to Clarion) but in general, I failed it hard.  The high point besides Clarion is that I’m selling more and more ebooks every month.

Here are my pathetic stats:

Words written: 21,648

Stories sold: 0

Stories finished: 1 (and a few starts)

Novels finished: 0 (almost one! Soon!)

E-books money earned: 42.86 (almost double last month, yay!)

New e-book projects finished and released: 1

So that’s that for the month. April will be better.  I have three romance novellas to write, a handful of short stories to finish, and a week-long intensive workshop on Character Voice to attend (that’s going to kick my butt, but everyone who has taken it says that it pushed their fiction to a whole new level and that’s what I’m always looking to do).

Quickie Update Again

Hey, I’m in the middle of finishing up my Writers of the Future Q2 story and putting the last couple of chapters of the first Pyrrh novel together. So that’s why it has been quiet around here.

There will be more Clarion news soon, I’m working on a couple projects that I’ll be offering up to help fund my crazy workshop adventures.  Until then, I leave you with an interview about my fantasy novel A Heart in Sun and Shadow by the awesome David Wiseheart and his Kindle Authors blog:  Find the interview here.

So…more later this week. Meanwhile, back to work!

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