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Archive for the ‘Submitting’ Category

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?

Revisions and Worries

Started revising Chwedl.  Turned the first chapter into the prologue that it is, and began the slow and painful process of cleaning up the prose and fixing my terrible dialog punctuation.  I’ve had nearly two months break from this novel, and I still can’t look at it objectively.  It’s probably not as terrible as I think it is.  Probably.  Also, I really need a real title for the book.  The best so far I can come up with is something like “The Hounds of Llynwg” or just “Cwn” (welsh for “hounds”).  Both of which aren’t terribly catchy and still probably too “oh god, book full of unpronounceable names ahead” flashing.  Of course, this book is full of welsh names.  Word spellcheck hates it, with a passion (actually, active spellcheck packed up and went home about 50k words into the novel).  I’ve doomed myself to doing something with this book, however, by signing up for a workshop which involves editing the first 50 or so pages, writing a proposal/query to a real editor, and then mailing the damn thing.  I’m not panicking. Yet.

I also seem to have sent out all my stories on submission, leaving myself nothing to send in for the first quarter Writers of the Future contest.  Oops.  So I have about 20 days to write something and get it in the mail.  I have about four short story ideas brewing that should be ready for the page when I find a moment, as well as a novella.  I’d like to get the novella done and submit that for WotF, but with the holidays and my novel revisions, I’m not holding my breath.

My third novel project is started, but I have no outline or concrete plot yet.  I do have a working title “One and Many”.  Not catchy, I know. I suck at titles.  I need to inject myself with essence of Elizabeth Bear (don’t ask me what that might be) because she has the best titles all the time and I could really use her brain about now.  Or I could just call it “fat fantasy with maps”, which is what it is.  I’m aiming for less than 110k words.  I also want it done by the time I go to the workshops in Feb.

The next novel project was supposed to be the Casimir Hypogean trilogy redrafting, but that’s now pushed back to at least March, and probably back more since my brain has been half-hijacked by a vampire novel.  Yeah, fricken vampires.  And no, not sparkly ones.  Abusive, control freak, obsessive, scary ones.  So we’ll see.  I’m not writing that novel without an outline though, so it better shape up.  One seat-of-pants novel is enough for the year. Seriously.  I love me my outlines.

I’m also taking a short story workshop.  And quaking in fear about that, too.  I know it’ll be good for me, but I worry about not being any good, not being able to deliver a story at all, and other stupid fears that hopefully will get out of my system before Feb.

So that’s what’s up with me.  Now, back to the novel.  Maybe in a hundred pages or so I’ll start liking it. Maybe.

Reflections and Going Forward

I’ve now been writing full-time for over a year, technically. I say technically because this time last year, I’d just started graduate school, and it was eating my life while I sat confused and miserable wondering how something that had seemed like such a good idea at the time could go so wrong.  In the end, I determined the program I was in wasn’t a good fit for me.  I gave it a year, and thought about pushing through the final year.  However, I wanted to know if I could actually get a decent amount of writing done without grad school, since my production while in it was pretty poor (about as bad as when I was working 70 hours a week, really).

So I quit.  This summer was full of moving, vacations, family obligations, and Worldcon.  Even so, in the last four months I’ve managed to write two short stories, get all 10 short stories currently on submission polished as best I’m able, and finish a novel.  It’s not been the smoothest going, nor the easiest thing ever.  There are days when the rejections stream in (today there were two more…) and everything I do feels like it’ll never amount to anything at all.  I even start scanning the job listings wondering if anyone will hire someone who has been out of work a year and has two pretty useless degrees (unless you need some Anglo Saxon translated?).

Then something happens to remind me, to nudge me back onto the path.  Some days it’s schadenfreude, I’ll be honest.  I read a forum post, or a workshop story post, or I’m talking to someone, or occasionally see something in a magazine and think “god, that’s stupid/terrible/sad, I’m totally not that clueless/bad/pathetic.”  Some days it’s seeing how far I’ve come, the days when I read over a line or a paragraph and think “hey, that kinda works, what I did there.  I think I understand foreshadowing now!”   Some days it’s other people like my first readers who read my stuff and tell me they like this or that, or that they can really see improvement.  And some days, the best days, it’s the writing itself, when it grabs me by the brains and I race along the story with every piece falling into place like a master level Go game on fast forward.

And looking ahead, I think I can keep going.  I’ve got a novel done, and three people have already finished reading it for me, with two more due to finish in the next week or two.  They’re compiling lots of information and commentary for me to sift through so I can make it the best it can be.  And reading about the market right now, I’m sort of happy I decided to work on this novel, which is a fantasy with pretty strong romantic elements, instead of trying to finish Casimir Hypogean.  Debut science fiction seems like it’s a tough sell right now, so breaking in with a fantasy novel might be easier.  Of course, there’s no way to know if Chwedl will even sell.  But I’m glad I’m making this the first effort the world might see and saving the more complex stuff for later.

Novel project 2 will have to start in a couple months, as soon as Chwedl’s query is out the door to agents.  I’m not sure what to do.  Part of me really wants to finish Casimir Hypogean to polished draft and then do roughs of the other two novels in the series just so I have them done enough that if by some chance the first sells, I won’t be coming back years later and tackling that world cold.  However, while I think the novels have great potential, I think in some ways the steampunk mysteries I want to write might be an easier pitch.  Local alternate history, alchemy, airships, murder, clockwork cats, and quirky characters?  I mean, how can I lose?  The Casimir story is in my head right now, however.  It’s been coalescing for a few years now, ever since I wrote that terrible rough draft.  I’m not sure how the third book ends, but I know how the second one goes, and how the third begins.  I figure by the time I get there, it’ll be clear how it has to go.  The steampunk book will take a lot of research, the Casimir books almost none (and what research there is I can keep doing as I go).

So I have some thinking to do.  Meanwhile, I’ve been researching and doing rough quasi-outlines/notes for stories for my crazy short story month plans.  It’s definitely time to start thinking about the workshop applications too.  I want to apply early this year to all of them, get it out of the way.  In some ways, I’m stressing about it more this year than I was last.  Last year I really wanted to go, but it was mostly because I wanted to work with the people at CW.  This year, I want to go for me.  I think that either the Clarions or Odyssey could help push my writing to the next level.  I’m clearly on the threshold, if my “nice” rejection stack means anything.  I want to get past the personal rejections and make a sale, to write the kinds of stories that editors can’t put down.  I think the workshops could help with this, could help me find out what I need to learn or practice to get closer to where I want to be as a writer.

I’ll likely be posting very boring somewhat daily updates during November about my short story mission.  Stay tuned for the crazy!

Writers of the Future Quarter 3

I took honorable mention.  Whew.  I was figuring on rejection at this point since it took so long to find out.  But now that means the story wasn’t at the bottom of the heap and I can send it out again.

I have higher hopes for my Q4 story, since I think it relects how much my writing has improved in the last year.  I won’t sniffle though if it’s another HM.

Now, to get to work on my entry for Q1 of next year…

Crazy Short Story Plans

Still no word on my WotF third quarter entry.

Which means I really need to distract myself.  I’m between novels at the moment, so the best way to keep up my writing habits is to work on short stories.  I’ve got 9 out on the market right now.  I need more.  I want to saturate the market with my work, plus starting in January I’ll be super busy trying to write an entire trilogy in six months while querying about my current novel.  And I have three workshops to apply to, all of which want slightly different word counts etc…

Inspired by Jim C. Hines post, I’ve decided to push some stories at more anthologies.  Writing to a specific theme isn’t really something I’ve done before.  Even with the Shine anthology, which I was very nicely rejected from recently, I wrote a story that I’d been wanting to write and thought it might fit (it didn’t, which once it was written I knew it was a long shot).  So I think it would be an interesting challenge to myself as a writer to write for some anthologies.

I went through ralan.com’s anthology calls and made a list of all the ones that interested me and pay at least 1 cent per word.  I have a notebook now full of deadlines, requirements, and submission information for each.  I’ve picked out about eleven, most with deadlines around early next year, though a couple have deadlines coming up very soon.

I read somewhere, and I honestly can’t recall where though I think it was linked to off of sfsignal.com in a post there, that when writing for anthologies, you don’t want to write the first idea that comes into your head because that will be the one that everyone else thinks of also.  I believe the advice said to pick the 17th idea.  So I’m currently brainstorming all sorts of ideas, and trying to aim for a good blend of crazy enough that it might not have fifty clones in the slush but still something I’d want to write.

This decision to write for anthologies as well as working on the giant list of ideas I already had is timely.  November is coming, traditionally National Novel Writing Month.  I’ve done nanowrimo twice and “won” both times.  However, I think that my last nano will be my last nano.  I learned I could write at length and on deadline.  Nano (not that I want to start a war if you disagree with me here…), but you don’t get a novel out of it.  Well, maybe if you’re writing middle-grade, because then 50k words might work.  But 50k is too short for what I want to be doing.  And while I imagine I could write 100k in a month,   I think, for myself at least, I’ve learned what I could and it’s time to move and do novels my way (you know, a novel in two to three months instead…).

But don’t think I’m not going to be silly crazy in November.  Oh no, I’m going to invent my own tradition.  NaShoWriMo.  National Short-story Writing Month.  My goal is to write a short story a day.  Yes, everyday.  I’m not limiting the length, though I’d dearly like to write at least a couple decent ones under 4k words to make my life easier come Clarion sub season, but I am holding the minimum to 1,000 words.  I figure if I even get six stories worth cleaning up and submitting at the end, I’m ahead for a while.  And it will be fun, a chance to experiment and get some random ideas out.  I’m planning on using the anthology calls as fodder.  I can write the 5th, 14th, and 20th ideas I have for any given theme and then pick the one I want to send.  Sounds like crazy fun right? Right?

So, my goals for October are to write up the novella formerly known as Werewolves in Space (which will be my 1st quarter sub for WotF most likely), and finish two themed anthology stories that are due by the end of the month.  A fairly light load, all things considered.

November is when the real exciting stuff gets going.  A story a day.  NaShoWriMo.  If anyone wants to join me in my insanity, bring it on.  I usually write short stories in a day anyway, just not generally consecutively.  And I’m pretty sure my typing limit is around 12-13k words in a day (10k is really more my comfort limit, and 3-5k my cruising speed), so at least my stories won’t be crazy long.  We can hope.

That’s my plan.  In December I’ll collect the notes from my first-readers and try to make my novel outstanding before the queries go out in January.  Until then, time to fill up my short story basket.  (Just think, I’ll get to 500 rejections much much more quickly if I have 50 stories out than 9…)

Slog Slog Slog (rant ahead)

I think this is one of the parts of kick-starting a writing career that *isn’t* fun.  The novel is grinding along, and the rejections are pouring in for my short work.  Everywhere I turn it seems I hear “this was good but…”  which as all the how-to books and advice out there will tell you is a very good thing ™ and a sign of progress ™.

What they don’t tell you is that almost good enough starts to get really really depressing after the first couple of near-misses.  Yay, my writing is improving.  Yay editors are clearly reading the entirety of my stories before they dash off the rejection note.  Yay, progress!  Head down, keep going.  Right?  Well, sure. Not much else I can do.  But it’s frustrating (and I doubt  any established writer would tell me that it wasn’t frustrating for them in the beginning either, or even still is on occasion).  And who knows how many years of near-missing I’ll have to muddle through?  At Worldcon I met a woman who’s been getting those nice rejections for 11 years without a single sale.  Now, I suppose she could have been lying about the nature of the rejections, and to be fair she only sends out five or six stories a year, but still.  11 years.  Frankly, I just don’t know if I have that kind of fortitude.  I joke about 500 rejections, but can I really hang on without a single sale through 479 more of these?  My spreadsheet that tracks what is out where is starting to look like a mess of black and the word Rejected covers the screen.

On the somewhat plus side, I’m nearly done with the novel.  It’s slow going, my normal cruising speed has been down  to a third because I’m having to carefully pull together two storylines and three POV characters.  And here I thought the ending would be a cakewalk to write.  Nothing is predictable about this process, is it?  Technically I gave myself the deadline of the end of the month, but I’ve got about 15k words left I think.  So it’s not going to be done tomorrow.  By the weekend though, hopefully.  Then I can put it aside and worry about something else for a while.  (And maybe, by the time I’m done I’ll know about my WotF entry? Maybe… though I suppose at this stage no news could be good news.)

Don’t worry. I haven’t been rejected to death yet.  I promised myself ten novels and ten years.  Will I be a ranting crazy person or a catatonic ball by the end? Perhaps.  Or I might be a selling writer.

Only one way to be the latter: Finish this damn novel.

Last Post til Worldcon!

Well, until after Worldcon really, since I’m not bringing a laptop and most likely won’t be checking the net while I’m there.

Finally got a response  about Delilah.  Great response short of a sale, sigh.  They held the story for over 5 months, but in the end decided that due entirely to the biblical retelling nature of the story they had no spot for it.  Apparently they loved it otherwise though and want to see something else.  *rubs hands together*  Fine! Something else you say? I has something else for you…

Well, I’ll have something else for them after Worldcon.  I’m beyond oh god oh god I’m full of lame panic and into the “I hope all those reservations I made back in Jan still are good” and “where did I put that thing I totally need for the trip” panic.  I made a list, and now I can’t find my list.  I’m made of organized, really.

If anyone wants to catch up with me at Worldcon,  I’ll be the terrified looking one with the short blue and orange hair.

I’ll be taking notes while I’m there and hopefully posting the funny, strange, or useful stuff here afterwards.

Whew

Even with insomnia, this last week I got a story up off the ground from rough draft through two edits (thanks OWW people!) and off to the Shine Anthology before their deadline of July 31st.   I’m not sure it’s optimistic enough and who knows what they’ll think of the contents/theme, but I figure it’s the first near-future story I’ve written and I think it’s a fairly sweet tale, so maybe they’ll like it.  If not, oh well, on to somewhere else.

So far the story a week is happening.  I just started the next one, though I need to do more research before I get more than a few opening sentences down (I want the turn of the century Ukraine feel to come across properly).  I think I’m getting sick, however, so this story might happen more slowly.  Just as long as I get three more written before I go on vacation, I think I’ll be satisfied.  Then they can go up on OWW and collect some reviews while I’m gone.  Once I get back I can edit, submit, and then buckle down and get the damn novel finished.  It’s on like Donkey Kong after I return from Worldcon.  That damn novel is taking too long and my wonderful novel edit exchange partner has been doing a great job of sending me critiqued chapters.  I need to get the final third written so I can do the edits I so conveniently have piling up.

Then… tackling Casimir Hypogean.  It’s almost time.  Once these next three shorts are done I’ll have 12 stories in the submission cycle and hopefully the edited Chwedl as well making the agent rounds.  After that there’s no excuse not to finish the rewrite of my bane novel.  I have the suggestions I got at NorWesCon, I’m armed with the plot, and damn it if I’ll let this stupid project die without giving it a shot.  Besides, I really do want to write the sequels.  Kinda have to write the first one… you know, first.

All right. Drugs and then sleep. I will not be sick. I will not be sick.  I’ve got too much to do!

Insomnia and a Story a Week

Well, my mission to revive Short Story Monday is failing so far.  I seem to be sleeping only about every other day which is doing wonky things to my brain.  Between that and packing to move, my writing productivity has dropped far too much.  I got my third chapter out for the novel chapter exchange with my friend an entire week late, for one.  This has to end.

This morning when I couldn’t sleep I worked on a new short story and managed about 1000 words I don’t totally hate.  I think I need to let the rest percolate in my head for another day.  Hopefully tonight I’ll get some sleep and that will allow me the brain power to finish it.  The story is somewhat different from anything I’ve tried before, so no idea if it will work or not.  I think the beginning is super rough, but my beginnings are always the worst part.  Which is really unfortunate, since beginnings are the first thing people see when they’re reading.  I truly have to work on that.  It’s what editing is for, right? Right?

I realized though that this story might qualify in terms of theme and feel for the Shine anthology, which means I’d have to get it done and through draft form by the end of July.  It’s entirely possible, depending on how many drafts it is going to take.  I’m hoping not ten, I think I can reasonably do four drafts in the timeframe, depending on where my beta readers feel the story is at.  Of course, I haven’t written the end yet, so my normal predilictions for disaster or ambiguous endings might disqualify it from that anthology, but I’ll worry about that when I get there.  I can always try a happier ending version.

In other news I queried on Delilah again, since they’ve had it now for 4 months.  Still considering it, apparently.  This is a good thing, I think.  But damn I’m impatient.  It could be my first sale… meep.  I just want to know.  I hate wait. (Yeah yeah, wrong profession, move along now…)

I’m starting to mini-panic about World Con.  I don’t know what I’m going to do there.  Sure, go to panels and all that, but I’m going to be all on my own.  Will I have the courage to talk to strangers?  Will they even care what I have to say? So much easier to hide at home, but I’ve been dreaming about going to Montreal and to a World Con for years and now I can have both at once.  Even if I won’t be able to afford to eat while I’m there, heh.  I guess I’ll go and try to let things happen as they happen.  I’m sure it won’t be nearly as scary as I think it will be. Probably.

I haven’t been staying nearly far away enough from Clarion West blogs as I should. Whoops.  Slightly depressed now. I really wish I were there.  I’m ready, even if apparently my writing isn’t.  I figure I have about 30 weeks until I have to have something new ready for next year’s application.  Last year I took a real gamble with the story I chose because even though I love it, I’ve gotten very mixed response to it from “this is really cool, I couldn’t stop thinking about it (the gist of comments from a really well-known author!!!)” to “this doesn’t make much sense, why is everyone crazy and what’s going on?”… I guess I chose poorly.  Next year I’ll try to send something (or two somethings) that get a more universal okay.

WotF and Sadness

Well, I took the plunge and submitted a story to the Writer’s of the Future contest.  Wish me luck.  I have no idea if they’ll like it, but it’s on the longer side and good old science fiction, so maybe it’s to their taste.  It’s my first time. Meep.

In other news, I got yet another rejection in the flavor of “we liked X about this, but it’s not right for us/we can’t use it at this time, submit more”.  I feel so near the top, yet in the end it’s functionally the same as being at the bottom.  No sales. Grr. Argh.  Oh well, head down and sending that story out again.

I’ve been on a very strange sleeping every other day sort of schedule lately for no good reason, so writing has been really sporadic.  I think I might abandon writing cohesive whole chapters for the next couple weeks (we’re packing and moving) and work on editing and writing some more short stories.  I’ve been reading lots of award winning stories lately trying to pick out what makes them tick/win.  I think I’m going to try to get out of my comfort zone and write a few stories using elements I don’t tend to gravitate to, like specifically happy endings and linear, clear plots.  I don’t know. I have some ideas.

Meanwhile I’m trying to avoid reading Clarion West blogs because man, that’s depressing.  I’ve got over half a year to get some stories to the point that I’ll have a chance.  Of course, the story I submitted last year is still one of my all time favorites, so clearly I’m no kind of judge of my own work.  That story has since garnered a near-sale and a few nice comments on rejections, so it can’t be totally bad.  Once it gets back from the latest submission place I might post it in the JBU slush and let the grinder that are those commenters take a stab at it.  Or maybe it’ll get bought, finally.  We’ll see.  So yeah, NOT thinking about Clarion West 4 hours to the north for the next few weeks. Nope. Not at all.

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