fiction writing Archives

Posts Tagged ‘fiction writing’

A Little Update and a Lot of Cover Pr0nz

I’ve been battling some health issues as well as a loss in my family which has led to some pretty serious writer’s block in that I just haven’t been writing much. Or doing much of anything. I’m on the road to recovering, I think. I’m writing again, which is the best part for me. I don’t feel good when I’m not writing.

I am having to re-order my goals for this year due to things that have come up. Right now, I’m planning to finish the first 20 Gryphonpike novellas (so the first 4 omnibus versions, essentially, more on those in a moment) and the first four books of the Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division series. I’m not sure when exactly each will be posted, part of my journey toward health is not putting too much pressure on myself. But they’ll all be up by December, that much I can promise (barring further life rolls).

Meanwhile, here is the promised cover pr0n.

First set are for the omnibus versions of the Gryphonpike Chronicles. Each will contain five novellas. The art for all of them was licensed from Kerem Beyit and the text done by my friend Greg.

These next two are for the Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division novels, books 1 and 2. The artist is custom courtesy of Nathie via Deviantart.com and the text done by my friend Greg.

There. Cover pronz. Those will be coming out this year. Now… back to the writing I go. Many pages to go in order to fill these covers with awesome stories.

Three Years

Tomorrow is the 3 year anniversary of my writing journey. It’s been a crazy ride so far. When I first decided to quit my job and get serious about writing, my plan involved something like “write a novel every year for ten years” while submitting short stories and hoping for a book deal.

How things change, eh? I discovered Heinlein’s Rules, attended a bunch of workshops including Clarion, and the self-publishing/e-book world came into being. Now my plan is more like “write ten novels worth of new material every year”, I’m hardly writing short stories at all this year, and I have quit submitting queries for books (for the moment). In these last three years, I’ve written over a million words, sold ten short stories, and self-published over twenty novels, novellas, and short stories.

I have seven years left in my ten year plan (I made a deal with my husband that I would be making a living from my fiction in ten years or I’d go get a different day job). I’ve learned so much, tried a lot of different things, put in a lot of work, over the last three years. I can only imagine where my skills will be in seven more years.

So I start my fourth year as a writer with a lot of optimism and a lot of hope. Also, because hey, this is still me, a lot of experiments planned. I’ve been absent from the blog because of one of these experiments. The novellas are going well and are a ton of fun to write, but also take a lot of writing time and energy. So the serial novel and the neo-pro interviews are on the back burner until March. I’ll probably be pretty scarce here for another month or so.

Three years. Feels like twenty sometimes and like a couple months others. I have a long way to go and a lot more to learn, but this is still the best job I’ve ever had. Here’s to seven more years of awesome (and hopefully another few decades beyond that).

The 2011 Wrap-up (with graph!)

And so the year ended and we come to the point where I need to look back on 2011 and draw some conclusions. 2011 was a roller coaster year. Both my husband and I dealt with health issues, we also had to deal with sudden unemployment and loss of income and insurance, I had a death in my family, and then there was Clarion, which disrupted the entire summer as well as being another unexpected expense.

I’m going to do the writing stats and talk about that for a bit, then I’ll get to the ebook stuff. This year was not the greatest year for my writing. I spent a lot of it feeling very unsure of my skills and where my writing was going. Part of this was because I think I took some pretty big leaps in skill, but inconsistent leaps. In April, I attended Dean Wesley Smith’s Character Voice workshop, and afterward everything I’d written before it looked weak and terrible. I’m not sure that was Dean’s intention, but it is, in the end, a good thing. I learned more during that 8 days about craft and writing than I’ve learned in the last 20 years. I took that study forward into Clarion and I think it helped a ton. Let me put it this way: last year I got very frustrated because I kept getting “this is beautiful writing but” rejections and I wanted to know what I had to do in order to hit the next level of skill, to get past that and sell.

The Character Voice workshop showed me. I’m still working on getting the stuff I learned in that workshop through my fingers and into my unconscious writing brain so I can do it automatically. But this year, I sold stories. Two of the sales came directly from stories written at Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith workshops. Of all the learning experiences I had in 2011, those workshops were definitely the most valuable. I believe that having Clarion after those didn’t hurt, of course. It gave me a chance to network, meet awesome people, and put the learning into practice while I had the captive audience of 19 or 20 first readers.

So, the writing stats with my 2011 goals and if I met them:

Word Count: Goal was to write 900,000 words. Total actual words written: 438,777. I beat 2010’s word count, so not terrible.

Of that 900k, 240k was supposed to be novels. That goal was met. In fact, most of my 2011 wordcount was novels or novellas. I only finished 20 short stories in 2011. I finished 3 novels and 80% of a 4th novel, plus more than half of two novellas.

Other 2011 goals included writing consistently, which I failed. There were weeks in 2011 where I didn’t write at all. This is a goal I will carry forward to 2012, along with not deleting entire sections of work, and finishing everything I start.

Short stories sold in 2011: 6 plus 1 reprint. This is what makes me happiest when I look back on the year. I feel that this is an indication that what I’m learning has started to show up in my writing and that my skills are actually improving.

Rejections: 97, over half personal. Less rejections than 2010, because I submitted fewer stories this year and sold more of them on their first or third tries. As I move forward into 2012, I’m focusing even more on longer work, so I think my submissions to magazines will fall even more. Oh well.

Other notable achievements this year: I sold too many pro stories and disqualified myself from the Writers of the Future contest. My final entry sneaked through the door right before the disqualifying publication. Here’s hoping it is the magical Hollywood finish and I win, right? *grin*

I also qualified for SFWA membership, though I haven’t joined yet. I’m still debating if it is worth it at this point in my career with what I’m doing and where I’m going.

So… on to the publishing side of things. One of my goals for 2011 was to dip my toes more fully into e-publishing. That goal, I met. I wanted to put up at least 15 more works as ebooks. At the start of 2011, I had 3 short stories up under another pen name and the results were just enough to convince me to try with more work.

I ended 2011 with 18 works available in three different categories/genres (and under 3 different names). Two novels, two mid-length (what I’m calling novelettes and novellas), four short story collections, and ten short stories published as singles.

Total ebook sales for 2011: 1174 (*these numbers are not final, because Smashwords hasn’t reported for some of the places it distributes, so I only have some December numbers)

Of those 1174 sales, 657 were sales of short stories, 94 were from mid-length, 167 were from collections, and 256 were from novels.

Amazon accounted for 1020 sales, Smashwords Distribution Channels and Direct accounted for 89 sales, and B&N accounted for 65. I also sold 6 paperbacks of the one novel available as a trade paperback, bringing total self-published sales to 1180.

How did sales distribute by month? Let me show you! (I did promise a graph, didn’t I? Click image for bigger picture)

This graph shows some interesting trends. One is clearly that sales grow when you put up more work. As my husband was helping me put together spreadsheets, he asked “What happened in May?”. Well, I put up three new short stories (one of which went on to be my best and most consistent seller). Other things that boosted sales were offering something free for a short time (a week to ten days). As far as I can tell, interviews, reviews, blogging, all that stuff does very little for sales. New work and offering free work for short periods are what boost sales noticeably.

Of course, there is December, which broke the trend of up in my sales. I was doing well the first couple weeks, and then sales fell off a cliff. We’ll see if they rebound in 2012. I’m trying new things this year, including putting up many more novels and putting up books in series, as well as putting out work in three more genres.

As for the money, well, my total earnings from my writing in 2011 came to just shy of 3,000. A nice bump from 2010, for sure. I have not been paid on ebook earnings for November or December yet, so that is not in the 3k. Nor are two of my short story sales, which have not been published yet and the magazine pays on publication. I only count money when it is in my hand.

2011 was an interesting year full of surprises and a lot of learning experiences. I hope all of that will carry forward into 2012.

September and Sundry

September was a stressful month. I was still recovering from the summer and Clarion (and all the other travel I did). I was also doing a lot of sitting around and trying to figure out what I should be writing and where my energy should be going. I think I’ve got that sorted at least, though it means writing in other genres. Science Fiction just doesn’t have the large readership I want to tap into, so I’m expanding my horizons and testing new waters.

Ebook sales started out amazing and then died off almost completely until the very end of the month. I don’t know why but I wasn’t the only one seeing the Kindle sales fall like a stone, so who knows. I put up another short story collection and a novel in a different genre under a pen name. Over the next six months or so I’ll be putting up quite a bit of work under pen names, so Annie Bellet probably won’t have much new (other than The Raven King which is coming this winter at some point, I promise). My Clarion project book is also in the works and that will be up in the next month or two.

Here are the stats, such as they are:

Ebooks sold: 102

Paper books sold: 0

Words written: 11,206

In other news, Daily SF got SFWA qualified, which means that if I can scrounge up 80 bucks, I, too, can be a full SFWA member. At the moment I’m super broke, so I won’t be joining. But I will before WorldCon next year, probably, even though I’m more or less leaving NY publishing behind and focusing my efforts on publishing my own work. I am still going to write and (hopefully) sell stories to magazines, so it might be useful to be an SFWA member. We’ll see.

I will be a panelist at the Portland, OR convention Orycon. I’ll post my schedule closer to the convention.

So that’s the news with me lately. Chapters of Casimir Hypogean will still go up each Monday and I have many new victims for my Neo-pro Interview series, so look for those on Thursdays.

New Plan, Same as Old Plan

Well, mostly the same as the old plan. I’ve noticed that one of my issues with writing is that I have too many ideas. I don’t get the traditional form of writer’s block (ie not knowing/having anything to write about), but I get the reverse of that. And it does slow me down and sometimes stop me entirely.

What I’ve noticed the last couple months is that I write in shifts. I’ll write for an hour or two and then take a break (breaks often lasting a couple of hours) and then go work again. Starting today, I’ve decided to try to use that to my advantage. I have so many stories in my head right now that I feel like I’ll never get them all out. I have a novel almost done and one started that literally needs to be done by Feb 1st in order to make a workshop deadline. If I write in shifts, I should be able to finish both. So for the rest of this month, I’m going to try that method out. Work on one in the morning and one in the afternoon/late at night or whenever the second “shift” happens. I know I can keep the stories straight in my head because my head is juggling about 20 different novels and short stories at the moment including these two. Hopefully doing things this way will prevent the “but I want to work on this instead” block, because I’ll just go work on that instead.

And hey, if this works, then I’m going to keep assigning shifts to projects and see how writing multiple things concurrently pans out. I’m still adapting my process and finding ways that work for me. I fully intend to try different ways of outlining novels as well at some point this year (that Snowflake method looks interesting, for example).

So that’s the new plan, which is pretty much the same as always. I’ve got a lot of writing to get done (about 90k words) in a short amount of time. But if I finish it or even get close, I’ll have finally gotten my 100k words in a single month. Which is pretty cool (I’ve written about 30k this month already).

Deadline!

Well, today (the 10th) has passed me by. And no, the novel is not done. It’s close, but not quite there. Oops.

However, I think I know what factors have gone into my total fail to finish on time (mind you, I have some leeway, I set my deadline a little ahead of the actual doomsday because I always try to factor in life things).

First and foremost, a lack of focus. I’ve actually written quite a few words in the last month (need to update my progress meters, I’ll get around to it), but on multiple projects instead of just focusing down one project at a time. I switched which novel I wanted to do and lost about a week of productivity before I realized that I didn’t have the time I needed to write that novel. I could really use that week back (if I’d stayed with the current novel, I’d be done!). So I’ve learned my lesson there about multiple projects.

Second, writing in a wholly new genre involves a learning curve and the work definitely goes more slowly. I’ve been working very hard on getting a thriller pace and character milieu and all the other things that come with writing a book like this. It’s been slower going and a lot of second-guessing and pep talks to myself these last few months. Didn’t plan on that. But hey, now I know.

Third, I’m sick. First was migraines, then they left a nasty cold in their wake. It sucks. Writing while my head is a fog from drugs or stuffiness or fever is lame. I’m pushing through because I have to, but it ain’t fun and I’m making mistakes in the manuscript. Caught one today where I’d changed a character’s name mid-book. Yay for find/replace.

So yeah, /end whine. I will finish this novel sometime this week. And then my Q4 entry for WotF which I haven’t even really thought much about. Then… well, I’ll tackle that once I hit Sept 30th. Until then, the novel and my Q4 entry are my focus. That’s what is up with me. Getting toward the wire, time to work.

(In happy news, I got the proof for my Contrary Magazine story, and that was pretty cool. It’ll be up soon!)

Another Quickie Post, Another Sale

I’m deep in the middle of “oh god oh god we’re all gonna die (before I finish this novel)” land, so this will be a quick post.

First, I sold another story. My story “Insect Effect” will appear in the next issue of Contrary Magazine. Does that title sound familiar? It should, because I put it up on Kindle. See, I somehow mis-marked my submissions records and had the story listed as rejected. Totally my fault. Fortunately, the folks at Contrary were kind enough to overlook that (the story is down now, and won’t be available again except at the magazine until after the contracted date). But it sure has taught me a lesson in double checking everything before doing anything that might compromise a sale. Fortunately this time I don’t have to pay for my mistake and my story still gets published by an awesome ‘zine. (They have some very odd, surreal, and beautiful stories, I’m happy that my odd and surreal story gets to be among them).

Well, my Friday novel deadline is looming tall. Time to drink another monster, stab the short story plot demons in my head (seriously, my brain wants to go back to short fiction. It keeps trying to escape) and go right back to the novel. I’m almost through the swampy middle and into the home stretch. Writing a thriller has been different and more challenging than either of my other novels to date, but I think I’m learning a ton doing this, and hopefully will have a kick-ass book at the end. But first… I gotta get to the end.

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.

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.

Full of Fail

So between real life fun like car accidents, new car shopping, and illness (mmm colds are so much fun, really), I’ve gotten just about nothing done writing-wise. I think I’m going to just write November off as a lost month, though I suppose two short stories isn’t the worst outcome. I’m working on another one, but the science part of it is tripping me up. I’m not a hard sci/fi writer, but this story really wants to be a hard sci/fi story. I solved one problem, theoretically, now I have to figure out how to solve one other sciencey issue and then maybe I can write the damn story.

I’m looking ahead at workshops and WoTF submissions. I have a novella planned that is supposed to be my first quarter submission, but if I don’t get it written in the next couple weeks, I’ll have to do something else, since I need a week or two break between writing and editing things.

The bad news is that with the car stuff, I might not be applying to any of the big three workshops this year. We had to clean out our funds to replace the car about a year sooner than we were planning to (it was a very old car, so we were going to replace it, but not for a year when our savings had been built up for it). So the money that was getting put away for the workshops has been used on a car. That’s life though, sometimes it doesn’t go according to plan.

I might sign up for one of Dean Wesley Smith’s weekend workshops instead. They’d be easy enough to get to and I’ve heard good things about them. Mostly I’m looking around for ways to really take my writing to the next level. I’m getting plenty of “positive” rejections, which tells me that while my writing is good, something might be missing. I want to figure out how to push past the “good but no thanks” stage and get to the “here’s your check” stage. I know it’s not a perfect science and that even famous writers get rejections, but I want to get at least my first sale someday. I need a little push, I think. Something.

For now I’ve been reading books on fiction editing and selling a novel. Gearing up to revise my novel and get my submission package ready to go to my chosen agents. I’ve got a top 5 list put together, so hopefully by January I’ll be ready to go on that. First though comes the hard part, the actual revising of something that is many thousands of words long. I’ll just tackle it the same way I wrote it; one page at a time. One page at a time.

1 2 Oldest ›