Sign up to hear about new releases and other exciting news from Annie Bellet.

Posts Tagged ‘fiction writing’

Boring but Short Update #1

I finished my first NaShoWriMo story.  It clocks in at about 5500 words, which, once again, is longer than 4000.  Oh well, one of these days I will write another story under 4000 words.  I think (hope?) I’ll end up cutting a couple hundred from this story once I get around to editing it (December is apparently editing month, January is submission month. Weee).  For anyone on OWW it’s now up there.  I figured for the kick-off story, I’d post it for fun (and comments?).  I don’t think I’ll be posting any of the future stories there until they’ve seen one edit at least (I didn’t even give this one a read over).

So it begins.  Day 3 and I’ve completed one story.  Time to decide today what’s next.  I’m thinking something short and on the sillier side, because I really don’t want to have to process information right now.  Insomnia is kicking my ass.  But hey, time to write!  Now, to spend a few hours building the next story in my head.  This one will have less research attached, damnit.  I’m going to make it up whole cloth so I don’t have to spend nine hours reading about flora and fauna and names and rivers and yeah…  I just love research too much. Grr.

One story down, at least 11 more to go.

Sometimes it Pours

Woke up at 4am because of the cat.  Stayed awake because I’d been having an awesome dream about being a stowaway on an alien ship that then got attacked by pirates and knew it could be a super cool short story.  Normally when I have a story idea it has to brew for a week or a month or a year.  Apparently all this one wanted was about 4 hours.

Well, it’s a story anyway.  After 7.5 hours of nearly continuous writing, the monstrosity that is “Crawlies” is now complete.  After a “oh god how messy is this” editing pass it stands at 7715 words.  Bleh.  I was aiming for 4000.  Is this what plot does?  Cause baby, this story has plot.  Hell, it’s got everyting. Provided that everything means aliens, pirates, an 11 year old protagonist, bombs, and exploding head jokes.  My research firefox window currently has open windows from wikipedia for oxygen toxicity, acute respiratory distress syndrome, and squid.  Lord save me, there’s even slang.  It was like this character waltzed into my head and wouldn’t shut the hell up.  Of course, she’s 11, she doesn’t shut the hell out anyway.  I wish writing was always this easy.  Even if it doesn’t let me do anything else.

Now that my work day is gone, I’m going to go eat something (sorta forgot to do that in the ‘writer will finish or she gets the hose again’ fog I’ve been in most of today).

In the other kinda of ego-boosting news (no, not the yet again “close but try again” rejection I got today), one of my poetry chapbooks sold at the bookstore COLD.  As in a random stranger who is no relation to me chose my little self-published being sold on commission chapbook all by himself with no arm twisting from my mother and paid COLD DELICIOUS CASH for it.  I feel pretty good about that.  Poetry is hard to sell, and this means that mine was good enough to attract a random human’s interest.  Or you know, so bad he couldn’t resist buying it to chortle at the next wine and schadenfreude party.  I’m going to believe the former.  For my peanut-sized ego’s sake.

Ok, now, to post this monstrous new baby of mine somewhere for critique.  Oh why oh why is it so long?  Curse you baby.

But I love you.  In fact, today (and probably only today), I love writing.  Thank you writing gods.  Now, can I please have a nice compelling dream about how to finish this novel? K thanx.

Oh yeah, and if you think I was kidding about my mother arm twisting people, you should talk to Ken Scholes*.  I’m surprised he made it out of there without a chapbook.  Lucky bastard.  You know you’ve hit a sad sad hole in your social life when your mother has to do your networking for you.  Thanks mom.  28 is just like 8, somedays.  At least she didn’t try to arrange a play date or anything.

(*Ken Scholes is, in fact, as far as my limited mother-twisted arm contact with him has gone, a supremely tolerant and nice guy. Buy his books).

So, To Sum Up My Rejection Woe

Clarion West: Rejected.

Space Bones: Rejected (by CW and the place it was out for submission)

Total rejections counting CW now: 5  (four form letter, 1 personal)

It’s almost enough to make a girl start drinking again.

On the plus side, I’ve come up with a cool story to write this week and solved a problem that I was having when thinking about the world of my Giant Novel of Doom that I’m still a decade away from writing.  So at least my stupid brain goes on despite my heart trying to tell it I have no chance and will never ever amount to anything.

495 rejections left.

Premier of Short Story Monday!

Short Story Monday Begins!  I’ll try, for the sake of organization, to keep these Monday posts at least similar in appearance.

Story Title:  Space Bones

Word Count: 4158

Plot Summary: While being escorted to her Court Martial, a Captain and her escort encounter something wondrous in hyperspace.

Time to write first draft: About 4.5 hours.

Other Comments:  This story is actually in two parts because I got to what felt like one ending and wanted to continue from there just to see how it worked.  So the first part is 3332 words and the second is 826 or there abouts.  When I sat down to write in the wee hours, I had nothing but the title.  I liked the title, however.  I started and got about a paragraph into one story and realized it wasn’t the Space Bones story.  So I cut and saved it to a note file for later and started over again.   After working so much on my novel, which is third person omniscient, I really wanted to write something in first person.   I find first person much easier to sustain than third, so it’s sort of like taking a big old brain break.

I used The Rough Guide to the Universe by John Scalzi to generate some places and names and ran with it from there.  The story is a rough sketch, sort of like the bones referenced.  I like that about it.  We’ll see what my unfortunate readers think.  Because, oh yes, I’ve created a nice little list and I’m going to mail these Monday stories to my dear friends.  Don’t pity them too much. They can opt out, I won’t hate them for more than a year or six. Truly.

Now, back to breaking my brains on Casimir Hypogean.

24 Hours Sleepless and Counting

Insanity tastes like…  Everything said here might be a giant lie someday.   We’ll see.

I’ve been thinking about practice.  I read a quote by someone (or someone quoted it to me? I can’t quite recall) that referred to art, but I’m going to appropriate the meaning for writing.  Basically the gist was that if you want to be good at drawing, draw something 1000 times and you’ll excel.  I think the idea has merit, which is good because it is essentially the idea behind the Ten Novels in Ten Years project of mine.  If I do it ten times (and really, with all the rewrites, drafts etc… it will be triple that at least), I might get halfway decent at this whole writing thing.

So I’m going to extrapolate this concept out even further.  I’ve decided that since I now have the time, and certainly the ideas, I want to write one short story a week.  I accept they won’t be good.  That’s fine.  Some will likely be variations on a theme in nature.  Who cares?  I can sort through later and revise the ones I like, steal from the ones that have promise, and murder the ones that should never see Others‘ eyes.  So from now on, Monday is Short Story Day.  Each Monday for at least the next year, I plan to write a short story.  My only rule for myself is that it has to be at least 2000 words (about 6-7 pages double spaced depending on dialogue etc…).

So begins Doom, part 2.

Now, I go sleep. Maybe.

Novel is creeping along.  I think aiming for ten solid pages a week is good enough. Yeah.

Tidbit of a Beginning

So… I started the rewrite.

I’m calling it Casimir Hypogean until further notice.

And now, for your enjoyment, here are the first few lines:

“…. Mist, pervasive and cloying, settled in between the tall buildings of Casimir’s spiral streets. The fog dimmed the bright advertisements pasted on screens, blurred the shining lamps and ever searching eyes of the security drones. On the far outskirts of the shell, beneath the conical towers of the aeroponic gardens, two shadows were up to no good.  ….”

(Now, to get things going properly, because I got two pages into the first chapter and realized it would work better as the second chapter.  So I restarted the first chapter.  I like it okay so far.)

Lie To Me

Tell me it gets easier after the first one. Tell me that after the months of uphill slogging, the view will be spectacular and that it is all downhill from here.

I’m working my way through the 4th outline of Dangerous. I’m going to change some basic elements of the story. I’ve been reading a great deal now that I’m free and lately one common element of books bugs me. I  get a little annoyed at a story when there is a secret power or society or special character who knows a great deal and pulls the strings behind the scenes too much. It can be done well, but is done so often that it stands out to me as a glaring conceit. Wrapping everything up neatly due to someone coming in and waving some sort of magic wand is too nice, too tidy.  Human situations rarely resolve tidily.

I’m guilty of this. In my first draft there is a secret society that seems to only exist to wrap things up easily and provide loose and convenient motivation for the characters to be together. It reads more like a one shot RPG session than a tightly plotted story. The first couple of outline rewrites moved the society first into a more prominent role with more of a back story, and then the latest has them more understated. The new rewrite? Well, I’m going to get them out of the story entirely. Instead I plan to make some of the characters actually a part of their own group, doing exactly what the idea was for the secret group, only now with a lot more at stake because they’re really more like a sleeper cell of societal activists than just a few criminals who got hired by the right (wrong?) people. This is going to require a lot of intricate introduction and plotting.

I’m starting to both hate and love this novel. I feel like this rewrite will make it something real, a creature I’m proud to have given form instead of a misshapen foundling. I’m not sure how feasible my goal of having a draft down by the end of September really is, however. I’m not only revamping the plot, I’m changing how the city works, how people get around, what they eat, everything. It’s going to barely resemble draft 1. Which is terrifying.

It’s like the first time you run a whole mile. You feel wonderful. Then you realize that you “ran” that mile at a pace most people walk it. Not only that, but you are sore and tired now. And you still have to get up and run it again. And again.

I don’t want to believe that. I want lies. Filthy wonderful lies. I want to write a novel and have that be the end of things, not the beginning. I wrote this, here, take it. I want to run a 3 minute mile without any training. Without pain.

Well, maybe not. But, I’d like to believe in the possibility of it.

Which is probably why I’m a writer and not a runner.

Writing Update July

Saturday the 5th is my last day of work.  Starting next week, I’m launching into being a full time writer (well, and student once that starts, but it is for writing, so it hopefully won’t slow me down too much).

So it is time for an update on what I’m working on and what I intend for the next 6 months or so.

Things That Need Doing:

Dangerous novel rewrite/2-3 months.

Poetry chapbook for school funding: I meant to do this, still might.

Monsters short story rewrite: By September

Delilah short story revision: End of July

Bladebearer short story rewrite: By September

Projects that will be started and/or finished in 2008:

Bad Day graphic novel (the written part at least, we’ll see how Law School treats my artist). This is about half done now (the writing part).

Past Dark graphic novels (started hopefully, definitely not finished since that could take a long time).  This is partially done, not sure when/if it will be finished (the writing part).

Werewolves in Space novel: outlined fully now, will be started next.

Chwedl novel: outlined fully, have about 200 handwritten words so far.  I think this will be my “when tired of staring at computer screen” project since I’m crazily writing it by hand.

‹ Newest 1 2