writing life Archives - Annie Bellet

Posts Tagged ‘writing life’

What am I Doing?

I’ve been posting very sporadically, I know. And that will probably continue. I have too many things to write now that I’m feeling better and writing again.

I’m going to add a new feature to the blog though, probably as a new page in the side bar, which will list out what I have planned. I’ll cross things off the list as I finish them (probably with a strike-through). These are novels, stories, or novellas that I have outlines and/or cover art for already.

Right now the list looks like this:

Under Fountain (GPC #4)

Dead of Knight (GPC #5)

A Cold and Silent Dawn (GPC #6)

The Gryphonpike Companions (GPC #7)

A Debt of Sorcery (GPC #8)

Shelter from the Storm (GPC #9)

To Steal the Crown (GPC #10)

Casimir Hypogean (Lorian Archives #1)

Beyond Casimir (Lorian Archives #2)

Casimir Rising (Lorian Archives #3)

The Raven King (Chwedl Duology Book 2)

Avarice (Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division #1)

Wrath (Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division #2)

Hunger (Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division #3)

Vainglory (Pyrrh Considerable Crimes Division #4)

Fresh Blood (The Hidden War #1)

Pure Blood (The Hidden War #2)

Ancient Blood (The Hidden War #3)

Heart’s Blood (The Hidden War #4)

The City is Still Hungry (Remy Pigeon #1)

Slow Beat Down (Remy Pigeon #2)

Unnamed Steampunk/Circus novella (have cover art)

12-17 Fantasy/SF stories (have cover art for awesome collection and 3 stories already for it)

That’s the “hopefully in the next year and a half or so” list of things to write. See why I’m busy? and that’s just under this pen name. I have other projects under three other names on my list here at home.

Meanwhile, I’ll be at Worldcon this weekend. I’m easy to spot, what with the blue/purple mohawk and all, so if you are there, come say hi or track me down after one of my panels.

Now, back to finishing things. ALL the things.

Home and House Cleaning

Added a link to my story at AlienSkin Magazine. As I get things published (hopefully!), I’ll toss up links there in the side-bar if the story is available online.

I have a ton of new information and ideas swimming around in my head from the workshops. And three new stories to get out on market. I’ll probably talk more about the workshops when I’ve managed to settle back into routine and had some time to think about things.

Meanwhile, this week is going to be for some basic tasks I should have done but hadn’t yet. So, here, have a boring list of things I’ll be doing this week:

-get all four stories (three from workshop, one that came back this morning with a nice rejection) into the mail. This will bump my race score to 23 (20 from short stories alone, wee).

-write 10,000 words of new fiction. I’m ditching the novel I’ve been piecing together and going to write a different one this month. The other one needs more time to solidify in my head.

-put up static websites for my three pen names. All three domains are free, just need to purchase them and code a very basic site for them. I’ll probably link to this blog for now at least on one of them.

-expand and update my submissions spreadsheet and make a new one for novels.

-mail two more packages to editors for my novel.

-join twitter (groan).

Boring stuff (except the writing part), but necessary.

I think I am also going to return to doing short story Mondays, and add short story Thursdays to the mix. The workshops proved I can get off my ass and write a decent short story in a small amount of time, so I should do that. Next week the word count goals will improve, I’m giving myself a break this week to get other stuff done and recharge. Being away from home is tough for me and I get pretty drained having to interact with strangers. But to get a novel done by Norwescon, I need to write about 20k a week after this.

Update on NaNo and Life

One of my classes got way behind due to teacher illness. This meant that week before this last one I had free time! In which I got to chapter 13 and just over 45,000 words in my novel draft.

Then said teacher decided to load us down with work to try to catch us up. Result of that? I’ve gotten no further in my draft, in fact, it’s been about 9 days since I did anything on it. I intend to remedy that this weekend and to make a push for 60,000 words before Tuesday. There are only two weeks of classes before finals and I have papers to write and a lot of extra translating to get done, so we’ll see if that last 40,000 is feasible in only a week and a bit (this novel will, however, be finished by the end of December no matter what that takes).

I also found out that one of my writing instructors next term is the author of “How to Make an American Quilt” which I think I read as a teenager. I know it was made into a movie, but I don’t remember if I saw the movie. Hopefully her workshop will be better run than the one I’m taking this term. No more poetry workshops for me, no sir, not at this college anyway.

So that’s where things stand. On the plus side, my Casimir Hypogean characters are chattering in the back of my mind again, though the scenes seem to be working their way back towards the beginning of the story. Hopefully by January they’ll be at the point I quit writing so I can pick up the threads and move it along. We’re only a few chapters away now with the current mutterings in my brain. Maybe I just needed to take a break and let the story get back to me. We’ll see.

In Our Darkest Hour

I’m stuck on Casimir Hypogean. Not like before, either. Truly and fubar sort of stuck. I’m not enjoying the slog, I don’t like what I do manage to get done, and the whole project is sinking my mood.

I find that the most effective of epiphanies are usually the things that seem stupidly obvious in retrospect. Those head-slapping moments of “why the hell didn’t I think of that weeks ago?”

I didn’t think of it weeks ago. In fact, I’m not sure I thought of it at all. The solution stumbled upon me more or less by accident.

I don’t have a deadline with this novel. Just because it was the first novel rough draft I’ve ever written doesn’t mean it needs to be the first final product. There is nothing, as long as I don’t give up on it forever, preventing me from moving on and working on something I’ll enjoy. Clearly Casimir Hypogean needs to get back burnered. The ideas aren’t flowing like they could, the images just aren’t there. I don’t see any need to keep forcing myself.

I have other projects. It was one of these projects that cast the light on this path. I was sitting here at the keyboard, grinding out another couple hundred words that I would most likely just erase tomorrow, when images came to me in my despair. Out of the negative self-talk I love so much started to emerge a character I’d thought of over a year ago. Someone who also is full of negative feelings about himself, someone who leaves his life up to others because he just can’t trust his own decisions.

I quit out of the novel and opened a fresh page. A couple hours and 3444 words later, and I have two chapters of whatever this story is. I don’t think it will be novel length. I’m guessing it will be novella at best. I’m hoping for about 30k words, I think that will be enough to tell the story.

In some ways I’m in the infancy of my writing life. The writing I did in grade school and high school, it was the baby steps. I was fitting shapes into other shapes. Now I’m a toddler, learning to walk. Learning that there is a whole huge world outside myself and figuring out how to relate to it.

I get to be a child again. I don’t have to decide right now what works and what doesn’t. I’m a freshman in this world. I’m still in that stage where I can be anything. I’m reborn, remade.

In the desperate race to get something done so I can start the submission/publishing phase of life, I’ve been ignoring the gift that is this time of being an infant, of being unknown, unvetted. I don’t have to do one thing or the other.

I just have to write.

Seems stupidly obvious now, doesn’t it?

Into the Scary

My other job is over now. Starting this week, I’m a full time writer. Hopefully I’ll even get paid for it someday. It is a little terrifying to be launching into trying to write for a living without having anything ready to sell, but the timing worked out this way what with graduate school, my (ex)job having some serious issues.

First up is tackling the rewrite of Dangerous (I really need a better title for this novel). I’m aiming for writing or writing related things being worked on for about 5-6 hours a day, 5 days a week. I’d like to have the second rough draft done by the time school starts at the end of September.