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Posts Tagged ‘writing’

Writers of the Future Q1 2010

Honorable mention. Again.  About all there is to say about that.  I keep joking with people that I’m going to make it as a writer “the hard way”, ie never winning a contest, never getting into one of the big workshops.  Who knows, I might actually end up having to do that.  Hell, I’ve got contingency plans for if I’ve written 20-30 novels and they never sell to NY.  It could very well end up I do this whole damn thing the hardest way possible. Sigh.

Meanwhile, I’m not even close to that point yet.  This week I’m giving in to my brain’s desire to write five novels at the same time.  Well, the five that it will let me outline.  Sindra’s Storm is being back-burnered until it grows a cohesive form.  Take that, novel.  I’m hoping that as I get going on the various projects that one will take over.  But worse comes to worse, I’ll have five novels done in the next few months.  It’s not as much work as it sounds like.  I imagine three out of the five will be short novels, one possibly very short since I’m going to try writing it as a middle grade.  So even being written much at the same time, the finishing dates should stagger out nicely.

I also am going to try to work in more short story writing time.  I’m feeling incredibly poor, and as my father always said, poor is motivating.  The more work out to markets, the more likely I am to get a sale.  Never thought I’d empathize with Dickens.  Life is full of surprises.

Also, my blog seems to be doing weird things.  Catagories and links are apparently missing, but yet they show up in my admin pages.  Sigh.  Not going to worry about it right now.  Hopefully Word Press will get around to fixing whatever is broken.

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.

Workshop Week

I’m headed out shortly to go the Coast for two Dean Wesley Smith workshops.  First is a novel workshop, the second a short story one.  I’d be lying through my teeth if I said I wasn’t totally nervous, but hey, worst that can happen is … wait… let’s not think about that. *grin*

I imagine in reality I’ll just learn a ton, and at the end of the novel workshop at least I’ll have my novel wending its way to the desks of editors, ready for the cold harsh evil world.  And I’ll get to meet a lot of interesting people.

In other news, I’m back in nail biting territory on a couple of submissions.  Having a nice spreadsheet that tracks what is where and how long each rejection took etc is very nice.  Having all this information so that I know when a market is behaving differently from the 5-10 times previous that I submitted? Not as nice.  Right now two, yes two, markets have held stories far longer than they usually do.  And a third is right at the query point, which they’ve done to me before (last time I got a very nice, detailed rejection on the day I was going to query).  So either somehow all three stories were lost in transit (I know that at least one wasn’t because of the email auto-reply), or they are all maybe getting real consideration.  Yeah, yeah. I know I shouldn’t even be thinking about it or trying to dissect what it all ‘means’ because it probably doesn’t mean anything.  But I can’t help getting anxious.  Le sigh.

I’ll take notes and hopefully have something more interesting to say after the workshops.

Strangely Stuck

I don’t generally start short stories and not finish them in one or maybe two sittings.  Usually by the time I’m sitting at the computer and writing I’ve spent weeks or months working on the story in my head and it is ready to hit the page.

I currently have four short stories and one novella sitting between 200-1000 words on each.  1-4 pages, basically, on each one.  I can’t seem to finish them.  It isn’t that I don’t know exactly what happens (in fact, if we count scribbled notes and scenes, the novella has a few thousand more words on it).  I know all of these stories beginning to end.  Which is maybe the problem.  I already know what is going on, so somehow the urgency to ‘tell’ the story is gone.  My brain has moved on.  I’m in novel mode (specifically Sindra’s Storm), and I really need to finish up the other bits before I spring into that.  And on top of it all, I have to write a story this week for the workshop I’m attending.  I have that story figured out too, though a few details came to me today while I was walking that will help refine the plot.

I know I just need to buckle down and get it all done.  Not just the writing, but the reading and other parts too.  But the writing is foremost.  If I get these stories done by the time I’m out of town for a week, I’ll have five more things in the submission launcher to fire and forget.  Five more things that can start collecting rejections.  That would put me at 16 stories out on submission, which is halfway towards my goal of at least 30.

But mostly, at the moment, my brain wants to be writing “Sindra’s Storm” and doing pretty much nothing else.  Maybe I’ll just stop fighting it (after I fulfill my workshop obligations) and go with that.  Though I truly hate leaving a short story sitting in a file unfinished.  Grr.  Welcome to my crazy process, heh.  There’s the insane part of me that wonders if I could finish all five in a giant push this week, which would mean finishing about two a day.  Also, of course, wondering if the stories would end up any good that way.  Can I jump through five totally different voices and worlds that fast?  One is first person from a macro-biologist’s POV and is sort of survival/thriller sci/fi, one is about an aging militia facing its final battle, one is about a  damaged bounty-hunter set in a re-imagined Ukraine,  another deals with Munchhausen’s by Proxy and sort of a Cinderella myth, and the final one has a man dealing with an unwanted gift.  Five stories.  One a novella, so it’s sort of like two stories length-wise.  But to have them done, that would be nice.  We’ll see how crazy I feel.

Guess it is time to stop blogging and start writing.  I think I can get a couple thousand words in tonight.  Must. Get. Unstuck.

Cleanup Week

Novel editing is done.  Novel bits are mailed and emailed off to appropriate places for the workshop.  Now to get the rest of the stuff done this week that should get done.

I have two stories I need to mail off.  I’m discouraged in that I’m fairly sure I’ve sent them to the most ideal markets for each, which means now I start sort of shooting in the dark.  One of the stories is pretty much hard sci/fi, in that there is nothing in it which isn’t utterly possible in the near future.  But it’s a love story, not a traditional hard sci/fi story.  So I’m not sure if the harder sci/fi markets are right for it.  Never know til I try I guess, right?

The other story is sort of fable/fairytale-esque and has gotten some really nice rejections, but now I’m low on markets for it.  It has eight rejections, which isn’t enough for me to trunk it, but the next two most likely markets for it have other things subbed to them already.  So I think maybe I’ll sit on this one, much as I hate to, and wait for one of those markets to open back up again.  Or I could send it off to a major long-shot.  Hmm.

I have four short stories and a novella to finish, hopefully this week.  Then, next week, I start “Sindra’s Storm”.  For real. Outline or no outline.  Who knows? Maybe one will miraculously come to me this weekend to be written down hurriedly on hotel stationery.  If not, well, I have enough to get started.  I know the general plot and have the shape of the first few chapters.  I even have villain motivation and all that good stuff.  It might be that I just have to sit back and let the book write itself, so to speak.  Not something my control freak brains are good at doing.  Normally I have to be inside everything, figuring out what is going on and what is going to happen next, and I prefer to work from an outline that tells me where the story is going (even if I generally end up revising this outline four or five times while writing).    This time, maybe not.  I’ll know in a week.

I’m setting a totally arbitrary deadline for finishing the rough draft of this novel as March 26th.  Eight weeks. 110,000 words.  About 2,000 words a day.  This’ll be fun!

Grind Grind Grind

After elation of making a sale, I’m back to grinding away.  Rejections keep trickling in, though some have been very nice.  I’m trying not to get too down about having so many nice rejections.  I know it’s a good sign, I just wish I knew what I could do to push the stories over the edge of “good” and into “sold”.  I’m hoping that the workshop I’m attending in Feb will help shed some light on how to do this.   I plan to work my ass off at the workshop, and to try to absorb everything I can, and be as open minded as I can.

I’m more nervous in some ways about the novel workshop.  I’m almost done on the editing pass of “A Heart in Sun and Shadow” and have been riding the rollercoaster of “this is good” and “zomg, how did I write something this bad?”  I really have no idea if it is any good at all.

The hardest part of the editing has been the fact that my brain has moved on.  I am no longer living and breathing this world.  My mind is out of Cymru and running around the mountain kingdom in “Sindra’s Storm” (which still refuses to be outlined).  So the few parts I added to might not really work with the whole.  I’m not sure.  I guess I’ll find out in Feb, for it will be interesting to see if anyone can even tell where I added things.  I didn’t end up adding as much as I at first thought I might, and I’ve cut a few things, so the novel is still quite short and will likely top out around 87,500 words.  The final 50 pages should be quick to finish.  Just a few tweaks of some scenes, and of course the copy/paste of the proper spelling of my main character’s name.  The first half took so much longer because I hadn’t started bothering to use proper dialog punctuation yet.  Never. Doing. That. Again.  From now on, I am not going to be lazy on the first draft.  Nor will I EVER take 8 months off in the middle of a novel. Ever. Again.

So that’s my project for today.  Then next week I’m going to finish the three short stories I’ve started, finish the novella, and then get it out the door for Q2 WOTF.  Then, then it’s time to write “Sindra’s Storm”.  For better or for worse, outline or no outline.

On a side note, I should really look up a market for the erotic non-speculative story I’m part way done with.  Yay for trying things totally outside my comfort zone.  Now, if only it will sell.  Sigh.

Writers of the Future Q4

I’m on the HM list that was just posted tonight.  I won’t pretend I’m not disappointed.  I thought my story really had a chance, given the feedback I’ve gotten on it.  It stings to just get another HM.  And yes, I know that this is better than a straight rejection, but at this point I’ve been pretty much spoiled by the fact that a form letter is actually a fairly rare occurrence for me.  I’m at over 2-1 on personal vs form.  I’m aiming for the stars here, not for “almost”.

Oh well. Keep writing, keep sending out, keep hoping I win before I’m disqualified (it only takes one novel sale, and as much as I’d love to have that sale, winning WotF seems to be a huge advantage/door opener).

Going to finish my novella this week for second quarter and send it in.  Then finish edits on novel.  Then, I’m going to write some erotica novellas I think.  I need to give my brain something new to do and I have some markets in mind for that sort of writing.  Besides, I’ve always been curious if I could actually write a coherent erotica/romance story.  Time to find out, and hopefully they’ll sell, cause this whole poor artist thing pretty much sucks.

I’m starting to get super nervous about the workshops in Feb.  I keep looking at my novel and thinking it is going to be the worst one there. Sigh.  The short story workshop also makes me nervous.  What if I’m the only one whose story doesn’t get chosen for an anthology? Or what if after reading my sample (of the story or the novel…) I get told that I’m not right for the workshop and should work on things and come back another time?

Bleh. I’ve just had a pretty awful week so far.  Clearly I need to just stick the whining, insecure bits of my brain in a ditch and get back to work.

And Congrats to Oso for being a finalist.  I might be biased (having read his story), but damnit, he better win 😉

New Year, Specifically

So first, more info on my short story sale.  It’s to Alienskin Magazine and is (of course) a flash fiction piece.  I’ll be posting a link when it is up, which will be for their Feb/March issue.  I’m really excited.

Secondly, I figured I’d post a little more specifically on my goals for this year.

1. Write 4 novels and submit them

2. Have at least 30 short stories in my folders and keep them out on markets until they sell or have nowhere to go

So, both of these goals require writing more stuff.  I broke it down to wanting to write about 465k words this year.  Which seems like a huge number of words.  But if you break it down, it’s only 1,275 or so words a day.  Which would take me maybe an hour to an hour and a half to do.  Not so bad.  But…   I can’t write everyday.  That’s just not the way I or my life works.  So I decided I’d calculate what I need to write a week to reach my goal, which works out to about 9,000 words per week.  I can’t write every week either though, since stuff comes up or I go away places, etc…  So I decided what if I write 35 weeks (or so) out of the year? That gives me plenty of time off if I need it.  This works out to about 13,000 words per week that have to get done to meet my goal.

Then, I don’t write everyday, remember? I take weekends off most of the time.  13,000 words 5 days a week is 2600 or so words per day.  2-4 hours of writing a day, 5 days a week.  That, that I can do.  See? Now it’s manageable.

I think I’ll start… Monday 🙂

End of Year Wrap-up

This year was my first for submitting my work for publication.  Over all, it was frustrating, but I think I made a lot of progress as a writer, so it could have been worse.

My ‘stats’ for the year:

8 short stories written.

1 novel finished.

38 rejections, 26 of which came with personal and generally positive notes (only one neg note).

1 novella finished, 1 started.

1 novel started and not finished.

Multiple writer friends connected with, and a ton of information and good advice gleaned (hard thing to quantify, but man I’ve learned a lot this year and really expanded my support/information network).

All in all, not that bad considering that grad school hijacked by time and energy for a while, as did family/obligations for much of last summer.

So I close out 2009 still unpublished, but a better writer.  I’ve learned how to finish things, I’ve stopped being afraid of writing dialog, and I have some idea of what I want to accomplish in the future and how to start doing it.  I also developed some pretty good writing habits, which I hope to continue and improve upon in 2010. And I seem to have more or less gotten over my crippling fear of submitting my work or letting other people read it at all.  Go me.

Update:  I do not, in fact, finish 2009 without selling a story.  Sweet.

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