It's the Night

Tonight at midnight Nanowrimo begins.  Good luck INKers and friends of INK!

Check!

I got my first payment check yesterday for words I've written.  It's an amazing feeling.  So many years of practice, workshops, flattening my butt on at least a half dozen different computer chairs.  Novels, shorts, stories long since lost or abandoned, hundreds of thousands of words of fantasy that will never see the light of day because I needed that million words of crap before I could begin to make real progress.  Learning to connect with a reader.  Learning to find a balance between my internal editor and my dreams.  Learning to educate myself, because so much of the education of a writer happens either entirely from the inside or by deliberately, through an act of will and trust, separating the ego from the written word long enough to accept a professional opinion.  Learning who trust and when, especially myself (and when not to trust myself.)

The kewlest part of all this?  It's a beginning.  A long road to travel to begin, but that's the nature of this, and many other crafts.

NaNo Brainstorming Rocks!

Awesome evening spent at Kami's brainstorming and outlining our NaNo stories. Good food shared with good conversation in front of a warm, crackling fire (with good pet accompanyment) made for a great time! We made strong headway I think. If we don't watch out, we all just might have novels circulating out there sometime next year.

Thanks again Kami! Your downstairs library/study room is incredible and the vibe fantastic for writing.

INK sponsors an Open House for Nanowrimo

Come one, come all to the INK Open House for Nanowrimo!  Food, drinks, and fun!  October 24, 2008, 6pm, Kami's house.  If you need directions or other details, email kamila at easystreet dot net.  The plan is to discuss our Nano projects for this year, do a little outlining and brainstorming if necessary, and generally prepare to sit down, shut up and write.  Kami lives in the Columbia River Gorge not far from east Vancouver, WA.  If you want to learn about or participate in Nanowrimo, this is a good first step.

The Kickoff Party for Nanowrimo in Vancouver, WA is on the 27th.  See the Nanowrimo web page for details.  There are also lots of write-ins scheduled, including some for midnight when it officially becomes Nov. 1 (your local time.)  Kick off parties and write-ins are happening all over the world, so if you're not local to me, check out your region and see what's what.

Adrenaline is my friend

I had my first panicked OMG Nanowrimo is in single digit days moment.  I have an idea, a plan, and inspiration, but what I don't have is a lot of time.  I have to maintain 3000 words a day to make the goal for the month.  That's not a big word count, but that's a big daily word count, if that makes sense.  My writing schedule has been so disrupted I'm a bit worried that I may be out of practice of the daily writing thing.  

Which is one of the reasons why Nano is so awesome--daily writing habits are refreshed and reinforced.  If I didn't do this every year, I'm fairly certain I'd be a much lazier writer.  

Flashed by Writer's Block

Steve and C.S. brought fun show and tell books to the Washougal library combined writers and Nano prep meeting.  They included two of the really kewl Writer's Block books and a book on 45 character archetypes.  I ended up making tons of notes on my Nanowrimo novel project and wrote a flash.  That's one heckuva productive meeting right there!

It was a good time to get out of the house, otherwise I probably would have gotten zilch done in writing today.  Unfortunately I'd miscalculated the time of the OryCon 30 meeting and missed it. 

In other news, I've had a story accepted for publication.  I'll post details when I'm cleared to do that.  Also, my honorable mention certificate arrived from Writers of the Future.  It's gorgeous and hand-signed.  Definitely something I'm going to frame for the office or maybe the I Love Me Wall in the stairwell.

Autumn INK Sightings.

WooHoo! INK meeting tonight. Wide assortment of topics to be discussed.

INK at Library Saturday with NaNoWriMo brainstorming immediately afterward.

INK meets again on the 24th. Prep for NaNo plus outlining/writing time and looking ahead toward OryCon 30 and beyond are topics.

A Farewell.

It is with great sorrow that INK bids goodbye to Carissa Reid, one of INK's founding members. We wish her the best of luck in all her future writing endeavors.

You Want Me to Write for FREE?

Thanks to Jim Fiscus for sending this article out to the Lucky Labs and by default, me.  Here's the scary part.  The blog owner, who is soliciting non-fiction articles, is so very insistent that she's not asking for writers to provide articles for free.  Payment, to her, is promotion.  

If it were a very prestigious and high-volume blog where I know the owner isn't getting any $$ from the articles, I would probably do it.  But, a very prestigious and high-volume blog that gets advertising money and whatever all else--you'd think that they'd be able to afford to pay the author, even if it's a tenth of a cent per hit or something like that.  And if it's not prestigious and high volume, then huh?  Why would this be worth a writer's time and effort?

The promotional opportunity here?  Zilch.  Again, if the blog owner hopes to build prestige and business through the blog, she should cut the writer in or, less painfully, cut them a check for a flat amount and have done.  

Or maybe I should simply say yeah!  What Ms. Hoy said!

Backup

This is hopefully a timely reminder for everyone to back up your data.  Now.  You have time to surf the web and read blogs, so you have time to back up, obviously.  

Well, I guess you might be at work reading this.

But still, back 'er up!  If you don't and something happens to your data, don't come whining to me.

No future for me

Looks like I didn't make it into the finalists with my Writers of the Future sub.  There's still a small chance I'll get an honorable mention.  One more box.  I hope!  It would be my very first one!  If not, I guess I'll get the form answer in my mailbox shortly.  I wonder if I made it pretty far or if I was just at the bottom of the stack.  I'll probably never find out.

The good news (kind of  stretch, I know) is that I can start sending this story out.  I've been eager to do that for quite a while now.  And I can send in my next WotF submission.  I probably could have done that all along, but I was hoping.  Ugh.

How Flashy are you feeling?

Apex Book Company is having its annual Halloween flash fiction contest.  Scare them with Election Horror in a thousand words or less if you dare!  Former INK guest and writer extraordinaire Jay Lake is the celebrity judge.  

And if you can include housework, you'll kill two birds with one stone, meeting C.S.'s latest challenge.  

The winner and second place get SFWA-qualifying pro rate payment and publication in Apex Digest online.  The deadline is Oct. 15.  Spooked by close deadlines?  Face your fears and embrace the terror!  After all, it's for Halloween, er, elections, er ... just write the darned story already!

Another one bites the dust

Got another blue slip of death from Realms of Fantasy.  I'm actually enjoying getting them--not as much as an acceptance, mind you--but they're apparently infamous and besides, they're kind of pretty.

Why are they infamous?  Your mileage may vary.  Writers are imaginative people and they come up with all kinds of reasons that they don't like or like something.  I've heard/read that the slips are particularly impersonal, that you get them regardless of writing quality and so there's no hinted feedback at all.  I've heard/read that the small size makes the writer feel small.  The content is very general, and lists some of the reasons why both poor and good manuscripts are rejected--again, giving the author no feel for where their story may be on the scale.  And there's a number on them--the average number of manuscripts received in a given period.

Me?  I like them.  I like the color.  I like that it's an efficient size--it fits perfectly inside a legal envelope, no muss, no fuss, no folds to straighten when I file them.  I like that my story and the date it was viewed is hand written on the rejection, and that so far, I've never had someone else's rejection come to my mailbox.  And I like that they make the editor's job easy.  That means she can go through more manuscripts faster.  That means quicker responses so I can return my manuscript into the marketplace where it may find a home, and hopefully it's less likely that the editor will burn out.

So, although it was disappointing not to get a fat envelope with a contract in it, I still smiled.  Another pretty blue note to add to my collection, and I didn't even have to date or put the title of the story on it before I filed it.

Way-yay-ting is the hardest part!

I hate waiting.

I try not to wait.  I try to keep writing and editing and looking forward.  I try to build my story portfolio and keep things in the mail.  But there's a certain contest I'm very eager to hear from.  Every time I load the page I think why, oh why isn't it updated?  It's been ten days since their big to-do.  Isn't there even a teensy eensy batch of new results?  Is anyone calling anyone to let them know they're on the honorable mention list?  

It's all part of the writing thang.  The anticipation is part of the 'fun.'  

Done with whining, back to writing.

Whine!

Okay, done now for real this time.

OryCon 30 Writer's Workshop

Don't forget to submit!  The workshop deadline is sneaking up!

I've got my submission all put together.  I just have to wait until email starts to behave again.  For some reason the server is being a pill.

Update:  Got a nice rejection.  Sent that baby right back out.  We're at 43 subs and 31 rejections.  Keep going, INKers!

Another One Flies In and Flies Back Out

I got a rejection back today.  The comment puzzled me--I'm not sure that adding another scene to a flash humor piece would work.  I guess it would, maybe, but then it wouldn't be flash and the humor wouldn't punch, it would whiffle.  Maybe (trying to read between the lines here) it didn't quite end for the reader.  Or maybe it didn't have a climax, or the reader wanted a twist.  Something wasn't there.  Anyway.  I hunted around markets to see where to send this next (I love sending rejected stories back out the same day) and came across some guidelines that made me look at the story in a new way.  I didn't end up sending to that market because it didn't pay pro rates and I want to exhaust my pro markets before I go to semi-pro, but I did tweak the story a bit.  I think it added needed depth without sacrificing the humor.  Or so I hope.  It added a few words, and I took away a sentence that I thought wasn't carrying its weight.  

When working at a short length, especially flash, a whole sentence can create a surprising amount of change.  A paragraph that drags can shine when the chaff is removed, or an unimaginative passage can become enriched by a single, sensory-bright description.

One thing that I think is lacking in my marketing at the moment, and that only time and more depth of work can change, is I haven't been able to send in very many second submissions, much less thirds.  I've submitted to Flash Fiction Online more than anyone, but they've only looked at three stories so far.  Technically I've sent quite a bit to F&SF, but most of my subs were from long ago.  I've only sent them one recently.  Part of that is due to the fact that there are a lot of wonderful places to publish out there and I try to fit the story to the market as much as I can.  I know (or educate myself about) what they publish and some stories are closer to a particular style than others.  But part is that I've spent the past many years writing novels and I refuse to send old stories unless they've been rewritten from scratch.  I don't think editing old writing will bring it up to my current skill level.  I think it'll just turn to mud.

What was the comment in the guidelines?  They wanted characters that they cared about.  A lightbulb came on.  Now, hopefully, the pov character is someone special, someone human, something more than an archetype for me to use to poke fun with.  It's the difference between the three men who walk into a bar and Fat Albert.  I want Fat Albert.  If I have three men walking into a bar, it's not a story, it's just a joke.  So, thanks, commenter.  I didn't take your advice, but I think I ended up in a good place because of you anyway.  

INK Author Series Continues with Ken Scholes.

As part of the 2008 INK Visiting Author Series, I am very proud to announce that Ken Scholes and his amazing wonder-wife Jen will be visiting us on Friday, September 19th to speak about his journey from writer to author (and most everything in between).

Ken, besides being one of the best speakers on writing process I personally have heard to date (his Norwescon Writer's Workshop was fantastic!), is well published, is currently working on his five-book series for Tor beginning with "Lamentation" due out in just a few months, and is an absolute delight to read and listen to.

This will be a evening to remember.

Clarkesworld

For those of us with stories in Clarkesworld's slush pile, do not despair!  Rejections (and acceptances!) will be forthcoming.

I'm just doing my part to spread the word.  Don't pester them with queries even though it's probably been more than the 50 days they recommend prior to querying, they'll get through the slushpile in due time.  If you need your manuscript back sooner rather than later, they're being very readily accessible for that purpose.  Details here.

Unfortunately it looks like the days of personalized rejections are over.  Alas, this is my first sub to them so I'll never get to experience that.  However, that wasn't my motivation for submitting to them, so I won't miss it.  

I never expect personalized comments, nor do I think some stories 'deserve' personalized rejections if they're good enough or whatever.  Editors are busy and I don't think they should have to explain their decisions to potential authors.  If I get a note I'm thrilled, especially if it's something that I can use to bring the story to a whole new level, but it's not the job of the editor to help me write the best story I can if that editor doesn't intend to publish it.  It's my job to learn how to write effectively, and I have lots of resources to exploit to that end.  And when I someday earn my place in a publication, then I'll be able to enjoy the process of working with an editor, including the suggestion/rewrite process with their experience and skills to help me make the story shine.

Someday ... soon!

Oh, and a shameless plug for my blog:  I just wrote an entry about prologues.  Hopefully folks will find it useful.  If the INKers would want that, maybe we can dump it in the Toolbox or repost it here or both.  If not, you know me, I don't get offended or feel rejected.  I'd have a much tougher time breaking in as an author if I did!

Critiquedit

I enjoyed a very good critique session today that could have only been made better if the folks currently at Worldcon were present.  I'm ready to put the short story in question into something approximating final form.  

The thick stack of paper I end up with after a critique session used to daunt me.  I'd begin the process of procrastination by setting it somewhere not-my-desk, where it would fester for a while.  Every time I looked at it I'd think I should get to sorting through that, but first I have to scrub around the kitchen faucet with a toothbrush.  Right now.  Just like a cat that has to interrupt crossing a room right now to lick itself, I'd feel a compulsion to get busy doing something unrelated to going over the written critiques as soon as possible.  

But, no more.  A lot doesn't get said during a fiction critique.  No one wants to point out every single little grammatical error or the fact that when the character teased out a nosehair you laughed so hard you blew milk out your nose, and you weren't even drinking milk at the time.  So going over the written comments is important, as is going over the notes you write during a critique.  Don't give me that look.  No, you aren't supposed to file those with the copies of manuscript into your to-do pile.  Your sex partner goes in the to-do pile.  The manuscripts go on the desk, so that when you next sit down to write (not blog or surf the net) you have to move them in order to get to work.  I'm a firm believer in not letting manuscripts that have been critiqued stew.  They've stewed already.  They've stewed while you waited to hear back.  The longer I wait, the more good ideas I lose as the short term memory is taken up by details of daily life that isn't going to be important five minutes later.  I don't need to utilize the fact that I had pizza for dinner.  I need to utilize the expression on a critiquer's face as she detailed the impression my work had left on her.  I need to remember what "Yes to Sara and C.S., go with the bastard" means.  

With that, I'm off to edit.  Cue music!

Action!

So, I've hit my one and only combat scene in the script.  I get to write magical combat with zero special effects.  I'm pretty sure of how I want to do it, but that doesn't mean it's going to be easy.  Yes, this is going to be a low budget very short film done by a high school student with the help of his friends and the drama department.  Yes, it's probably going to be, ahem, of emerging quality.  But that doesn't mean I shouldn't try to set this up so that they have the best chance of succeeding.  So I'm keeping the melodrama down to a minimum, and this combat, when it happens, should give the director, actors and cameraman the best opportunity to make the fight look creepy and wonderfully nasty.  This is going to require quite a bit of thought and planning ahead, so that when it comes time for the director to shout 'action!' it won't turn into a silly, messy headache.  Or, if it's going to be a silly, messy,  headache, it won't be because the script called for something beyond the reach and scope of the project.

Now if we had $68 million to play with?  Oh yeah ...

Of course that sort of attitude is bass-ackwards.  It's still best to write it simple and tight.  After all, special effects may save an otherwise bad film, but no one will be fooled.  They'll always say, gee, it would have been so much better if the dialogue and the acting and, well, pretty much everything was at least as high quality as the CGI.

Swamped

I have to leave much of August open, but that doesn't mean taking all of August off as far as writing is concerned, either.  My happy medium--since any day now I'll get the reading list for the master's course set for next spring, I'll include reading how-to books as part of my August goals.  I think I can manage writing a story too.  When I can I'll write on one of my novels.

August isn't usually a slow writing month for me but I've got a lot going on.  I still may use the hot part of the day to write or read and the cool parts to garden, but a lot has to happen in the month.  I've got a dead-deadline coming up for office remodeling, a big yearly party to plan and execute, have to move all the downstairs furniture and books and clutter out and tear out all the carpeting, and Gilder to frame for it.  I'm swamped!

I know, if I haven't got my health, I haven't got anything.  Right now I'm feeling pretty stressed and nauseated and I had a nasty headache last night (almost certainly from stress) so I've got to tone things down.  Writing goals are not usually my pressure valve.  I always write.  But things are especially pressed right now so I suspect that my ability to do all work, including writing, will be depressed and I'll have to scale back across the board.  While meeting major goals.

It should be an interesting month.

Budgeting for writing time

It's Tuesday again.  That means I'm going to be cranking out the words, enjoying some (mostly silent save the keyboard tappety tap) writerly companionship and drinking weird combinations of tea.  My favorite mix is mint and chamomile.  I have to grab an extra lid and not steep the mint as long or it completely overpowers the chamomile.

When I first started going to these writing meetings it was to get my writing out of my office.  Then I thought it would be good to get out of the house and socialize in general.  Now I'm having to actually budget my week to make sure I can attend.  I never, ever thought I'd be this busy.  I thought quitting my day job would vastly open up my schedule.  Ha!  That'll learn me.  More free time = more work time.  And my list is growing daily, so it makes writing time that much more precious.

I really have to get the mulch out of the back of the pickup truck soon, though.  There's huge dandelions growing out of it now.

On the good news front, I haven't heard anything yet from Writers of the Future.  Wish me luck!  And congrats yet again to C.S. for her Honorable Mention!  Woot!

Phone call from my calling?

"Hello...Oh, hi! Good to hear from you! It's been a long time...where on Earth have you been?"

I know I've spent plenty of meetings yapping about my angst around my writing and I apologize to all of you for having to listen to all of that pablum. Over the past couple of weeks, thoughts of writer support have been flowing anew through my noggin, and I find myself thinking that (perhaps) my calling was one more of providing tools to support the process of being a writer.

I've investigated a number of writing software packages and while there are some good choices available, they are (for the most part) pretty tailored to limited usage. I certainly know that there's no such thing as a magic story maker, or at least that any attempt to create one would create atrocious output,

My software background shows me that tailored software solutions is the right answer and logic informs me why there are relatively few of them. But I also know that a limited number of tailored software packages leaves a lot of space for more tailored software packages.

I do have a couple of ideas for possible tools that would help in some of the situations I've found myself stuck in, but what I'm wondering in here is whether my fellow INKers have ever wondered about software solutions around particular research, planning or writing tasks/problems. I know the biggest tool is the word processor for pounding out the story, but I'm wondering about organization, preparation and planning tools.

Thoughts?

Fighting Crime with Radioactive, Magical Mosquitos

At the Fireside today I plan on hand writing again.  I still haven't had any valuable insights about the process.  The thing that I keep coming back to is that it's slow.  Is slow more careful, deeper writing?  So far, not to my experience.  Is transcribing cool?  Does it add a special layer that I can't get through normal editing?  Not that I've seen, yet.  I'll hang onto that yet for a bit longer under the assumption that I'll still be learning more about the process over the next four weeks. 

 I don't have much choice as far as handwriting or not at this point because my options for Fireside writing are, well, let's see, hand write or pout, and I'm not big on pouting.

We do have a laptop in the house, my son's, an old powerbook he inherited from me.  Recently, somehow Snape ended up with a problem--the OS went bye bye for reasons unknown.  So, my original reasoning of "I'm not going to abscond with my son's computer every Tuesday for my own stuff" has become "and even if I wanted to, I couldn't use it."  So as a gift I'm going to take the poor Mac to the mighty techs and see what they can do with it.  

Tech voice in Kami's head:  Did you try starting it with a bootable CD?

Little kid sulky voice:  Yes

T:  Did you remember to hold down the c key?

L:  Tried that.

T:  What about the CD reader, does it sound like it's spinning?

L:  Yes!  I'm going to pout now.  See my lip?

I'm sure the boy would loan it to me if I asked, especially if I showed my lip, but this is good for me.  At least, I think it's good for me.  Is this just a case of me being stubborn?  Why do I want hand writing to be different, better, or at least teaching?

I guess because I haven't published yet and I want a magic radioactive writing mosquito to come along, annoy me by whining near my ear, land a couple times so I swat at it but it escapes with blinding mosquito speed, and then zap!  It bites me where I can't get to it and infuses my blood with that special something that turns me into The Belly Avenger!

Hey wait, I wanted a writing--

The Belly Avenger, mild-mannered housewife and goat wrestler by day,

Stop, no, I wanted--

Superhero by night, she fights crime with her hypnotic belly dancing, helping the helpless, saving the savingsless, and bringing jerks to justice.

Oh I give up!

Time to head to the place of all things good techie, Power Mac Pac.  See ya at the Fireside with my pen, paper, and apparently my hidden powers of belly dance.

Structure and Style.

I'm deep into reading about story structure and style, something I didn't know anything about. Three-act structure? Uh, what's that all about? I get that now though I'm still struggling with how exactly one goes about accomplishing it.

In an amusing moment, I discovered what structure style I use, one completely un-taught, the one I had always gravitated toward writing: The Slice of Life. I already knew what this was called but had always been told it wasn't a real writing style. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that outside of the westernized world, it's a preferred story structure. Apparently, it's accepted, somewhat loved even, in parts of Europe. Interesting.

To help me internalize the traditional three-act structure, I printed up a cheat sheet of steps and requirements. Whenever I find myself straying from turning points, temporary triumphs, reversals, and final obstacles through to climaxes and resolutions, I'll slap my hands and delete all that Slice of Life nonsense...until I'm no longer a newbie writer and can get away with writing in my former, preferred style once again while getting paid for it. But for the time being, it'll be all about identifying each in stories. Easier said than done.