I've written more words over the past month than I did in the four prior, so it's mostly sunny over here at Camp Joe. Did a little digging around the ol' story trunk and found a couple of goodies that could use some polish, and that's where most of my efforts are currently. That, and a complete rewrite of a story that is currently out for submission at a big market...
Yes, I know, stupid. But I think the story could be so much better than it is if I had approached it from a different angle. I don't even know if anything will come of it, frankly; I'm kind of in a funk, and can't quite find the voice, so it might end up being one more useless exercise.
Did re-read "The Bright Walk," the story I have out currently at The New Yorker, and man if that isn't the best damn story I've written so far. It's got heart, character, voice, pitch-perfect narrative (if I do say so muhself). It's at a level I've always thought I was capable of, but haven't reached in a long time. Reading it again was a nice reminder that I'm not as terrible as I sometimes think.
I'm up to five stories out for consideration as of today, which is a very good feeling. Three of them have been out a while, but two left the coop only a day or so ago. Very exciting stuff. Found a very cool new market on Duotrope Digest, decided to sub there. Semi-pro rates and everything! I'll let you know more about them if they're smart enough to accept my story!
Til next time...
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
Finito
I've finally completed the first draft of my first post-hiatus story. It's called "Sonny" and it's about a day in the life of a boy dealing with abuse at school and at home. It wasn't particularly difficult to write, but it came it fits and starts over the course of a couple of weeks.
A big part of that, I think, is my dedication to reading. There's no coincidence that the writers we all read are constant readers. Sure, full-time authors have more time to dedicate to it than we do as aspiring writers, but that's no excuse.
It's a mainstream story, and all (or at least a good portion) of those markets are slow as hell, so once I give it a good once-over and send it out, it will probably be a while before I hear back. In the meantime, I have a few unfinished nuggets in the ol' trunk I'd like to have a whack at, and a new idea or two knocking around upstairs that probably should get a look-see. But first, I need to finish off BLOOD MERIDIAN.
Oh, and in other news, the official release date of A DANCE WITH DRAGONS has been announced, for all my fellow fantasy buffs. Mr. Martin confirmed the announcement on his Not-A-Blog. He isn't finished quite yet, but he's apparently close enough for his publishers to make the announcement, which means the end is very near.
A big part of that, I think, is my dedication to reading. There's no coincidence that the writers we all read are constant readers. Sure, full-time authors have more time to dedicate to it than we do as aspiring writers, but that's no excuse.
It's a mainstream story, and all (or at least a good portion) of those markets are slow as hell, so once I give it a good once-over and send it out, it will probably be a while before I hear back. In the meantime, I have a few unfinished nuggets in the ol' trunk I'd like to have a whack at, and a new idea or two knocking around upstairs that probably should get a look-see. But first, I need to finish off BLOOD MERIDIAN.
Oh, and in other news, the official release date of A DANCE WITH DRAGONS has been announced, for all my fellow fantasy buffs. Mr. Martin confirmed the announcement on his Not-A-Blog. He isn't finished quite yet, but he's apparently close enough for his publishers to make the announcement, which means the end is very near.
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Submission Updates
I mentioned "The Machine" getting a very friendly and helpful PRL from On Spec in my last post, but I just realized I didn't tell you guys about the rest of the stories I have out.
"Glory in the Wasteland" was rejected by Asimov's Science Fiction on November 17...the same day "Broadcasting Live From Bensk" was rejected by Pedestal Magazine. Yes, that's right: A double-whammy, two rejections in one day.
"All Debts Public and Private" was sent back by Ploughshares on November 20th.
"...And Other Significant Junkies" rejected on November 27th. Four rejections in ten days.That one, believe it or not, is not a record: From September 27th to October 5th, I received 5 rejections, a record which came very close to toppling in November, but did not.
Only "The Machine" has been sent submitted elsewhere; the stories listed above are all on hiatus. I don't know why I didn't send them out. I guess I was feeling down about my writing and thought it was pointless. But part of it is also that I just don't know how good these stories actually are. When I went back and reread "The Machine," I knew I had a good story. Even with the apparently-confusing introduction, the story itself is strong, and I still enjoy reading it. I need to sit down and read these stories again to know if any of them are ready.
And not just if they're good, but if they're in my voice. If they read like I wrote them. I have always been told that there are no rules, but I guess I never really understood what that meant until I read McCarthy. That book ("The Road', and subsequently, "Blood Meridian") showed me that there are no rules. Here's a man who writes a story and doesn't give a fuck if there aren't enough commas for your liking, doesn't care that there isn't one quotation mark to be found. Fuck your rules, this is my voice, is what he says with his writing.
Well, now I know, finally, that I can take the mask off. I always tried to dress my writing up so it looked like it fit, like it belonged, but to hell with all that. I'm not doing that anymore. The quirks that made my writing unique and appealing to my teachers when I was growing up, that stayed with me into my 20s, and were pounded out of me by every bit of writing advice I've received (save one, of course: "there are no rules"), are all back. I'm back. I'm not going to force my writing into a niche anymore just because that's the "right" way and my way is the "wrong" way.
To quote Romany Malco's character in "The 40 Year Old Virgin" (no, seriously!) "What's felt right to you don't work; it's time to try some wrong, dog."
"Glory in the Wasteland" was rejected by Asimov's Science Fiction on November 17...the same day "Broadcasting Live From Bensk" was rejected by Pedestal Magazine. Yes, that's right: A double-whammy, two rejections in one day.
"All Debts Public and Private" was sent back by Ploughshares on November 20th.
"...And Other Significant Junkies" rejected on November 27th. Four rejections in ten days.That one, believe it or not, is not a record: From September 27th to October 5th, I received 5 rejections, a record which came very close to toppling in November, but did not.
Only "The Machine" has been sent submitted elsewhere; the stories listed above are all on hiatus. I don't know why I didn't send them out. I guess I was feeling down about my writing and thought it was pointless. But part of it is also that I just don't know how good these stories actually are. When I went back and reread "The Machine," I knew I had a good story. Even with the apparently-confusing introduction, the story itself is strong, and I still enjoy reading it. I need to sit down and read these stories again to know if any of them are ready.
And not just if they're good, but if they're in my voice. If they read like I wrote them. I have always been told that there are no rules, but I guess I never really understood what that meant until I read McCarthy. That book ("The Road', and subsequently, "Blood Meridian") showed me that there are no rules. Here's a man who writes a story and doesn't give a fuck if there aren't enough commas for your liking, doesn't care that there isn't one quotation mark to be found. Fuck your rules, this is my voice, is what he says with his writing.
Well, now I know, finally, that I can take the mask off. I always tried to dress my writing up so it looked like it fit, like it belonged, but to hell with all that. I'm not doing that anymore. The quirks that made my writing unique and appealing to my teachers when I was growing up, that stayed with me into my 20s, and were pounded out of me by every bit of writing advice I've received (save one, of course: "there are no rules"), are all back. I'm back. I'm not going to force my writing into a niche anymore just because that's the "right" way and my way is the "wrong" way.
To quote Romany Malco's character in "The 40 Year Old Virgin" (no, seriously!) "What's felt right to you don't work; it's time to try some wrong, dog."
Thursday, February 17, 2011
I, Writer
Howdy, stranger.
It's been too long.
The last time I was here, I said I'd take a week or two to rest. A week or two become three and a half months. No doubt time I will look back upon as an old man and wish I could have back, swear now I know how to use it. Don't they say youth is wasted on the young? Enough of it has been wasted on me, I think.
Maybe I shouldn't be so tough on myself. I didn't stop writing because I was afraid of the rejections or failure. I stopped because I was tired. All summer and into the fall, I tried to cram in all the experience I didn't get in my teens and 20s before my 30th birthday. Like a midlife crisis, but instead of sports cars and girlfriends ten years my junior, I overcompensated by sitting in front of my laptop so long that I got a monitor burn. Yeah, I had "OpenOffice" seared in my forehead backwards for a week.
I even had trouble reading. I'm usually able to sit down for hours with a good book, but it was getting to the point where I wasn't reading much of anything, and even after I took a break I was having a hard time reading without getting distracted.
Wasn't all bad, though. I received a lovely new Nook on Christmas, and that has completely cured me of my reading trouble. I've already torn through three books this year (China Mieville's Iron Council and Looking For Jake, and Cormack McCarthy's The Road) and I'm deep into another McCarthy tale, Blood Meridian, as well as Mieville's latest, Kraken. (I know, kind of McCarthy-Mieville heavy. Don't worry, I've also got Jeff VanderMeer's Shriek: An Afterword) on deck, and even a non-fiction by Physicist Brian Greene entitled The Hidden Reality, which is about quantum physics and parallel universes. So I'm really back into the swing of it, as far as my reading goes.
The reason I titled this entry "I, Writer" is because once I started reading again, it wasn't long before I started feeling that old pull again. Every time I'd turn it on I'd get drunk on words and story and have to shut it off and write. Got about four thousand words into a short before I ran out of steam. Hey, it happens.
Then I got a personal rejection for "The Machine" from the friendly folks at On Spec magazine. They said the plot was broken because the initial setup was steampunk, yet the characters were modern. I was blown away by this response, because I definitely did not intend the story to appear at all steampunk.
How do you like that? Accidental Steampunk! I just started a new genre.
Anyway, I went back and revised it, and that really got my blood pumping. Not just the revision itself, but that I really, really loved it. I think I did a great job! I really do. I only wish I had gotten it this polished before I sent it out the first time. I'm starting to run out of pro genre mags, as this is easily my most well-traveled piece. But it's off at another market, and we'll see what happens.
As for me, I've already begun working on another piece. Literary, not genre. Nice change of pace, I think. It's about a boy who gets bullied at school. I can already see the Cormack McCarthy influence in it (No quotation marks, very few commas), and I'm really enjoying myself. I'm telling the story out-of-order, as well. Don't know why. It just feels right. That's the thing: I'm feeling so artistic lately, like I've got all this creativity inside begging to be let out.
I'm excited to feel this way, but it's tempered with regret for what had to happen to get here. I also have to confront what happened at the writing group, as unpleasant as that will be. I know my reasons for leaving were sound, but I have to ask myself if I was really just in a bad situation, or if I might have brought the troubles on myself. There were some good people there. Mike was much too distant for my taste, and I wasn't comfortable with a fellow relatively-unaccomplished writer being "in charge", but I don't know that I handled it correctly.
I was put off by how she spoke to me, but could I have handled it better? I feel I may have started counting enemies before anything happened. Maybe that combative mindset hurt me.
I don't know how well it would have worked out in the long run regardless, but I can't deny that I learned something from it, even if those lessons weren't the ones intended.
Anyway, I'm just glad to be writing again. This time around I know what my priorities are, and in what order they belong. I write because it's fun, not because I feel like I have to get my career going. I'm not going to be a famous author by 30 (since I already am 30) so I can stop panicking. No more pressure. No more deadlines.
It's been too long.
The last time I was here, I said I'd take a week or two to rest. A week or two become three and a half months. No doubt time I will look back upon as an old man and wish I could have back, swear now I know how to use it. Don't they say youth is wasted on the young? Enough of it has been wasted on me, I think.
Maybe I shouldn't be so tough on myself. I didn't stop writing because I was afraid of the rejections or failure. I stopped because I was tired. All summer and into the fall, I tried to cram in all the experience I didn't get in my teens and 20s before my 30th birthday. Like a midlife crisis, but instead of sports cars and girlfriends ten years my junior, I overcompensated by sitting in front of my laptop so long that I got a monitor burn. Yeah, I had "OpenOffice" seared in my forehead backwards for a week.
I even had trouble reading. I'm usually able to sit down for hours with a good book, but it was getting to the point where I wasn't reading much of anything, and even after I took a break I was having a hard time reading without getting distracted.
Wasn't all bad, though. I received a lovely new Nook on Christmas, and that has completely cured me of my reading trouble. I've already torn through three books this year (China Mieville's Iron Council and Looking For Jake, and Cormack McCarthy's The Road) and I'm deep into another McCarthy tale, Blood Meridian, as well as Mieville's latest, Kraken. (I know, kind of McCarthy-Mieville heavy. Don't worry, I've also got Jeff VanderMeer's Shriek: An Afterword) on deck, and even a non-fiction by Physicist Brian Greene entitled The Hidden Reality, which is about quantum physics and parallel universes. So I'm really back into the swing of it, as far as my reading goes.
The reason I titled this entry "I, Writer" is because once I started reading again, it wasn't long before I started feeling that old pull again. Every time I'd turn it on I'd get drunk on words and story and have to shut it off and write. Got about four thousand words into a short before I ran out of steam. Hey, it happens.
Then I got a personal rejection for "The Machine" from the friendly folks at On Spec magazine. They said the plot was broken because the initial setup was steampunk, yet the characters were modern. I was blown away by this response, because I definitely did not intend the story to appear at all steampunk.
How do you like that? Accidental Steampunk! I just started a new genre.
Anyway, I went back and revised it, and that really got my blood pumping. Not just the revision itself, but that I really, really loved it. I think I did a great job! I really do. I only wish I had gotten it this polished before I sent it out the first time. I'm starting to run out of pro genre mags, as this is easily my most well-traveled piece. But it's off at another market, and we'll see what happens.
As for me, I've already begun working on another piece. Literary, not genre. Nice change of pace, I think. It's about a boy who gets bullied at school. I can already see the Cormack McCarthy influence in it (No quotation marks, very few commas), and I'm really enjoying myself. I'm telling the story out-of-order, as well. Don't know why. It just feels right. That's the thing: I'm feeling so artistic lately, like I've got all this creativity inside begging to be let out.
I'm excited to feel this way, but it's tempered with regret for what had to happen to get here. I also have to confront what happened at the writing group, as unpleasant as that will be. I know my reasons for leaving were sound, but I have to ask myself if I was really just in a bad situation, or if I might have brought the troubles on myself. There were some good people there. Mike was much too distant for my taste, and I wasn't comfortable with a fellow relatively-unaccomplished writer being "in charge", but I don't know that I handled it correctly.
I was put off by how she spoke to me, but could I have handled it better? I feel I may have started counting enemies before anything happened. Maybe that combative mindset hurt me.
I don't know how well it would have worked out in the long run regardless, but I can't deny that I learned something from it, even if those lessons weren't the ones intended.
Anyway, I'm just glad to be writing again. This time around I know what my priorities are, and in what order they belong. I write because it's fun, not because I feel like I have to get my career going. I'm not going to be a famous author by 30 (since I already am 30) so I can stop panicking. No more pressure. No more deadlines.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Burnt Out
Earlier this year, rejection after rejection poked through my thin skin and made me want to quit writing. I thought I wasn't good enough, and I walked away. From March until July, I really didn't write much of anything. Real life sucked at the time, though that's no excuse; some of the greatest writers have written their best work while their lives crumbled around them.
In July, though, I decided I wasn't going to let rejections beat me, and I started writing again. This time, I was more focused, and a few stories into my return, I was writing better, and more prolific than any other time in my life. A handful of stories, a ton of submissions, and a bunch of rejections later, and here I am.
But "here" isn't a good place. It's a tired place with no good ideas and no real distinct voice. See? How shitty was that imagery?
The point I'm trying to make is that I'm tired, and I'm burnt out. I'm not bothered by the rejections as much anymore, but I literally haven't stopped writing since that night in July when I made the decision to refocus my life. Maybe I need a week or two off? I could catch up on my reading, let my muse nap a little bit.
I don't know if it's the right answer, but I'm out of answers now. I'm not a prolific writer by any means, but in the last two months I haven't even come close to my modest daily best of three or four thousand words. That's too long to be a slump. I think if I let my brain reset a little, it can only help.
In the meantime, I've still got eight stories on the market, and all but one or two of them are good for another dozen submissions before I trunk them, so no matter how long this hiatus lasts, you'll be getting regular updates from Yours Truly, so there's no reason to not check in on me from time to time.
Until next time.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Hothouse of Horrors
Well, I've left the writing group I joined about a month and a half ago, putting an end to one of the most dysfunctional experiences of my life. What I thought was going to be a professional group of writers interested in the common good turned out to be anything but that.
Hint: when the person running the group is more interested in you flying to England to have sex with them than giving helpful critique of your stories, it's time to leave.
Anyway, back on my own again. And in a way, it feels good. I'll miss the advice of the more helpful members of the group, but it just wasn't worth it to stay.
Monday, October 18, 2010
The Waiting Game
Submitting your work for consideration takes a kind of courage some writers don't possess. I was one of those writers for the better part of my 20s. Now, just a few months from my 30th birthday, my urgency to get published wins over fear of rejection. But some things don't change, no matter how many times you take that leap and submit your work.
Waiting is the worst. Well, okay, it's the second-worst. I currently have seven stories making the rounds right now. Thanks to places like Duotrope Digest, writers now have some idea of how long they can expect to wait for a response, which is both a blessing and a curse. When a story nears the estimated response date, I can't help but get nervous. A decision, most likely, is imminent. It's like waiting for the guillotine to drop.
A perfect example is my story "Glory in the Wasteland", which is currently on submission at Lightspeed. One of the quickest turnaround times in all of genre fiction, Lightspeed's average response time is something like two days--a day and a half for rejections, five and change for rejections, and I think it's somewhere like three days for rewrite requests--so you know from the moment you submit that you're going to hear back quickly.
Being the pessimist that I am, my first fear is "I hope I don't hear back today," because it will invariably be a rejection, and who wants to set a person record for quickest rejection? But I've been "Under Consideration" for two days now, which, if you listen to Neil Clarke of Clarkesworld magazine, could mean good things. ...or it could mean that the editor took the weekend off, and hasn't gotten around to sending my rejection letter yet.
I have been driving myself crazy with this submission, but this seems to happen every time an estimated response date nears; I will find myself checking my hotmail account every five minutes, checking submissions systems every ten minutes (if applicable), opening and closing and reopening tabs just in case it isn't refreshing properly, etc..
Does anyone else go through this? I suppose it would be easier if I had kids to worry about, or some other real life issue to take up my time, but unfortunately (or fortunately) I have most of my time to dedicate to writing. And yet when these dates roll around, the one thing I can't do is concentrate enough to write!
Anyway, here's a list of my open submissions and where they currently are:
The Bright Walk / The New Yorker / 83 days waiting / 134 day mean average RT / 90 day EstRT
Postcard From Arborville / Tor.com / 50 days waiting / 190 day mean average RT / no EstRT (this could be out a year)
The Machine / On Spec / 17 days waiting / 134 mean average / 180 EstRT
All Debts Public and Private / Ploughshares / 14 days waiting / 76 mean average / 150 EstRT
Broadcasting Live From Bensk / Pedestal Magazine / 13 days waiting / 39 mean average / 60 EstRT
...And Other Significant Junkies / Glimmer Train / 6 days waiting / 66 mean average / 90 EstRT
Glory in the Wasteland / Lightspeed Magazine / 4 days waiting / 2 mean average / 14 EstRT
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