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Showing posts from 2012

(Not) winning

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This was the first weekend in a while that I could really look forward to writing. It made me realize that while I may have a third book out at the beginning of the new year, what I was most excited about was the work that ran up to it. Not that the editing experience was not enriching, or that it did not produce an objectively better book. But nor could I really say what it was, either. For those of you who aren't aware of  my facebook page , the cover is done. For those of you who are, the edits are also complete. I didn't win, or place, or garner an honorable mention once again in the sci-fi short story competition that I attempt yearly these days. It would be a lie to say that yet another flop isn't a repeated blow to my ego. On the other hand, I really believe I had assumed the dual posture of someone who both thought he would do exceptionally well and someone who would not be surprised to get the rejection letter. As always, the form letter came along with it l

Fight(ers), fight(ing), fight

The first round is done. I can't be sure, but I think I'm much closer to understanding the difference between good and bad editors. Not that the previous ones were bad, but the current person I'm working with feels better. Things are developing into what I could only describe as a working relationship. In the beginning of the manuscript, when she saw that I was going about something in a confusingly convoluted manner (for instance, using adverbs too much and/or not using strong enough verbs) she would say that things could be, or needed to be, tighter. Towards the end, the only comment was "tighter" and the arrow pointed to a highlighted sentence in track changes. I knew what she meant and went about things accordingly. She was explicit in that I didn't have to change things, but I needed to provide explanation. She wanted the back and forth. And I can admit that at points it was frustrating, but that's mostly because part of me wanted to be lazy, and all

Full body cast can't catch soul

Seems like that time of year again. My editor for the next release contacted me, and I was relieved at her thorough professionalism and evident experience. The people I've met thus far that are near my age I can count on one hand, but in every respect age does not equal expertise, or even experience. Writing seems to come and go with people, stay with them in their youth and then vanish, only to reappear again in the middle of life, perhaps after children. I made sure to at least ask for advice, and she was very nice, and shared with me some of her experiences and thoughts. And she thought the novel was "pretty solid" as well. "It was an interesting and exciting read... Overall, it reminds me of the King's Dark Tower series." Admittedly, I've never read the series in question (although I picked up the seventh book for super cheap, and at one point intended to collect and read them all). And also, there was half a paragraph between those two complime

Yes we should

Writing and blogging seem to go hand in hand. It's been weeks since I wrote last on the current project, and I imagine it's been about that long since I updated this blog as well. I did a lot of planning recently, spent a lot of day-befores making I-swears to myself. That's about it. I did a lot of planning and very little implementation of what I came up with. That changed this morning. Brushing my teeth, I tried to think of a less crazy way to say it than, "I heard the voice in my head again." But that's really the best I got. I knew what the next chapter was about, at least in the beginning so I felt confident about putting something down. Then, before I actually did, I began to hear narration in the back of my head on that very same subject. Almost like with an interactive file, I stopped and started the recording, editing where I saw fit. I rinsed. I spat. I looked myself in the eye while wiping my face and thought "well, I guess I should go write

Future-us

The work got done this past weekend, I'm proud to say. I also feel like I learned some things. Like about the idea of a brief, open-door policy to unagented submissions for a major publisher. The actual activity required some additional information which was surprising at the beginning, and understandable toward the end. The deadline for submissions is Sunday, but even as I was trying to get in things early, I could see evidence that the submission portal was under duress, trying to shoulder the load of everyone trying to access it. It occurred to me that the idea might have been something they had lightly discussed doing, then pulled the trigger on just to see what it would be like. Then, in the place of the river they expected, an ocean swelled up, threatening to crash their servers. If a publisher underestimated ebooks, I thought, it might have even more traction than anyone suspected. Then, once the portal was even accessible, it required a synopsis of the book, a query letter

Because i dream

Sometimes I dream when I'm awake, about award speeches and magazine interviews. In those times, I practice the things I tell, because I don't want to regret things I might say. I don't want to leave out anyone I mean to thank. Tracing the events that led to where I am is getting trickier by the season. This, for instance , was an opportunity I only heard about because I'd been somewhat active in an online writer's group which I was only invited to because I tried to apply myself during a web party for a book release. And that's one of the shorter lists of degrees of separation. And that's where I've been over the last few days. With a two-week window, and their openness to accepting any manuscript of the genres they're looking for, I'm putting all my feet forward, and I'm doing my best to make sure they can be as good as they can be. Needless to say, work on the current project took a hiatus briefly. Submissions to agents are out, naturall

Opening Time

I've written to the end of my outline. It isn't necessarily good or bad, but it is unexpected. Stitching together different but relevant stories into a (hopefully) cohesive quilt is an old habit that I might have been better served growing out of (in lieu of finding a better way to tell stories). As it is, there are times when I'm so keyed in that I don't necessarily need to look at the outline, and thereby can forget that I am guided by it. As it was, yesterday I finished chapter 9, with nary a glimmer or vision of the next project hounding me. I felt good, good enough to glance into my notes and see what was up next. That's when I was greeted with the infinite potential of white space. Was somewhat similar to leaping, then looking. Up that high, there aren't crickets, either, just the occasional and indifferent breeze. In addition to that, I have begun finalizing the requisite materials to finalize my third publication. Writing blurbs and choosing excerpts

Swim, baby

Been awhile, though, I haven't been very busy. And it feels lately that every time I jot out one of these the impetus behind it is "Alright, now it's time to get productive." Not that I haven't been writing. I just haven't been writing as much as I could be. Should be. Would be, if only... For months now, scenes of a book have been occurring to me, and I was satisfied with that, because keeping ideas at bay is part of what I do. The other day though, the thing inside my mind became ferocious and insatiable. It insisted, and that is a bit of a problem. I'm working on chapter 8 of the current book, and if experience tells me anything at all, it's that my books round out at somewhere between 25 and 30 chapters, which means that I'm only a third or a fourth of the way through this one, with another bearing down on me. It's time to get productive. Despite all this though, I have yet to be sad about such things crowding in on me. It feels more

Hungry

The local convention has come back around again, and all the ambitious thoughts I had this time last year seem like the rest of my dreams. I have a list of things I should have done, and it syncs nicely with the list of things I would have done had I the chance of a re-do. Oops. On Sunday, the fourth draft of the short story I wrote was sent to the contest, an entire month before the deadline. This was not done entirely to give me something useless to fret about, but mostly to let me focus on some real-life things that have become most pressing. I had some good talks with people who read it, and learned some things about my constantly improving style and feel. I've been told I'm getting better at tap dancing the knife edge of showing just enough and telling too little. And, crushing onslaught of reality or not, the voice in my head spinning sentences for the novel returned this very morning and I was happy for it. It's looking like this weekend will be productive on th

High note

This weekend saw a hiatus, not in writing, just in what I was writing on. A few weeks back I had a discussion with a writer friend. He had paused in working on his own novel to chisel out a short story for a competition we try to win every year. To date, he has two honorable mentions and I have nothing. Even though he knew I was working on a book, he questioned my lack of initiative to write something for this year's contest. At the time I was against it because I had nothing to write about, and felt no incentive to wrack my brain to uncover if that were really true. We left it at we were both writing, and that's what mattered. Last week an idea struck me, struck me so squarely that I decided I would write the story, and that it was going to that contest. The timing was good, I felt. Further inspired, I decided not to put any outlining or the usual amount of forethought into it. I wanted to sit down and let the idea take me somewhere. Normally, such an unfettered notion spel

Kindest negatives

The query letters have gone out. Not to every place I could conceivably submit to, but on one particular website I found for registered agents, I certainly submitted to every single New York science fiction agent that accepts email queries. I did this because in such close proximity, such salesman could most easily shop my work to the imprints of larger houses face to face, provided they liked what I sent. Also, I wanted to test the waters, as it were, in case the query was too aggressive, passive, esoteric, or biting. I've received nothing but rejections so far, which is not surprising, but none of the kindly worded negatives implied any of my previously listed fears.  By the way, if you've ever been curious about the kinds of lives authors you've never heard of lead, they engage in daily conversation with both people and machines that include language like this: "...a s to your material I'm afraid I will be passing -- I'm just not enthusiastic enough ab

Tithe for the mill

I've become somewhat of an excuse factory of late. I didn't write last weekend. I thought about it, over the course of days, but when the rubber hit the road, the words failed to reached the page. Among other things, I'll have to work on that. Family was in town recently, a lot of it. People I couldn't differentiate from the kind of stranger I might meet in an elevator or at a bus stop. But they said they knew me, remembered me. They said I looked like my parents, not either one but both of them, like I was some sort of mashed together amalgamation of my father and my mother. I spend time in the mornings staring at my face, and when I shave, or whenever my eye catches a reflective object. Another instance of having to take people at their word. One specific family member, my aunt, and I went to lunch together. She asked me questions, and since no one else was around, and the place was dimly lit, lacking those pesky mirrors that I hate, I earnestly tried to explain

Judgment days

When your mom asks why you haven't written on your blog, that's a good time to recognize that you've been slacking off. A friend asked me if I'd ever composed a list of the things I wanted, with as much specificity as possible. The kind of agent I want, the kind of publisher, the kind of contracts. The color, flavor, tone, and dimensions of the success I desire from this life. I had to admit that I never had. I've imagined intimations with interviewers, red carpet photos, conversations with other success stories, and other memories I'd want, but when it came to the kinds of things that would yield all of that, I'd always phrase things like "I just want someone to give me a chance" and "All I need is an advocate that has some backing of their own." For the entire remainder of the day after my friend had asked me that question I ruminated on the possibility that all the universe needs from us is specificity and such things come to us in

Here's... questions

I'm happy to say I'm back in the swing of things. Supportive friends of mine ask me sometimes if I've been writing, and it's a difficult question to answer for me, like most. I work on stories pretty much everyday, after all, ponder on how to improve things I've written and on how to improve on things I've even yet to write. There's even some storytelling in my hobbies that make me think on character development, story pacing, and line writing. Ultimately though, for the past month and a half, the answer to the question has been no, I haven't been writing. But all that changed this Sunday. Now I'm back to lying awake on nights late in the week looking into the mental file of an outline I have in my head. I think about what's happening next, and why it's important, who's involved, and where their place is in the overall setting. Lately, I would say my excitement over it has to do a lot with its familiarity. When it's all said and do

Things told me

The vacation is over, in more ways than one. I won't get into the messy personal details, but a few quotes come to mind. Favorites include, "you've still got options, even when there's a gun pointed at your head," and  "I've learned that 10% of life is what happens to me and 90% is how I respond to it." Which is to say that I find myself under the gun, and the past few days have encouraged me to carefully mull over my response to recent events. One response I've decided on is not to stop writing, and I'm happy to say that it felt very natural, that decision. Before the news came, I had been editing through my sci-fi manuscript, cringing at points, and remembering why I did it in the first place at others. When I was done, I felt good, and the notes for the next book flowed freely, and have continued to even through the present (though, admittedly, I haven't slept very well). A related response is that I'm also going to revisit the

Sunless Rhetoric

A good friend being good to me strongly encouraged me to write this weekend, because I hadn't in some time. What I had been doing was blazing a trail through the box of games the same friend bequeathed to me (okay so maybe he isn't so good). I stumbled across a fascinating parallel between the writing in games and the writing in books in that I found myself, as the main character, wondering why I should care about certain details and regretting not having as much information as I should've had to connect with the story material. "This," I thought to myself as I wandered around aimlessly, "is what bad writing feels like to a reader." However, what I was doing could not be expressly described as researching. But I did write, and for the first time in a long time no one will be able to see what it is I put down. On about the third page, my computer restarted, saving nothing of what I had written. I searched and searched when it finally booted back up to

Legacy

I had a lot of thoughts, and then I had none. Lately, without writing on something weekly, I'm feeling fairly unproductive. Plans are being created almost everyday, but none of the little seeds have quite gestated into something more fertile. I am working on a few guest appearances to promote the latest novel, so that's something. It's a bit odd, answering something like the same questions over and over again, and being conscious of similar answers being already in existence, time stamped for eternity. One question I consistently choose to answer is about advice given to aspiring authors. How does one battle a mountain? Thoughts and opinions about the April release are trickling in. It seems to be about the same as last time, the vast majority of people who read it like it, and then there are a handful that don't for a smattering of reasons. I fear the editing might be somewhat impactful, and I'm not sure as to whether or not I should have fought harder. The next

Up and up

On Sunday I wrote, detouring the route that would take me to the coffee shop again in lieu of sitting in the room I like to call my office and writing there instead. I was happy with the end result and happier with the idea that I was finally, finally close to finishing. Last week I had discussed getting together with a writing friend and perhaps having dinner. On yesterday we did so, but afterwards the night was still young, his because Monday is his work schedule's version of Saturday, and mine because he is a constant reminder to me of what can happen if one simply leaves oneself open to possibility. After drafting and snipping several plans, we ended up taking our laptops to his office, or might I call it perch. That it is a nice, quiet area full of tables and chairs is not so remarkable, even to say that it's on the 19th floor of a luxury hotel. It's remarkable because my writing friend is terrified of heights. Yet that is his office. "I was really afraid the

Being continued

The insidious nature of distraction occurred to me the other day as possible excuses piled up. I have a box from a friend that I referred to as my "retirement," in that it contained a gaming system and a dozen different games. When I used to open the box and look inside, I could see a future where I sat next to a television and let my brain make dazzling chemicals as I exercised my fingers. A week at my new place, I finally opened the box and made that possible future a reality. It was as pleasant as I imagined. Then came the time when I would normally write. The coffee shop seemed unappealing, even the notion of writing itself was strange and foreign. I wanted to play. I'm happy to say that I did play, but only after I worked. I triumphed over that urge, but in leaping that hurdle I could better examine its dangerous nature. But while I was thinking about that I came across another new notion: talking shop. It's been more than a year (by a smidgen) since my

Bright side

I should be writing, which is not to say that I'm blaming the blog. I'm making excuses. Yesterday I moved and my muscles have stretched and torn in ways they haven't in some time. And while they're excited, I'm much less so. It was a new kind of sleep in an old bed. My fear that I would be unable to rest fully and normally, despite whatever fatigue, came true. So now I'm doing the coffee shop thing, because of all the things I paid for and took care to reserve in advance, and pre-imagined, internet in my new place was not one of them. I won't say that this was completely accidental. Much like renting a place with stairs, I knew that making certain kinds of decisions would be more interesting, if not better, for me. Already I've been silently introduced to all sorts of interesting people dwelling in the palace of the dark bean (and I am not immune. I'm drinking crazy expensive orange juice). The only plan I have at this point is to intend to plan.

Foolishness

This morning I wrote, an event which by and large determines my reply to the question "how was your weekend" posed by my co-workers. I wrote, I will say, so it went alright. And normally I don't tend to this site at the same time, or on the same day, or in the same mindset that I tend to whatever novel, but this weekend has been one of firsts, so why not keep the trend running? The book comes out in six days, and I've had the final file in my inbox for over a week now. After the errata phase I was so worn out that I just wanted to distance myself, but curiosity, as always, reconstituted me. I was curious, you see, because the last time I had gone through the editing phase things were left out. And if you've been keeping up, you know that one of the main goals this time was to prevent that from happening again. So I doubled my effort, then I tripled it. But you know what they say about it taking two to tango. And this reason, by the by, is why there are so ma

I was trying to daydream, but my mind kept wandering

Twitter tells me I haven't been by in a while to post about what I'm doing. I guess I've also been somewhat neglecting this particular outlet as well. I have no excuses or reasons. But the words are coming. Blogging is like riding a bike I don't want to be seen on. It's got tassels and a basket; I'm not precisely in sync with what it advertises. Writing didn't happen last weekend, but oh the editing. The final proofing had to be done on the April release. Unlike last year, I actually had work to do, dialog to fix, mistakes to root out. I admitted a while back that last year I hardly even looked through the final proof. I thought to myself, "I've looked at this, what, fives times? Six? I'm sure by now it's fine." That wasn't the case, as I found out. Every time someone found a mistake, it seemed like I had to hear about it. Needless to say, I was motivated to prevent that from happening this time around. Consequently, I spent the

Step-mother to success

At about six o'clock this morning I realized I made a glaring error in the plot-logic of one of my novels. It's not the first time, I'm sure, but this is certainly the most pronounced one that I can think of. It's also proof that even reading a previous book before writing its sequel is not a fail safe against such mistakes. I'm at a loss though for how to document it. The writing continues, but things are turning back around on themselves. Like the first whiff of decay from a spoiling bottle of milk, for the first time in a long time I can sense the expiration date of something I'm writing. I think the pace is to blame. One chapter a week has been the slowest I've written in years, and slow progress can be as deadly as no progress for a creative project. It stretches things out uncomfortably, and the more time is spent on it, the more other things "come up" and the more unrelated ideas begin to develop "on the back burner," the more &q

History month

Work proceeds. I try to ask my co workers when I see them on Mondays how their various weekends went. And whenever I do, they cordially pass the question back to me. "I wrote," I typically say, and am happy to. This weekend's chapter came out of me on Saturday, so the part of the weekend I spent free of planning to write was more voluminous than usual. I even saw a friend on Sunday. The term rip-roaring comes to mind in description of the excitement. A few months ago, an organic conversation bubbled up between a co-worker and I about things we liked to read. He had purchased my book, and had attempted to read it, which led him to lending me several books of his own in somewhat of an attempt to apologize for not liking what I wrote. It took some weeks, but I returned one of them, and apologized for losing the other, but the conversations didn't stop. When we got around to westerns, I was excited to tell him about one western I had read that I did enjoy, so we could f

States of being

Yesterday a friend asked me about sports. Specifically my opinion about whether or not a certain player, that I had never heard of, should have made the all-star team. After his dismay, he further investigated to what extent I just haven't been paying attention, for years apparently. Later last evening, a different friend called me to tell me one of his projects was starting to get some air under its wings. He blessed me with the opportunity to get my name out there through an outlet of his creation, and asked me how my own projects were going. I told him the next book was due out in April. He asked me if I was working on the next one. I told him that I was working on a different series currently, but that the next five books of the series in question were already drafted. Again, there was silence on the line, though dismay is maybe an improper description. So I guess I've given up things for all this focus. I haven't quite started stashing notes in my desk at work, piece

All downhill

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Well, it finally happened. I'm blogging about blogging. Still, despite this being another ill omen, I remain optimistic that the Mayans were wrong. Day by day, I find more things to add to my bucket list. But back to my doom saying. Last weekend the picture taking progressed well.The photos were amateur of course, but I did do the driving and the walking and the shooting myself, so that's something. Further, among all the other things I was busy doing, I even jotted down some notes about what I would write. A tie in to my books developed that I was very pleased to stumble across. The first round of edits went well, also. I had a window of ten days, and set out on a pace to complete the first round in seven, which allowed me to turn back around, as planned, and refine the beginning. I got it back to the editor in nine days, confident that I could put that book to the side for at least a few weeks while I worked on the current drafting project. To that end I wrote, and was