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Showing posts from 2017

Overstand

Tis the season. For falling into funks. The writing has been proceeding, albeit at a slow pace. I've been hamstrung by the start and stop pace created by the research required to keep this off the ground. Normally, my chapters hover around 2,500 words. That's been strangely consistent across series, across genres, across years. I theorized early on that a specific amount of detail is required, like the rubber casing surrounding copper wires, to transmit understanding and create immersion for the reader. And it depends a lot on where the author is starting, what needs to be explained for the story elements to make sense, so the narrative can proceed. In more modern settings, I found the chapter word count dropping, because everything was so very similar to our modern world. In fantasy settings, not medieval but different worlds entirely, certain things had to be clarified, but where I didn't explain, the trappings created a safety netting in the medieval understanding. Some

Seasonal work

Been under the weather. Yet another phrase I cannot parse. The sickness delayed some things, but only delayed. However, even healthy I likely would've procrastinated in doing the research needed to get the latest project off the ground. I never did go back to looking into agents or researching publishers. I just don't feel right unless I'm writing. Maybe I should talk to someone about that. So, for a few different reasons, waking up at 5 with a story playing in my head was less than ideal. And for a few different other reasons, I rolled out of bed at 5:30 with my hands out, trying to catch the thoughts tumbling out of my mind. Two thousand words in, chiding the sun about finally getting up, I was happier, in general, and I think I was better, too, having learned some things already about my world and the characters in it. It's going to be a longer prologue, I think, an introduction to the internal logic of the space and some of the major actors moving about. I also

Either, or

"I want them to be great writers." I'm not sure why I jumped at that, but I did, as if I didn't need, or want, to hear anything else. Thinking back, there wasn't an ounce of pause in me, not a mote of modesty to wonder at my inability to help with that, or to wonder just how far I had to go to be great myself. Today I start a new job with that as my mission statement. Some years back, a bunch actually, my mentor told me about his lament at discovering the distinction between "a writer who teaches" and a "teacher who writes," and how he had looked up in recent days and discovered that he had become the latter, and the former, his goal, had gotten away from him who knows when. Like a lot of my lessons, I recall thinking to myself, "well, I don't want that to happen to me." So far, it hasn't. Speaking of things that haven't been happening. NaNoSubMo is tanking. I started research only yesterday about publishing and sub

I digress

I think I need to go camping. Let me back up. The submission is done. That one is. Going in, I thought that I would wash my mind of the stress, distract myself after all the triple checking and document attaching with trying to start and then to finish the next story. It is November after all, and I've avoided NaNoWriMo every year someone has asked. I was either in the middle of something, or just finished something else. I finished the submission process November 1, so it only made sense. Except they only allowed one novel per author. I had worked on sharpening three. One fell out because they didn't want that kind of story, and another because, well, there was only one hole and I had two pegs. Instead of feeling like I was ready to move on, I felt like the task wasn't done. I finally looked up the Atlanta Writer's Conference details, and learned how many weeks I was late. They have agents, from publishers most people have heard of. And they have a finite number

Am for now

Tomorrow is the first day of the open submission period I've been aiming at with all the recent refinements and edits. Honestly, I finished the last, latest read-through a week early. Early morning head aches and close-faced line reading made for some dizzying moments. I felt better and worse about everything at the same time. I took a couple days off and went back through the submission guidelines again. Last year they got over 1200 entries, and 300 were rejected because the authors failed to follow instructions. Recent events prompted me to go through some extreme measures to ensure I wouldn't be in that unfortunate group. A one-sentence summary and a synopsis no longer than two, double-spaced, 12-point Times New Roman font pages. At first, I thought I had three books to send, then I read how they don't want young adult. Then I did some heavy deliberation on what young adult fiction is and how the term is defined. What clinched it, I think, is that when I went to write

Playing up

I recently posed a question to a creative professional I know. I presented to him this comparison, a created work completed in ones mid to late 20s, which was over time revisited and in some ways reimagined, versus the second or third draft of a piece completed years later, early to mid 30s. The ages are arbitrary. What I was getting at is one piece was done without the benefit of the extra years of wisdom and understanding, but it was edited and retooled, whereas the other was less modified but it benefitted the most from all available years of experience. His first answer was not an answer. He saw what I was getting at, at what I was really trying to investigate, and he said, "some ideas are just better than others." That struck a cord with me, but more on that later. I further clarified that it wasn't about good or bad, it was more about what is more valuable, what should, everything else being equal, be the better work, the one we complete at our most experienced,

Gain pain

It's been years since I started this, and I'll be the first admit that I haven't done a good job. I don't write often enough. I don't put in pictures or links, both of which would make me more internet savvy, beyond creating a better looking and more digestible online essay. But I've always committed to this in the spirit that maybe I could help some people by being honest with my own struggles. At least, should anyone ever ask me for advice, that's how I plan on giving it. Don't take this road, or don't open that door. I will, with the best of my talent, tell them what road I took, what door I opened, and how it all looked when the wash came out. In that spirit: feedback. Once upon a time I submitted 7 of the 11 pages of a short story for a competition. I got called into my mentor's office, where he asked me to look at my submission, and then asked my confused face if I noticed anything wrong. He told me to be careful about that in the future

Be-foresight

I took an email journey the other day, looking for a name to put with a face, and realized that all of the accounts I still use only go back to 2012. In every case, when I got to the beginning, I peered into the mists for awhile, trying to use my memory where there existed no physical record. The strange juxtaposition was between knowing I had history, memories, correspondences, but there was no way for me to verify any of it. Like it never happened. For instance, in November of 2006 my mentor took me to the local, yearly writer's conference. Graduation was coming, and I had finally settled on what would be stamped on my degree. I had taken every creative writing class, every writing class of any kind, my alma mater had to offer. He was the one who told me I could do it for a living. He was the one who told me I had talent. He was also the one who told me that if I did anything else with my life, I would make more money. What he said at the conference was something to the effect

Missing words

Silver Age is up, and for sale. I made the mistake of checking the sales on the self-publishing interface. The lesson was painful, but also valuable. Honestly, I learned a lot during that process. Not least of which is what the mastery of Photoshop can do for an artist. It's such a ubiquitous concept that I misappropriated the use of the program with the population of the skill. The fact of the matter is, it is very, very powerful and expensive software, and it allows for an incredible range of manipulation. I am not sure how yet, but I vow to do better with my cover artists in the future. I also have a better appreciation for the work publishers do. There will always be disputes, I think, but I also believe it was good to see how the other side toils. In the mean time, I have been writing, as per usual. The novel has a handful of chapters yet, with today's drafting, and the nightmares are right on time. Several ideas mashed together the other night and a horribly, monstrou

Maybe it's me

I've been accused of being a fixer, on more than one occasion. Something happens, something negative, and the person wants to share, or vent, or commiserate. All I can ever focus on is how to fix it, change it, prevent it from happening again. Today I received some very disappointing news dealing with my own situation, and my first reaction was to tinker. I was relieved to know that I'm nothing if not consistent, and I was able to fully understand why I am not apt to passively mourn. I thought, well, I'm going to be sad, and this is going to be difficult, that's the easy part. That part happens whether I am productive or not. I also thought that maybe it was somehow my fault, and looking back, I recognized that I usually assume that's the case. That it's safer to believe that it's my fault, that somehow that is the less arrogant conclusion. Or maybe if it's my fault, I don't forfeit control. I haven't blogged, naturally. I went into a frenzy o

Not today and not here

Tomorrow I will be embarking on a road trip. I can't remember the last time I travelled anywhere physically. If I'm being honest, everyone asking me if I'm ready for the trip makes me feel unprepared. I will also admit that as I type this, I have yet to pack. This week I have been working in construction. Or deconstruction, I suppose. I was hired as a helping hand to tear something down. It had been built poorly, apparently, and was very long not in use, covered in all manner of discarded and disregarded items. A dumping ground on top of a lost space. It was interesting, unearthing the mysteries there, and even more so to finally begin to get at the miserable undercarriage. Dangerously rickety and half-fallen over, and yet, when the crowbars and hammers and in the end, chainsaws, went to work, the fixture proved mightily fastened to the world. The whole thing reminded me of a number of stubborn old people I've known. At one point in the process, a large pile of steel

Good enough to dream

Rejection is fairly commonplace, I think. I was told that I could only expect a single interview out of twenty submitted applications. I don't know the numbers for post graduate, but several of my emails in reply had the phrase "we receive hundreds of applications every year," as some sort of explanation. Romance is romance. People look for "the one," and singling up is implied in monogamy, but that's a needle in quite the haystack. It's interesting because other words I hear as often as I hear the word no begin to lose meaning as I drift down into the rabbit hole of what words mean, the why of letters, and the bedrock of language concept. For artistic types. rejection is even more apart of their existence. I've seen hours of interviews concerning successful creative professionals and their childhoods, their formative years, and the pre-fame portions of their careers and how most people they encountered had no conception of what it would be to bec