Author: Shane

Writing Year 4

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My writing anniversary is March 1st. Every year on March 1st, I write a post about how the previous year went in terms of writing. I think it speaks to how well this year is going as far as writing is concerned that I just completely missed March 1st this year! So I’m writing this post as of March 1st (i.e. not counting rejections or new submissions since then), just to keep things consistent.

This year:

Stories Written: 3
Number of [Submission-Ready] Words: 12,700
Number of Story Submissions: 61
Number of Rejections: 50
Number of Acceptances: 2(!)
Postage Costs: $2.40
Revenue: $144.88

Total:

Stories Written: 18
Number of [Submission-Ready] Words: 86,000
Number of Story Submissions: 175
Number of Rejections: 165
Number of Acceptances: 2
Postage Costs: $116.59
Revenue: $144.88

The big news obviously is that I sold 2 stories this year, and came out of the closet (so to speak) about writing. After 3 years of toiling in obscurity with the rejections mounting up, this has been a phenomenally successful year for me. Of course, 2 acceptances to 165 rejections, that’s still only a 1.2% acceptance rate, lest my britches get too big.

You will notice that my lifetime revenue now exceeds my lifetime postage costs! Exciting. However, that’s postage only. Luckily I almost never need postage or ink these days, but I did donate $10 to Duotrope, and buy a $30 iPad bluetooth keyboard for writing. So I’m still net negative lifetime (even without considering ink). I’m no longer using Duotrope, but I’ll probably donate something to The Grinder this year instead.

My first thought on looking at the stats was, “Only 3 stories last year? That can’t be right!” Actually, I think it is, with a few caveats. First off, I put 20,000+ words into a novel, which is not counted there. Second, I had a story finished just before March last year, which I counted last year, and I actually have 2 stories I just finished in the last few weeks, which I’ll take credit for next year. So 3 might be technically correct, even though it doesn’t tell the whole story.

I also finally got around to trunking a few stories, and I think I’m about to trunk a bunch more. I don’t know if it’s because my writing has improved, and so my older stories look worse to me now, or if it’s just because I’m published and thus more snobby. But I start to think about certain stories that have been rejected everywhere and have mostly run through the list of markets I like, and I start to say, “If this does get published, would I still want people to see it? Is it up to the level of the other stuff I’ve published? Would I want this magazine on my “resume” of places I’ve published?” So yeah, I guess totally snobby.

I also joined Codex, an online writer’s group. This has been an amazing so far, for so many reasons. It’s very nice to have someone to talk to about writing (believe me, Sara hears about as much as she can handle). Also, I spent so long researching how to get started writing, and now that I’ve sold a few things, it’s really nice to tap into sort of the next level of research and talk to people who are more in a similar boat. Big thanks to David Steffen of Diabolical Plots for recommending it to me.

As usual, onward and upward. But it feels great to finally see a little bit of onward and upward progress!

Quote Monday is proud of itself

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Ollie: “I used to have a stinky toot in my bottom.”
Me: “It’s not in there anymore?”
Ollie: “No. I stinked it out.”

An 8 year old girl: “The babies don’t like Mitt Romney anymore.”
Sara: “Why not?”
8 year old: “Because he wanted to cancel Sesame Street.”
8 year old: “Adults don’t like him anymore either.”
Sara: “Oh yeah? I guess not.”
8 year old: “He said the f-word.”

Ollie: “I don’t want to clean up, not anymore.”
Me: blah blah blah “responsibility” blah blah blah “value of hard work” blah blah “…and when you’re done, you’ll feel very proud of yourself.”
Ollie, not impressed: “I already feel proud of myself.”

Evie: “I’m pretending my Barbie is Shirley Jones.”
Sara: “Nobody’s said that for 40 years.”

There is such a thing as a robot camel jockey

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My friends. Ohhhh my friends. What a wonderful, wonderful world we live in.

Did you know that somewhere in the world, possibly right at this moment, robots are racing camels? It’s true.

Apparently, the wildly popular sport of camel racing had just a teensy bit of a dark side:

Camel racing has been around for thousands of years. “The Sport of Sheiks” almost exclusively utilized small children, usually boys around the age of four, to ride and direct the camels. Often, the boys would be starved to be as light as possible. Many of the boys used for the races were often sold to race organizers or camel owners, and there was an active child slave trade for camel jockeys, involving victims of kidnapping or the children of destitute families who sold them into servitude.

Yeaaaaah. Whoops.

The elegant solution? Robots. Ranging from the realistic:

To the simplistic:

Not only do the robots save the lives of these poor boys, it also allows the owners to take a more active role. If you’re going to drop the kind of cash it takes to enter into a competitive breeding and racing program, wouldn’t you rather be holding the remote control than just sitting on the sidelines watching?

What is it about robots riding camels that is so outrageously awesome? It’s like the sport of the future mixed with the sport of the past.

How is this not popular in the U.S.? How is it not televised?

WHY AM I NOT WATCHING IT RIGHT NOW??

Lonely Eats the Pancake Maker

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We take our pancakes seriously in this house. For the past several years, we have made pancakes every Sunday morning, like clockwork. Of course, this tradition goes over *very* well with the kids, which means we need to make at least a double batch, and a triple batch if we want to have leftovers for weekday breakfasts. Picky Evie generally tries to eat her entire week’s allotment of food in that one meal. Last week, she ate 13 pancakes (granted, smallish, but still).

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Even with two griddles going, demand far outstrips supply, and the kids are clamoring for more as fast as I can make them. Right about when I’m finishing up cooking the last of the batter, everybody else finally gets their fill, which means by the time I sit down, I eat solo.

Like all of the best traditions, it evolved organically, but is now firmly entrenched in the fiber of our family. I’m not joking when I say that I think all four of us look forward to Pancake Day. As traditions go, it’s not the worst thing in the world.

My favorite part about Pancake Day, is trying different recipes. There’s our famous pumpkin pioneer pancakes, slow rise pancakes, and coconut pancakes with pineapple sauce (wow, been too long since I’ve posted a pancake recipe on here!). We’ve done crepes, Dutch babies, and sour yogurt pancakes. Pancakes with jam, pancakes with marmalade, and pancakes with lots and lots of maple syrup. Blueberry pancakes, walnut pancakes, and peanut butter pancakes. And then there’s French toast. Don’t even get me started on French toast!

I hope that we have Pancake Day for the next 20 years. I hope that when my kids are teenagers, they make sure they’re home (and awake) on Sunday morning (don’t worry, I’m not holding my breath). I hope that when my kids have kids of their own, they make pancakes on Sunday.

Long live Pancake Day!

A friendly neighbor, a late night rendezvous, and a Scotch egg

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I would like to tell you a tale. A romance, if you will. Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Chicago where we lay our scene.

And just like Romeo and Juliet, our tale begins on Facebook…

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For the uninitiated, a Scotch egg is a treat most decadent. It’s like a heart attack wrapped in a hard-boiled egg, wrapped in sausage and breading, and deep-fried in deliciousness.

Alas, Eliza, fair maker of said delicious delicacy, lives on the 3rd floor two buildings down. And I in my pajamas did thus set out to procure the item of my desires, with naught but a scarf with which to catch the plummeting beauty.

Like Romeo, I stood under yonder balcony, but in the very process of texting, “Wherefore art thou Scotch Egg?” I perceived yon intercom crackling to life and beaconing me inside. Thus, disappointed to not actually be catching my lovely amid her three story drop, I instead mounted to the sky to meet her in all of her tinfoil-and-plastic-bag wrapped glory.

Alas, as romances often do, this story was fated to end in tragedy. Both for the Scotch egg, which met with cruel fate:

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and for me, since I will now ultimately die of a heart disease-related illness.

For never a story of more woe did beg,
Than this of Shane and his Scotch egg.

fin