Writing

Achievement Unlocked!

/ Shane / 6 Comments

I have an announcement to make.

In my spare time, I have been secretly writing and trying to sell professional-level short fiction. (Specifically speculative fiction, which includes fantasy, science fiction, and horror.) At first I (very, very) naively believed that this would be a snap. Even though I tried to tell myself it wasn’t so, I still secretly thought I was a hot-shot natural who would type up a story or two and then the acceptances would start rolling in.

3 1/2 years and 132 rejections later, my eyes have been opened.

Writing a story that an editor wants to publish is a lot harder than I ever imagined. Even just getting down on paper the story you imagine in your head is a lot harder than I ever imagined. Furthermore, that’s not even the hard part; the hard part is finding time to keep writing when the rejections, dishes, and laundry are piling up, and you have two small kids who need 110% of your effort, to say nothing of a full time job.

Way back at the beginning, I decided to keep my fiction writing a secret “until such time that I feel this whole idea is not foolish. Or, until I decide that it is completely foolish and we can all have a good laugh about it.”

Well, I can finally say it is the former rather than the latter. I am pleased to announce that my story, “My Heart is a Quadratic Equation” will appear in the September issue of Redstone Science Fiction!

It feels so good to finally have a win (even if the score is 132 to 1) that I am “coming out of the closet” so to speak with my illicit, night-time fiction writing. Momentarily I will unlock the “Writing” category and all the posts contained therein. If you feel the need to go back and read them, please remember that 3 1/2 years ago I was more or less a clueless idiot when it came to professional writing.  (I’m sure that in another 3 1/2 years I will look back at this post and consider my current self more or less a clueless idiot when it comes to professional writing.)

So there it is. You can be sure I will link to the story when it goes live on their website, and from here on out, any other information about my writing.

The first of many!

Time to put up or shut up

/ Shane / 3 Comments

Evie really loves to hear stories, and lately she has been specifically honing in on stories about us when we were kids. The other day I was telling her one of my favorite polished old chestnuts and Sara said, “That’s a really good story. You should write it in a book.”

Since then, I have been thinking a lot about trying to write something a little less “fictional”, and I have decided that it is time to take the plunge into novel territory.

If you recall, right from the very beginning, this entire short story experiment was a gateway into novel writing. A way to get my toes wet, if you will. However, there are a few particular difficulties with novel writing. The thing is, writing a novel is a huge undertaking with no guarantee that you’re actually any good at it. You can will sink massive amounts of time and effort into it, only to find out that your novel sucks and writing’s just not for you. Everybody thinks they are good enough to write a novel, but most of them (most of us) are wrong. How do I know if I’m any different? And even if it is for you, most pros and editors will tell you to just throw your first novel out and start on a second, because your first effort is never going to be any good. So my thinking on that was, if my short stories get any traction, then that will confirm that my writing is decent enough to make it worth a shot. Sort of an insurance policy against all the time I’d be committing to.

Well, that hasn’t happened yet. Although I often feel like I’m on the verge of breaking in, I definitely can’t say I’ve been officially “approved” as a good writer, since no editor has ever selected a story of mine.

Second off, I just didn’t know if I had enough time to put into a novel. A typical young adult novel is about 50,000 – 60,000 words (as opposed to 80k for adult science fiction or 100k+ for epic fantasy). I usually do about 5-6k every three months (in time to submit for Writers of the Future). So call that 1,800 words a month, and we’d be talking right around 31 months to write a typical young adult novel. (And that’s also assuming I don’t write anything else during that 2 1/2 years, which means no more short story submissions…I’m not sure if I’m ready for that! Especially when I feel like I’m so close!)

This is why I haven’t bitten off a project that big before, though I’ve always really wanted to.

So why now? Well, I’m sort of hoping that writing this novel will be something of a special case, since a) it would be personal, b) I’ve been telling a lot of those stories for years, and thus polishing them, and c) if it never sells, it won’t be time wasted, since I will still have produced something that I can share with my family.

But if I’m just writing it for my kids, then you might wonder “Why are you making it such a big project? Why does it have to be a ‘real’ book, and not just something you throw together?” Well, for a few reasons. First and foremost, if I’m going to do it, I’d want to do it right. If it’s not good enough that I would feel comfortable submitting it to someone, then why even try? I don’t want to write a crappy book, even if it’s just for my family. Especially if it is going to consume 3 years of my life. Second off, I’ve always wanted to write a book, so if I don’t try to really do this right then I still can’t say I’ve tried to write a book. I still won’t know if I can really do it or not.

Here’s the thing though: I really don’t think I could maintain working on a novel for 2 1/2 years (or 3 by the time you have re-writes, etc.) That’s just too long to put into one project without losing interest. One of the best parts of writing short stories is that if you lose interest in one story, you can always start on a fresh new idea the next day.

Long story short, if I really wanted to do it, I think I couldn’t do it at the current writing rate.  I think instead what I would need to do is something drastic: no Facebook, heck, no Internet at home in the evenings, no knitting, no movie watching, no playing guitar, no accordion practice, no nothing (except stuff that needs to be done of course, like work, dishes, laundry, etc.) Basically, all free time goes towards the book. I’m going to try for a word count of 3,000 words a week (not too hefty, I know, but a *huge* increase from where I’m at right now). If I could maintain that, I could hit 55,000 words in under 5 months, sooner or later depending.

Hey, people do novels in a month during NaNoWriMo, right?

So, starting yesterday, I’m going to try super-lockdown-writing mode. I’ve already cut Twitter and Google+ and trimmed my Facebook lists and Google Reader. I’ve un-followed, un-subscribed, and de-friended everybody I possibly could (which was very, very difficult in a few cases). Doesn’t matter, time to try out being disciplined. I’m not sure yet how this will affect the blog, but I think I’m going to cut out Friday posts (they get the least amount of traffic anyway), and possibly cut another day if necessary.

I’ve got about 700 words left on my current story, which I can hopefully finish tonight, and then I’ll start in full steam on the novel. ::gulp:: Here’s hoping!

Engage the Blog Brain

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I posted awhile ago about whether blogging helps with author voice or not. Lately it has been occurring to me that blogging might be able to help me with another aspect of craft: the speed at which I write.

I write *so* much faster when I blog, but how do I engage that for fiction writing? It would be a huge jump in productivity for me. Basically, I think that when I’m blogging I am writing more directly from my stream of consciousness, and when I’m writing fiction I spend more time thinking about every little word choice. Occasionally I tap into my subconscious and write faster, especially when I know a scene very well or I get close to the end of the story where all the little threads are starting to come together. So I think that it is possible, but for some reason it just comes more naturally to me when I’m blogging.

I have to think that a lot of it is just practice. I’m so used to writing in my own voice that I can do it seamlessly, but when I’m out of that head-space all of these other little things start to creep in and slow me down, moving me from the deep “feeling” part of my brain to a more frontal “thinking” part of my brain. But as I write fiction more and more, I’m hoping to break through into “writing beast mode” more and more often, until I can slip into it at will. Like a dislocated shoulder, the more it happens, the easier it is to do it again, right?

It’s kind of like when I was learning how to play the guitar. At first it seemed *impossible* that I would ever be able to get the fingering right. Many times I thought to myself, “I’m just not meant to do this, in fact, maybe I am physically unable do it.” And then I practiced and practiced and then one day I found that I was just doing it.

Lately I’ve been thinking about writing some non-fiction, or at least some literary fiction that is closer to home. Perhaps I can “trick” my brain into slipping into Blog Brain often enough that it becomes a permanent habit.

Now all I need is all that practice.

But what does it all mean?

/ Shane / 1 Comment

It is so hard not to participate in rejectomancy.

The editor of a magazine that has a story of mine just followed me on Twitter. That’s got to be a good sign, right?

But here’s the thing: I don’t list my twitter on my cover letter. I do list my website which in turn lists my twitter, which would seem to indicate that said editor has been to my website, no?

Perhaps I’m reading too much into this…

[Edit: I wasn’t.]

Things that Annoy Me, Writing Edition

/ Shane / Leave a comment
I could have called this the “cliche” edition, because the main reason all of these things drive me nuts is because I see them over, and over, and over again. And you know, most of them come down to someone trying to be cute. Nothing annoys me faster than someone trying too hard to be cute.
  1. The fact that every writer’s bio starts with, “She’s been writing stories since she was six…” or “His first story was scribbled on a napkin at the age of four…” Yeah we get it, you like to write, always have, always will. That’s sort of proven by the fact that you’ve A) finished at least one book, and B) you’ve had the drive to persevere long enough to get it published. Among published authors, it doesn’t make you unique, it makes you normal. The whole point of putting that in there is because you think you’re some kind of phenom I guess, but based on the number of author bios I’ve seen this in, it makes you anything but. So why mention it? Everybody has the same story, doesn’t that automatically make it uninteresting? Shouldn’t authors know how to make words interesting? If you were such hot shit at age 5, why didn’t you get that first story published instead of this one?
  2. “Oh, you know, my characters did this, my characters did that…I just couldn’t control them!” I know that this is really a result of someone trying to put into words something that is hard to put into words: the fact that, once you have developed a character and a story, the words start to flow freely, because once you know everything, it all happens naturally. In addition, once you know how a character thinks and acts, you sometimes find out that events you had pre-planned no longer work. But that’s a result of your poor planning, not of your characters coming to life! That’s the natural evolution of a story: things that you thought would work out end up not working out after all. So as long as that’s what you mean when you say your character took control, I’m fine with it. Just don’t try to pretend like your characters exist outside of yourself though. It makes you sound pretentious.
  3. “My muse tells me…”, or “Oh, I never know when my muse will strike!” or “::shrug:: I guess my muse wasn’t with me that day.” Again, best case scenario, you’re just trying to use a trite phrase to indicate that writing is difficult or sometimes inconsistent. But even then, why use the word “muse”? I guess it’s supposed to seem quirky or interesting somehow? Worst case scenario, you’re using words to give yourself a built in excuse for not writing well or not succeeding. And everything I’ve ever read from pros indicates that you better teach yourself how to perform when you need to, not when your “muse is upon you”.
  4. When someone asks a writer how they wrote such an amazing story, and they answer “I just wrote a story I would want to read.” So simple isn’t it? Of course, that’s what everybody is *trying* to do, so the question is really asking, “How did you manage to accomplish that?” I can assure you, nobody who is putting pen to paper is trying to write a story that nobody would want to read.
  5. “You should be a writer!” Oh, if I had a dime for every time I heard that one. Believe me, I’m trying. If it were so easy, then I guess everybody would do it. I realize that nobody knows I’m actually trying to be a writer, but nevertheless, it does kind of trivialize the effort I’ve been putting in.