Writing

This is what I was talking about!

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I got my second Honorable Mention from the Writers of the Future contest today!

I think this validates what I was talking about last time I got an Honorable Mention. It took me 5 tries to get my first one, and then only 3 more tries to get my second. That feels like progress folks, and it’s about the only thing I can point to that feels that way.

Now I just have to make sure I finish my current story by September to make the Quarter 4 deadline (I’ve already submitted for Quarter 3). I know any aspiring writer out there would absolutely laugh in my face that I hope to finish 3/4 of a story in 3 months, but I have to tell you, it is about the best I can do at this stage in my life. Writers of the Future deadlines are the only thing that even keep me going. Need I remind you that I only finished 2 stories last year? I’m just happy that I’m more or less keeping the ones I have circulating (and not doing a super job of that either…ones that are destined for electronic-submission markets are okay, but I am doing a very bad job of keeping the ones that are going to postal-submission markets out. I’ve got to get on that!)

Onward and upwards!

Writing Year 2

/ Shane / 1 Comment

This year:

Stories Written: 2
Number of [Submission-Ready] Words: 8,600
Number of Story Submissions: 39
Number of Rejections: 34
Number of Acceptances: 0

Total:

Stories Written: 9
Number of [Submission-Ready] Words: 52,800
Number of Story Submissions: 62
Number of Rejections: 57
Number of Acceptances: 0

Wow, I can’t believe it has been another year already! I thought I had time to catch up a little bit on the writing. I guess not!

Only 2 new stories this year?? On the surface, it’s sort of pathetic compared to last year. However, on further inspection, there are some good things and some bad things. One thing to note, I changed it from “Number of 1st Draft Words” to “Number of [Submission-Ready] Words”. I’m not keeping track of the length of first drafts anymore, because what’s the point? So this number will reflect the size of the first draft that I’m ready to send out (which may be draft 3 or so).

The bad is that I only wrote 2 stories (this does not count the work in progress, which is a little over half way done). Of course Oliver was born in April, but even considering that, my goal for the year was 4 or 5 new stories. Did not get it done! On the other hand, the good is that I actually managed to keep the stories in the mail, more or less. You would expect there to be more submissions with more inventory (a very little more inventory in this case), but at least I was keeping them in circulation, even if I wasn’t writing.

Overall, I would say I had more positive rejections, including an honorable mention from Writers of the Future. Still not as close as I’d like to be by the end of year 2, but making progress nonetheless. What can I say, life (and accordions) intervened.

My goal for next year is going to be 4 stories again. That goal is apparently not as easy as I originally thought! However, my main goal right now is not to miss a quarter of Writers of the Future. I’m hoping that will give me the extra motivation to get it done!

The way I figure it, writing stories is practice. The more you practice something, the better you get. If I practiced more, I’d get better faster. If I don’t, it will just take me longer, but I’ll get there eventually.

Onward and upward!

Cutting Back

/ Shane / 1 Comment

When I first started getting in the game of writing, I was always looking for writing advice. I loved reading author blogs; finding out what their process was and getting a glimpse into the publishing world. So every time I heard about another good author blog, I added it to my RSS feed.

Lately I have removed every last one of them.

There were many reasons for this. The main thing was that I had so many author blogs to read, I never quite found time to write. The problem with authors is that they like to write. Some of these blogs were updated multiple times a day, every day. I was having trouble keeping up. And the vast majority of the updates weren’t related to writing (not that I blame them for that, that would be a little pot-calling-the-kettle-black-ish, considering my own nonsense I spew all over the Internet).

The second problem was that I wasn’t really learning anything new. Most of the blogs just repeat the same advice over and over again. And most of the advice wasn’t really relevant to me (e-books, agents, insider publishing discussion, etc.). It can be debated whether learning about writing is useful or not compared to actually writing, but it is certainly true that NOT learning about writing is a little counter-productive.

So, since the #1 piece of advice that writer blogs offer is to write, write, write, I think they would all be happy with my decision to stop following them. I think that I have a lot more free time already. Now I just have to make sure I spend that time productively, and not just watching t.v.!

To trunk or not to trunk, that is the question

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I am a big believer in Heinlein’s rules. According to those rules, once a story is written you should keep sending it out until it sells.

I think this makes a lot of sense. First off, writers aren’t the best judge of their work. So if you think a story is rotten and you trunk it before anybody sees it, then nobody has a chance to see if it is really as rotten as you think it is. Second off, you’ve already done the work of writing the story. That work will certainly never generate any money if the story is sitting in your closet under your dirty socks. Unless you plan to rewrite it at some time in the future (which may or may not violate another of Heinlein’s rules, depending on the context), then it doesn’t hurt you to keep sending it out there, while you are working on writing better stories. Even if it only gets you $10, that’s $10 you wouldn’t have otherwise.

So, by this logic, you should never trunk a story. However, I would like to present a few mitigating circumstances.

First, one of the stories I’m considering trunking is the first story I ever wrote. Even if I’m not the best judge of my work, I think I can say objectively that it’s not my best. I have also received detailed comments in rejections that I happen to agree with. These comments point out some major holes. As it currently stands, this story may never be publishable, at least by the types of people I would like to be published with. And I didn’t just decide that before it ever saw the light of day, I gave it quite a few tries (13 tries at the time of this post, to be specific).

Second, postage is not free. Each (snail mail) submission costs some small amount. If I send it to 20 more places before selling it for $10, then I would have been better off just cutting and running now. Now, money is not the only motivation to sell a story, so just because you might lose money doesn’t necessarily mean you should stop sending it. However, this leads into my third point.

Finally, I have my reputation to consider. Okay, that was sort of a joke. But in reality, there are magazines I would be proud to be published in, and there would be magazines I wouldn’t be proud to be in. My goal isn’t to be published just anywhere; if that were the case I would just put my stories up on my own website. My goal is to get into pro markets. I would not be satisfied if a story garnered 200 rejections before eventually being published in some fortheluv magazine for a couple of contributer’s copies. That would tell me that, at least for that story, it was not good enough. I can tell myself that all day long and save on the postage.

The thing is, if I really believed in a story, I would push forward no matter what. Some of my stories I really believe in. There are a few that I don’t. So that makes it a little harder to keep looking farther and farther down the market list.

So should I trunk it, or not? I’m leaning towards yes, but I might need a few more rejections to make up my mind.

The funny thing about rejections

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I mentioned recently a story that received an honorable mention from Writers of the Future. The next venue that I sent it to rejected it, but they had nice things to say about it. One of the best rejections I’ve ever gotten. To those of us who practice rejectomancy, that counts as sort of a half-win.

“This story is sort of generating a lot of attention,” says I, “maybe this is the one!”

However, in searching for my next venue, I noticed something funny.

Usually, Writers of the Future is the first place every new story goes. So I assumed that I had sent this story out twice, with decent results. However, when I looked it up, I discovered that I had actually received 5 (form) rejections on that story before sending it to Writers of the Future. So it just so happens that I had 2 interesting rejections in a row, but the majority of the rejections were typical form rejections.

Some pro markets passed on it without a second glance. Others were very nearly interested. It just goes to show you, it’s all about catching the right editor on the right day.

Either way, if I’m even getting in the ballpark, I’d say that’s a sign of improvement!