Month: April 2009

Not too bad…

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

The goals were set high and I fell short on a few. That pesky kitchen is taking forever; people keep messing it up as I try to clean it. Couldn’t we all just stop eating for the weekend? And those tests are still untouched. I’ll set my goals for the week here, though that does technically mean it didn’t get done over the weekend.

On the upside, I breezed past my word count target last night.  A lot of those words may get cut before the end, but that’s irrelevant.  I got the contest entry out to coolstuff, got the living room clean (with help from my wife), filled a box with dirt, sent off the headset, saw some waterfalls, even replaced a leaky shower head with a cool two-head model (not on the list).  A successful weekend despite the unfinished list.  I’m a little disappointed with my eating habits for the past few days, but that’s a different post.

So goals for this week (outside menial day-to-day stuff):

  • remember my soccer ticket duty for Tuesday and show up
  • grade those blasted tests!
  • print and distribute the last of the review worksheets for my classes
  • get answer sheets for those worksheets printed and reserve time for the students to use them

Those are all school-related goals.  There’s a high-stakes test next week so these goals are at the forefront of my attention, but they fall within the school day and aren’t that big a deal.

  • write 500 new words
  • rewrite “Secondhand Rush” 
  • finish cleaning the blasted kitchen!
  • catch up the laundry
  • lose 2 pounds
  • fix the invisible fence

The fence might not get done, but I want to try.  I thing a mole chewed through it.  Speaking of…

  • poison those stupid moles

The low word count is practical considering the school pressure I’m under the next couple weeks.  That should jump after the big test.  Anyway, let’s see how I do.

Goals are good

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

A while back (like here), I set a goal to have five stories under consideration all at once.  I managed that today as part of another goal (set yeaterday, not bothering to link) to get my contest entry out to CoolStuff4Writers.com.  No, that’s not technically a story submission, but the scene is definitely a stand-alone story with a bit of a cliffhanger ending.  I’ll try to get another one out there soon — maybe as early as Tuesday — to make me feel better about the whole thing.  Anyway, here’s what’s out there:

Story Market Submitted
Glow Baby Writers of the Future 28-Mar-09
Excuse Me Rejected Quarterly 9-Apr-09
How Quickly We Forget Every Day Fiction 9-Apr-09
Brother Goo Beyond Centauri 10-Apr-09
A Game of Telephone CoolStuff4Writers Contest 25-Apr-09

Bad excuses

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

I have accomplished a paltry couple-hundred words or so this week.  Pitiful.  There is no excuse for my poor progress.  School has been hectic, but not unlivably so.  I have started this pesky diet, which leaves me feeling a bit weak and light headed at times (like right now) and makes it hard to concentrate.  The feeling will pass in a few days when my metabolism gets used to my lack of binges and severely reduced intake of both sugar and caffeine.  The diet is making it tough to focus today.  I’m going to try to get at least a thousand words in this weekend.

I need to brush up my all-dialog story and send it to coolstuff4writers.com (big thanks to Tracie and Jamie for their comments).  I also need to build some momentum on my brilliant brainstorm story.  And that old story I rediscovered that needs a rewrite.  Lots to do but it ain’t getting done.

Maybe displaying my goals for the weekend will help me attain them.  Here they are:

  • 1000 words minimum of new writing [1300 baby!]
  • polish and send the story to coolstuff4writers.com [done]
  • fill my wife’s garden with a load of dirt [done]
  • get the kitchen and living room clean [1 down]
  • grade my stack of long-ignored factoring tests
  • send back my mildly defective headphones [done]
  • take a hike [done, but shorter than planned]
  • set more goals for next week

So it’s not all about writing.  Knowing what’s there helps me schedule.  I’ll update Monday to let you know which goals I achieved…and which fell short.

-Oso

It’s time…

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

One of my Facebook friends — my former college roommate –today posted his intention to start losing weight.  He weighs only a small Thanksgiving turkey more than m and I decided to join him in his endeavor.  I think doing this together will be beneficial; neither of us is the type to let the other run away with all the success.  As long as one of us makes progress, I suspect the other will tag along.  If we both shrug our shoulders at the first donut, well then we fail together.

I am no stranger to weight loss attempts.  I got down to 240 a couple years ago (shortly after my daughter’s birth) while my wife was losing with me.  It took longer to gain the weight back than to lose it, which was comforting if only mildly.

For Lent, I pledged to get back on my diet.  That didn’t work.  The stress of waiting to hear from the Clarions was my excuse to falter.  I am the kind of person that eats when he is stressed…or happy…or tired…bored…awake…

I feel better when I am lighter.  Imagine wearing a 40 pound jacket that you have no need for.  It makes me slower, I tire easily, I’m always hot.  It sucks.  Does it suck more than I like donuts?  It might, but it’s a close race.

Food is my drug of choice.  I’m an addict.  Compulsive overeater.  They don’t make a patch for this.  They make pills, but no thanks.  I’m not exactly quitting cold turkey (still have to eat), but I’m doing it on my own (well, me and my old roomie).  No rehab, no Biggest Loser, no electroshock therapy.  I’ll approximate the Weight Watcher’s plan that worked so well for me before.  (Wikipedia has the “points” formula posted.  I would link to it, but I  question the legality of their sharing.)  That combined with some not-too-tough exercizing should melt the pounds away at a steady rate.  I’ll be hungry as my dog is scruffy, but I can do it.

I hope.

-Oso

Long time, no me

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

I was disappointed to see I got zero hits on this blog the other day.  Then I checked and saw it had been a week since my last post.  Ack!  Sorry about that, folks.  I wish I could say I’ve been too busy writing to make my blog posts, but I can’t.  My writing has been slow and in tiny fragments.  It is life that has kept me busy.  Not a good excuse for someone who calls himself a writer, but it’s true.

So what’s been going on?  A lot of teaching (not sure how much learning has occurred), a lot of time with my daughter (fun time and fussy time), some sleeping, some gardening (yuck), and…I don’t know, stuff.  There have been other things neglected, too.  I have a very old stack of tests that still isn’t graded.  My house is a wreck (I did attack some of that last night but not enough to downgrade the wreck to mess).  

On the upside, I received a package I’d been waiting for: my wireless headphones!  My daughter’s bedroom is about six feet away from the living room television, so the wife and I had to watch with a thumb on the volume.  Turn it down when people yell, guns fire, things blow up; turn it up when people are talking normally or whispering.  We often had subtitles on so we could tell what was going on.  With the headphones, we can both listen without difficulty and without worrying about waking the toddler.  The headphones are Sennheiser 120s: big, on-ear (as opposed to over-ear or in-ear) models with rechargeable batteries and a nice charging stand.  Comfortable, too.  One pair does seem to have a weak speaker for the right ear, but I often find this the case with headphones and wonder if that’s a typical thing.  Or maybe my right ear is where the problem is.  I’ll compare the two headsets again tonight.  If there is a significant difference, I may return the suspect pair…if I can.  The one giving me trouble was refurbished, so I may be stuck with it.  We’ll see. 

I’m setting a goal to put something significant on here this week.  Nothing monumental, but some sort of useful insight I have gleaned from a decade of floundering as a writer.  Check back soon.

-Oso

Ever feel brilliant?

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

Some days I feel like I am a genius.  This usually happens on days where I don’t get a lot of actual writing done.  Today is one of those days.

I was once an outliner, using the whole Roman numeral system and everything, just like they taught me in middle school.  I eventually regressed to a bullet system, but even that is often too rigid for my short fiction.  Now I do almost all of my story planning in freewriting exercises (also something i learned in middle school).  It usually just helps me find character motivations, flesh out plots.  Today it worked a miracle.

Okay, it’s probably not the freewriting.  Only so much of it is even me.  I got my inspiration from, of all places, a reality television show.  The rest came from about a dozen of those writing books that line my bookshelf (many described here).  I kept asking myslf the right questions.  Like what?  The biggest: What human truth am I revealing with this story?  According to Kate Wilhelm’s Storyteller, triviality is a regular problem with stories, even at Clarion.  I suffer that problem a lot.  I am pleased to say that this story isn’t planned to be trivial.  How about that, huh?  (Sorry, watching Leno as I type.)

Other questions: Why do I care?  Who’s viewpoint is the most dramatic?  Why would she do that?  How would I accomplish this or that goal?  It’s all basic stuff, but I finally feel like I’m asking the right questions at the right time.

I realize, this late in the post, that most of you probably don’t care.  I sound kind of like I’m bragging.  Maybe I am.  It has seemed recently that everything I’ve been writing has either slipped out too smoothly or bogged down in attempts  be relevant only to end up monotonous.  People keep telling me that making the Clarion West waitlist this year means I’ll surely make it next year (unless lightning hits Jordan Lapp before June).  But I hadn’t felt like the ideas hitting me had the potential to be any better than “Leech Run” or “Glow Baby”.  This one could be.  I’m excited about my good idea and I’m taking it out on you.

Reality check: I haven’t written the first word yet.  I have my main characters (mother and daughter named Evelyn and Kelby Abrams), an opening scene idea (think the opening of The Great Gatsby set in a CEO’s waiting lounge), a POV (Kelby’s), the antagonist’s motvation, the SF plot points, comuppance, a major foreshadowing element, a few minor characters, and that great human truth that so many of us endure…but they are all ideas in paraphrased forms that may or may not play out in words the way I envision them.  Basiclly, I’ve done the easy part.  Next comes the gruesome act of spewing this into narrative form, followd by the painful art of revision and editing.  It’s like I’m looing at Everest from basecamp praising myself for making it this far.

Still, I am thrilled that my brain has returned to me.  I go through phases like this, where I don’t feel like I’m getting anywhere just to come out of it a long way ahead of where I fell off.  My monkey paw touched the monolith.  Now let’s see what I can do with this bone.

I should be ashamed of myself

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 4 Comments

I am just shameless enough to use my blog for this.  Maybe someone can help me out.  I knowthere are a few competent writers out there reading my blog (no names so I don’t put anyone on the spot or leave anyone out) and I am looking for a favor.  First, some background.

I stumbled across a contest at coolstuff4writers.com that challenges writers to write a scene using only dialogue.  I sat down and started playing with it.  I started out with some detective and lieutenant talking about a perp and bored myself sufficiently to delete the whole thing and start over.

I’m much happier with what I have now.  It’s more than a scene; it’s a one-scene story…I think.  It takes place over the phone and I really felt the need for a line of explanation as to who hung up.  The contest (which I haven’t conclusively decided to enter) seems to prohibit even that much.  I think I managed to end things (a bit of a dangling ending, but that works sometimes), I just want some feedback.

I guess what I’m (shamelessly) asking is: anyone got time to skim a 1200-word story just to let me know if it has an ending?  Let me know and I’ll send you a copy.  Other commentary would be welcome, but the ending is mainly what I’m looking for.

Normally I’d take it to Critters or maybe Baen’s Bar, but it’s not technically a “ready” story.  That and the contest has a deadline.  I’d be happy to offer a reciprocal critique to any takers.  No pressure though; I know how my schedule gets.  Just thought I’d ask.

-Oso

free stuff from my past

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I dug through a file on my computer called “sold stories” and found some gems that will not likely be sold as reprints unless I make it big or need filler for my own anthology. Not to say they were bad stories — they sold, didn’t they? — but they aree clearly from my past.

I decided to post one of those stories here, despite mixed opinions from my readers.  The story I’m posting (right now) is “Blood of a Soldier”, my 5000-word military-vampire story.  It’s probably more science fiction than it is horror, but it does get a touch graphic.  I am more disturbed by some of the amateur flags I flew throughout the story (watch for my not-too-blatant “said bookisms”).  Still, there are a few well-turned phrases and a lot of my preferred direct style.  Surprisingly there is little in the way of dialog; I feel I’m usually strong with dialog and fill stories with it because of that.

Anyway, this is where I’ve been.  Stories like this got me this far.  Depending on its reception, I mayreplace it sometime in the future, but it’ll be here for a while.  I don’t have a trunk of pieces I’m ready to fling around for free…at least not yet.  Maybe someday.  For now, enjoy.

rejected but not dejected

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

I just got the mail and it had a form rejection from Cricket magazine.  So “Brother Goo” is ripe for another market.  Which?  I’m not sure.  I think I need to plan my backup markets a little better to get the stories back out faster.  I’ll figure out the market today and try to get it outby tomorrow.

This will put me another step closer to my twenty-six submission goal for 2009.  I don’t like getting rejections, but a quick no is better than a slow no.

Now I’m going to try to get five stories out for consideration at a time, since I have three out, one almost ready, and one near end of first draft.  I can do it.  I think.

-Oso

Submission streak

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

I have just surpassed my submission total from 2008.  And that doesn’t even include my applications to Clarion or Clarion West.  It is April, right?

I have always been a slow submitter.  I didn’t keep very good records when I started.  I seldom had more than one or two stories in the wind at a time.  Right now I have four.  Okay, three since “Leech Run” is obviously not getting scooped out of the slush at Baen’s Universe.  Still, “Brother Goo”, “Glow Baby”, and “Excuse Me” are all out being considered.  I also intend to send one tentatively titled “How Quickly We Forget” to Every Day Fiction (depending on how it looks when I read it over; it’s a one-draft story right now).  My Kree story is really close to finishing its first draft and its process should speed up soon.

This may not sound like much, but it’s a gushing output for me.  In my own submission defense, I spent a lot of time the past couple years hopping from unfinished novel to unfinished novel, a lot less focus on shorts.  Still, my work ethis was poor and my submission confidence was low.  The community I discovered while applying to the Clarions has helped me greatly.  My good showing on the CW list and my WotF HM (I’d like to buy a vowel) have helped my confidence, too.

My new goal is to surpass my total of documented submissions before December.  That’s just twenty-six including stories I sent to the Critters workshop.  I’ve sent more — I only started keeping track in 2004 — but twenty-six is a lofty goal for me, full time job and all.  Of course acceptances are likely to slow the pace down, them taking longer to process and forcing to write new stuff to submit.  If that forces me short of my goal, I’ll find a way to cope.

-Oso