Month: November 2011

Five out the door

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 4 Comments

Once again my story submissions have slipped past my notice and the number of stories in circulation reached dangerously low levels.  I managed to get five back out the door this weekend with another five lying in wait of attention.  Maybe I’ll get them out by week’s end.

I need to do a thorough, introspective analysis of why I don’t do a better job of keeping them moving.  Heck, one of those had only been to one market…in January.  I let a perfectly good story sit and fester for ten months?  Okay, it wasn’t really a “perfectly good” story.  I recently described it as “unsaleable” which is pretty much the opposite of “perfectly good”.  I was wrong, though, and now the story is out in the world, rubbing elbows with perfectly good stories.  I’m making it a personal goal to sell that one.

I won’t wax on about how I need to get in gear on my steampunk story.  That horse has been beaten to death.  I made a little progress over Thanksgiving, but I need to grind out about 8k by Thursday to meet my goal of a finished draft by month’s end.  Yeah…no point exploring the odds of that happening.

More when it’s less 1-AM-ish.

Look for Me on Boxing Day

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

The day after Christmas, a time where people sit around the house and decompress.  A perfect day to read a story from Daily Science Fiction.  At least I’m hoping so since that’s the day my story “Ten Seconds” is scheduled to be released.   It’s a fun little piece starring some middle grade students.  Another flash, but I’ve gotten pretty decent at writing those.

“Ten Seconds” marks my sixth publication of a story 1000 words or less; seventh if you count “Not Rats” which was originally flash then edited to longer.  Quite a ratio of flash to other.  It explains why I’m having so much trouble writing longer stuff.

I’m currently tapping away at a novelette-length piece, that steampunk story I keep mentioning.  I’d be a lot further with it if some personal stuff hadn’t come up and derailed my life.  Nothing I want to talk about, but a definite life-changing moment I’d sooner forget.  Anyway, after that it’s back to my festival-of-the-naked-man novel (title still pending, but I’m leaning toward Naked).  The NaNoWriMo time travel novel has been pretty much abandoned for life plus twenty.  I’m thinking of following Naked with a revision of my very first completed story, a fantasy novel of the ripping-off-Harry variety.  There’s Codex’s Weekend Warrior contest in there somewhere — January, I think — which means bucketloads of new flash to play with.

Yeah, writing has slowed down for me of late but it’s far from abandoned.  It’s not even 10:30 yet, maybe I should go get a few hundred more words into my steampunk story.

Happy Thanksgiving.  (Or to those not under the Stars and Stripes, Happy Thursday.)

White Flag

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

Ten days.  That was as long as I lasted before reality set in and I surrendered to not finishing NaNoWriMo.  I am a schnitzel.

It’s a matter of pragmatism.  I am currently incapable of reaching the 50,000 word goal by the end of November without fracturing an already delicate priority system.  Here are the bullet points that led me to this conclusion.

  • The demands of my day job have increased.  Substantially.  I am behind on everything and this weekend is time to either catch up work or on WriMo.  Not both.
  • I am woefully behind already.  My fault?  Definitely.  The story I am working on is not a story.  All I really have is a milieu.  The characters are cardboard, but the kind of cardboard you can stand up.  The plot is thinner than Kate Moss.  I’m not opposed to fighting to salvage a crappy novel on a deadline, but not at the expense of my day job, especially with no monetary prospect at the end.
  • I do have a novelette to work on that does have a monetary prospect at the end of the rainbow.  It was a bit asinine of me to take on NaNoWriMo with that project swaying in the breeze.
  • I have “stuff going on at home” that’s none of your business.

I’ve done the math.  Not happening.  I have set a new goal of finishing the novelette by November 30th.  With my current workload and the holiday looming, that’s still a significant aspiration, but one that won’t get me fired or alienate my family.  And my novel?  It’s going back in the drawer to await the rest of its skeleton before I heap any more innards into the mess.

Oh, you eat the peanut butter and jelly at the same time? Good idea.

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

After some soul searching that had nothing to do with typing, I’ve decided to stick out the Time Travel story, at least for the moment.  I’d also like to travel back to when I started it and do it right…but clearly that’s not happening.  I think I realized, however, why the story and I weren’t getting along.

I’ve been focusing on one plot.  The whole idea was to have multiple plotlines swimming around each other and building into something.  This was still the plan, but the tread that was expected to get the ball rolling has actually proven to be the muck that stopped said ball and another (more exciting) plot should be moving simultaneously.  I had considered a chapter zero; what I need is chapters 0, 1.5, 2.5, 3.5, and on while the plot I’ve been pursuing takes place simultaneously (in different times, of course).

I’ve also put too little consideration into the limitations of the time machine.  It’s not what the machine can do that’s interesting; it’s the stuff it can’t do.

So, as I suspected, I leaped into this project too early and I’ve only been spreading on one slice of bread.  Time to work with the other slice and (much later) figure out how to build a sandwich out of the two halves.  And I need to do this stuff soon; I’m at least two full days behind in the word count department.

Alas, the Naked Man must wait.  Hmmm, that didn’t sound quite right…

NaNo Blues

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 2 Comments

I am a slow typist.  I’ve known this for a while.  I should probably learn to type from the home row rather than using my mutli-finger hunt-and-peck method.  But I’m not there yet.  This contributes to me being 2500 words behind on my NaNoWriMo story.  Contributes, but it’s not the cause.

I’m bogging down on my novel.  I do this, it’s part of my process.  My WotF story was flying along great until the end where it kept bogging down and kept bogging down.  It took me months to write the ending.  Why so long?  Because I was trying to write an ending that didn’t fit.  The scene I’m bogging in now fits the novel, but isn’t propelling the story like it should.  I need to cut a lot of the words I’ve written, if I’m being honest.  And I need to write a Chapter zero (can be renumbered later) so that the oddities of the story are more obvious when they arise.  It should come out a bit like the opening scene in The Matrix, only not quite so Matrixy.

I didn’t do my homework on the front (outlining) end so now I’m suffering on the writing end.  This may not have been the right project to try to NaNo.  Temptations to return to my Naked Man novel (you heard right) are growing.  Since this is more about my career than about the challenge, I’m seriously considering it.

If you don’t care what I choose to do, by all means, stop reading now and I’ll vow to be more interesting next time.

Still with me.  Really?  Okay, I guess you can watch me weigh the pros and cons of each project:

Time Travel Novel: Pros

  • Good practice to stick with one project through completion.
  • Marketable concept.
  • Flexibility in plot/characters.

Time Travel Novel: Cons

  • Will require a lot of cuts (later) to anything I write right now.
  • Lack of project enthusiasm.
  • A lot of historical research needed.

Naked Man Novel: Pros

  • Theme is integral to the story.
  • I know where the story is supposed to be going.
  • Unique and original.
  • In a subgenre where I’ve had past success.

Naked Man Novel: Cons

  • Requires a lot of cultural and language research (mostly Japanese).
  • Haven’t worked on it in 6 months.
  • Questionable marketability.

I hate the thought that this Time Travel novel may just end up in the also-ran pile of 10-20% finished novels, but it’s dreck.  I started decorating the cake before it was baked, now it’s just a flat, gooey mess.  Upside: I seem to be at a similar wordcount in these two manuscripts, so switching horses in midstream will have no real mathematical or moral dilemma when I report wordcounts to NaNoWriMo.

ZFL scheduled for EDF

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

My zombie football flash story “ZFL” is on the November table of contents for Every Day Fiction.  Mark your calendars for the 19th.  I’ll post a link here the day it comes out.  No word yet on my forthcoming Daily Science Fiction story, “Ten Seconds”.  I hear the wait from sale to publication is significant.

In other news, I wrote 1800+ new words on my NaNoWriMo yesterday.  I’m not ahppy with all those words, but part of that is a voice issue I’ll iron out later in rewrites.  My little stat graph still doesn’t have me on target yet, but I’m hoping to hammer out a bunch this weekend.  We’ll see.

 

NaNoWriMo: Day 1

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

Only 850 words as I turn in tonight.  Not as much as I’d hoped but near what I expected.  Kind of a busy day; tough to get the keys clacking.  Better winds tomorrow.  I expect a lot of the words to materialize on weekends.  Still, I need my weekdays over 1k if I’m to have any hope of finishing.