Con Time

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

ChattaCon is this weekend.  I haven’t blogged about it but I’ve been looking forward to it for months.  I’m doing two panels Saturday and an autograph session Sunday, but otherwise I’m chilling with old friends and making new ones.  ChattaCon is a laid back kind of Con with a lot of social and a little business.  Very little.  Trust me when I tell you that I could really use some social time with “my people”.

In other news — rather, non-news — I’m still waiting to hear from DSF on my latest sub NwR.  The story is a Codex flash contest creation from last year.  As it turns out, the same contest is going on right now.  I’ve written 3 stories, gotten meh reviews on two and I’m yet to see the scores on the third.  I love kicking the year off with this contest because it gives me stuff to submit and tinker with all year long.

I have some big changes coming in my life.  Nothing I’m ready to talk about yet, but significant stuff.  Some pretty upsetting, some a little exciting.  Amid all that, anything that brings me back to focusing on writing and SF is very welcome.  A con will go a long way to improving my calm.  And a short story sale would do wonders, too.  With luck, this weekend could be a windfall of good vibrations for me.  At the very least, it’ll be fun.

Back in the Saddle

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

On December 1st I sent out a short story.  No great feat, but it was the first I’d sent in a long time.  Since July.  I guess I hadn’t been subbing because I hadn’t been creating.  It’s been a slow year for me.  So sending off this story — a flash piece that had been sitting near-finished on my hard drive — was a good step.  My next step will be to finish that $#!++% steampunk story and send it out.  And get the other half of my NaNo novel written.

The story currently under submission is into round 2 and I hope to hear something around year’s end.  If it sells, it will be pro sale #3 and the payment will slip through my grasp and into the SFWA coffers.  I’m trying not to get ahead of myself (an issue I’m battling left and right these days), but I am hopeful.  Mostly it just feels good to have some suspense as a writer again.  Will it sell/won’t it sell?  Yeah, that’s the stuff.

 

Capitalism conquers Duotrope

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

duotropeI have long been an advocate of the website Duotrope as a source for short fiction market listings and tracking story submissions.  It is great for predicting response times and acceptance ratios.  The search functionality and market categorization is good for targeting stuff.  I have also supported supporting Duotrope financially through donations.  I’ve donated several times, though I don’t think I did this past year since I haven’t been subbing many short stories and thus haven’t been using the site.

Alas, the site has grown to the point where donations seem no longer sufficient to sustain it and they are going to subscription only.  I get it, but part of what makes Duotrope so useful will die with this change, particularly the response time tracking.  Duotrope was the ultimate source for response tracking because so many people were reporting there, largely because it was a great place to track submissions for free.  I suspect you’ll still be able to report responses, but you won’t be able to access that information without a subscription so the benefits of reporting will be vastly reduced.  Reduced benefits lead to reduced reporting which leads to reduced quality of the information.  From my perspective, charging for the service will make the service no longer worth the price.  Ironic, no?

So will I subscribe?  Probably with the monthly plan, $5 per month.  That way I can drop a little money and use it when I need it and let it go when I don’t.  The annual subscription of $50 will be a bit steep for how I use it and would eat most if not all of my likely annual writing income unless I can sell a novel.

Is it really worth subscribing to a paid list to find non-paying markets?  Or token paying markets?  Not for me, even if I did still send to those markets.  Besides, I’ve sent to enough markets that I can probably find a lot of that info in my own records.  And there is always Ralan’s for a market list.

I’m afraid $50 is just too rich for my blood.  I suspect I’m not alone.  And I’m sad about it.  I still support the mission of Duotrope, but I fear that a subscription will reduce its relevance in the fiction world.  The change is set to take hold January 1st.  If you use Duotrope and aren’t planning to subscribe, be sure you download your stats before then.  I keep a spreadsheet, but I’ll have to make sure it’s current.  Duotrope helped me get my career where it is today.  I hope it can make the transition to a pay-based site and maintain that value for the subscribers.  Good luck to them, but I won’t be a regular there.

NaNo – Day 30 part 2 – and the winner is…

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ME!NaNoWinner

Congratulations to me and thousands of others who successfully wrote 50,000 words this month.  My prize?  A lovely computer generated certificate and an icon for my website.

I am very happy and very proud of this accomplishment, but I wonder if there is a better word than “winner”.  Do people who finish a marathon call themselves “winner”?  Maybe “finisher” or “victor”.  (Victor means the same as winner but sounds different on the ear and requires clarification whereas “winner” sounds like you beat out other people to get a prize.)  Really, “I won NaNoWriMo” sounds almost identical to “I won Writers of the Future.”  Yes, I have wone both now, but one was a attle against myself and the other was a battle against hundreds (possibly thousands) of other writers.  Both are worthy accomplishments, but one definitely paid better.  Though a workable novel is priceless in itself and could end up worth a lot more money.

Anyway, I finished around 9:00 on the last day of November.  There were only 3 days this month during which I did not write, so I figure I could have finished 3 days earlier if I hadn’t been puking the day after Thanksgiving and just ill equipped to write that one weekend.  Looking at my stats, I’m surprised to see that Mondays were pretty good days for writing.  Mid-week was worse, surely due to work-related distractions.

I am glad I did this.  It shows me that  can write every day, even amid distraction.  I can outline.  I can follow an outline.  I can decide parts of the outline suck but keep writing anyway.  I can turn off the editor long enough to get some work done.  It’s been a long time since I wrote this much on a single project.  On the one novel I did complete, this amount of writing took about 4-6 months.

I need to keep powering through this novel, but there is a project I’d like to turn to briefly, my ever-festering steampunk fairy tale project.  It is so close to being done and really close to being great.  I think it’s time to attack it for a few days before I hit The Realm Crystal again.  I need to finish the draft and I REALLY need to edit.  For instance, I want to turn one of my bad guys into an obnoxious good guy (you know, the one that gets killed in the zombie movies and everyone cheers) who slowly gives in to his nefarious impulses, then gets devoured by the true bad guy.  (It was written as fairly bad guy gets too big for his britches and gets devoured by true bad guy…not quite special enough.)  That’s the biggest change, but there will be many.  But first, get to the last page — still a long trek from where I am.

I hope everyone else found NaNo as rewarding as I did this year.  Keep writing and keep dropping by.

NaNo – Day 29 – So close I can taste it

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I love this character.  He’s a bad dude, but a sarcastic and insane bad dude that is nowhere near as big and bad as he thinks he is.  And he’s going to learn that soon when he dies.  But until then, he gets his mouth going and my wordcount skyrockets.  He goes on and on insulting people.  And he twists fun phrases, like “I don’t give a pile of kerplop”.  He can get away with it because of his insanity.

Anyway, I just finished riding him through a chapter and have closed to within 2500 words of my 50k goal for NaNoWriMo.  I need some sleep now, but I’m hoping to steal some time at work tomorrow and get 500-750 words in, then come home and pound out the final stretch.  I shall succeed.  Victory shall be mine!

NaNo – Day 28 – Grrrrr

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 1 Comment

I am a hair away from 45000 words, yet I’m afraid I won’t make it to 50k by Friday.  I’m very tired right now and I need to get to bed, so I’ll have a little over 5k to write over the next 2 days.  I would love to take a day off work to get the time in, but the timing is really bad at work.  I’d love to duck out of parenting responsibilities for a night, but I’m solo on that front for the next couple days.  Basically, the odds are stacking against me and I’m just going to have to buckle down and battle through it.  But not right now; right now is sleep.

If I can do 3k tomorrow, I can do this.  Go team NaNo!

NaNo – Day 25 – Life’s a Happy Song

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Yeah right.  Life is still kicking me in the crotch from every angle it can think of.  I don’t have control of most of it.  What I can control (at least while I’m not bent over a toilet) is my NaNo novel.  I am a few hundred words short of being back on schedule.  Things flowed pretty well today.  Those missing words should come tonight as I describe the city of Spire on the distant horizon.

I will make the 50k by Friday.  I will be damned if I won’t.  I even have a title at last: The Realm Crystal.  It’s what starts the whole adventure rolling.  It says a lot.  I’m happy, and I’m happy with the book so far.  It’ll need work and it’ll need a lot more than 50k.  But it’s going to get finished.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go get kicked in the balls again.

NaNo – Day 24 – Home Stretch

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I lost yesterday to a stomach bug.  That and a daughter with an ear infection.  Crappy timing.  Spent the morning at the 24hr clinic and the afternoon alternately  in front of/on the toilet.  (TMI?)  No writing accomplished.  I only needed about 1000 words yesterday to stay on pace.  Now I need 2667 today to make it back to pace.

I seem to be doing better and my daughter has been okay as long as we keep her medicine flowing to keep the fever down.  The wife may have gotten my stomach bug, which may put a little more parenting responsibility on my shoulders for the day.  I’m thinking Netflix, video games, and coloring books for her today so I can get my wordcount (and more, I hope).

I should also shave today before I start howling at the moon.

NaNo – Day 15 – halftime

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

And there goes life poking its obnoxious nose into my writing time.  For the last three days I’ve been falling short of even the basic 1667 target wordcount.  My personal goal was 2k per day.  I’m still a couple days ahead of the curve, but my head start is slipping away.  And tomorrow after school I get to make a 2-hour trip to drop my daughter off with Nana and Papa, then 2 hours back.  I’m happy she gets to visit, but that’s definitely a chunk of writing time that can’t be used to write.  And no, dictate and drive are not among my multitasking competencies.

I’m off to bed, again short on my count.  Thanksgiving break should afford me some time to catch up.  Or get ahead again, rather.

I just took a character in a direction I hadn’t expected.  It’s always fun when I can do that.  And things are about to get ugly in that scene, also good news.  I may well have to insert another chapter break once the ugly starts since that chapter is starting to drone on a bit.  Lots of chapters, lots of words.  Lots of editing decisions to make down the line.

I have a character death coming soon, for a character that had a lot of long term possibilities.  Maybe a short story about his origin will be in my future.  Let’s face it, it’s in there for the “no one is safe” factor, though nowhere near George RR Martin’s commitment to the cause.  There will be character deaths at the end, too.  They fit the story.  Will I change my mind later?  Only if the story demands it.  Some intense writing in the works for the days ahead, that’s for sure.  Wish me luck.