Tag: writers of the future

Input/Output

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

The day I put my Writers of the Future fourth-quarter story in the mail is the day I discover that my third-quarter story earned an honorable mention.

Good?

Eh…

I haven’t read that story in a while.  Now I can give it a quick read and send it off somewhere.  Market to be determined.  I think I may take some market advice from a recent visitor (thanks David) on my second-quarter story (a reject — late speculative element) and try Pseudopod.

Sadly, I have nothing out there right now.  Not a thing.  School staarted and I fell behind with story subs.  Time to throw a couple into the wind and see where they blow.

-Oso

Hey Mr. Postman

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 3 Comments

Tomorrow.

“****************” hits te mailbox tomorrow.  It’s as ready as it’s going to get.  I truly believe this has semifinalist tattooed all over it.  Maybe I’m naive.  Then again, maybe I’m selling myself short.  Only one way to find out.

So it’s on to greener stories now. “The Naked Man” is due for more attention, as is “The Will of Roshambo”, an older piece I haven’t done much with.  Or maybe it’s time to spark the creative juices with a quick flash.  Whatever it is, I need to keep writing.  I don’t have a story for the next WotF quarter yet.  I’ll be 4 for 4 in submissions this year and I’d like to keep it up until I either win or start focusing full time on one of my five novels-in-progress.

Thanks to Nobu and Tomas for their last-minute comments on OWW, and thanks to Matt and Will for their commentary, too.  But now, off to bed.

Getting out and pushing

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 5 Comments

brainlogoThe writing machine has run out of gas.  No words are pouring through the fingers to the keyboard, no stories are progressing.  So what do you do when you’re out of gas?  Get out and push.  And I’ve got a shove that will either gdet me going or get me run over by my own vehicle.

Several other writers have mentioned the flash fiction contest over at Brain Harvest.  I decided (yesterday) that I am going to write a new story and get into that contest by the deadline of…tomorrow.  How hard can it be to write a 750-word story in a day?  Ha!

It’s not so much about winning the contest, it’s about clearing the fuel lines so I can start producing again.  So far I am part wa through my first attempt, placing me at about 1500-words.  Yikes!  I had planned to write the story then go back through for heavy cutting, but I may have gone too far here.  It’s tough to put a unique twist on story’s from Strange Horizons’ dreaded cliche list in so few words.

So maybe I’ll wander back to the list and think a little more.  I will get this done.  I must.  Then I’ll repair a few other stories and get my submission list back up to snuff.  I don’t even have my WotF submission ready to go.  Not long ago I had a line of manuscripts ready for that envelope.  Time to be a writer again.  Otherwise, why am I here?

Uncle Orson’s boot

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 5 Comments

After my anticlimactic fumble at the goal line of Clarion West, I spent some time wondering what to do this summer to improve my writing.  Write; that was the first thing.  Read, critique, join OWW, fraternize, and submit were also on the list.  But, golly, did I want that workshop.  Face time with pros, some gut-wrenching time for Scott-the -Writer.

Orson Scott Card
Orson Scott Card

So I thought about other options.  It was too late for most; others were too expensive.  I spent a lot of time thinking about Orson Scott Card’s Literary Boot Camp.  Card is one of my favorite authors and has a very good reputation as a teacher.  His characters ae painted on the page the way they might be emblazoned on the ceiling of a chapel.  Not cheap, mind you, but some of his time and attention could be really inspiring.

I did some procrastinating that masqueraded as thinking and very nearly missed the deadline.  I mailed my application and writing sample on Tuesday; the deadline is Friday (tomorrow).  I should hear one way or the other by next Friday.

I’m not sure what my chances are.  The website suggests applying early.  Ha!  Strike one.  The only writing sample they ask for is the first page of a finished short story.  Yep, the first page.  It makes sense.  How many editors, or even slush readers, get past that point before stuffing a rejection in the SASE and shipping it back.  But gosh, it sure put some pressure on my page one.

I cheated a bit, something I hope doesn’t come back to bite me for being “unprofessional”.  You know that big space you’re supposed to leave in the top half of your manuscript, the one for editor’s comments or instructions to the typesetter or whatever?  Yeah, mine was a little smaller than it should have been, squeezing a bit more writing onto that first page.  *gulp*

The story I sent was “Glow Baby”, the story I sent to Clarion SD that did not go to CW.  (I wasn’t even waitlisted at CSD, so maybe that was a mistake, but the first page was less pulpy than “Leech Run”‘s opening.)  I stretched to get the end of a paragraph onto the page, really only two or three lines more than normal.  We’ll see how that plays for me.  I looked at several stories before settling on that one; the descriptions just rang truer for me than the others.  “Glow Baby” is the first story I wrote where the setting was based on a real place, a place I was intimately familiar with in memory and emotionally tied to.  If the story has a weakness, it’s probably the ending.  The pace is slow, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.  I don’t think either of those potential concerns will be evident in the first page.

“Glow Baby” is my second quarter submission to WotF, too.  I have not yet heard back from them (a good sign, yes?), but it was a bit of a late entry.  The speculative aspect of the story really doesn’t show up until page 4, so it may be a hard sell to the contest.  I did write in some foreshadowing (eerie pink light emanating from the window) toward the end of the first page or beginning of the second.  Maybe that was enough to pull me through.  We’ll see.

A big month for “Glow Baby” any way you look at it.  Keep your nubs crossed.

-Oso

Faster than a speeding “no thanks”

~ Scott W. Baker ~ 4 Comments

Wow.  Clarkesworld took less than 24 hours to reject “Secondhand Rush”.  It usually takes editors several weeks to decide I suck.

So what now?  I printed it out, stuffed it in an envelope, and it’s off to Q3 of WotF.

Why am I bombarding WotF with my stuff?  This will make one per quarter for this contest year.  (Another will surely be ready by the fourth quarter.)  Well, there’s nothing quite like an “honorable mention” rather than a form rejection.  That’s not to say I’m guaranteed at least an HM (if I were, I probably wouldn’t be satisfied with one), but it gives me the “at least it wasn’t a flat rejection” to pad my ego.  The HM also becomes a tidbit to toss on the cover letter, as if to say “relax, editor, this isn’t pure junk”.

WotF also limits my competition tonon-pros.  Even at small mags you have to compete with pros and “friends of the magazine” who repeatedly have their work printed there.  I feel like I get a tiny bit of favoritism from Sams Dot Publishing because I’ve been associating with them for so long (since it was ProMartian under the late James Baker, no relation).  Maybe my quality just fits their needs, but better than half my published stories have been there.  So entering into a blind competition with other semi-pros is a good place for me right now.  Can I win?  Eventually, I bet I can.  (If Jordan can do it… 😛 )  Or maybe I’ll go pro before that happens.  Either way, I think WotF is a good market for a writer in my position to pursue.

-Oso

Glow Baby update

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I got my rejection from Stange Horizons today.  I expected it from such a tough market.  49 days it took.  Not bad.

This TykeLight from MOBI inspired "Glow Baby".
This TykeLight from MOBI inspired "Glow Baby".

I want to squeeze “Glow Baby” in under the wire for the second quarter WotF contest.  I believe the deadline is Tuesday.  I’m trying to brush it up, maybe hint at the speculative portion earlier in the story than where it currently shows up on page four, solidify the ending.  I’m not sure how it will fare, this being a story for select tastes, moreso than “Leech Run” that pulled my first HM.

I’ll let everyone know if it gets out in time.  It should since it’s no more than a day worth of editing I need.  This was one of my submissions to Clarion SD (and we know how that went with the whole close-but-no-cigar response).  We’ll see.

On a related note, I am leaving “Leech Run” alone for a while.  I can’t remember if I declared that already or not.  Anyway, it’s the only story I subbed to CW and if by some miracle I end up there, it believe it will be critiqued.  I’d hate to spend a lot of time and energy fixing a story before subjecting it to that amount of feedback.  I have modified it a lot based on the comments from Baen’s Bar, but a whole scene needed reworking in the middle.  I plan to adjust it this summer, be it through CW advice (in some parallel universe) or on my own while CW is going on without me.

Okay, enough from me.  I have editing to do.

-Oso

Treasures from the Book Cellar

~ Scott W. Baker ~ Leave a comment

I had a noon dentist appointment last week, so I took the whole day off from school. It left me with a lot of spare time that morning, something my two-year-old strives to eliminate from my days. But she was at the sitter this morning and I went out for some breakfast and to visit the local used bookstore.

The used bookstore is the only bookstore in the “city” I work in. There is a Books-A-Million in the next little city, about half an hour away and just as close to my house. I am a bibliophile (mild case, not life threatening) and can’t resist wondering among the orderly shelves and tables of a proper bookstore, doing much more looking than buying.

Then there’s the used bookstore. Tens of thousands of books on mish-mashed shelves, crammed together in only the vaguest resemblance of alphabetical order, sectioned wherever there was space for the category. It’s beautiful. This trip I wound up purchasing five books and four magazines, spending under fifteen bucks. No too shabby.

Primarily I was looking for books and stories from the instructors at this year’s Clarion and Clarion West, also keeping an eye out for other names of note. I stumbled across (the only way to find anything there) Kim Stanley Robinson’s Green Mars in trade paperback for two dollars. That’s right, two. It was in very good shape, after all, I was looking for stuff to read, not display. Alas, I had not yet read Red Mars and didn’t want to try to absorb things out of order. But Robinson is teaching in San Diego (Clarion west’s new home — no more Michigan) so I held on to it. I’m glad I did since I found Red mars in standard paperback in another group of shelves, $3.50.

Among the hardcover SF books I found an old library copy of Heinlein’s The Cat Who Walks Through Walls. Not renowned as his finest work, but I have heard the title pop up on occasion. Three quarters was all they asked for it. I just hope I can read it, the pages are brittle and falling out. If not, well I’m out the cost of a really bad cup of coffee. Heinlein is obviously not teaching any workshops this year, but he’s still Heinlein.

The most intriguing find was a book entitled Science Fiction: History, Science, Vision, copyrighted the year of my birth. It starts with a brief history of the genre in literature and a little from other mediums. Then it’s an overview of 1977 science, starting with the scientific method and touching on biology, astrophysics, etc. Next it looks into various areas sci-fi likes to visit that might not be quite so scientific: utopias, imaginary worlds, and the like. Finally it comments on ten representative novels. I have not read any more than the table of contents, but I am very curious about what the Oxford University Press had to say about these things over thirty years ago. I nothing else, there are story ideas hiding in these pages begging to be discovered.

The last book was one I actually sought out. My space opera story, “Leech Run,” just received honorable mention from Writers of the Future. A nice enough showing, but I wondered what winning stories looked like. So I sought out some WotF collections and found the book from 2005. I am currently reading one of the stories that won a quarter; I’m not terribly impressed yet. Maybe it has a strong ending.

My magazine purchases weren’t all that exciting. I sifted through a pile to find some recent issues of Analog, Asimov’s, and F&SF. It didn’t even occur to me to seek Clarion authors, but I still wound up with a story co-written by Rudy Rucker in an Asimov’s. I also lucked into a copy of Isaac Asimov’s classic story, “Nightfall” in an anniversary edition of the magazine he founded. It was a good haul on magazines I would love to be in but haven’t read in several years.

It is worth noting the overwhelming dominance of Star Trek novels at this store. Two full bookcases. I know some of them are well written, but I have no clue which ones. I am a fan of most of the different series, especially TNG, but I have never read a Trek novel. I may grab one next time if I can get an idea of a good one, but I’m a little weary at the thought of reading a book in such a thoroughly explored universe. I already know the characters for seven seasons and several movies. I just can’t get excited about reading stuff I am already full of.

This has not been a review of any of these books, really no more than an announcement of my purchase and the processes that led me to them. It was a good haul. I’ll need to wait another few months to let the store’s inventory change before returning. Fortunately, I think I have enough to read while I wait.