I’ve been writing for about a quarter of a century. While the very first thing I wrote as a writer was a novel (a shameless Harry Potter ripoff that was never even close to publication), my successes have all come in the form of short stories. I’ve tried novels. I’ve outlined them, started them, restarted, started a different one, gone back to rewrite the first one… I haven’t been a novel finisher.
And no, I’m not about to claim to have finished one. I’m on the other end of that spectrum. I just happen to be approaching this one with a seriousness that some other attempts have lacked. At least, that’s what I keep telling myself. “This is the one I’m really going to finish.” Surely I’ve never said that about any of those other projects.
As it turns out, writing a novel is a different beast altogether from writing a short story. Part of my novel difficulties has been that, while honing my writing skills in my early career, I had to train myself to get the story out there fast. As such, I grew to equate depth of description as frivolous navel-gazing. This plot has got to move! I need to tell this whole story in 7500 words. Or 5000 words. Or 1000 words. Or 750. Yes, that was a regular target for me in flash contests.
One of the things that accompanies such brevity is the possibility of holding the whole plot in your head at once. This makes story structure an easier thing to mold, at least for me. This week, as I attacked the outline for the LitRPG novel that has captured my imagination (Dungeon Crawler Carl rocked my world), I realized my plot-in-a-nutshell method wasn’t going to cut it.
As I mentioned, I’ve been at this writing thing for a long time. I have no formal training as a fiction writer or any other kind of writer. I didn’t even take any writing classes in college; my ACT score exempted me. So most of what I know is self-taught. Not to suggest that I pulled it all out of thin air. It came from books. Writer’s Digest and Elements of Fiction Writing and Lukeman’s The First Five Pages and Gotham Workshop books, and yes, Snyder’s Save the Cat. I’ve seen more videos and con panels on story structure than any man should ever be asked to endure. But somehow, after umpteen million times, I finally started to wonder if I needed to think about story structure while I made my outline.
Why should I think about it? Don’t I know it by heart? Don’t I live and breathe and eat and poop story structure? Apparently, I do not. Because today, when I created an extra column in my outline spreadsheet to enumerate which story beats were happening in which chapter, the story clicked.
Once I got to the “oh yeah, Save the Cat made a lot of good points:” thought in my head, I realized I had trouble recalling what those good points were. Back through YouTube, again finding a gem in this Reedsy, vid summarizing the 15 cat-saving beats. Then I found this handy chart from this article. I’ll tell you what–these percentages really helped!
I locked myself in at 40 chapters. If the actual writing of the story demands 38 or 42, I’ll be flexible, but the plan was 40. That put the Catalyst at the beginning of chapter 5, the debate stretching through chapter 8, the B story kicking off about chapter 9, Midpoint at 21, Dark Night of the Soul in 31-32… I already had ideas of where I wanted the story go, but this more than anything else let me lay the brickwork for the yellow road to the Wonderful Land of Novel. Was it new information? Not really. Now I know how my Precalculus students feel when they factor their 457th trinomial and suddenly understand what they’d been doing in all 456 that came before it. Or in a more relatable metaphor, I felt like I was bowling with the bumpers up. Sometimes you need a little framework to nudge the ball back on course.
I’m not counting chickens before I even have eggs. I know I’m on step 3 out of 93 just to get a draft. I just wanted to share the feeling of relief and ease I experienced when I finally applied this structure deliberately. That coupled with my recent trend toward over-writing instead of the short story induced under-writing suggests that maybe this time will be the one that gets all the way to The End. I can’t wait to start putting words to page.
After a long wait, the results for Round 2 of the nycMidnight Flash Fiction Contest are in. The authors of the top three (3) stories in each group move on to the third and final round. My story placed…fourth. First Honorable Mention. Alas.
Sometime in the next week or two, I’ll put my thoughts together regarding the whole NYCM experience. I want to see the critique and let my mind settle before I attempt that. Check back if that’s something that interests you.
Avast, matey!
In other news that I can’t believe I haven’t blogged about, I sold a story to an anthology! Very soon, Raconteur Press will be releasing their pirate anthology, Planks & Plunder. They’ve asked that we wait for all versions (ebook and print) are available before pushing out links, but I’ll have them soon.
My story is called “The True Stone and the Faux Blade”. It’s a classic Caribbean-pirate tale (not space pirates, though I have an old one of those you could read/listen to on Escape Pod. Click here to check out “Leech Run”) with plenty of fantasy elements. Driven by vengeance, a girl joins a pirate crew captained by a collector of magical artifacts. But is she part of the crew of part of the collection?
This is the first story sale I’ve made in a long time. A looong time. Long enough that I can’t bring myself to type it. If you look in my bibliography, I guess you can do the math yourself. Some of that I can chalk up to decreased output, but that doesn’t make the hiatus any less frustrating. So it was a huge relief when I saw the congratulatory email. I’m using that boost to fuel a surge in my submissions so I can maybe get another one picked up somewhere.
I’ve seen the cover art. It’s nice. But no…I’m going to hold off until I can link you to it. That should be sometime in the next week. Watch for it soon.
The results of the first round of the nycMidnight Flash Fiction Challenge are in.
The writers of the top 7 stories in each group move on to round 2. There are 88 groups, each with apparently 30-35 stories. In my group, my story came in 6th. Whew.
On Friday, at midnight NYC-time, I’ll be assigned to a new group. Like round 1, we’ll get a genre, a setting, and an object. Then we have 48 hours to write a 1000-word or less story in that genre, set in that place, including that object. Only this time my competition will be people who have already proven their ability to write a decent flash fiction story.
I’m hoping that this round goes a little mor smoothly for me than round 1. Can I get a genre like sci-fi or fantasy or fairytale or comedy? All those were given to some groups in round 1. Political Satire was quite the challenge for me. I think my odds are good of getting a genre that’s a more natural fit for me, but historical fiction and romance are still out there like landmines waiting to blow up in my face.
I was also at my parents’ place for most of round 1’s window. Honestly, the political friction that exists between my folks and me might have helped the genre part of the story, but otherwise it was a big distraction. Round 2’s distraction (as mentioned in my last post) is the start of the school year. Friday is my first in-service day. Fortunately, the writing window is the weekend, so I’m hoping to avoid too much back-to-school distraction. Maybe I can use that atmosphere to my story’s advantage like I did with the last one.
I’m happy to make it to round 2. I was very nervous that I took too many liberties with the setting and object for round 1. I’m going to need a better showing if I want to make round 3. For now, I’m going to polish up that round 1 story and send it out to and editor. I’m supposed to let 10 days pass before publishing the story anywhere, but a 10-day turnaround for a response would be very fast, let alone sub-to-pub. I think there are some markets that “TruthSerum.ai” would fit into nicely. Let’s find out.
As July ticks to its end, it is almost time for a bunch of things. It’s almost time for the NFL preseason games to start. It’s almost time to renew my car’s registration. It’s almost time for my root canal appointment. Hopefully, it’s almost time for this wave of sweltering heat advisory days to chill out. Of course these aren’t the almosts I’m most interested in. So what are they?
Almost time for the nycMidnight Flash Fiction round 1 results
Wow, that was a mouthful. This one is very near as they are due to drop today. I was a little surprised to wake up and find no results posted, but I have since discovered that they usually post around midnight EDT. Yes, that’s midnight New York City time. I see what they did there. Branding at its most literal.
As I mentioned a few posts back, this was my first foray into one of nycMidnight’s challenges. Depending on the results, it might be the end of that experiment. Only the top few finishers in each group go on to round 2. It’s a bit pricey for a one-and-done event, so I’m hoping I make the cut. Of course, so is everyone else.
Good news has been nonexistent for me in the writing category of late, so I really need something to smile about. Godfather Death has been selling like coldcakes (that’s the opposite of hotcakes, right?); my short story submissions have been missing their marks; even my latest work-in-progress has stalled out after a promising start. So I’ll be up at midnight (11:00 PM here) spamming refresh with crossed fingers.
Almost time for school to start
As a teacher by day, this upcoming event is quite profound for me. This being my 24th first-day-of-school as a teacher, it’s kind of old hat, but that doesn’t make it any less of an event. Time to start crawling out of bed before the sun, write my name on the board, and start learning names. Time to instill math knowledge against student’s will. Time to watch the blood-borne pathogens video. Time to train on what to do if a kid decides to come to the building with a duffle bag of firearms and make his inadequacies everyone’s problem. Hooray.
This year does bring some new things. My school now has weapon detection at its major entrances. (Does that make me feel better or worse about the duffle bag scenario?) We are moving to a true block schedule, meaning my students will be done with their course in December and I get a new pack of hooligans pupils in January. (I’ve taught that way before, but it’s been about a decade.) Possibly most profound for me, my child won’t be at the school anymore. Why not? That falls under the next almost…
Almost time for my kid to start college
Yup, they’re a freshman again. Dad doesn’t have any clout to pull strings for them anymore. We’ve already found ourselves behind the 8-ball with late student loan applications and the like, but if you know me and/or my kid, you know how predictable that is. We’re figuring it out. Slowly.
The kid’s going to be a film major, if you were curious.
Am I nervous about the kid crawling out from under my protective wing and striking out on their own? A bit. They’re still living at home, so the striking out is by baby steps, but it’s still scary. In a lot of ways my kid is quite mature. In a lot of other ways…coldcakes.
Almost time for almost to become is
The scariest part of almost, for me, is the anticipation. Once the event arrives, it’s just a thing that’s happening or that already happened. Is that better or worse? Only one way to find out…
With Godfather Death and the Amazing Diagnostic Machine coming out June 30th, I’ve decided to try to get the word out. That’s harder than it sounds. My social network footprint is tiny. (You finding your way here is a blessing. Glad to have you!) My skill for talking myself up is…questionable at best. So How do I let the world know the greatest steampunk fairytale retelling ever is about to drop from yours truly? (See…that felt weird to say.)
The answer: TikTok
Allegedly.
Not just TikTok, but that has been my primary medium. I’ve poked at a YouTube short and will likely do at least one more before release date. But mostly I’ve been following the advice of Katie Wismer (a.k.a. Katesbookdate) as presented in this video. I’ll give the rundown of my interpretation, but let me start by explaining why I took Katie’s advice over others. (I’ve never spoken to Katie directly, so if she is alerted to my existence via Google Alerts or something: Hi Katie!)
Why This Advice
First off, I have scoured the internet (mostly YouTube) for advice on advertising a new book. And yes, there are a lot of voices out there, many saying similar things: establish a presence on social media, interact with the communities that overlap with potential readers, let people know you have a book coming out, and let people know a bit more about you. That’s four items that sound like A LOT of work. Where do I start? This is going to take how long? You mean I have to talk about myself?
Katie’s advice was titled “The one book marketing strategy you NEED to be doing”. Yeah, a very clickable title for me. She goes on to lay out a strategy that felt manageable. I can do that! She also wasn’t pushing a course to take or anything like that, just an advertising tool that has been successful for her. I’m not putting all my eggs into this basket, but it’s the basket I’m filling the fullest.
What am I doing?
If you didn’t watch Katie’s video already (heck, I linked it twice), I’ll give you my version of her advice. I’m sure I’ve misinterpreted parts and overlooked important nuances, but you can get the full breakdown from her.
Make carousels (slide shows) on TikTok. These are images with text.
The last slide is a direct quote (passage) from the book
She seemed to suggest you hint at the excitement without giving too much away
Use a trending sound that fits the theme of the book/passage/hook
Make sure your profile page does a good job of promoting you and the book. (This is my weak spot; I’ll get to why.)
Oh, and make sure you use good hashtags!
This felt like a process I could handle. No fancy equipment to buy or awkward performances required, just post some images with text. So I made some.
Okay, I didn’t follow the recipe perfectly. My carousels have a one-slide hook, the next slide starts a quoited passage, the last slide has the book’s cover.
The first carousel I made had the whole passage on one slide. Depending on the size of your phone and the mightiness of your eyes, that could have been tough to absorb. My next few had the quote spread out over 2-4 slides, their text posted either over faded images or carefully curated around the images.
About half the hooks are the same or very similar with very similar images: a cloaked figure with a metal skull for a head with something along the lines of “When a man who was more metal than flesh entered her father’s shop, her life changed forever.” Others get more thematic to the excerpt/images. One scene takes place at a wedding, so the hook is “What better place for an ambush than a wedding?” You get the idea…
Music choices have been a battle between my preferences and TikTok’s preferences (mostly represented by my 18-year-old offspring). My first choice was George Michael’s “Father Figure” which has been hot on TikTok, though that song seems to accompany a fairly specific trend that has nothing to do with books. (My kid also thinks it might suggest the book is spicier than it is.) I made a couple with songs that had been used in a few thousand posts each. I made sure to swing big with a couple of the songs (uses in the millions and the tag “popular”). I have a mind to make a video or two with sounds that aren’t songs, but I haven’t made that leap yet. Are they helpful? It may still be too early to tell.
Alas, the profile page is the weakest link. Speaking of links…TikTok won’t let you have links to external sites (a.k.a. a link tree) until you have one thousand followers. So I’m only 998 followers away from that goal! Yeah, I’ve had a TikTok account, but I was only consuming until this past week. So right now, potential readers will have to find Godfather Death and the Amazing Diagnostic Machine by searching Amazon or even the whole internet for it. Suddenly, that wordy title is starting to seem like a better idea. (I also think it sounds steampunk-y.) This is why I feel like it was important to end with my cover image.
I don’t know if anyone has chased the book down yet. It doesn’t launch for another 5 days. It’s available for presale on Kindle, but that’s it. Either it’s impossible find out how many preorders there are or I don’t know how to figure it out. I guess the third option is that there have been none, but that would be knowing how many (zero is a perfectly good number, just not preferable in the wallet).
What am I definitely doing wrong?
I may be making several mistakes that I don’t realize, but there’s one I’ve definitely fumbled. Katie say to get a few “burner accounts” to post from as well as your main account. I haven’t done this, mostly because I don’t quite understand what the nature of the account should be. If the profile page is important, then what’s on the profile page of my burner? Some fictional reader that is allegedly posting fan-art for the book? Are they all supposed to be new vids or should these burner accounts be reposting the originals? I couldn’t wrap my head around that, so I haven’t made that leap. I’m 48; this is already a little overwhelming for me.
Am I reaching people?
Not as many as I’d hoped, but maybe more than I legitimately expected.
My first carousel (the one with the whole excerpt on one slide) has the most views and the most likes (261 and 7, respectively). Most of those were in the first couple hours. None of the others have topped 200 views.
The least-viewed is the wedding one, which has a female cover of “In the Air Tonight” that has been used over 100k times. I had expected the most interest in that one. My intention is to make some adjustments to that one and try posting it again (may change the song, but I like the fit). My research has suggested that there are a lot of variables at play for how many people see any given post, so reposting duds is a fair strategy.
These numbers don’t sound like a lot. They are well below the ones Katie cited in her video. I think established accounts have better reach. That’s why I’m not going to throw in the towel just yet. I’m hoping the needle will move by the end of July.
What else have I tried?
I mentioned that I dipped a toe into YouTube. What I really did was post my one outreach video as a Short.
Yes, I did make a video for TikTok that wasn’t a slideshow and wasn’t an ad for the book. This was a “What is Steampunk?” video. Please hold for my great shame: I made the video with PowerPoint.
Hey, I’m a teacher and I am very good with PowerPoint. Use what you know. I promise, my kid has thoroughly skewered me for it.
Anyway, this video analyzes steampunk as both an aesthetic and a literary genre. It’s about a minute. (I had to speed my voice up a little; noticeable but not terrible.) I do need to improve my audio recording skills; there’s a slight echo. The video ends with the book’s title and release date. There is a link to the Kindle preorder in the video description.
So was this little video popular? Not on TikTok. It’s neck-and-neck with my wedding carousel. On YouTube however? Just over 2000 views, 18 likes. (That’s almost 1% like-age…not sure if that’s good…doesn’t sound awesome.)
What’s next?
For now, I’m going to keep working the system. I’ll either pull some more passages from the book or repackage the ones I’ve used with altered hooks, songs, and/or images. Every time one gets 100 views, that’s more eyes (some new, some repeating) that see the book. The repeat views are possibly the most important since I heard somewhere recently (might have been Katie?) that it takes 8 exposures to a stimulus before someone takes action.
I’m also going to experiment with turning some of the carousels into videos (still the slides but they cycle for you). TikTok is a largely passive platform, so maybe it will hit differently. Remember the one video I did post didn’t get many views, but it also didn’t have a viral sound attached. This way I can also hit YouTube with them.
I’ll put some of this on Facebook too. I’m not an Instagrammer, so I’ll avoid that.
Is it worth it?
The labor end of things has been fairly mild (picture hunts were consuming but also fun). Honestly, I’m hoping that being in a niche subgenre like steampunk will help this book along. And If someone is looking through steampunk books and sees a cover they recognize, that could be the difference between them buying my book or someone else’s. Maybe something like this will help get enough of a bump to make a dent on the Amazon top sellers list for steampunk. Or maybe this whole exercise will just help me grow my TikTok footprint enough that the next publication’s ads (and there will be more) will have a little more reach.
Oh, don’t take my word for all this. Make sure you check out Katie Wismer’s video. And please, if anyone here has experience with this kind of advertising that could help me or others, please share it in the comments!
It’s mid-June and the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction Contest is back on my mind. This is an update. If you want my primary report on my NYCM experience, click here.
The only new thing that’s happened with the contest since my last post was that people were invited to share their stories on the forum (password protected for feedback purposes, thus avoids classifying as “published”). I elected to do so. It seems about 10% or so of participants joined me in the experience. The suggestion is that you read some stories and comment on them, including a link back to your own story for reciprocal readings.
So I read one of the first few stories to post and offered some commentary. By then, I had comments start trickling in on my story, so I started reciprocating. And after one day of this…it stopped. No one was reading and commenting on my story anymore. I was a little shocked that it halted at day one, but not as shocked as I was by something else.
As I mentioned in my original NYCM post, I’m used to contests like this through my writing group. That group is composed exclusively of writers with a professional sale or participation in a major workshop with similar selection criteria. (This fact might be crucial in a moment.) For such writing group contests, the participants are the judges, reading, rating, and commenting on every story in the group except your own. The ultimate goal of those contests isn’t just to win the contest but to create a marketable story. Thus, most of my comments attempt to include both positive and constructive comments, to let the writer know what worked for me and what didn’t. In the NYCM forum, I did the same thing. This thing was great; you might want to think aboutthis other thing. However, none of the comments I received included the second part. Lots of back-patting, no recommendations. So either my story was perfect (it was not) or they just didn’t offer those kinds of thoughts.
So my over-thinking brain and I have been stewing on this. Why no constructive comments? Is it because the se posted after the contest deadline so it’s considered too late to change? Or is this just not a community that offers those kinds of comments? Or was my story just too out there for suggestions? (This is possible. The story format was an AI analyzing the factuality of news stories line by line, offering its own explanations and commentary. And the news story in question was about the sun dying. So yeah, a little weird.) And the follow-up overthinking question: did these people whose stories I read want my suggestions?
I hope the participants know my comments were all made with good, helpful intentions. I wasn’t suggesting I knew more than anyone else, just sharing the thoughts I had about the story min case they could be helpful in some future rewrite. So if anyone was under the impression I’m not a guy with anxiety, you now see evidence to the contrary. I guess I’ll just wonder about this until eternity.
I hope the participants know my comments were all made with good, helpful intentions. I wasn’t suggesting I knew more than anyone else, just sharing the thoughts I had about the story min case they could be helpful in some future rewrite. So if anyone was under the impression I’m not a guy with anxiety, you now see evidence to the contrary. I guess I’ll just wonder about this until eternity.
NYC Midnight is a series of pay-to-play writing contests. The current contest (which just started May 30th) is flash fiction, which is often a go-to for me. Contestants are grouped and each group receives a genre, location, and object for their prompt, then you get 48 hours to write and submit a story of 1000 words or fewer.
As a general rule, I don’t do fee-based submissions, be that markets or contests. However, I discussed this contest at a con with a writer I respect. She had good things to say about NYC Midnight, particularly about the feedback it provided on every story submission. Being in an incredible sale drought, I thought some feedback might be nice, as might a little validation if I can get through a round or two of the contest. So, on my birthday, I decided to get myself a gift and join the contest.
I consider the fee an investment to help me decide about the contest’s value for myself. Is it worth participating? Is it worth the fee? Is the feedback valuable and/or worth more than a writing group’s feedback? Should I recommend it to people or warn them away? I won’t know unless I participate, so I did.
As a member of Codex Writing Group (a speculative fiction writers’ group for writers with professional sales or major workshop experience), I get to take part in a flash fiction contest every January. I’m up against writers with significant writing chops and accomplishments there. I usually hold my own. I’m hoping for similar results in this contest, but I’m not holding my breath for prizes.
So how’s it going so far? It’s been interesting. I have written and submitted my first story. The submission format was a little odd, requiring a title page and synopsis instead of a more typical manuscript format. It took about 30 minutes to be sure I was doing it right. And Now I get to wait until the end of July for results and comments. I guess I should have looked at that closer, because that seems like a long wait. The Codex contest, by comparison, had a similar prompt-to-submission window and gave only to the end of the week to judge. In the early years, that could be a lot of stories to read, rate, and comment on. Now they’ve made groups (not unlike NYC Midnight’s) so it’s more manageable, but still 12-20 stories to handle. The groups for this contest are reportedly about 35 stories.
I don’t want to give away my prompt completely since I’m not sure what the privacy rules are (I looked at them but don’t recall), but I’ll tell you my genre: Political Satire. Yeah…I’m a sci-fi/fantasy guy. Their examples of political satire included 1984, Wag the Dog, and SNL political sketches, the first of which definitely gave me permission to do something science-fictiony. The location and object kind of felt like they were steering toward a specific type of story, possibly with a specific political slant. I didn’t really take the bait on that.
I found this story challenging to write, a fact not helped by being at my parents’ house to celebrate my dad’s 75th birthday while I wrote it. I had 3-4 false starts before getting an actual story written. I didn’t like it, so I wrote another full story. Of course I didn’t like that one either, so I went back to the first full. At this point I had maybe 2 hours to the deadline.
I monkeyed with the story for a half hour or so before I started to feel confident in it. Then I went and looked up the submission process and checked the FAQs. Yeah…my order could have been better.
The FAQs were the scary part. The story is required to have the prompted location as its primary setting. Okay, I had noticed that part earlier, so I had written it so that the physical setting used was indeed the one in the prompt…unless you consider an online application a setting, because that was where the story was really happening. So maybe that was a stretch. What did the FAQs say about that? That my story might be disqualified if I didn’t use the location sufficiently. Ooh boy. And what else did they say? That the object in the prompt has to be physically in the story or referred to in a story-in-a-story kind of way (like a bowl of porridge if a character recited the tale of Goldilocks). Did I do that? Well…not exactly. I took liberties with both setting and object. The object was part of the title and came up repeatedly, but was that prompt-object supposed to be physically present in the prompt-location? No. And that’s another story-might-be-disqualified offense, depending on the generosity of the reviewer.
So yeah, this might be a big fat DQ for the bargain price of $58 (I missed the early registration window). Did I get a marketable story out of it? Maybe. I definitely know of a couple markets that I could send it to, but it may or may not fit their preferences. It’s a weird little story with a very weird format, basically designed as if interacting with an A.I. In my world, stretching the limits of the prompt is a positive. We’ll see if NYC Midnight lives in that world too.
Now I wait to see how this went. Did it get disqualified? Did it pay off setting it in a future with a crisis that isn’t actually a current or even predicted crisis? Were they impressed with my creativity? With my writing at all? Check back and find out. For now, all I can tell you is that the contest format was a little different than I’d anticipated and the rules are making me a little nervous. But at least I wrote a thing. (Technically two things, though I disliked the second), and that ain’t nothing.
It’s amazing how real life can get in the way of writing. More astounding is when real life gets in the way of real life that was already interfering with my writing.
Case and point: the bout of illness that has struck my house like the plague. I got sick and got behind grading papers. My wife got sick and I couldn’t catch up grading papers. I got sick again and got way behind grading papers. Through all this, there was no time for writing. Heck, I had trouble finding time for little things like sleeping and eating and pooping (yep, I said it). What little I did manage to write was always trite, cliche, and totally directionless because I couldn’t find time to think, to plan. Bottom line: no production in two months. None worth keeping, anyway.
Maybe that’s not such a bad thing. I hit slumps periodically, often longer than a couple months. There was one year where I only finished one story (but tinkered on all my half-baked novels). One. I don’t even recall which story it was. But I came back from that stronger than I had been when I slumped. Maybe I’m in for another of those rebounds. Maybe.
The family seems to be on the mend, myself included, and the papers are almost caught up, just in time for the end of the fall semester. I already did Christmas (so to speak) with my parents when they came to town for my daughter’s birthday, so that’s one Christmas distraction I can avoid. There are always others, but it looks like I can finagle some quality writing time during this semester break. I’ll be scurrying like a rat on the Titanic for the rest of the week while finals are going on, but at least there is light at the end of the tunnel. Time for a deep breath and a system reset. Time to be a writer again.
I suspect I’m not the only part-time writer, full-time flunky that gets in these jams. They’re natural. Stressful situations are good for a writer. I hope to use mine, build on it, make my stories deliver the kind of I-can’t-escape-the-vortex stress that I’ve been battling. Ironic that I need that stress to settle before I can create it in fiction. It shouldn’t be that way, I should be able to write through the hurricane. I’m not that organized…yet. It will come. It will take a lot of work, but I’ll get there. Right now, writing is my hobby and hobbies have to take a back seat to jobs that bring home pork products. I need to be a better teacher in order to be a better writer. No, that’s not true. I need to be a more productive teacher in order to be a more productive writer. Production comes from organization, not chaos.
I am still excited to be finally writing my Festival of the Naked Man story, but progress is taking forever.
In my infinite wisdom, I decided this should be set on an English-speaking planet founded by Japanese with a rich cross-section of cultures represented. My main character has a Norse name and heritage but his family all believes in the planet’s Shinto-based religion. The protag’s girlfriend is Chinese and the religious leaders are pretty much all Japanese. I spent hours just researching the names. A little slang follows each culture with the Japanese filtering in more than anything due to thir dominance of the population. Considering the only language I have any background in (other than English) is Spanish, this language thing has been wearing out my Google. Now watch me end up cutting half of those words in the end. Grrr…
Even the parts in English are slow going due to my desire to really choose the right word. I know it’s still a first draft, but I can’t just throw any word on the page. (I recommend Flip Dictionary for this — an exceptional thesaurus for getting the right word out of a close miss.)
I dare say this will end up novella length, or at least novelette. My pace is starting slow but there’s a lot to get out there early.
I really think this will be the first of my stories that could fit in Analog magazine. There’s a lot of “soft science” wrapped in a shell of hard science. I’m pretty sure I’ve buried some commentary about American organized religion in with my plot. (For the record, I am a baptized-Catholic who attends a Methodist church where I deliver the children’s sermon each week. You’ll have to read the story to find the message that comes out of that Christian crossover.)
Mostly I’m just happy to be writing again. Now if I could just disconnect from all the other stuff I do (video games, television, parenting, teaching, sleeping, eating…blogging) I might have enough time to finish this story before my daughter goes to college.
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.
Scott W. Baker .net 