Category Archives: Novel Writing

Writing in Public: Day 13, Month 01

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Yet another bad day for actually getting stuff written.  I was at the keyboard for a number of hours, struggling to get “Listening Post” rewritten.  I’m not sure what the problem was, but the words did not want to come.  It was one of those days that makes a writer think he’s not a writer at all.  It’s not a very complex tale either, which had me both puzzled and frustrated.

Further, it ate into my rough draft time and yet another day passed with little more done on “You Are My Brothers.”  Tomorrow is the start of a new week, and a new set of goals.  And part of those goals will be finishing the rewrites of “Listening Post” and “Fallout Ariel” very early in the week, possibly as early as tomorrow.

  • Nonfiction: 148
  • Planning and outlining: 200
  • Fiction: 1,627
  • Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 32,549

Total Salable for Month: 1,070

Writing in Public: Day 10, Month 01

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Spent a little bit more time tweaking “Amidst the Swirling Sakura Petals” and fired it off to Flash Fiction Online with a total length of around 1,070 words.  If accepted there, it will need to be trimmed down to 1,000 words, but they accept submissions up to 1,100 words with that understanding.  All we can do is wait and see what happens there.

I also started work on the epic fantasy story “You Are My Brothers”, with ten pages and approximately 3,000 words finished at the moment.  Think of this story as a sword-and-sorcery version of the Siege of Bastogne, featuring a mercenary company caught behind enemy lines and the band of all-female knights that come to their aid.  The Order of the Emerald Garland is here to save the day!

  • Nonfiction: 142
  • Planning and outlining: 000
  • Fiction: 3,500
  • Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 27,719

Total Salable for Month: 1,070

Goals for the Week Ending 02-23-14

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Writing Goals (Any titles listed are working titles):

  • Write “Songs of Fate”, a fantasy short story for Crossed Genres‘ “music” theme. (4,000 words or less)
  • Write “Interstellar Explorers”, a science fiction short story about human prospectors discovering – and dealing with – a pre-spaceflight alien race that is very warlike and will be a threat if they do reach the stars. (6,000 words or less)
  • Write “Sublease”, a science fiction tale set in the not-too-distant future where all of humanity is tied into a network that makes use of everyone’s unused physical and mental abilities in exchange for paying off the enormous debt a collapsed global economy has placed on everyone.  Think of it as a coal-mining town where the company owns everything, and charges more than you get paid for the necessities.  The hero is someone who wants to break free of that system.  I’m expecting this tale to be around 10,000 words.  This is the story I want to send to the Writers of the Future contest.
  • Write outline for the second draft of “Into the Wastes”, a fantasy novel about a company of crusaders sent into their kingdom’s northern hinterlands to deal with one threat, only to discover multiple threats.

Reading Goals:

  • Read each of the five stories that Daily Science Fiction puts out this week.
  • Re-read my notes for “Into The Wastes” and lay the groundwork for a second draft.
  • Re-read the prologues and opening chapters for several epic fantasy novels, including King’s Dragon (Kate Elliott), The Green Rider (Kristen Britain), and The Eye of the World (Robert Jordan), amongst others.  I’m doing this as an exercise to see if there is anything common in each book’s opening chapters and how that could benefit the opening chapters to “Into the Wastes.”

Week in Review – Week Ending 02/16/2014

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This week was an interesting one.  Blizzards, shoveling, blizzards, shoveling.  I’ll admit all of that left me drained physically and mentally.  I was able to push through some of the writing goals I had, but the week ended with a lot left to be done.  I can only blame so much of this on the weather, as the rest lies squarely on my shoulders.  I knew the week was going to get bad and I didn’t take precautions and frontload as much writing into the better days as I should have.

The plan should always be to think of tomorrow as being worse than today in terms of productivity.  Tomorrow could be perfectly fine and productive, or the car could break down or the heating system could die and the day could be spent dealing with that.  Better to assume it will get derailed and focus on the present than to hope for a better tomorrow.

With that said, the rough drafts of four stories were finished.  They are:

  • “Fallout Ariel”, originally on the goal list.
  • “Ninja Mama”, originally on the goal list under the Kazka 713 “Journeys” theme.
  • “Alien Concept”, a flash fiction story that just came to me and had no bearing on the original goals.
  • “Listening Post”, originally on the goal list under the Penumbra‘s “superhero” theme.

“Songs of Fate” and “Interstellar Explorers” were not started, though some planning/outlining was accomplished.

On the reading front, I did finish the stories that Daily Science Fiction sent out, and look forward to enjoying more next week.  My goal with this reading is to eventually start reverse-engineering the tales and breaking them down into their component parts.  Such an exercise can only help improve my own grasp of the craft of writing, and it’s something I want to start doing with everything I read.  The more I can understand what goes into an accepted tale, the more likely my own work will find a home in the publications I read.

Writing in Public: Day 05, Month 01

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Much of today was spent either working on the rough draft of “Listening Post” or coming up with a new schedule for writing that should be of great benefit:

Several writers I follow all say that it’s best to work on multiple projects at once, and I agree with that.  It’s something I’ve done as a tactic rather than a long-term strategy.  I would write until stuck on something, then switch to something else, then go back to the first item, so on so forth.  There was never a plan involved.  It was just something that happened on the spur of the moment.

Starting Monday the plan is to have a rough draft to work on, a revision to work on, a research/outline project to work on, and my novel “Into the Wastes” to work on, with a set amount of hours devoted to each as the day progresses.  I’m not entirely sure which hours will be devoted to what yet, but for now the rough draft will be worked on first, followed by the revision of something previously written, then on to the novel work, and finishing with researching the next project.  I’m hoping to have a flow that will eventually go like so:

Short Story Writing:

Day One:

  • Rough Draft: Story 1 (In this case, the already planned “A Gentle Breeze”)
  • Revision: Story 0 (A previously written tale, such as “Ninja Mama”)
  • Research/Outline: Story 2

Day Two:

  • Rough Draft: Story 2 (Planned the day before)
  • Revision: Story 1 (Rough draft written the day before)
  • Research/Outline: Story 3

And so on, so forth.  Will it always work out like this?  Probably not.  Some rough drafts and revisions will take longer than a day to work on, especially tales in excess of 5,000 words.  It’ll be an interesting experiment, in any event.

Anyway, on to the numbers.  Hopefully early next week we’ll start seeing some “salable” numbers as revisions from this past week get finished:

  • Nonfiction: 315
  • Planning and outlining: 250
  • Fiction: 900
  • Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 4,368

Total Salable for Month: 000

Goals for the Week Ending 02-16-14

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Starting today, every Monday there will be a post of my goals for the current week. This will include writing goals as well as reading goals. Reading is as important to a writer as writing, for both are learning experiences that help us to grow in our craft.

Or, so I like to think. Anyway, on to the goals!

Writing Goals (Any titles listed are working titles):

  • Write “Fallout Ariel”, a flash fiction story of a technical diver meeting a mermaid at the outset of nuclear war. (1,000 words or less)
  • Write a flash fiction piece for the Kazka 713 “Journeys” flash fiction contest. (1,000 words or less)
  • Write “Songs of Fate”, a fantasy short story for Crossed Genres‘ “music” theme. (4,000 words or less)
  • Write “What Use, This Strength?”, a short story for Penumbra‘s “superhero” theme. (3,500 words or less)
  • Write “Interstellar Explorers”, a science fiction short story about human prospectors discovering – and dealing with – a pre-spaceflight alien race that is very warlike and will be a threat if they do reach the stars. (6,000 words or less)
  • Write outline for the second draft of “Into the Wastes”, a fantasy novel about a company of crusaders sent into their kingdom’s northern hinterlands to deal with one threat, only to discover multiple threats.

Reading Goals:

  • Read each of the five stories that Daily Science Fiction puts out this week.  It’s free to subscribe, so I highly recommend it.  They put out many wonderful stories of varying sizes, shapes, and stripes.
  • Re-read my notes for “The Wastes” and lay the groundwork for a second draft.
  • Re-read portions of Elizabeth Haydon’s Symphony of Ages series, mostly for how she incorporates music into her writing.  This will be important for my own musically-themed stories.  Plus, it’s a good series!

July 2013 Goal Progression

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So far, the rough drafts of three short stories have been finished.  Also, between the two novel ideas I was floating around I’ve settled on the older one of the two.  The world is a little bit more established and should give me plenty to work with as I try to speed through the rough draft process.

Things have been off to a bit of a rocky start this month, but we are picking up steam.

I will also need to make time to re-submit some tales (Such as “Code Amaranth”) to new markets.  For most of my tales (With the exception of “A Tuberous Anomaly” and “The Little Red Survivalist”) it is a long journey down Rejection Alley before arriving at the Hall of Acceptability.

July 2013 Goals

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It had been my intent to write a “June 2013 Goals” post, but some issues came up that prevented much writing (Read: no writing) during June.  It was completely my fault, as there was certainly time to write.

Novel Writing

Well, July 2013 begins with an added note of urgency.  I’ve had a novel idea I’ve been mentally tossing around for quite some time, and some of it has already been put to paper.  I wanted to start writing the rough draft in July with the idea of being done with it in September.  The end date in September is still there, but there is now less time between now and then to get the draft done.  Pressure can be a good thing, so here’s my goal for the month:

Week 1: Go back over my old notes and writings, including a short story set in the same universe.  Come up with a solid structure for the story, and a basic (if not detailed) outline.

Weeks 2-4: Begin writing the rough draft.  1,000 words per day is the goal, so over 21 days we should have approximately 20-25% of the story written.

I would push for a more ambitious writing goal, but I need to save room for short story writing, which will allow my brain to roam in random directions as it is wont to do.  It will also allow for more chances at publication, either in magazines or in anthologies.

Short Story Writing

My writing goal for short stories is the same as the novel writing: 1,000 words per day, so by the end of this month there should be around 31,000 words of short stories under my belt.  Will it be as exact as that?  Probably not.  But, I’ll do my best to make that happen.  At an average of 3,000 words per story that could be as many as 10.

There are some upcoming theme and anthology deadlines that look interesting, including (In no certain order):

Tell Me a Fable – A Grimm Retelling

NeaDNathal – Another Fringeworks anthology, this one about Neaderthals having to be resurrected for some reason.

Wily Writers – They have three themes with a July 31 deadline, and they all look interesting: Military, Psychological Horror, and Speculative Fiction (A catch-all?).

Penumbra – Each month they have an interesting theme.  Last month was the Fae (Elves, faerie-folk, pixies, etc), next month is Gaslight Fantasy, and this month is Alfred Hitchcock.  Not sure what I could do for a Hitchcock-style story, but maybe I can come up with something.

There are also a few flash fiction ideas I’m tinkering with, so hopefully I can get those out in-between these deadline tales.