Category Archives: Benjamin T. Smith

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

Writing in Public: Day 09, Month 01

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The rough draft of “Sublease” is finished!  It took a few more hours, but with around 5,100 words put in today the total is right at 10,000 words, which was on the low end of my estimate.  Once I begin the rewriting phase of it, I imagine this story will actually grow a little bit longer.  Working through the rough draft gave me several ideas that should help make the plot and overall theme more coherent, and the pacing should be better.  This is a story that I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years now, so it’s exciting to see it finally getting done.

I didn’t meet any of my other goals for the day, unfortunately.  But, 5,100 words for a single day is not bad.  Not quite what I wanted, but infinitely better than the first few days of this “Writing in Public” challenge.

Tomorrow the focus will be on revisions for some other stories, so hopefully the “salable” number will be on the rise, especially considering there are a few deadlines that have to be met by the 28th of the month.

  • Nonfiction: 000
  • Planning and outlining: 000
  • Fiction: 5,100
  • Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 24,219

Total Salable for Month: 968

Writing in Public: Day 08, Month 01

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Today was another good day, although I’m still not meeting all four goals.  On the rough draft side of things, I met my goal of getting the first half of “Sublease” written.  The story is now at its midpoint, and I plan to write through to the ending tomorrow.  This rough draft is about as rough as it gets, to the point it’ll have to be rewritten entirely.  But, it’s helping me see what will work, what won’t work, and what sort of pacing the story will have.  That alone makes it worth my while.

I wanted to edit the flash fiction piece “Alien Concept”, but wasn’t able to.  Instead, I shifted focus back onto “Ninja Mama” (Henceforth referred to as “A Mother’s Duty”) and reworked the final draft a bit.  There’s still a tiny amount of work I want to do on it, but it will be going out this week for sure.

That’s all for today.  We’ll see what tomorrow holds!

  • Nonfiction: 178
  • Planning and outlining: 1,000
  • Fiction: 5,300
  • Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 19,119

Total Salable for Month: 968

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.

Submission Sunday – Week Ending 02/16/2014

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No new submissions this week, but that’s to be expected.  The stories written this week are still in the rough draft phase.  Next week should see a few new submissions, and possibly some resubmissions as word comes back from various publications.

Summary: 0 New, 3 Resubmissions

Resubmissions:

“A Matter of Upbringing” resubmitted to Fantasy Scroll Magazine.

“Familial Obligation” resubmitted to Horror D’oeuvres.

“Sand” resubmitted to Bastion Magazine.

Writing in Public: Day 06, Month 01

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Today was a very productive day for fiction writing.  I finished up with the “Listening Post” short story.  The rough draft, anyway.  The revision will be complete before the week is out, and hopefully it will be submitted by the weekend along with a few other tales.

Tomorrow begins a new week and a new experiment in writing that was outlined in this yesterday’s Writing in Public.  Expect the numbers in all four categories to rise on a (hopefully) daily basis!  I also want to start posting some snippets of the different stories as they are worked on, specifically to show the evolution from rough draft to final product.  To use a movie industry term, a lot gets left on the cutting room floor.

On to the numbers!

  • Nonfiction: 516
  • Planning and outlining: 000
  • Fiction: 3,000
  • Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 7,368

Total Salable for Month: 000

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

Writing in Public: Day 04, Month 01

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Today was another day marked with more planning, outlining, and research than with actual writing.  I was able to begin the rough draft of “Listening Post.”  The first page is written, and I have a pretty good idea of where I want to go with the tale, at least from the perspective of the first draft.  Revision is where the story’s framework really coalesces for me, so I’m looking forward to getting started on that as soon as possible.

While out shoveling snow I spent a good bit of time thinking about “Listening Post” and “A Gentle Breeze” and I’ve come to the conclusion that “Listening Post” stands a better chance of fitting the more traditional superhero mold that I’m assuming Penumbra is looking for.  On the one hand the main character, Listener, is not going to be your typical superhero who’s capable of duking it out with a volcano despite never having been to the gym nor having any kind of flame retardant clothing.  He’s more of a desk jockey, his abilities tailored less to combat and more to behind-the-scenes intelligence gathering.  On the other hand, he is part of a team that does include the more rough-and-tough superheroes we all know and love, such as Pugilist and Shootist (He’s a John Wayne fan, as you can probably tell).

Anyway, on to the breakdown:

  • Nonfiction: 240
  • Planning and outlining: 825
  • Fiction: 300
  • Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 3,468

Total Salable for Month: 000

Writing in Public: Day 03, Month 01

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Today was not very productive from an actual fiction-writing standpoint.  I spent a good bit of the day reading articles on writing technique from Superhero Nation, a website devoted to the writing of superhero novels, short stories, and comics, and also writing in general.  I had gone with the intent to look up some common tropes of superhero stories to either play off of or avoid entirely, and ended up reading a bunch of articles on general writing techniques.  It was well spent.

The reason for the superhero interest has to do with Penumbra‘s superhero theme this month.  There were a few different ideas floating around in my head, and two coalesced rather nicely today.  The outlining is ready to the point that I should be able to get rough drafts for both finished tomorrow.  They’ll be sloppy (Rough drafts always are for me), but they should be finished and ready for revision Saturday morning.

It’s obvious that all of my writing goals won’t be met for the week, but there should be five stories finished.  And the number of stories I wanted to write was five, so…

Anyway, today’s numbers:

 

  • Nonfiction: 206
  • Planning and outlining: 2,806
  • Fiction: 000
  • Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 3,168

Total Salable for Month: 000