Category Archives: Writers

To paraphrase Dean Wesley Smith, an author is someone who has written something; a writer is someone who is actively writing. Be a writer, not an author.

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

Writing in Public: Day 02, Month 01

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Started my writing at 12:00 PM today.  Normally I like to get writing started at 10:00, get a solid two or three hours in before lunch, and then hit it again until dinner.  The “hit it again until dinner” also didn’t happen.  With the bad weather rolling in, it’s been a busy day of running more errands and gathering firewood.  No excuse for someone trying to make a career of writing.  Writing time is something I need to guard jealously and insure that only writing is done during those specified blocks.  That is something I will implement first thing tomorrow.  10:00 – 12:00, then 1:00 – 5:00, or something to that effect.

With that said, there was some productivity.  The rough draft of “Alien Concept” is finished, clocking in at approximately 1,050 words.  The rough draft of the Kazka “Journeys” theme story is also finished.  It’s another flash fiction piece, and it will need quite a bit of work to get it up to where I’m satisfied with it.  On the planning and outlining front, I’ve figured out a starting point and protagonist for the “Songs of Fate” story that I’ll begin actually writing on Friday.  That is for the Crossed Genres‘ music themed issue.

  • Nonfiction: 211
  • Planning and outlining: 481
  • Fiction: 1,218
  • Salable words: 000

Total Fiction for Month: 3,168

Total Salable for Month: 000

Writing in Public: Day 01, Month 01

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Well, today turned out to have less time devoted to writing than I had originally planned.  I started writing at around 10:00 AM, and at Noon I was slammed with a seemingly endless supply of errands that had to be run.  The good news is it has freed my day up for tomorrow.  Once I sit down at 10:00 AM tomorrow I should be clear to write well into the afternoon.

The other good news is the two hours I was writing fiction turned out to be fairly productive.  I finished the rough draft of “Fallout Ariel” and came up with a plot for another flash fiction piece with the working title of “Alien Concept.”  I’m hoping to get a rough draft of that out tomorrow.

Here is the breakdown for writing today.  Note that both the “Fiction” and “Planning and outlining” categories will likely be edited tomorrow, as I tend to write just before bed.

  • Nonfiction: 840
  • Planning and outlining: 353
  • Fiction: 1,950
  • Salable words: 0

Total Fiction for Month: 1,950

Total Salable for Month: 0

Update: Wrote another 300 or so words, the opening page of the “Alien Concept” rough draft.  It’s been added to the numbers above, bringing total fiction for the day up to approximately 1,950.  Note that these are estimates, as my rough drafts tend to be written by hand.  Once I get into the typed revisions and final drafts, the numbers will become more exact.

 

Brevity in Flash Fiction

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One of my favorite sources for great flash fiction is the aptly named ezine Flash Fiction Online.  Another is the Daily Science Fiction, although they do not solely publish flash fiction.  They prefer shorter fiction for first time buys, so I have always tried to gear my submissions to Daily Science Fiction with that in mind.  In fact, of the numerous tales I have sent to them (16 as of this writing), it was the 11th one that made it to the second – and final – round of selection.  It was also my shortest, at just 273 words.  It has yet to be published, but hopefully a home will be found soon.

I find myself writing more and more flash fiction as the months go by, and my main hang-up is keeping my tendency for verbosity down.  If brevity is the soul of wit then I’m lacking in the wits department!  As frustrating as it can be, it’s a great exercise for a writer to try and be as concise as possible.  The words do add up, whether one is writing a story that’s only a sentence long or an entire novel or series of novels.  There comes a point when you need to rein them in.

Take “Fallout Ariel”, the flash fiction piece I finished the rough draft of today.  It’s a lengthy 1,650 words.  To be considered a flash piece by most markets it will need to be at least 1,000 words.  That’s a lot of shaving, but that’s to be expected from me.  I will probably re-read the rough draft and then rewrite the story entirely.  I have some ideas of how I want to change up the plot to make it a better tale.  After that, the story will need to be tightened.

By tomorrow night I’ll have a tangible example to show of the process I go through from rough draft to revised draft to final draft (Or as many revisions as are needed before arriving at the final draft).  Each story requires different things of me, which is what keeps things interesting.

Suzanne Vincent, the editor of Flash Fiction online, has a great article on managing story length.  It’s been a tremendous help to me, and if you’re into writing fiction (flash or otherwise) you owe it to your self to give it a read.  Not only is it good advice, but it comes from an editor!  You know, one of the people who determines the life or death of your story once you release it into the wild lands known only as “Submitted.”  It never hurts to see how they think and to know what they look for.

Writing in Public Challenge

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Dean Wesley Smith has taken on an interesting challenge that I will soon take up myself.  He is publicly displaying the amount of writing he does in a given day, with month-to-month totals given for fiction writing and non-fiction writing.

For me this challenge will be to hold myself accountable.  2013 was a productive (If not profitable) year for my writing, and my plan is for 2014 to be at least ten times more productive and, hopefully, profitable.  There are ambitious goals that must be met.

Expect my first post tonight!  I’ll probably break it up into three categories for word count: nonfiction, planning and outlining, fiction writing, and salable words:

  • Nonfiction: Posts here or anything else written that pertains to the business of writing, such as correspondence, query letters, submission letters, etc.
  • Planning and outlining: anything from simple, jotted-down notes to full-blown outlines.
  • Fiction writing: from rough draft to finished product.
  • Salable words: the finished product.

I have some numbers from January that I should post up that are pretty interesting.  With the six stories completed in January, the amount of total words written when compared with the amount of finished product was a ratio of roughly 3-to-1.  So, the next time I write out a 5,000 word story I should plan for 15,000 words to be written.

How does it work for you, as a writer?  Can you bang it all out in one go and send it off for acceptance, or do you need to get something – anything – written and then revise and rewrite?