Living the Fictional Dream

I’m a little late on the rec, but if you haven’t read it yet, you should check out my writing group mate Jens’s piece on Everyday Weirdness. It’s called “The Difficulties of Writing a Novel (In a Zeppelin Fortress).”

My poor muse must be tired of me. She has packed her bags and flown the coup. I imagine her reclining in a beach chair in Hawaii or Aruba, sipping mai tais and being glad not to be tied to me any more.

Was it NaNo that sent her running?

All I know is that my inspiration and writing ideas have totally deserted me. I did manage to turn something into my writing group to be critted at our meeting this week, but it was a story I’d written the bulk of before the holidays.

Sometimes it seems like there are so many stories out there that I could never write them all in a million bazillion years, but lately it seems like my creative landscape is a dull, featureless void.

Maybe I should take advantage of the writing prompts that Alex supplied for our writing group prompts contest this month. Or maybe I should start trying to write the prompt a day that Stephanie has been sharing with the world (get aload of the Twinkie one if you’re looking for something really off the wall to write about!).

I keep telling myself that I should do that, but when I look at the prompts, nothing creative comes to mind.

**sighs**

Hopefully my muse will return soon, tanned and rejuvenated from her illicit vacation. Speaking of vacations, in a couple of weeks, Stephen and I will be heading to Sedona on a vacation of our own. Perhaps my muse will find me again there!

I’ve had writer’s block before, but this really isn’t writer’s block per se… it’s more like creativity block.

Here’s hoping that whatever it is, it goes away soon!

A few weeks ago, I got a rejection letter in my in-box. Not an uncommon event, but this particular rejection has a strange history.

The market in question deals solely in reprints, which is unusual enough, but on top of that my impression of this market is that a group of children/teens have a great deal to do with the running of the place. It is a Y/A market, by definition, and all the editorials, etc., I’ve experienced were done by younger people.

I sent a story into this market quite a while ago — last summer, actually. After two or three months with no response to my submission, I queried the market and asked if my story was still in their reading queue or if it had been lost in cyberspace, in which case I would be happy to re-send it. No response.

The months crept by. After a couple more months, I pondered sending them a note withdrawing my story from consideration, but it was a reprint, after all. It wasn’t like there was somewhere else this story needed to go. And there was still a chance that they reason it was taking so long was because they liked the story.

Then, approximately six months from the original submission date, I get the rejection note. One of the highlights of the note was that it addressed me as a Mr. instead of Ms. — maybe this is unfair of me, but that gaff makes me believe that someone more youthful wrote the response.

Basically, the note says that they liked my story and it sat in their maybe pile for quite a while, but because of the limited number of stories they produce per month (only 2), they eventually had to reject it.

Now, that is all fine and good. I am no stranger to rejection, and a story that was classified a maybe is way better than a story that is rejected flat out with a form letter. I’ve gotten some harsh rejections in my time, and, despite the gender-bending typo, this one was pretty nice.

Here are my problems with this situation, though. If this market wanted to be more professional, I think they need to make a few changes in their submission response system. First of all, if someone queries the status of their submission, they should reply, even if it is just a short response that says, “Your story was received and is still under consideration. Thank you, the Editors.” Second, if you’re going to tie up someone’s story by keeping it on your maybe pile, you should let them know. Most authors would be thrilled to have their story make it to the next round of consideration — just tell them about it and tell them how long you think you’ll need to make your final decision. Don’t leave them hanging out there with no news, wondering if the market has closed, if it didn’t actually recieve the story, or if they just don’t care.

Part of me really wants to reply to the rejection letter and, very calmly and professionally, give them the above advice. However, replying to a rejection letter is typically one of the biggest faux pas in this business. I’m torn… what would be the better course of action?

I guess, in the long run, I will just let it go. That’s probably the right choice. I think the reason I am so much more tempted to reply and give them this advice is because of the perception I have that they are all young. But that perception could be wrong — there could easily be adults behind the scenes, even if that would mean they aren’t very experienced adults.

I don’t know… what do you guys think? Would you reply, or would you leave it alone?

My latest flash piece is up at Every Day Fiction today, and you should definitely check it out. It’s called “The Care and Feeding of Your Sleeping Knight.” As always, you may wish to actually go read the story before you read the rest of this entry. It depends on how you feel about spoilers.

The best way to describe this story, I suppose, is a fairy tale with a twist. Last summer, Jamie, one of my writing group mates (as well as my sister!), brought a writing excercise to one of our lunch meetings. She brought a long list of titles that she’d created at this random title generator website, and the challenge was to write a story based on one of them. This story is the one that I wrote based on the title “The Care and Feeding of Your Sleeping Knight.”

The voice of the narrator came to me all in a flash. I was thinking about a sleeping knight and why he would need care and feeding — of course, a magic spell! And then I was picturing poor Gavin, stuck in an enchanted sleep with no true love to waken him, and he’d become a lot in some merchant’s stall, a conversation piece to be sold to the highest bidder.

I seldom write in the second person — in fact, this might be my only second person POV story — but for this particular tale, it just flowed out of my pen this way. I think it works. I enjoyed writing from the point of view of the merchant woman. It was also fun imagining all the things for sale in her shop. I see her as a opportunist — some of her merchendise is genuine, like dear Gavin, but she’s not above selling a few frogs and claiming that one might be a prince in disguise.

If you head over to EDF to read the story, I would appreciate it if you took the time to vote in the star ranking. That’s what spurs stories onto the Top 10 lists. And comments — either there or here — are always great. I love knowing what everyone thinks of my stories.

I hope you have as much fun reading this one as I did writing it!

And, while you’re clicking about reading fiction online, you should check out the new issue of The Rose and Thorn, which includes writing group mate Stephanie’s reprinted story, “Brimstone and Liars.”

I’m sure that question has been plaguing all my loyal readers. Assuming I have any left!

Between holiday house guests, crazy vacation schedules, too many big work projects, and one of those colds that burrows into your lungs and refuses to leave, writing has not been high on my to-do list lately. I think my muse went to Aruba for the winter, and took all my good ideas with her!

However, at today’s Writer’s Ink meeting, I signed up to submit a story for critique at the next meeting, so hopefully that will spur something remotely resembling fiction out of me. Our annual collection theme this year is “Genre Collision,” so we all have to write a story this year that combines or somehow smooshes at least two genres — or as many genres as we want, really.

I have a story I’ve been tinkering with for a while. It’s set in my sci-fi universe where there are five self-sustaining human colonies on the moon. I tried to write this story back when the “Return to Luna” anthology was soliciting, but I couldn’t get the plot to turn out right. I tried two different moon colony stories, and while I really liked the world that I built, I had issues with the plot in both stories. However, I hope that I have reached a turning point with one of them. And if not, heck, I’ll send it into my writing group any way — they are great at helping ferret out a problem with a story and brainstorming ideas on how to fix it!

As far as colliding genres go, I hope that this story will end up as a space western. We’ll see. Thus far, the western elements are a lot lighter than the sci-fi elements, but there’s a wandering stranger, a woman who seems helpless, a dog, a farm… I see a bit of western in all that.

Hopefully, now that the holiday obligations are over and the walking crud is slowly but surely releasing its death grip on my lungs, I’ll be able to resume my more regular posting schedule. I actually have a few topics in mind that I’ve wanted to write about lately, which is a step in the right direction! I got a thought-provoking rejection letter the other day, and I’m interested to know what other people think of it. Maybe that will be my next post!

I hope all of y’all out there in blog land are doing well. I will try to resume my normal blog reading soon, too. If I could comment on Blogger blogs from the office, I would even start that today. Sadly, I’ll have to wait on that until I get home.

Oh, and something else to leave you with — my flash piece, “The Care and Feeding of Your Sleeping Knight,” will be up on Every Day Fiction later this week. I’ll post here when it’s live! I’m looking forward to that.