Living the Fictional Dream

I’ve mentioned before how my writing output has severly diminished since my little girl was born last July. I don’t get down on myself about it because it’s really only to be expected. Juggling a newborn and a full-time job is CRAZY! I’m finding it difficult enough to carve two nights of the month out to attend writing group functions, much less write on my own. (Not that I’m complaining… Summerlyn is the light of my life and what she needs comes first.)

What I’m finding interesting is that, as if to compensate for this lack of writing time, my subconscious keeps hammering away at little plot bunnies. I had one pop into my head a month or two ago for a horror story (horror like scary; not horror like blood and guts gruesome). The idea started as just a single line and an image in my head. Previously, that would have been enough for me to start writing, but now I just don’t have the time to do it.

So, as if in response to this lack, my subconscious keeps turning the idea over and over, and every time it comes to my mind again, it’s a little more formed. Now I actually have two characters, a partial plot, and the ending of the story in mind (it will probably be flash or a very short story). I can actually see this story fairly vividly in my mind. Whenever I do have time to sit down and write (hopefully, during one of the November NaNo write-ins my writing group will host), the first draft of this story should come out pretty quickly!

What this has taught me is that I will always be a writer. I knew that before, but I’d never really tested it. There’s never been a time like this in my life before when I wanted to write but actually couldn’t do it for weeks and months at a time. Previously, if I wanted to write, I either sat down and did it right then or maybe only had to wait a day or two to find some time. If I wasn’t writing before, it was because I had no ideas, not because I had them but didn’t have the time.

This proves that I will always create stories, whether I get the chance to write them down or not. It’s part of my make-up… pretty much part of my very DNA. The stories are there — all I have to do is hear them out. And if the muse is strong enough and if I devote them enough thought time (even if I don’t have enough keyboard time), they will still be formed — a little more slowly, but they will eventually be there just the same.

The fact that creating stories is so natural to me that I do it even when I am not able to pursue it, is why I will always pursue this writing thing. I may never have a novel published or be able to give up my day job in favor of staying home to write (I hope that’s not the case, but one has to face up to the possibility), but I will always be a writer at heart.

I think that’s the mark of a true writer — the ones who do it because they love it; the ones who do it because they have to, because the stories will be there either way. If you go into this business to try to find fame or fortune… well, the odds are significantly stacked against you. I can’t imagine sticking with it for those reasons, because there is no guarantee. But sticking with it because the stories have to be told — that’s a writer’s heart!

I received word over the weekend that I’ve had four flash pieces accepted for the 2009 Every Day Fiction anthology. I had one story (“Remember?”) accepted into last year’s anthology, which was exciting enough, but to have four accepted is amazing!

Not to toot my own horn, but I felt that the odds were pretty good that “The Care and Feeding of Your Sleeping Knight” would get in. It was on the top 10 stories of all time list for several months running.

“A Million Faces” seemed to have a good shot, as well. It was on the top 10 stories of all time list for a while, as well — though not nearly as long as tCaFoYSK. Personally, I think aMF is the best story I’ve ever had appear on EDF, so I was really rooting for this one and am thrilled it got into the anthology.

The other two stories to be selected surprised me — “Fortune Cookies” and “Frigid.”

“Fortune Cookies” is a fun little short — a little humor and a little surreal. I didn’t realize it was a favorite, and was surprised to look back at it today and see it had such a high star rating.

With “Frigid,” I’d actually thought it was published after the anthology deadline, but I looked back and it just squeaked into the running by being published at the end of August. That poor story actually had a bad start out at EDF due to technical issues in which every other paragraph was missing when it was originally posted. The EDF crew fixed it right after I emailed them about it, and it’s fine now. I hadn’t realized until I went back to look at it today that it actually recovered more than I’d thought on the star rating. It’s not ranked as high as the others mentioned above, but it had barely been holding at 3 stars when it first went live. I’m glad it got in, though, because I’m partial to my superhero universe. This is the first story set in that ‘verse to be published somewhere other than the wonderful A Thousand Faces.

All in all, I am surprised and excited by this multiple acceptance, and I cannot wait until the new anthology is available. Last year, I gave several copies as Christmas gifts. I wonder if the new one will be out in time for that. If so, that is several gifts taken care of already. If not, then I’ll save the copies for next year’s birthday gifts instead.

I can’t wait to find out who else I know has stories in the anthology. I’ve heard that Alex had a story accepted, but quite a few of my writing group mates, blog friends, and even a college friend had at least one story published over there this year. There were so many good stories, I don’t know how Camille and Jordan can narrow it down! If you’ve had a story accepted, comment and let me know!

Oh, and in case you’re interested, in addition to the five stories linked above, I have had two other stories published over at EDF in the past year – “A Castle in the Clouds” and “Honor Bound.” If you’ve never read them, check them out.

The search terms that result in hits on this blog are interesting — at least to me.

For example, I wrote one post this year comparing my new favorite vampire paramour, Sookie Stackhouse, to former powerhouse Anita Blake, and, I swear, that post has garnered more search hits than any other. When I go through the list, 44 of the 108 tearch terms used in the past month were related to Sookie, Anita, or both.

My posts mentioning the Twilight series and the TV show Castle garnered quite a few search terms of their own, though not as many as Anita and Sookie did. Strangely enough, many searches people ran trying to find out the names of the writers in the poker game in the first episode of Castle hit my blog quite a few times. I guess I am a writer (and my blog is a writing blog) and I wrote an entry about Castle, so it makes sense.

The lesson I’ve learned from the above is that if you want search engines to direct people to your blog, blog about big names in pop culture. Of course, the caveat is that most of the people who visited my blog due to one of these searches spent little to no time on the site. For the one or two who spent a few minutes, most of the others spent 00:00:00.

My post on vampires versus werewolves came up with several search topics that were actually on the same topic (search terms like “what’s the rivalry between vampires and werewolves”).

My recent post about wacky eye colors in L.J. Smith’s novels made my blog hit on a search for “characters with unique eyes” — so, I guess, that one person’s crazy eyes is another person’s unique.

The biggest laugh I got reading the search results was the search term “clavicle sexy.” The blog hit on that one because of the post I wrote a while back about the latest novel in the Luxe series and how the auther way overused the term clavicle when describing her characters.

And then there is the strangeness of searches like “erin selkie” and “erin’s story blog.” Of course it makes perfect sense that those searches would turn up hits for this blog. The oddness comes from the fact that of those two searches, one recorded zero time spent on the site and the other recorded only 3 seconds spent. Is there another Erin out there who has a story blog and/or who has written about selkies? If so, I would like to meet this doppleganger.

The person who searched for “erin ‘the wall’ hypersonic tales” only spent 14 seconds on the site, and I know good and well that person was searching for me. But maybe they didn’t want the blog, but wanted to look at the actual story on hypersonic tales?

Last, but not least, someone came to my blog as a result of the search “summerlyn’s dream.” I really wonder what they meant by that. I assume they were not referring to my baby girl. It’s amazing how many Summerlyn’s I’ve heard about since we chose that name for our daughter. We thought it was so unique — the person we heard about it from spelled it Summerlan, and we used a different spelling. But, since July, I’ve had at least two other people tell me they know someone named Summerlyn (one a little girl born two weeks after ours). I would be interested to know what Summerlyn this searcher was looking for when they wound up on this blog.

Well, there’s not really a conclusion to this rambling post. I’m about out of blogging time for today, so I’d better end this. Maybe some day I will think of a way to use these search results to the benefit of my blog, but, with the exception of blogging about big pop culture items, I can’t see how at the moment (and I don’t want to blog about pop culture as an angle… I only want to do it if I’m moved to).

I guess the biggest moral of the search results story is that, 9 times out of 10 (or even more often than that), they don’t really matter. The searchers don’t spend any time here anyway, because, no matter how relevant the term, it wasn’t what they actually wanted to read about anyway.

Happy searching and blogging everyone!

This morning, when I checked my email, I found the proof for “Dinner for Three,” a story set in my superhero universe that is coming out in the next issue of A Thousand Faces.

There is something fun about looking over a proof of my very own story. It’s a little sneak peek as to what it will look like when it’s published. And a proof makes the acceptance real, at least to me. I may have had an email acceptance sitting in my inbox for the past six months, but now the story is actually here, right in front of me.

I also revised my bio, which was fun. I was able to mention my baby girl in it, which gave me a happy.

All in all, a very pleasant morning. I hope you all have some good news to brighten your day. And, hey, if you haven’t read issue 9 of ATF, click on the link above and check it out. There are some really good superhero stories in this issue, including one by my writing group mate, Stephanie.

Have you ever gotten a story idea that would be better in a different venue than your usual medium?

When I write, it’s short stories or novels, definitely prose. I wrote a screenplay once for a class during graduate school, and it was fun, but it’s not my usual thing. But every once in a while, I will get this “brilliant” idea that wouldn’t work well as prose, but would look great on screen.

I’ve had a plot bunny floating around for a year or so for a romantic comedy. The idea would be crap as a novel, but as a 2-hour movie, I think it would be great. It could star John Cusak and Amy Adams and pull the audience in with quick scenes and witty banter.

Too bad screen writing is such a crazy business. My understanding is that you can’t really break into it unless you’re in Hollywood and have an agent to book you pitch sessions with studios. And, also, probably more importantly, as I learned back in graduate school, writing screen plays is not really my thing. I’m not good at cut scenes, transitions, or even the really strict format that you have to use.

Also, I think horror is a really challenging genre to write. Not gross-out horror, but suspense. A lot of my favorite suspense and horror stories take place on the screen, where you have music and visuals to get that creepy feeling across.

Now, I’m not saying that horror can only be written for screen. The best sellers of Stephen King would prove me wrong there. But I guess writing horror is just not something I’m talented at. I can see this idea that I have for a scary story, but I don’t know how to write it as prose. It needs to have shadows that the watcher can see in the background and ample opportunity for the evil supernatural creatures to pop up for a big scare. It would make a great episode of a show like Supernatural.

The easy answer to this conundrum would be for me to try my hand at writing for the screen sometime. It might not go anywhere, but one never knows. And maybe while writing the screenplay, I would realize that I could actually write the story in prose instead and have my first best seller ready to go (yeah, right!).

If I had the time, I think I might do that. It would definitely be a stretch for me writing-wise. Maybe I could even do Script Frenzy, which is put on by the people behind NaNoWriMo. Sadly, the time for something like that will be a long time coming, though. If I have any writing time these days, it’s gotta be devoted to all of my regular writing. I don’t have enough time for that right now, much less random experiments.

However, it is fun to think about. And it is interesting when my brain decides to take a flight of fancy and go off in a new direction. I look forward to the day when I can follow that direction for a while and see where it leads.

Have any of the rest of y’all out there (oh, my dozen blog readers!) ever tried your hand at something really different from your normal style? Do you ever get the wild hair to write screenplays or poetry or just something entirely different from your writing bread and butter?

Poor little girl! She had to come with Mommy to the write-in last night. Poor Hubby was supposd to keep her, but he was not feeling well at all. I tried to find sitters, but to no avail. So, with me she came.

Bundled up in a car seat — not her favorite thing. Normally, she falls asleep in the car, but this time, not so much. She dozed on and off long enough for me to have dinner with Steph and Dauna and have some writing-type discussions (my favorite was a writing topic related to meatloaf… but I think you had to be there).

Then, just as I got out my laptop to, I’d hoped, finally finish revising the flash piece that my writing group critted for me back in August, I heard fussing. The baby wanted her own dinner (or is that second dinner, since she’d eaten less than 3 hours before?). For the first time since she was born, Mommy realized she’d forgotten to pack the bottle in the diaper bag. Luckily, home is only a 5 minute drive from the restaurant where we’d set up shop. Sadly, that meant I had to leave, writing undone.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love my baby girl very much, and I will give up whatever I need to so that I can give her what she needs. But, selfishly, doing so last night was really hard.

When the baby first came along, it was full immersion and totally overwhelming. There was so much to do with the baby and she was so new that I didn’t want to do anything else but be with her. And it took a while to get used to having her, especially since she didn’t come home from the NICU for 3.5 weeks (she was a preemie).

These days, while the addition of the full-time job makes things more complicated, the baby care is getting more routine. Taking two or three hours off a couple of evenings a month seems a lot more doable than it did when she was so new and fragile.

Now, I’m really starting to miss writing. My fingers ache for the keyboard, and plot bunnies and characters are nibbling at my brain. Too bad there is never any time to give them attention!

Last night, I was so desperate, I tried to do some writing during my 4 a.m. pumping session (thanks to her time in the NICU, our little one spurns the breast, which means there are both pumping and feeding steps to do multiple times a day). Sadly, writing when I’m sleep deprived and dealing with baby care is not my best work.

Here’s hoping that next time (which will be the writing group’s NaNo planning meeting and kick-off party), babysitters will come through and I can have a tad of uninterrupted me time. I think my muse might rejoice if it happens… assuming she doesn’t leave me for more active environs in the mean time.

I haven’t had a lot of time for reading short fiction lately, a fact which makes me sad. Hopefully, things will calm down at work soon (the fall is our busiest season), and I can get caught up on Every Day Fiction and all the other great ‘zines out there.

However, I have managed to read a few stories every once in a while, so here are a few links that I think y’all might be interested in.

First off, my writing group mate, Alex, has a story out in Big Pulp. It’s called “Big in Ak-Sar-Ben,” It’s a fun flash piece — a bit steam punk, a bit superhero. I love the professor main character, and how brains over brawn save the day.

Second, K.C. Ball had a story in EDF earlier this month called “Canticles.” It’s a ton of action packed into the flash fiction format. And, if you want more stories, you can always check out K.C.’s speculative flash fiction e-zine, 10Flash.

Finally, also at EDF this month, check out “Grown from Man to Dragon” by Megan Arkenberg. I love Megan’s fantasy stories, and this is no exception. She knows how to pack a lot of world into a small word count. And, for more stories, you can check out Megan’s fantasy e-zine, Mirror Dance.

Happy reading!

Wrimos all over the world are gearing up for the 2009 installment of National Novel Writing Month  (NaNoWriMo). It boggles my mind that it’s almost that time again already. Where did the time go? Weren’t we just doing that?

Of course, NaNo 2008 was the last big thing I did before finding out I was pregnant, so maybe that’s why it feels like it just happened. The time between here and there is a blur of nausea, labor, the NICU, having a newborn at home, and then leaving her at home as I transitioned back into my fulltime tech writer job. So, definitely some big events since last year.

My writing group is preparing to help our Wrimo members who will be competing in NaNo this year. It looks like we’ll have at least three participating. Go Wrinkers!

Sadly, I will not be amont them this year. Last year, I was able to juggle busy season at work and writing 50,000 words. It was hard and it aggravated my carpal tunnel, but I made it through. This year, though, doing all that with a baby in the mix? Yeah… there’s just no way.

However, I’m hopeful that I will be able to take advantage of at least a few of the write-ins that will abound in November to make progress on some of the stories I’ve been working on. I have a zombie flash piece that is almost finished. There is that rewrite request that I got, so I want to readdress that story. And some of my more recent rejections deserve a polish and another send-off into the world.

Lately, the only time I get to do writing-related things is when I’m at a writing group function (so, basically the monthly meeting and the monthly write-in). Those are the times when Hubby takes the little one and I can selfishly devote myself to my own interests for a few hours. I’m sure that will improve as the little one gets older and more self-sufficient, but that is quite a ways away.

Here’s hoping that the NaNo spirit will infect me in November and lead me to finish a few of my works- and revisions-in-progress. And I hope that my writing group mates, and any other Wrimos who might be reading this, have a great month full of thousands and thousands of words.