Living the Fictional Dream

Happy 2010, readers! I hope the new year is treating you well so far, and that the writers out there have already begun to garner plentiful word counts and loads of acceptance letters!

The Preditors and Editors Reader’s Poll is live. It honors print and electronic publications that published in 2009. Click here to vote for your favorite ‘Zine.

There are a lot of good ones nominated this year. I had a hard time choosing! If you’re a fan of 10Flash, Residential Aliens, Everyday Fiction, or a score of other magazines, go over there and place a vote for your favorite.

To elminate ballot stuffing, you have to give your email address and click a confirmation link to make your vote valid, but that’s understandable. I hate polls where the same person can vote as many times as they want to.

Well, I have to run. The day job beckons, as do plans for my sister’s wedding. It is going to be a busy January at my house!

The folks over at Every Day Fiction and Every Day Poets have started a writing blog specifically devoted to flash fiction. If the quality of the blog is anything like the quality of fiction and poetry these publications offer us on a daily basis, the blog should be a must read.

Today’s entry was written by my writing group mate Alex, and discusses the effect of exposition and world building on flash fiction stories.

Here’s the link so you can go check it out:

I’m always fascinated by stories that approach time in something other than a linear fashion. The movie Memento is a stellar example of this. The main character has a condition where he can’t make long-term memories, so once they leave his short-term memory, they are gone forever. To illustrate this, the movie progresses in reverse.

Another example of stories that play with time well is the TV show How I Met Your Mother. I truly believe that this is the best-written sitcom that I have ever watched. Their grasp of continuity is amazing. Something is mentioned in a throw-away line in season 1, and it comes up as a huge plot point in season 3. And the stuff that they put in for viewers with a sharp enough mind to catch it makes the show really fun to watch.

But I especially like it when HIMYM plays with time. They’ve done several episodes where they tell stories out of sequence. Sometimes they’ll split the plot between the characters — do one or two characters’ stories from start to finish, then rewind and go to the next one. Other times, they will throw in flashbacks in creative and amusing ways (my favorite was once when they put in a flashback to 30 seconds ago — and it worked).

The best thing about stories that experiment with time is how the normally linear element is twisted and used to give the reader/viewer a unique A-Ha moment — that moment when everything you knew about the story is flipped on its head and you see it all from a whole new light.

I’ve always wanted to expirament with non-linear time in my stories, but I have yet to really do so. I’m not sure why… Part of it may be that I’ve just never had an idea that seemed like it would work well in such a structure. And part of it might be that I seem to have a bias in that a more visual medium seems more appropriate for these types of stories.

I know that second limitation is all in my head, though. I’ve read print stories that did a fine job of twisting time. There was one in particular that I remember enjoying at Every Day Fiction — sadly, I have long since forgotten its name. I just remember it was a story about a guy in prison that was told backwards Memento style, and it was pretty good.

I will have to put my mind to this time twisting conundrum and see if my muse has anything to say about it. It would definitely be a challenging project.

What about you guys? Any recommendations for good time twisting stories/shows you want to share? Have you ever tried your hand at such a story? If so, how difficult was it?

The Best of Every Day Fiction anthology is now available for ordering. This anthology includes 100 pieces of flash fiction — EDF’s best from Sept. 2007 to August 2008. Jens, Alex, Stephanie, and myself from Writer’s Ink are included, as are other great authors like Gay, Kevin, K.C., and more.

Alex is setting up a reading/signing for the EDF authors in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. If you’re an author in this area and want to join us, comment and let me know. If you’re in this area and want to come up to the event, I’ll post all the details when they are settled. It looks like it will be a Saturday in January — after the holidays but before Jens heads back to S. Korea in early February.

Sorry if I’ve been neglecting the blog lately — one of the hazards of NaNo, I fear. My novel is progressing OK so far… I’m in that early stage of semi-hating it, but that’s not the story’s fault. The plot hasn’t actually fallen apart or anything, so I think we’re still good. I’m just about about 6K, so under quota, but I have two write-ins today, and I’m looking forward to a day off tomorrow and then a weekend at the cabin (no Internet!), so much progress should be made. (And, if the plot is going to fall apart, well, I should know by the end of the weekend!)

Work is gearing up again. Only two projects left for the year, both that should be more update than writing new stuff. But we’ll see. With the holidays coming, I have to get into high gear on those or they won’t be out by year-end.

I proofed the .pdf pages for my story in the EDF anthology today. I always love doing that — there is something about looking over proof pages that makes a publication so real!

EDF sister site, Every Day Poets, has been interesting since it’s 11/1 launch. I’ve been checking in on the poems fairly regularly. Some I’ve really liked (”School Uniform”!), and some, not as much. But that’s true of any publication. Poetry is always a little harder for me to wrap my prose-bound mind around, but sometimes a poem will just click.

All right… enough babbling for today. I have work to do, and then a write-in to prep for.

Happy writing, everyone!

I found out this morning that Arcane Twilight is going on an indefinite hiatus, which really feels like the preface to ceasing publication entirely.

It was a “for the love” e-zine (e.g., it didn’t pay its authors), and such efforts tend to come and go with great frequency. However, this is the first time one that published a story of mine has gone away. (It can’t me my story that did it, though, since it was published months and months ago.) Well, I guess there was that one e-zine that folded before it published the story of mine that it accepted, but this is the first one that ceased publication after my story came out.

Anyway, it just made me a little sad, so I thought I would mention it here. Efforts like this are labors of love for their editors, so if you have a favorite e-zine out there, maybe take the time to promote it on your blog, tell a friend, or even drop by the site and leave an encouraging comment or, if the site has a donation button, donate to keep them around.

Waiting is never fun, but right now it seems less fun than ever! A literary flash piece that I wrote a few months ago was accepted by a literary e-zine. It is supposed to be published in their September issue, but that issue still has not appeared on their website. I emailed the editors once to ask about the publication date and was told to expect it on September 15. That day has come and gone, but no new story for me to happily announce on my blog!

Anyway, I don’t mean to complain (at least not too much). I know that e-zines operate without much staff, basically depending on the efforts of the dedicated few who do all the work. I understand that there can be issues and delays.

But, dang it, I do want to see that story out in the world. I’m anxious to know what other people think of it! And, there is also the fear that the e-zine will fold without publishing my story. The last time I had a piece accepted by an e-zine that kept moving the publication date back, it folded and I had to start anew searching for a home for that story. This one took me longer to place the first time (sometimes I think mainstream/literary fiction is more subjective to editors than even genre fiction, but maybe that’s just because I specialize more in the genre fiction), and I would hate to have to start over.

Though, if the worst case scenario happened and I did have to start over, I did eventually re-place the story from the first time an e-zine went under on me. I’m sure I could do it again, if necessary.

Right now, though, I’m just going to cross my fingers and hope that the September issue of the literary e-zine publishing my story makes it out soon. I was impressed with some of the stories in their previous issue, so I would love to see what else they have to offer!

I recieved an interesting rejection today. The editor of a fairly prestigious e-zine said, “No to this, but please keep trying us?” Short, sweet, and to the point, but also a rejection with a grain of hope. And not a dreaded form rejection, either.

After I read the note, I stared at it for a while, trying to parse the appropriate meaning from that question mark at the end of the sentence. It seems a very deliberate punctuation choice. A period would be the norm, but a question mark means something else entirely.

This particular market has rejected quite a few of my stories. Perhaps the editor meant that question mark as an acknowledgement of that, and also hopes that I will continue to submit to them despite the number of rejections? If that’s it, if the editor actually remembers who I am and that I’ve sent stuff before, maybe that means that they really like my voice, and, as yet, I just haven’t sent them a story that quite fits with the e-zine? That I’m almost there…

That would definitely be a nice thing to believe! It’s a market I would particularly like to appear in, both because it pays better than a token payement and it is a fairly well-known market, at least in e-zine circles.

I probably shouldn’t overthink it. It’s just as possible that the question mark was a typo. That thought brings to mind Eats, Shoots and Leaves and the example of the difference between “the panda eats shoots and leaves” and “the panda eats, shoots, and leaves.” Gotta watch out for those gun-toting pandas, yeah?

Either way, the rejection leaves me inspired on two counts. First, I need to keep pressing on that particular story. There must be a home for it somewhere! And, second, I need to write more of the kind of story that this particular e-zine publishes so I can try them again.

The Every Day Fiction table of contents for September came out today, and my story, “A Castle in the Clouds,” is on it. Very exciting! Look for it there on September 14 (I’ll remind y’all here when it’s live).

You can also mark your calendars for September 26, when the story by my writing group mate Jens will be live. An adventurous good time, that one.

It looks like a great lineup for the month. There are a lot of familiar names (authors who always deliver), and some new names, as well. K.C. Ball’s “I Must to the Barber’s Chair” is out today, and you should definitely pop over and read it, because it’s great.

Can you believe today is the last day of the three day weekend already? Where did the time go? At least I can say that I made good progress on my writing goals for the weekend. I’ve revised one story, thus far, and sent it out. I sent another story that I just got the rights back to out to a podcast (**crosses fingers**). And I’ve read through/made final revisions to another story. I hope to finish that one up today sometime and sent it on its first foray out into the world (it’s over 8K, though, so it will be tougher to place).

If only I had made as much progress on my work out and house cleaning goals… Ah well… we must make sacrifices for our writing, yeah?

I want to write a sequel to “The Widow and the Stranger” (Allegory e-zine, May 2008 issue). I love Sarah Kirby, and I want to write about another of her adventures. I like that she’s reserved and old fashioned, but at the same time she’s a liberated feminist.

When my writing group did the Story Every Day contest back in June, I actually wrote a sequel to tWatS, but it was too much of a sequel. It relied heavily on background that someone would only know if they read the first one. One of Jadon’s enemies tried to steal the amulet that he made for Sarah in an attempt to find him.

Sadly, while that might be interesting if I ever wrote a novel about Sarah and her Atlantians, it wasn’t going to work for a short story. Maybe if the same e-zine published it, but you can’t count on that. And even still, in the short story game, each story really needs to stand on its own. The characters can have more adventures, but they shouldn’t have continuing adventures (unless you’re lucky enough to have the chance to publish a short story collection like Mercedes Lackey’s Tarma and Kethry stories or perhaps if you have a market that’s committed to publishing them all).

Recently, I wrote a few paragraphs of the next Sarah Kirby story. The title popped into my head fully formed, and I actually kind of like it — “The Widow and the Lord” — it stands on it’s own, and yet it still harkens back to the predecessor for those “in the know.”

Sadly, that’s as far as it’s gone. I have a good setting and a new character for Sarah to interact with (and bring her common sense business acumen to), but I have no plot! Don’t you hate that? Great concept/idea/character, and no plot. I know that romance is the wrong way to go — Sarah had enough of that last time, and she’s not a woman who opens herself up that easily. So, I need a plot with a speculative twist to involve Sarah in the life of this lord. I want her to somehow save the day this time in a decisive way. But… how? Nothing is coming to mind.

Ah well… I guess I will just have to let “The Widow and the Lord” linger for a while. Perhaps one day, out of the blue, the plot will come to me like the title did. It’s strange, though. Usually I suffer through the title creation process. I never start with a title! Weirdness!