Living the Fictional Dream

I can’t believe how fast the summer flew by. It seems like just a blink ago it was June! And now it’s September, and Writer’s Ink is getting ready to gear up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, or just NaNo — writers are often called WriMos). NaNo happens in November, but it takes a while to get your idea in place, do any outlines or other prep work, etc.

We have quite a few successful NaNo veterans in my writing group, and it’s something we look forward to every year. This year, we’ve decided that October will be our NaNo planning month. We’ll devote our meeting time (aside from any crits we have) to prep work for NaNo and other planning exercises.

Last year was the first year since 2005 that I participated and didn’t win NaNo. My failure was due to the lack of an idea I was really invested in. I had an idea that I kind of liked and started with that, but I guess I wasn’t feeling it enough because it never gelled, and I abandoned it after a couple of days and a couple thousand words.

Then I tried to write the sequel to my sucessful novel from the year before. However, since I’m not done revising that first novel, the sequel stalled a bit. Also, I made a crucial plot decision in the first chapter that set the tone for the rest of the book, but about the time I hit 6K I realized that I should have done something different.

I totally wasn’t ready to chuck it all and start over again, so I threw in the towel and used NaNo to focus on all my burgeoning short story ideas instead. I didn’t write 50K, but I wrote several stories that ended up finding homes, including “Zero to Clean in
Ten Minutes or Less,” “Remember?,” and “The Widow and the Stranger.” So it was a productive November, no matter how you look at it.

Now I need to decide what I’m going to do this year. I really don’t want to branch out into another novel idea that will wind up a first draft in need of heavy revision. I’ve got several of those lying around. Novel revision is apparently my big weakness as a writer.

One thought I had is that perhaps I should take one of those novels that needs revision (the revision is pretty major — pretty much total rewrites) and work on that. There would probably be 50K of new text, and it might end up more polished than the typical NaNo novel, because it’s already been done once.

The other thought I had is to write 50K worth of short stories. Then I’d come out of November with tons of stuff to market. Or at least tons of stuff to prep for submissions, but I’m much better with following through on revision of a short piece. Maybe because it doesn’t take so long!

Well, I still have a month and a half or so to decide, which is a good thing. Of course, most of that time will be eaten up with work. The fall is my company’s busiest time!

What about you guys? Any Wrimos or potential Wrimos out there? Any tips or tricks to share?

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?

Why is it that when you have deadlines, your muse wants to write something else? I had to tie her down so that I could finish writing my guest blog for Jens (I’ll put a link here when that appears in August) and so I can make progress on my actual work work (this summer has been unusually busy!!!).

I also have a couple of stories in need of revising and another that I wrote a good first scene for, but now my muse is whispering intensely of another story all together. Arg! I just hope that she doesn’t clam up out of spite when I finally get some of these other obligations out of the way so I can sit down and pound out this new idea. The other stories I can put on hold, because that’s my stuff. It’s the deadlines for other people that have to be met first!

What grips you when you sit down to write? What keeps you typing or scribbling on?

Usually, I get swept up in the story, the characters, what happens next. This is especially true when I work on one of my novels in progress, but sometimes for short stories, as well. When my muse really starts to flow, it’s like I’m channelling the lives of those characters and just trying to keep up getting everything down on paper. I usually save stuff like language and word choice for the revision.

However, I’ve noticed a slight shift in the past year or so — especially with shorter stories and flash. Sometimes, as I write, I’ve been thinking more the voice of the narrator and the language itself than I used to on the first draft.

When I wrote “The Widow and the Stranger,” Sarah’s voice sprang to mind fully formed, and I was conscious about carrying it on throughout the piece. When I wrote “Alpha,” language reflecting the canine and bestial nature of my werewolf and werecoyotes was on my mind — using “barked” instead of “yelled” or “ordered,” that sort of thing. (And the same thing happened with the new story set in this universe that I’m working on now.) I have another story out on submission at the moment with a concert pianist as a main character, and the language took on certain musical terms and (I hope) rhythms.

I’m sure this isn’t new to a lot of writers out there. I know some who’ve always focused on language and theme when they write, and I’ve admired their well-crafted stories. However, it’s not a mindset I’m used to having. I’m used to throwing myself into a story, letting it submerge me, and then worrying about perfecting the language later. But, this new mindset has been interesting. It’s not quite as passionate and spontaneous as the other, but the pieces turn out a bit more polished in the end.

It all depends on the story, I suppose. the right mindset for one, might not be the right mindset for another.

I had a story critiqued at my writing group meeting today. Back in my undergrad and graduate workshop classes, I used to be so stressed out about having critiques. Maybe it was being graded. Or maybe it was because I was being critiqued by classmates, not friends.

The thing I love about Writer’s Ink is that balance of friendship and writing. Everyone is genuinely supportive and wants everyone else to succeed at this writing thing, but we don’t pull our punches about the stories. If there are problems, we talk about them. No rah-rahs just for the sake of praise. If people do give me good comments, I know they are sincere. And when you have that level of friendship, it’s easier to listen to what they have to say, because, let’s face it, critiques can be rough. Trust in a writing group is very important.

A good critique group is very valuable for a writer. Writing is hard on your own. You get mired down in the story and soon it is saying what you want it to say. Critiques help you see a story for what it is and make it better.

I’m excited about the story that I had critiqued today. I think it’s a good one. It has a few flaws to iron out, but I hope to have it ready to start submitting sometime soon. I have the perfect first place to send it to!

G’night all!

If you send your stories out into the world, you’ve gotten rejected. It’s just par for the course. Getting published is a mixture of hard work and luck (getting your story to the right editor at the right time).

I think one of the hardest things about writing fiction with the hope of publication is the frequent rejection. These stories are our babies. We work on them, endlessly tweaking one word here and one paragraph there. We cut for flow and add for understanding. We craft characters out of thin air and breathe life into them with quotation marks and semicolons.

But, rejection isn’t all bad. If you can take rejections with a grain of salt and see them as something professional, not something personal (I know that’s hard… what is writing if not personal?), it’s easier not to lose heart. I know… I lost heart when I was in high school and again in college. But when I started submitting short stories in 2007, I promised myself that this time I wouldn’t give up. And I didn’t! And now I actually have a publication list, which thrills me to no end.

Rejection notes still have a sting to them, but it’s so much less now than it used to be. So, if you’re a new writer out there who has yet to garner that ellusive first acceptance letter, I would encourage you to keep trying. Craft the best stories you can, and eventually someone will want to publish it. It might take a while to find that first right fit, but it’s out there.

Also, try to learn something from your rejection notes. Sometimes rejection letters include comments from the editors. That is especially nice – you’re not left wondering why they didn’t choose your piece. (Every Day Fiction is one market that takes the time to do this. Haurah: Breath of Heaven and flashquake do, also.) However, you have to be able to take the criticism. If you fire off an angry response (or even a pleasant, but argumentative one), not only are the editors not going to change their minds, but they’ll probably be glad they didn’t accept your story.

Even if you recieve a form rejection, sans comments, you can still learn something, even if it’s just something about what kind of stories that market likes/dislikes. The more rejections you get for a story, the more it might be that there is a flawed element in the story that needs work before sending it back out there.

So, for all you new writers out there, I say brave the rejections and start submitting. The worst anyone can say is no!

I managed to power through my writer’s block and finish one of the short stories I was working on. I got it to the anthology that inspired it the day before the final deadline, so yay! Now I just have one more short story to finish for a pending anthology; then, I can wait until the responses roll in.

So, speaking of writer’s block, I stumbled across a link to an article on the subject. The article uses famous authors, such as Ralph Ellison, as examples and discusses if they had writer’s block or if they were procrastinators.

The bit about perfectionism especially hit home. It is hard to get stuff finished when you want it to be so precisely perfect. I get that way with my novels-in-progress all the time. Probably why the revisions drag on and on (that and lack of time). It’s easier to finish a piece of flash or a short story because of the limited word count. Of course, you can always revise, but the shorter length allows you to get to something you’re happy enough with to submit sooner.

And that’s my thought on writing for the day. Now it’s time to head out to dinner and for a movie!