Living the Fictional Dream

I just finished a huge project at work. I met the deadline (whew!), but it was tricky. Thanks to my previous two huger than huge projects, this one got started late. But, the writing is done (I’m a technical writer by day, if you didn’t know that), so all that’s left is updates and QCs.

Maybe now I will have a few brain cells free to think about creative writing! And possibly even produce something!

Several more projects between now and the end of the year, but they have more flexible timelines. But fall is crazy around this place.

OK… enough rambling. TGIF, everyone!

I was tagged by Kevin over at Shameless Stuff for this meme, and I’m a sucker for a good survey, so here goes!

The Rules

1. Link to the person who tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Write 6 random things/unspectacular quirks about yourself
4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post and link to them
5. Let each person you have tagged know by leaving a comment on their blog
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is posted.

This is going to be a challenge. Usually when I play the random facts game (office ice breakers, etc.), I can talk about my as-yet-unpublished novels, but you guys already know about those!

Random Facts about Erin

1. I’m a Christian. That’s probably not random if you know me, but religion isn’t something I talk about much on the blog, so I think it counts. A world this beautiful and this complex could never have been an accident. I also strongly believe that everyone has the right to believe how they choose. Forcing religion on people through laws or a show of force is just so wrong…
2. My dog, Tag (an eight-year-old golden retriever who is the sweetest puppy in the whole world!), is never going to die. Or, at least she thinks so.

   One day, my husband and I were talking… I don’t remember what about now, but he glanced down at Tag on the couch and said something like, “You know, honey, someday Tag won’t be with us anymore.” Tag’s head popped up (I’d thought she was asleep) and she barked, just once, but with this serious look on her face. I know that was her way of saying either “I’m never going to die, so shut up,” or “I’m never going to die and leave you alone here with Erin!”

3. I get celebrity crushes on little/lesser known actors — Kevin Anderson who played Julia Roberts love interest in Sleeping With the Enemy, Nick Brenden who played Xander on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the guy who plays Junior on Wildfire (even though I just watched the one season!), the guy who plays A.J. in Empire Records… I don’t know why these guys never break out into bigger stars!
4. I hate typos. I always did, but after being a copy editor for several years, the hatred grew. My biggest pet peeve is when people put the apostrophe in the wrong place in “y’all.” Drives me up the wall, and since I live in Texas, I see it all the time — on signs, notes, etc. An apostrophe in a contraction is supposed to go where the missing letters are. “Y’all” is contracting “you” and “all,” so the contraction is taking the place of the “ou.” If we were supposed to spell it “ya’ll” it would be contracting “ya” and “will” … or something else that ends with an “ll.” I guess people get it wrong because they are used to “I’ll” or something? I don’t know, but it drives me crazy!
5. I don’t have the small talk gene. I think I’m physically incapable of making good small talk, especially with strangers. If I’m emailing or chatting with you, I’m fine, but face-to-face… arg! Conversation crashes and dies every time! I never can think of anything interesting to say, and when I do, it feels so forced. Luckily, if people keep hanging out with me despite this lack, we eventually get to know each other well enough that it goes away.
6. According to The Birth Order Book, I’m a first born compliant (as opposed to a first born superstar). I don’t think any psychological grouping is the end-all/be-all of a person, but when I read the description, it was totally me. First born — check. Worrier/mother hen type (as opposed to the type that has to be the best at everything) — check. I’d have to look it up again to remember the rest of it, but that’s totally me.

   That book also told me that I’m a frustrated perfectionist. Apparently, if I’d had my way when I was a kid I would have been a full-on perfectionist — everything totally neat and in it’s place, well organized — but something happened, and I wasn’t able to be neat like that, so I became a slob instead. However, it’s a well organized mess. Even though things are piled haphazardly about, you can ask me for something and I will totally find it wherever it is in whatever random stack of junk. Normally I can go straight to it (assuming no one else “organized” my stuff). I don’t know about the first part — I can’t imagine ever being a neat freak, because I hate to clean — but the second part is right on.

The Tags

I’m not sure I know enough bloggers for this, but here goes. (If you don’t feel like playing, no pressure!)

1. Ms. Eclectic
2. Miss Meliss
3. Jens
4. Stephanie
5. Alex
6. Donna

Whaddya know… I did think of enough. Just barely!

Sweet dreams, y’all!

For a brief moment, “A Castle in the Clouds” is in a top 10 list at Every Day Fiction. Nice thing to wake up to. Must be because of all the voting you guys did — thanks!

If you head over to EDF today, make sure you check out today’s story — “Double Virginity” by Kevin Shamel. Science fiction with a twist — it’s a great read.

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.

Good morning, world! It’s a lovely day today, because my flash piece, “A Castle in the Clouds,” is the story of the day at Every Day Fiction. You should definitely check it out! And, while you’re there, vote on it and maybe leave a comment.

This story is a fantasy romance/parable. My favorite part about it is the setting. Ami lives in a cloud. When the weather changes, so does her home, so it’s larger on rainy days and smaller on sunny ones. It reminds me of a game that I used to play with my grandmother as a child — our paper dolls had such fun exploring imaginary rooms. I loved to imagine the craziest most awesome rooms. In that game, it was a regular mansion, not a cloud, but imagining the possibilities that could exist was so exciting… Imaginary rooms could hold whatever you wanted — clothes, toys… anything!

When I was younger, I remember reading a fairy tale about a girl who lived in an invisible castle in the sky. Her companion was a large spider. The only thing the girl was not allowed to do was go into the spider’s special room during a certain hour of the day. At that time, he would cover all the walls, the floor, and the ceiling, so no one could see in, and she never knew what he did in there. So, of course, one day the little girl went into the room before the appointed hour and hid under the couch. The spider came in and, while he thought he was alone, he became a man. When the girl’s hiding place was revealed (as of course it would have to be), the castle became visible and floated down to the ground. She lived there with the man and it was nice, but never as wonderful as it had been living in an invisible castle in the sky with a spider.

Weird story, huh? I wish I remember the name of that tale. I’ve always remembered the story. It was one of the inspirations for “A Castle in the Clouds.” Another inspiration came from Little Women. There is a chapter where Jo and the girls, and Laurie, of course, describe their imaginary castles in the air — places where they are carefree and all their dreams have come true.

Ami’s adventure in my story is totally different from those above, but those were the things that gave me the first glimmer of inspiration that eventually became “A Castle in the Clouds.”

I hope you enjoy it, and if you have time, leave me a comment here and let me know what you thought!

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?

I go back and forth on how effective writing prompts really are. Most of the time, I’m not that into them. I have enough ideas floating around in my head — I tend to feel that I don’t need anyone else’s inspiration. However, sometimes they totally work out!

I’m sure I’ve discussed my writing group’s monthly prompts contest here before. Some of the stories I’ve had published this year were the result of prompts from the contest, so that in and of itself illustrates the value of using them.

I think, possibly, the best thing about the prompts contest is that it can get me writing when I might be stuck on something else (a or story-in-progress). And like anything of the sort (prompts, the group’s story every day contest, etc.), there can be good and bad results. Some of the prompts I attempt come out extremely crappy, and others are either good or at least good enough that they can be retooled into something I can submit.

The other good thing about prompts is that they challenge creativity and allow me to stretch myself. It’s harder to write about something that I didn’t choose myself. Prompts created by someone else make me work for the story, but in a good way. I think it’s helpful to get out of one’s comfort zone (genre of choice, POV of choice, etc.) and write something else on occasion.

And, sometimes, I use the prompts provided by my group’s monthly contest to expand one of my already-created fictional worlds. I’ve written many a prompt (and short story) for the group set in the fantasy world of my first novel, and each one helps me to know that world just a little better. Whenever I get back to revising that novel, it will be the richer for that extra work.

The danger of exercises like prompts, writing a story every day, and other such things is that they can take you away from the things that you really need to focus on. It can be so seductive to focus on something other than that novel or short story I’ve been struggling with.

I don’t know that I like prompts enough that I would seek them out on my own, but as long as Writer’s Ink has the monthly contest, I will occasionally delve into that madness.

I watched the premier of the new HBO series True Blood tonight. The series had an intriguing hook, and it left me wanting more, like the first chapter of a good book. Of course, the series is based on a book series — the Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris — so maybe that’s why.

Interesting premise… a girl with some sort of psychic powers (telepathy and possibly TK), a vampire whose mind she can’t read, a feisty best friend, a brother associated with strange circumstances, a dead “fang banger,” and a couple of crazies out to siphon vampire blood. Take all that, throw in some Louisiana accents, and you’ve got the beginning of what looks to be an interesting story. I’ll definitely be tuning in next week.

Part of me wants to read the books so I can find out what happens without waiting a week for the resolution of each episode’s cliffhanger!

Anyway, it goes to show the importance of the opening hook.

Lots of writing exercises going on in my writing group write now, and I’ve promised myself that September is the month that I’m going to make the most of them. Jens is running our prompt contest this month, and I have my eyes on the $10 prize. His prompts were quite challenging, I must say, but I have several ideas already. And I already turned in one, so go me.

We’re also doing a world-building exercise. It’s really fun! Six of us claimed land on a map that Virginia made, and now we’re coming up with the common elements of the world at large and the unique elements of our countries. Alex actually posted about this last week and included a lot of cool world-building links.

World-building can be scary some times, and yet it is also fun. The first time I built a world, it took me years to get it all fleshed out. This time, I’m starting with the world first, so hopefully the stories I eventually write set there will be well grounded in their unique fantasy world. Maybe it’s because I have experience creating a world before, but this time it seems more fun and less stressful. Maybe because I know that I can do it if I take the time. It also helps to be doing it with a group of friends.

If only I were better at making up words/names for things. That has always been a struggle for me, because I always think the made up words sound so stupid when I make them up (but I don’t think that when other people do… must be that hyper inner critic of mine!).