The WAL

Okay, so it’s been a busy time the last little while.  That’s not going to change for the next few weeks between regular life, an upcoming interview, Halloween, Remembrance Day, and plenty of other stuff.  But I’m still getting my writing time in, mostly on breaks at work.

Heroes Inc Progress
58,516 / 50,000
(117.0%)

I have exactly one scene to write and Heroes Inc will be finished.  Under a thousand words and I might even be able to find enough time to finish it tomorrow, thus making the Halloween deadline I set for myself.  For anyone keeping track, this will be the third novel I’ve started and finished since Christmas Day last year.  Not too shabby, even if they’re all only first drafts.

But I’ve done it at almost the complete expense of my short fiction.  Of the 291k new words I’ve written in calendar 2008 so far (yes, I keep track and this number doesn’t include editing, revising, or plotting), 235k of those have been on the novels.  So, for the remainder of the year, it’s a short fiction blitz.

There are two stories that need to go back into the wild.  Yes, I got another rejection this week.  Strange Horizons took a pass on ‘The Last Eclipse’.  I’m okay with that and remain confident I can find a home for this story.  ‘Failing Hope’ also needs to go out again and this morning I finished the (theoretically) final revision of my submission to the Tesseracts 13 anthology to come out next year from Edge Press.  ‘Waiting for Spring’ is a dark fantasy story, if anyone’s wondering.  Throw in two other stories finished their final revisions and a lot of stuff I need to get edited, or in some cases written and, well, my word count is probably going to drop off a lot for the next two months but a first draft does not a story make, so I’ll be spending just as much time on my writing.

Updates to follow more regularly, I hope.

So for my first post in a week, I’m not going to write about the disappointing election result or the pathetic voter turnout or the or anything political at all.  I’m still contemplating, though I’ll happily discuss anything political if anyone wants to drop me a line.  And if I owe you a message, I’m going to plead life and not having been connected much in the last week.  It’s on the way.

No, this post is another dreaded writing update for today is a special occasion!  I received my first rejection letter today, though letter stretches the point a bit.  Heard back from the editor of “The World Is Dead”, the anthology I submitted my first ever zombie story to at the end of August.  I’m honestly not that surprised by the rejection (never expect to get published) because while I do think it’s a good story (I wrote it after all), I don’t know that it’s really horrific enough for a horror anthology.  My first readers really enjoyed it, but one of them made the observation that it was kind of twilight-zoney, sort of.  A definite compliment, but it means I should look for somewhere else to send it, and I will.

Still two stories waiting for responses with two waiting on market research and two more waiting for commentary from first readers.  A couple of anthology deadlines coming up, too.  As for the novel, well, I have managed some progress there.

Yes, I’ve exceeded the 50k goal and with 8 and a bit scenes left to write, I’m tracking at 59-60k.  The Halloween goal doesn’t look as realistic as it once did, but I’m okay with that.  After Heroes Inc is done, I’m going to take a break on the novels for a bit.  Yes, I know I’ve said that I intend to do some heavy editing on one of them before Christmas, but I’ve got twenty-ish stories that have at least a first draft complete (plus one in progress and four more plotted) and I want to get more of those into the wild.  I am working on plotting a new fantasy novel - I think I mentioned that a while back - but the story already feels too big to be contained in one book.  Might have the word trilogy associated with it and that scares me a little.  It’s tough enough to hold a narrative across a short 60k novel.  Across three books?  Serious continuity policing will be involved.

So my short, 50k word Superhero novel is on track to finish the first draft at 57-60k.  Not surprising, I suppose.  The good news is that this afternoon, I was two scenes from being caught up to where I’d plotted to with only a nebulous idea of how to reach the planned ending from there.  Built about half the bridge and I think I can flesh out the rest tomorrow without too much difficulty.

On other fronts, no word yet on any of the stories out looking for homes.  I’ve got a couple of stories with first readers looking for issues, but nothing quite ready to go.  Two others with a third draft in progress and still other things in the pipe.  Starting to wonder if this is taking too much of my time, but I’ve got too many stories I need to get out of my skull and can’t really slow down.  The goal is fifteen submissions by the end of the year.  Wish me luck.

I’m not a fan of Stephanie Meyer or of her Twilight Saga, but I recognize that there are thousands of people who are and that vampires are hip and cool right now.  Miss Meyer is understandably upset at the moment.  According to an article on the Guardian UK website, which I learned about through the Adventures in Scifi Publishing podcast, she has a right to be.  But she’s not the only one.  Look around and you’ll find there’s a lot of angry buzz attached to her name.

Apparently, someone leaked the full (but not yet nearly complete) manuscript of the final volume in the series onto the internet.  Upset is probably missing the mark by several orders of magnitude.  She’s so upset that she can’t possibly finish the book.

Ex-squeeze me? A-baking powder?

Really.  ‘In any case, I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on Midnight Sun, and so it is on hold indefinitely.’  That’s a direct quote from the guardian article.  She feels… sad.

I have three points of view on this.

First, as a reader, WTF?  One person whom you trusted betrayed that trust, so you’re going to punish legions of readers by not finishing the story.  They’ve given you their trust, their belief, and their money and you’re going to throw that back in their faces because someone hurt your feelings and you’re sad?  Had I been a fan, I wouldn’t be any more.

Second, as a writer (and yes, not one with a bestselling series of books, only a single published story, which, oddly enough, also involved vampires, but this is all beside the point):  again, WTF?  Your fans have bought 5.3 million copies of your first three books, with a fourth released this past summer, and there’s a movie coming out adapting the first one.  (And how do you think the movie studio might feel about this?)  How can you possibly show them this level of disrespect and think any of them might ever look at something you write again?  Way to thumb your nose at the people who made you a success.

Third, as a parent, this is obviously the act of a spoiled, petulant child who needs to be sent to her room for a decades-long time out.  Suck it up, princess.  The universe does not revolve around you.  Five million copies and a movie?  Your fans have made you rich, probably rich enough that you don’t need to care what they think any more.  And obviously you don’t.

You do have a way out.  Bitch slap the person who released the manuscript until they’re sorry and you feel better, take a month off to relax, recuperate, and grow up, then come back to the keyboard and get to work.  But first, apologize profusely in a hugely public way to your fans and keep apologizing until you get it right.

Because I haven’t posted one for a little while.

Progressing well, but I need to do some more detailed plotting.  The rough plot is only going to get me through to the 3/4 mark.  The last quarter of the book is only worked out to a “major event” per scene level.

I’ve also got one more story in need of a home.  “The Prince of Mediocrity” is a short piece, under 1400 words that might be classified as humorous sociological SF.  “Dragon Gold” had its final polish, but I want to give it one more read before I think about sending it to anyone.  And I’ve got a Christmas SF piece midway through its final edit and in need of a new title.

Something more after I’ve had some sleep, maybe.

I’m trying to pick up steam with story submissions.  “Failing Hope” went out as the anthology submission for The World Is Dead.  I also sent out a flash piece called “The Monkey is Only Bait” a couple of days ago and I’m researching markets to find potential homes for two other stories at the moment.  Add to that a dozen or so of the better stories I’ve finished in the past year that have gone through at least two drafts already, and I could have quite a bit of stuff in circulation in the next month or so.  Hopefully, I can find homes for some (dare I hope all?) of them.

So, what does this mean for my novel writing.  At the moment, nothing.  I’m still putting in my 500 words per day on Heroes Inc.  Editing and revising are separate activities and I’m doing a lot of this on my breaks at work.  It may mean changing my editing goals for after the first draft of Heroes Inc is finished.  I’m actually thinking that Dragon Summer should rest a lot longer or maybe it’s just that I know how much work it’s going to be to fix the narrative difficulties the story has.  I will still work on editing one of the two novellas by the end of the year, but I think I’m going to focus a little more on short fiction.  Novel aside, I have a lot of short stories I want to tell, and always have at least one in progress at the moment.  I’m switching back to nights in a few days, which always gives me more writing time, so hopefully will make a lot of progress in the next month or so.

Releasing stories into the wild, however, even if only two so far, has turned me into a compulsive e-mail checker.  There’s no danger of hearing back about either of them for at least another three weeks, but I’m still checking my e-mail four or five times per day to see if word (good or bad) has arrived on either.  Next time I log into hotmail, though, I have to start on a different sort of writing - messages to the half dozen people who have written to me in the last few days.

Okay, so I know it’s been a week since I posted, but I’ve been on vacation and it’s been fairly busy.  My wife is on nights and I’ve taken the kids on a bunch of day trips and to visit my parents so haven’t got much of anything done outside of vacation stuff.

But I did hit another writing milestone last night.  My post-apocalyptic zombie story left the nest last night to perch in the anthology editor’s in box.  A couple of days later than I expected, but I think it’s stronger having waited for the feedback from my beta readers and spent a couple of days polishing.

I did obsess over the final polish and formatting a little, partly stalling for time to finally decide on a title, I think.  The title is “Failing Hope” and once you’ve read the story, you can take several different meanings from the title.  5700 words and released for its first journey into the wild.  Hopefully last, too.  It would be nice if it got selected for the anthology, but I’m not going to hold my breath waiting.  I need to get other irons in the fire.

But right now, it’s time to get ready for the beach.

I meant to blog this a couple of days ago, but couldn’t connect to Blog.com for some reason and time has gotten away from me since.  “Skip to My Luu” is complete at 73,264 words.  Not bad for a story that I didn’t expect to much past 65k for a long time.  Is it great?  No.  Is it good?  No.  Is it better than the first draft of “Dragon Summer”?  Absolutely.  I’m going to let it rest for a few months, too, but I think I’m likely to be happier with it when I do come back to it.  There might be as much as half a salvageable story on this one where I think it’s more like one quarter of DS.  So,

It’s a superhero novel if I haven’t mentioned and yes, it looks to be on the short side, but the SFFWA defines a novel as in excess of 40,000 words so I’m in good company.  Besides, I’ve started plotting a high fantasy story, some scenes of which are leaping wholesale into my head with a ridiculous level of clarity and detail.  Looks big, really big, if a bit jumbled a tthe moment, but I’m trying to focus on HI right now, plus a story I’m writing for my youngest daughter.

I’ve just finished burning three copies of a DVD containing all of the photos taken of my family in 2007.  Yes, that means I finally finished labelling them all which means I’m only seven months behind.  Next phase will be to catch up the 2008 photo sorting and labelling.  This will probably take me until sometime deep in September.  Being caught up will be interesting and unusual.  I think my next major catch up project will be the digitizing several years worth of paper journal entries.  That’s going to take a lot longer.

Half way through chapter 24, more or less.  After that, chapter 25 and then I need to go back and write chapter 13 which only exists as a very brief outline right now.  Another week until I get to write ‘The End’ more or less.  Definite progress.

Remember how I said that I didn’t think that this novel would make 70,000 words on the first draft unless I made some major plot modifications (all the way back on Jun 24)?  Well, the characters in the story helped me make those, and now it’s just possible that it might go that high.  With the plot pieces that I’ve got left, I’m projecting 68.  We’ll see what happens.  My Halloween goal for Heroes Inc is starting to look a little more difficult.

The current chapter borders on goofy, though.  I think it’s going to require an awful lot of clean up during the editing phase.