All My Projects

Confession: I have just enough fashion sense to know when I look like crap, but not enough to effectively do anything about it.

Reading:

• "Pa's Darling" by Louis Auchincloss

Writing:

• Untitled Dark Fantasy Project

Revising:

• "Cora and the Sea"

Future Projects:

• Dairhenien's Library - Development
  
• Floorcraft - First rewrite of 1-5, first draft of 6-8
• Ferian Fetlock - Next chapter, "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold," followed by "Ferian Fetlock Takes a Wife."
  
• July 26th 24-hour Short Story
• "Motley" - Expansion
• "Fireworks and Earthworks" - 5% into first draft
  
• Untitled School Mistress Story

Unpublished Stories/Status

• "The Revenant" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "The Frost Fugling" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Leaves and Sunsets" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Motley" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Black Pudding" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "A Happy Ending" - 1st Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Illuminated" - 3rd Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "Pictures of the Old Port" - 5th Draft, Unsubmitted
  
• "What Price Stamps" - 3rd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
• "A Cup of Coffee" / "Morning Tea" - 2nd Draft, Unsubmitted
  

I think this is a good exercise to do, and perhaps I'll keep it going. Above I have listed all of my projects, current and ongoing. I think I need to start getting that "Future Projects" list shorter by actually completing drafts of some of those, and need to change a bunch of those "Unsubmitted" tags to "Submitted."

I think I'd like to keep this list going every day, although I'll need to find a way to copy and paste instead of retyping it every time. I might also change the "Writing" and "Revising" categories into "Currently Working On," since in practice I usually work on either the revision or the composition at any given time. If I happen to be working on both, I'll put both under the same heading.

Regardless, this gives me a good way to measure my progress, and to remind myself of exactly what I have waiting for me, especially during those times that I sit down to write and can't think of what to work on.

I was thinking this past weekend about how much finishing some old projects will help me clear my plate, and I think that's true. There's nothing like a game plan to get you going. In fact, as time goes on, I think I'm going to start ordering this list so that I always know what I want to work on next.

I just reread the list, and I think my first step is clear. I need to finish the "Cora and the Sea" revision this week, since the reading is coming up soon, and I want to get some feedback on the new version before I read it aloud in front of a group. Also, I've got that new 24-hour short story to do this Saturday, and it has to be done Saturday afternoon. (Which reminds me... I need to make sure I actually get some sleep Friday night....)

After that, the best thing will be for me to get some of those stories moved over to the "submitted" column. There are a few, like "Black Pudding" and "What Price Stamps?" that are in good enough shape to send out as-is. Maybe "Pictures of the Old Port" too. I can submit "Morning Tea" today. Why not at lunch? All I need to do is to finish the cover letter, then I'll have one more story out.

The next step will be research. I made a promise not to send "Illuminated" out just anywhere, and that means researching a good place for it. The length is a factor that makes that more difficult, though. For a new author, the longer the story, the more difficult it is to sell. I wonder if it would be in my best interests to sit on it for a while, do a revision in a couple of months once I get a bit more objectivity, and try to shop it out again then? Either way, I need to explore a few more markets and see what stories I have that would suit each one. That's going to be the single biggest step in getting the "finished" stories submitted.

Of course, as you can see, I don't have a "finished" category for anything. Until a story is actually published, it's not finished. It's almost like each story is always growing and changing, and each submission is like taking a picture of it at that moment in time. If it gets accepted, then there just must be something about that snapshot that works. (Of course, that doesn't mean I can't keep tinkering, does it?) It's like the story is all grown up and has moved away from home.

Hmmm... perhaps the metaphor is apt. I'd like to send a few more stories off to college, and turn their rooms into a rec room. They're welcome to visit, and I'll be happy to do their laundry, but it's time they got their own place.

Publication Status:

• Submitted: 2
• Accepted: 1
• Rejected: 1
• Pending: 0
  

Finding Markets

Confession: Having a clearn apartment makes me feel better, but I never seem to clean it until someone's about to come over. It's like I value their opinion more than my own comfort.

Reading:

• Someplace to be Flying, by Charles de Lint
• The Last Command, by Timothy Zahn

Revising:

• "Cora and the Sea"

This morning I accomplished a lot, as long as you didn't expect me to get any writing done.

Fresh from my weekend surprise, I decided that it would be a good idea to get a few more stories out. In the hour or so I spent working this morning, I found three good potential spots, one for "Illuminated," one for either "Pictures of the Old Port" or "The Revenant," and one for "A Cup of Coffee." Except the last one is for a magazine about tea, so I'll have to change it from coffee to tea.

That's the miracle of writing, right there. The entire point of the original was the coffee. But a couple of judicious edits later, the point of the story is tea. It was almost as simple as a find and replace. That was kind of cool.

What I did, though, was to exhaust the small circulation section of the 2008 Novel and Short Story Writers' Guide. I'd worry, but there are still plenty of wider circulation magazines to try. Plus dozens of the small circulation ones I've have submitted to yet.

My plan for tomorrow is to write cover letters for each of the three stories. I can put on them my brand spanking new publication credit, too. Heh heh heh. Dunno if it'll help, but it looks better than a blank bio.

Then later this week, I'll get them mailed off (I have to buy stamps first), and then I can update my submitted counter to 5. That'll be nice.

Publication Status:

• Submitted: 2
• Accepted: 1
• Rejected: 1
  

A good writing day

Confession: I'm afraid something's going to happen to take this away.

Reading:

• Someplace to be Flying, by Charles de Lint
• The Last Command, by Timothy Zahn

Revising:

• "Cora and the Sea"

As you can see, I've taken "Ferian Fetlock" off the list. That's right, the first draft of "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse" is finished. It needs work, of course, but that's only to be expected.

The ending surprised me a little. Oh sure, I knew how I wanted to the story to end, and that's how it ended. The events that transpired are the same as I had planned. But I wasn't able to make that ending be an ending with closure. It was an ending with a hook for the next chapter. In other words, Ferian is refusing to shut up and be a short story. He wants to be a book.

As you can see, though, I didn't immediately put the next story, "Ferian Fetlock Catches a Cold," as my new writing project. Nor did I put up Dairhenien's Library, although that had been my original plan. You see, in two weeks I'm going to participate once more in the 24 Hour Short Story Contest, and I want to be in the right frame of mind for that.

My next major task is to actually start working on the "Cora and the Sea" revision, since my reading on August 11th is coming up fast. I don't know if that will take two whole weeks or not--hopefully not. So I need to decide on another project to fill in with in the mean time. Dairhenien might be a good bet, if nothing else to organize further the world building notes I've written. Or characters... yes, I should probably start working on characterization a bit more. I know many of the broad strokes, but none of the flavor.

Of course, any time I work on Dairhenien, there won't be an immediate payoff. I need to get "Illuminated" resubmitted, and perhaps another story too. Should I work on "The Revenant" some more? Do some more magazine research too?

It's doubly important to get more stories out because of the other thing that happened today: our girl "Dolly Hobbles" was accepted for publication by The Storyteller magazine. It is slated for the Jan/Feb/March 2009 issue of that publication.

As you can imagine, I'm thrilled. I immediately called my parents and a few others, and emailed everyone who has ever helped me in my writing. Now I'm going to have to put an Accepted counter down here too!

Publication Status:

• Accepted: 1
• Rejected: 1
  

My first rejection

Confession: I don't deal well with rejection.

Reading:

• Someplace to be Flying, by Charles de Lint

Listening:

• Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, by J. K. Rowling

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse"

Revising:

• "Cora and the Sea"

So I got a rejection today from Realms of Fantasy. It's my first rejection. I'm perversely proud of it, yet also disheartened. I know it takes a while to get a positive response, but at the same time, you always hope that lightning will strike right away.

The rejection was a blue slip of paper, not even a letter. They didn't even bother to fill in the name of the story in the blank left for it on the form. That was just a little insulting.

But on the bright side, I now have yet another story ready to be sent off to another magazine. I want to do that this weekend so that it doesn't just sit in a drawer feeling sorry for itself. (Yes, I'm personifying my story. So what? I'm a writer. Call it artistic license.)

Location, Location, Location

Confession: It's been a while since I was in a relationship. Even the group of women knitting in the corner of the restaurant look hot. To my credit, they are all about my age.

Reading:

• Someplace to be Flying, by Charles de Lint

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse"

Revising:

• "Cora and the Sea"

I wrote almost all of "Illuminated" in the Barnes and Noble in Smithtown, NY. "Cora and the Sea" was conceived on the walk between my house and the local Borders books, and written there in an afternoon. Each story in Floorcraft has a different origin: Lauinger Library, the Leavey Lounge, the Davenport Coffee Lounge at American University, Uncommon Grounds at Georgetown, and others. I can remember each one distinctly.

Dairhenien's Library has ranged wildly. Lately it has been written at the back table of the Panera Bread in Bohemia, but in the past, it's been at the Borders in Friendship Heights, the Barnes and Noble in Georgetown, La Madeleine in Chevy Chase, and others. It started at my dad's work computer at Cargill Steel and Wire, where I typed up some notes while waiting for him to finish up for the day.

Location is pretty important for me and my writing. It's not that these places set the tone for the story--I mean, they're pretty much all coffee shops, bookstores with coffee shops, or college coffee shops. But each is distinct, and just thinking about those places puts me in the same mental place I was when the stories were written.

With "Ferian Fetlock," I have no such place. Each part has been written in a different location. I think I need to find a place, a new place, and write there until it's done. That's my project for this weekend... to finally put that story to bed and move on to something new.

The Forest or the Trees?

Confession: I just popped the =+ key off my keyboard accidentally. And this is my work computer. It took five frantic minutes to put it back on.

Reading:

• The Snapper, by Roddy Doyle

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse"

Revising:

• "Dolly Hobbles"

I realized something about my writing style today. I write deductively; that is, I start with the general and move to the specific. I can't visualize doing it any other way, although I've been told, and by people I trust, that it is possible to do it the other way around.

You see, I have to have the big picture before I can even start. That means, for me at least, an outline. For that, I write about one line per scene, with additional notes on important details or plot points that have to be unveiled. Once the outline is done, I read through it, just like a movie director would flip through storyboards to see how the movie will come together. Tweak where necessary and voilà! The first part is done.

What's left is the writing, and that's fun too. I have the bones, but I'm adding the muscles and tendons and little wiggly bits. Once a scene is finished, I check it against the outline to see if I covered what I need to cover, and if not, I go back and adjust. Sounds pretty easy, right? Except sometimes the story takes on a life of its own.

If you've never experienced it, it won't make any sense. I'll try to explain. When you speak, do you have conscious control over every word that comes out of your mouth? Probably not. You've got the thoughts in your head and they come out your mouth, and they get converted into language somewhere in between where we really don't even think about it. The next time you get stopped dead in your tracks because you can't think of a word, you'll know what I mean. It's like a train getting derailed.

Composing, at least for me, is similar. I think less about individual words and more about the flow of the description, or making sure that the words of dialogue that emerge are in the appropriate character's voice. The characters don't know the plot or where it's going, though, and that can cause problems. Suddenly I look up, and their motivations or actions have led them down a different road than I intended, subtly at first, but finally to an extent that my outline is no longer valid.

There are three options for me, here. One is to work the digression into the story. I don't usually have a lot of success with these kinds of detours, though, and it's usually better to go with option two, which is to prune. You figure out where the story diverged and you revise from there.

But sometimes even that doesn't serve. The characters struggle to break free from the bounds you give them, and you have to follow the new path. This is where I freeze. I find that I have to go back, reconceive the story from the beginning, and revise everything to match the new direction before I can proceed. It's what held me up in writing "Illuminated," as well as Floorcraft and ever other novel I've ever attempted.

In fact, "Illuminated" is the first story that has ever survived derailment. I should figure out what I did, and do it again.

My First* Submission

Confession: Less than fifteen minutes ago, I got the call that my 93-year-old grandmother had died last night. I had also just sat down to write. I'm going to try to keep writing anyway, but I'll forgive myself for stopping if it gets too hard.

Reading:

• Master of the Cauldron, by David Drake

Writing:

• "Ferian Fetlock Cures a Horse"

Today, I made my first real submission. Now let me explain some parts of that right away. I have written and submitted stories to contests in the past. Most recently I've competed in the 24 Hour Short Story contests run by Writers Weekly. Before that, I competed in a Read magazine contest back in high school, and got to take a trip to DC to read a selection from the story at the Library of Congress. My elementary school held a liberal arts fair, and I got my first (and to date, last) first prize on a short story in the contest held while I was in Kindergarten.

But as for actual magazine submissions, this was my first. I sent "Illuminated" to Realms of Fantasy magazine, not as part of a contest, but because I want them to read it, like it, and buy it.

I think it's a strong story. It's got a good shot. But this was a big step for me for a couple of reasons.

First, I had to get off my ass and actually submit. That meant an early morning trip to K-mart to buy envelopes, and more rigid editing than I usually subject myself to. It even meant going to the post office.

That was going to be my confession earlier... I have an irrational distaste for the post office. I think it's because it feels wrong to pay them and then give them both my purchase and something else I had with me. There have been several times I've tried to walk off with whatever I came to mail, and they had to call me back.

Second, I had to have enough confidence to send it out into the world. Like many writers, I tend to be apologetic when asking people to read something of mine. It's like I try to downplay their expectations from the beginning, so that if it sucks, well, they weren't expecting that much anyway.

When submitting for a contest, you see, the magazine (or whomever holds the contest) is asking for my submissions. If they don't like it, it's their fault. They asked for it. And anyway, I'm used to losing contests by this point. There's no real surprise in that.

But this time, Realms of Fantasy did nothing to attract my prose other than producing a good, entertaining magazine that I quite like to read. And I just swooped down out of the blue and sent them a 11,000 word story (with cover letter, thank you very much) that I expect them to pay me for. About $500, based on the calculations they helpfully provided in the guidelines.

I'd take $50 and three copies. Hell, I'd take one copy and a pat on the back just to get published in a mainstream publication. Don't tell them that.

I've had people tell me that my stories are good. The odd thing is, I believe them, at least in the sense that I believe they mean that. But are they good enough? Where is the dividing line between the gifted amateur who can impress his friends and relations, and the professional wordsmith who thrills the masses with his prose?

I'm starting to understand that there is no difference, not really. Sure, someone who has been successfully publishing for thirty years probably doesn't worry whether or not their next book will be published. But I bet they do worry about whether it will be well received, and if they don't, well, I probably wouldn't want to read it.

I think we become the establishment that others look up to accidentally, and so gradually we never notice. I remember when I was ballroom dancing back in college. Some background... I'm a clumsy, galumphing, 6'2" Irish/German goofball, whose last real physical activity had been a year of fencing about three years before. (I sucked.) But I didn't know anyone there and thought, what the hell, give it a try.

And I did. I got to know the other people, realized they were just as bad (if not worse), and got better. The next year, I moved up from the beginner class to the intermediate class, the only other class there was. That meant I was still bottom of the barrel, and that's how I thought of myself and my dancing. But during our group practices, I got to know that year's newcomers, and gave them a hand.

The next year, we started an advanced class for the first time, and I took both that and the intermediate class concurrently. Oh, and the beginner class was held in between, so I stayed to help out with that. And I also taught some of the social dance classes. Even so, it came as a surprise to me when I found out that some of the newcomers thought of me as one of the best dancers, who had obviously been doing it forever and knew what I was talking about.

I didn't feel like I knew any more. Sure, I had made progress since I started, but I was measuring my progress against those people who were great when I started. They had continued to make progress themselves, of course, so I didn't feel like I had really closed the gap.

And that's how it is with everything, at least for anyone who maintains a healthy level of humility. And the easiest way of doing that is my focusing on how much farther I have to go.

Of course, at this point I've only submitted one story, and it hasn't been accepted. Humility is rarely my problem. The other problem is confidence, and you handle that by focusing on how far you've come. Submitting was a big step, and it will take a lot of big steps to reach my goals. I hope that by this time next weekend, I'll have taken another step just as big.

Rational versus Irrational Magic

Confession: I cried for the last 150 pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Almost nonstop.

Reading:

• Master of the Cauldron by David Drake

Revising:

• "Illuminated"

First of all, thanks to everyone on the Accentuate Writers Forum who helped with the revisions of "Illuminated." Super giant shout out!

In revising "Illuminated," I noticed that this is my first ever fantasy story, or even fantasy idea, with what I like to call "irrational" magic.

It all comes down to the type of magical system employed in the story. Some are almost scientific in their complexity, like the One Power in the Wheel of Time. There are some mysteries and inconsistencies, sure, but having read twelve books in that universe, I feel I could sit down and write a pretty good research paper on the way the power works. Moreover, I could make explicit what is and is not possible with the One Power. Magic, in that universe, is merely an extension of the laws of physics, not something that breaks those laws.

David Edding's The Belgariad (and The Malloreon which followed) is similar in a way, not with magic, but with prophecy. The ways that prophecy work in those books are very explicit. Much of the interest of the series derives from that overt view of prophecy as something that can be studied rationally.

And that's the keyword for me, rational. These are systems that make sense, within the context of the story in which they're written. The authors have made entirely explicit the causes and consequences of their magic systems, and we have the ability to predict how things will work in those words irrespective of whether the authors actually wrote about those scenarios or not!

That's why The Wheel of Time would make such a great role playing game. The rules of magic are so explicit that they could be easily encapsulated into a rule set. (The D20 RPG did an okay job, but it could be done better.)

You'd never get that level of explainability with, say King's The Dark Tower or Susanna Clarke's Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell. In both cases, magic is unpredictable and irrational, and the reader never knows what it may or may not be capable of.

That's not to say that there aren't rules, but in both cases, those rules come from what the characters themselves are capable of, not what the magic system can achieve. The vast majority of magic is hanging out there as a great unknown, and it remains a mystery what it can accomplish.

In the case of Johnathan Strange and Mr Norrell, the irrationality of magic was actually a theme of the book. For centuries, English magicians had been trying to study it as if it were a rational system, but as the book proves, it is inherently irrational. One of the main characters concocts a potion that bestows temporary madness just so he can understand magic better. The end result is the assertion that the world of magic (in the book, that is) is more great and wonderful than the human mind can comprehend.

Given my background, I'm much more comfortable with the scientific approaches to magic. My longterm project, Dairhenien's Library, uses a very explicit and rational magical system itself.

"Illuminated" is my first attempt at an irrational system, although I don't think that was my purpose in starting out writing. I give no explanation as to why the four books exist, only that they do. And I establish rules... if Lasair had not resisted, he would have lived; if he hadn't broken the rules earlier on, he wouldn't have gained the forbidden knowledge that frightened him so and caused him to try to resist the final page. It was his choices that defined the outcome, not some undefined magic system. Yet, I hope, I left the reader with the idea that there were parts of nature that were great and terrible and beyond our comprehension.

Where you start, where you end up

Confession: I snapped at the barista at the Barnes and Noble cafe. She kept trying to get me to order larger drinks and food and snacks, and I just couldn't take it. My exact words: "For the love of God, please just give me the drink I ordered!" I apologized later, at least, and maybe they won't do that again. Of course, now I'm too embarrassed to order anything else!

Reading:

• Master of the Cauldron, by David Drake

Writing:

• "Illuminated"

It's interesting how sometimes a story will take a life of its own. I've often heard this said, and I'm never quite sure what it means for other people. For me, it's when a story goes in a direction I didn't plan.

In the case of "Illuminated," for example, I had originally planned for Lasair to die at the end as a result of what Tiarnach did to him. As I wrote, though, I realized that Lasair would be perfectly safe as long as he followed Tiarnach's instructions. Instead, he broke every single rule, and paid for it at the end.

The setting changed, too. The final scenes originally took place at the abbey, but as I'm writing it now, Lasair leaves the abbey after finishing the Book of Earth, and instead completes his task in a small cottage. This is the same cottage I had originally used in the opening scene, which I cut.

Tiarnach himself started as a druid and became, by the end, some sort of angel, I think. I left it intentionally vague, but in my mind, he's a servant of God on Earth, whatever you want to call that. He has enacted this scene over and over... searching out someone with sufficient talent and the right personality, giving them the commission, and watching as their humanity gradually overwhelms them. In the closing scene, we learn that Lasair did better than most, because at the end, he did not allow the power to consume him utterly.

In general, I think the story of temptation, succumbing to that temptation, and later resisting, is a stronger story than being forced into a fatal task by a stranger. Tiarnach never seemed evil to me--quite the opposite, and his motivations could only be explained in the terms laid out in the story.

I just realized that anyone reading this post would have no idea what I'm talking about without reading the completed story. If you'd like to, email me, and I'll send it along.

The 10% Rule

Confession: When I finish a draft, I think it's perfect. It usually takes 3 days of objectivity to convince me I was completely wrong.

Reading:

• Master of the Cauldron, by David Drake

Writing:

• "Illuminated"

Yesterday I did my big push to edit the first 24 pages of "Illuminated." I got through about 20, which was great, because I'm going to completely rework the last scene preparatory to the final passages. Doing the revision helped in several ways, because I was able to start to work in some thematic elements that I didn't even think of while initially composing.

I can thank Stephen King for that... praise for On Writing is justified, in my opinion. He also mentioned one other rule, the 10% rule. Essentially, the idea is to cut out about 10% of the volume of a draft.

I realize now that I've been doing that by necessity with the stories I submit to the 24 Hour Short Story Contest. The word count is always just a few hundred words less than my first draft, so I wind up going through sentence by sentence to rephrase, trim, snip, delete, edit, etc. In the most extreme cases, I have to lose entire passages. What's left is usually a much leaner story than I would normally write, and you know what? That's a good thing.

Not to imply that I have verbal diarrhea, but I'm all to prone to use a fifteen-word clause where a single adjective will do. I think that's because the composition, in my head, is being generated in a certain order, and my brain is converting those thoughts to language in the same order. So if I think of a woman, then think that she's beautiful, I'll probably write "the woman, whom he thought was very beautiful" instead of "he thought the woman was beautiful," or even "the beautiful woman...." (Hell, if it's from "his" POV, I don't need to specify that he's the one thinking that, right?)

Those are revisions that only become apparent when the brain is going through a completely different process. Composing is take thoughts and converting them to words. Revision is the process of making sure that the words can be reconverted into the proper thoughts. I don't think it's really possible to do both of those at once, which is why revision is so important. The 10% rule, then, becomes a rule of thumb that pinpoints one way to achieve that... using stronger language.

I guess by that I mean "content" language. Words like "of" and "that" and "it" lack content, so why not replace them with a word that will work for you?

Finishing a Cooled-Off Story

Confession: I've tried to start blogs before, and they never lasted more than a few months. This is the first one not called "Radioactive Duck."

Reading:

• On Writing, by Stephen King

Writing:

• "Illuminated"

I don't know if it's fair to say that I'm writing "Illuminated" right now. It's a project I definitely want to finish, but I've cooled on it a lot from that first rush, nearly six weeks ago now. And it's a shame, because the first draft is so close to being done, and I know exactly where the story is going.

Maybe that's the problem--most of what is left is the work, not the invention. I know some of the earlier parts need work, and it feels wrong to finish with those parts still there.

So here's a question: Do I revised the first part and use that momentum to propel me through the end, or would that tactic get me bogged down in editing before I ever finish a draft?

Personally, I'd like to have a clear direction to begin with before I try to write an ending, so I think I'll try the revised and continue approach. We'll see how it works.