In Which I Receive A Promising Rejection

My short story Hole Ridden has been out on submissions for just a little over 2 months.




It's received two rejections, all very nice, but I recently received a third, promising rejection.

More or less they said they can't accept it now, but if I wanted to make it a bit longer and perhaps draw more of a connection between the MC and the otherworldly aspect (the hole) they would be excited to take a look at it again.

Which is, of course, very exciting. Puts me one step closer on the road to publication.

Of course, now I need to figure out how to make it longer and rework it some. I'm not so worried about the reworking, but I am a little intimidated by the "making it longer" aspect. Since I don't make things longer. Ever. I always cut cut cut.

Ah well, hopefully the re-working will lend itself to a longer length. The key is to rework some of the middle without effecting the end and beginning all that much. Especially the end. The pacing is too tight, so any messing around in there could really muck it up.

How's things for everyone else? Anyone have a short out on submission as well?

In Which We Learn About Writing

There's been some chatter around the blogosphere recently regarding honing one's craft and what specifically that takes.

I've mentioned before that I have a BA in fiction writing. But in all seriousness, I learned more about writing, the business and the nuts and bolts of everything from blogs (and some excellent writing books) than I did in my BA.

Let me 'splain. No, is too much. Let me sum up (NEVER GETS OLD).



I had a lot of fun earning my BA. The best thing about all my advanced fiction classes (and the few post grad classes I was approved to take) was the workshopping. Sure, we had to read some essays and articles on how to write, but almost all of my classes involved writing junk in class, then sharing and getting feedback or crits. I learned A LOT about how to crit and workshop in college (especially in that grad class, which was AWESOME). But I can honestly say, no teacher ever said "Show don't tell" or "don't use adjectives or adverbs" or any of the other important rules (though I did have one teacher who let us help her choose the cover for her most recent book and that was super fun)

Those rules came to me in books on writing.

When I started blog surfing over a year ago, that's when I really started to understand aspects of craft that I had only flirted with before.



I remember Simon had a post and examples on the "Show don't tell" rule that was just genius. It was the first time anyone had ever shown how to follow that rule (a bit ironic, yes? That we're always told and never shown how to Show, Don't tell)(it turns out I was doing it right all along. But it was good to know)

Before Query Shark I had no real clue what a query was. Yes I would have researched it if the time came, but knowing about how to craft a successful query helps me in my writing to narrow down the conflict of the novel ahead of time.

I certainly think you can benefit quite a bit from taking classes. Not to mention the people you can meet.

But if money's an issue for you (and it typically is for me) or if you're super introverted, you can improve your craft by using the lovely interwebs and books all by yourself.



Does that make sense? Yes? Good.

The key is to make the attempt to improve. If you're serious about improving, you'll find a way to do it, no matter your means.

How have you improved your craft?

In Which I Conference

So I mentioned on Monday that I was out all weekend (and Friday evening).
And the reason was:

Palindrome and I went to a writing conference!!

4th Street Fantasy to be exact.

It was our first writing conference and Hannah located it by doing an interwebs search for local writing conferences. She's just so clever.

It was quite a bit of fun. And we got 4th St Fantasy pens that were also flash drives! AWESOME!

The Program and thoughts (in red) are as follows:

Thursday, June 24, 2010

8:00 PM – Three Shouts On a Hill
Last year we added a pre-conference opportunity to laugh and play. It was so successful that we decided to continue it and establish a tradition! Tonight we share in presenting the world premiere of Jo Walton's play version of the Irish legend of the Sons of Tuirean: Three Shouts On a Hill.

Jo Walton, Author, on the right

Hannah and I did not attend Thursday. We have day jobs and junk.
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Friday, June 25, 2010

4:00 PM – 5:00 PM What should I be reading (that I'm not)?

An open discussion of what's exciting out there: not limited to fantasy or genre at all! We want to know what's getting us jazzed in the world of books and web stuff.
Tom Whitmore, with much audience help

Tom Whitmore, Conference Organizer and retired reviewer

Again, the day jobs prevented us from hitting this one. Too bad because I bet it was a lot of fun. However they made a list and posted it online.


5:30 PM – 6:30 PM How do you know when a story's going wrong?

An editor, a writer, a reviewer and a reader talk about how to tell when a story is going wrong, and what to do about it, from their perspectives.
Steven Brust, Karen G. Anderson, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Pamela Dean

Steven Brust, author, and his awesome editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Hannah pulled some strings at the day job and was able to leave work early. So we got zazzed up and hit this panel as our first foray into the conference. Both Steven Brust and Teresa Nielsen Hayden (editor for Tor books) were fantastic panelists. Funny and enlightening. Mostly the conclusion was, things can go wrong in the beginning, middle and end, but the middle and end mistakes are usually brought about by poor revision. Also this panel served to add to my confidence that the majority of work in the slush is terrible so we're already at an advantage.


8:00 PM – Getting to know you gatherings

Join Steven in the Smokers Den for Philosophy and Fun, Peggy in Courtyard Ballroom A for Singing and Silliness, Tom in Courtyard Ballroom B for Musings and Meanderings, or Janet in the ConSuite for Munching and Mischief... or stroll among them all. Other amusements will undoubtedly ensue.

Since we weren't planning on attending anything on Friday, we skipped this because we'd have to be up early for Saturday. Next year, I would definitely stick around to get to know everyone better
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Saturday, June 26, 2010

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Mixing genres

We've had a raft of different ways of mashing up genres over recent years. Fantasy with rivets, dragons with novels of manners, future-setting fantasy — what's coming next, and why does this sort of synthesis work well (when it does)?
Jo Walton, Elizabeth Bear, Teresa Nielsen Hayden

We started off with a delicious breakfast. Twin came with and I brought my camera to take photos but for some reason it stopped working (though it's miraculously OK now...).
Elizabeth Bear told a fun story about how her first novel she submitted was All the Windwracked Stars which has MCs that are: A Valkyrie, Fenrir and a two headed mechanical horse. The response from her editor was that it was a good book, but not suitable as a "first novel". It was eventually published as her fourth book (and both Hannah and I picked it up from the dealer's room)



11:30 AM – 12:30 PM Beyond promotion: Reputation management

Why is it wrong to put a stack of your books in front of you at a panel? What is effective at a convention in terms of promotion, and why? How do you get a reputation, and what do you do once you have one?
Steven Brust, Ctein, Patrick Nielsen Hayden

This was my least favorite panel. They pulled someone from the audience who was actively engaged in self promotion to sit on the panel as well. But all the authors more or less said, why would anyone want to self promote themselves when that's what the publisher was for. Which wasn't very helpful for everyone in the audience who didn't have publishers. Or who were published at small prints and couldn't even get bookstores to understand that they weren't self pubbed. Still, it was an entertaining panel. It just made me think that I should try real hard to be published with Tor books (BTW, they still accept un-agented submissions. Crazy awesome, right?)


2:00 PM – 3:00 PM How does the medium affect the story?

There are many ways to tell stories. Why choose graphic novel over song? What are the advantages of keeping it short or making it long? Why has epic poetry pretty much died?
Adam Stemple, Elise Matthesen, Elizabeth Bear

Elise Mathessen, writer, jewlery maker

This was an interesting panel. It ended up mostly focusing on using music or jewelry as a medium. Elise Matthesen was one of the most interesting people at the whole conference. She also had a jewelry booth set up for shopping where Hannah bought a set of earrings based on Jo Walton's discussion of her face shape. Hannah also bought an old Renfest costume of Elise's that she was selling for $80 which is ridiculously cheap. (I wanted one of her necklaces, but it was $425 and there's no way I could ever justify that). While the panel was going on Elise made us vote on what kind of jewlery we wanted to her to make. Eldirtch Horror won out, and then Pirate (even though Steampunk was CLEARLY the better choice...). When the panel was done she had created two necklaces.

3:30 PM – 4:30 PM Fantasy vs. Progress

Sarah Monette had a blog post which began a discussion on the nature of progress in fantasy, and how conservative fantasy tends to be. Of course we had to continue it.
Sarah Monette, Marissa Lingen, Adam Stemple, Patrick Nielsen Hayden

Elise Mathessen, Sarah Monette, Elizabeth Bear (aka Bear), authors

This panel discussed why, in fantasy, we rarely reach, or go beyond, the industrialized age, and why we think that is so. Topics included Tolkien and his supposed dislike of technology that somehow allows him to have bicycles and umbrellas in The Shire which are not simple bits of technology



5:00 PM – 6:00 PM Submit, or die!

What keeps you from submitting and what keeps your submissions from being seen by the right people? Includes stories about the story an author won't submit.
Tom Whitmore, Elise Matthesen, Skyler White

For some reason, I can't remember what was discussed in this panel... WTF

Update: I now recall, with help from Hannah, that the discussion more or less centered around the fact that sooner or later, it becomes more painful to not submit, than to submit

7:30 PM – 8:30 PM Second thoughts: The morning after

The aftermath of Food, Fashion, and Fornication. Happily ever after? I don't think so. Unruly, lively discussion of what happens next.
Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Jon Singer, Elise Matthesen, Karen G. Anderson


We skipped this one and went home so we'd have more energy to tackle Sunday
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Sunday, June 27, 2010

10:00 AM – 11:00 AM Point of view: How not to suck

Who's telling this story, anyway? Why should I care? Does it make a difference?
Jo Walton, Sarah Monette, Steven Brust

This was a fun in depth discussion about POV and authors that use it well and those that don't. A lot of focus was spent on the unreliable narrator



1:00 PM – 2:00 PM The new cliches

When does something change from a fad to a cliche? What's jumped the shark recently (besides "jumping the shark")?
Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Tom Whitmore

Discussion ranged from anti-cliche's that become cliches to trends. General consensus was that if you begin a story by examining a cliche, it was probably OK, but if a cliche was the punchline of your story (ie - aliens come to earth in the past and create Adam and Eve) then you're in trouble


2:30 PM – 3:30 PM But that's a different panel...
Everything you wanted to discuss that got tabled until now.

We voted on two topics to discuss. And though both Hannah and I voted for "Why the horror genre collapsed" the winners were "How to make your problems fun" and "When to stop revising"

For "Problems" there was discussion about how every writer is given a "freebie" which is a writing skill that just comes naturally. For me, it's dialogue. Then to take that skill and use it to help the areas you suck at. Bear stated she hates setting, so she uses her freebie, which is fun, to try and make setting fun to work on.

For Revisions it all depended on what kind of writer you were. Do you know the ending? Then you probably need less revisions. If not, you'll need to go back and work it in. All the authors said they had had a book that they either had to, or came close to, starting completely over on. Also they pointed out that every writer, on every book, will always reach the point where they feel like they're the worst writer in the world.

So that was it! It was super fun and I'll definitely hit it next year.

In Which I Don't Wear Pants?

When I was younger and used to write, I could sit in front of a blank sheet of paper and write whatever struck my fancy and make it into a viable story.

I think for the most part I can still do this, a blank piece of paper - or in my case, a blank word document because I am not a hand-writer - isn't something that stresses me out or causes writers block.

I also used to start stories with just the barest understanding of what my plot held. I'm a great starter and love jumping into something new when the excitement and idea is fresh.

But over the years I learned that if I jump in too soon, the excitement that comes with a new piece will wane and I'll be left with a story that I still like, but typically have no idea where it's going. I'll keep plugging along until I get stuck, and then typically, I would stop.

After a while I told myself I wasn't allowed to just start things willy-nilly until I gave them some more thought. And then that morphed into not really starting anything until I have at least a bare bones outline (most recently I now know that I need to have character conflicts, motivations and goals at least internalized if not written out if I want the story to have any sort of chance).

So what I'm getting at is, I used to be a "pantser" (flying by the seat of your pants sort of writer) and now I no longer am.

I think most writers fall into one or the other category - the pantsers or the... what are we called? Non-pantsers? sure...

I wonder, are there any other writers who fall in between, or, like me, started out as one way but then discovered that the other way was much more suited to them (even though I still sometimes consider myself a pantser - short stories especially)

What about you? Pantser or Non Pantser?

In Which I Embarrass Myself A Bit

So during my lunch breaks (you know, when I move from the office to go sit in the living room) I have to find something to watch on TV when I'm eating. Except there's nothing worth watching on at 12 or 1 o'clock during the weekday (and no, Wendy Williams doesn't count).

So I use our lovely DVR to tape shows for me purely to watch during my lunch breaks. Tuesdays are always the best day because Monday evenings are a big DVR night. Intervention? Awesome. Castle? Even more awesome. Because it's about a writer and the writer is Nathan Fillion! If you don't love Nathan Fillion, you are not human.

Adorable!

But lately I've been pushing Castle back a day or two. Why is that you ask? Well I've found a new lunch TV show...

Make It Or Break It

Take it all in. It's as fantastic as it looks.

I mean, what's not to like? For example - On this week's episode, Payson (the blonde in the blue leotard) had to start going to Public Highschool. Last season she broke her back and she's done with gymnastics. FOREVER!

Anyway she goes to gym class and the gym teacher recognizes her (she was headed to the Olympics until her accident). Then typical bitchy popular girl is all "hey everyone watch me do this back handspring I'm a cheerleader blah blah" and she does it and it's crappy.

SO THEN, and you won't believe this, the gym teacher makes Payson tell the popular girl what she did wrong! Awesome.

Later, the popular girl is daring Payson to show them a back handspring (which of course she can't, she's in a back brace) when Payson's gymnast friends (the ones above) show up and put popular girl in her place by doing super back handsprings! YES! Fight bullying with gymnastics!

Seriously I'm not even embarrassed by how much I love this show. It's full of so much melodrama and teen angst, it's impossible not to love it.

Let's see, how can I relate this to writing... hmmm... sleeping with best friend's boyfriend? No... Mom having an affair with gymnastics coach? Definitely not. Ah, here we go.

Nicky, cute boy National Champion is angry because one of the girls is blackmailing him for giving Payson cortisone before she hurt her back.

Anyway, he's actually a nice guy and a good gymnast and he had this to say to Kaylie, the girl National Champion who's kind of in love with her new found fame:

"Imagine if you focused as much on improving yourself as you do selling yourself". Oh ouch.

It's a good point. Yeah this blog post is a stretch in relation to writing, but the reason it is is because I'm still behind from doing all that writing on Sunday. And really, isn't that writing the whole point of being a writer? Though I LOVE this writing and all my blog friends. Which is why I'll always have something, even if it's just a chat about Make It Or Break It (and believe me, there will be more...) or some LOLCats

I gotta go - Lauren is doing a hiphop dance on the balance beam. Classic.

In Which My Query Is Critiqued

Ugh.

You know how when you work out for the first time in a long time, and the next day you're in a lot of pain? But you know it's good for you - it's a good pain - but that still doesn't change the fact that it hurts when you laugh?

That's how I feel.

I submitted my Query to Evil Editor for it to be critiqued (Face-Lift 723). After two weeks of anticipation (and Twin checking every day) it was finally posted. And of course it was posted when I was having a negative attitude day (don't worry, I fixed that by cramming my gullet full of macaroni and cheese and tackling the dishes)(Also by watching Intervention, because it makes me realize things could always be worse...).

I thought my query was pretty strong, and I guess looking back on many of the other Evil Editor Queries (like Face-Lift 721...) I still feel it was pretty strong.

I just need to tighten up some areas, and loosen others.
After all, I do love an excuse to edit and revise things...

Back into the breach!

That's A Bitch Move, Jo March

I was eating lunch the other day and had nothing to watch on my DVR (in case you didn't know, my job lets me work at home, which is just as awesome as you think it is and also full of more sweatpants than you'd guess). Typically I have a swath of TV shows that I tape purely for watching during my lunch break, but Castle is on hiatus as with everything else. Therefore I had to channel surf and I found Little Women. It was half an hour in but I hadn't seen it in a long time so I started watching.

Barring the fact that I forgot Christian Bale was in it

I love you even with your dickery

Along with Gabriel Burns, Susan Sarandon AND Claire Danes, I'd also forgotten how awesome it is. I taped it after my lunch break so I could finish watching it in the evening (which is why I only got 300 words written that night on my WIP. Yes, it was definitely Little Women and not Zombie shooting. Not. At. All)

On a side note Brother apparently says he's never seen Little Women before, evidenced by the fact when he came in he said "What is this crap? It looks stupid." Even though BETH HAD JUST DIED and IT WAS NOT STUPID!

On a side note off the first side note, whenever I think of Little Women I'm reminded of the Friends episode where Monica finds Stephen King's IT in her refrigerator. She discovers that Joey put it in the fridge because it had frightened him, which is apparently his usual solution for books that upset him. So Monica suggests that he reads Little Women instead. He goes through almost the whole book thinking Jo is a man and Laurie is a girl. At the end of the episode Joey is all upset that Beth died and Monica's solution is for him to put Little Women in the fridge.

Back to the first side note - I do think Brother has seen Little Women, he just probably doesn't remember.

Back to the main point of the post. I was thinking about how Jo was writing, more or less, genre fiction and Friedrich is all "oh it's good but I know you can do better" and blah blah blah and I'm all like "Maybe Jo wants to write about zombies and steampunk and maybe you should just shut your mouth Friedrich" but not really because it's Gabriel Byrne and I lurve him.

I love you D'Artagnan - I mean Gabriel.

So then Beth dies and it's sad (AND NOT STUPID) and Jo takes one night (HAH!) to write a new wonderful novel called *Gasp* Little Women (and I freak out because of the paradox of her writing the book that the movie is based on that I'm watching where she's writing a book and...well you get it. Mind Freak!)

And even with all of that other crap going through my head, the one thing I really come away thinking is that Jo is a piece of crap because apparently she can write both fiction AND non fiction.

I took a creative non fiction class in college. I was a senior and the next semester I would take my senior project class which involved Fiction writing and then a semester after that (because I needed 4.5 years to get enough credits to graduate so my last semester was filled with pure fun stuff including beginning fiction writing which I had skipped over originally when I went straight to intermediate fiction writing. Talk about an easy class. Beginning Fiction I mean) I would take an MFA fiction writing class even though I wasn't working on an MFA.

I'm totally losing myself in my own train of thoughts here. Anyway I took a single creative non fiction class. And I was HORRIBLE at it. Not only was I horrible at it, I didn't find it very fun. I didn't have anything worth writing about. And I didn't even want to write about me and my past - booooring - I wanted to write about made up crap.

The weird part is, I knew HOW to write good non fiction - I could recognize it when my classmates did it, and I could appreciate a good memoir. But for the life of me I just couldn't apply that to my own writing. I think a lot of the people in the class thought I was dumbish and couldn't believe my major emphasis was in creative writing (I know this is at least partially true because one of the girls in that class would also be in my senior project class which was fiction based and she flat out told me that my fiction was world's better than my non fiction.) My non-fiction work is the only writing that I've willfully destroyed.

I wonder if other writers have this trouble, or if it's just me? I'm not great at poetry, either, but I can pull some of it off. But not Jo March, ho no. Jo can write anything and everything and get it all published while simultaneously finding herself a man. Apparently she's like the Avatar of writers.

I would give much to be an airbender

So anyway, here's what all this rambling comes to: Little Women, I love you, but Jo March can suck it.

In Which I Become A Writer

I'm often amazed at people who state they always wanted to be a writer - like they popped out of the womb with a pencil in hand and a story to tell.

That's not how it happened with me.

I didn't want to be a writer. I remember Twin reading Dear Mr. Henshaw in elementary school (I think she read it multiple times) and I always thought it was kind of dumb. A kid who wants to be a writer and so he becomes pen pals with an author? Boooooring.

No, not for me. I wanted to be a veterinarian.

And when I was even younger I wanted to be a veterinarian and a singer. Of course my parents then teased me, asking me if I would sing to the sick animals which, naturally, drove me crazy.

Now when I think about it, that's actually kind of a clever idea. It would be awesome if there was such a job, where all you had to do was sing to the sick (animals or people) and they would be healed. Though stuff like that has pretty much been done to death

But then I hit high school and the aforementioned fan-fiction. When I did NaNoWriMo for the first time in 2009 I noticed that on the website and in the book they constantly talk about how, when you've become a winner, it could possibly the most you've ever written! Well, barring the fact that my previous WIP was stalled at over 70K word, I spent high school writing elaborate fan-fiction stories with my friends, the longest one over 40K, though there were at least three others that capped in the 30K range. So you can see I spent much of high school writing a lot of fan-fiction. Word count was not an issue for me.

Fan-fiction was fun. Of course, the majority of it was that it allowed you to fantasize about fun and exciting things with your best friends who were also involved in the fan-fiction. But the writing was fun too. I began my very first writing notebook where I stored ideas for fan-fiction and other stories - my Puppy in the Pot Book.

so named because of this picture on the cover

Also, I began to do very well in English class. I mean, I guess I had always done well in English, I never got bad grades in anything, but in high-school I began to enjoy doing well in English. I still loved science (especially biology), but a few great English teachers began to steer me away.

When Twin and I went to our orientation for the University of MN, one of the first things they ask is what you want to major in, so they know where to send you during the orientation. I was all prepared to say "pre-vet" like Twin, but instead what came out of my mouth was "English".

It was then that it was finalized, well at least the English degree idea. I still didn't have any plans of wanting to be a "real" writer. My original idea was to become a high school English teacher (something I still kind of wish I had followed through on).

But then, around my sophomore or junior year, I realized with an English major I could have an emphasis in creative writing, and well, that was it. My senior project wasn't a big paper on an author, instead it was a lengthy short story. All my electives were fiction classes and solidified my desire to be a writer.

So there you have it. Had you asked me when I was eight if I wanted to be a writer, I would have laughed in your face (Twin would have helped). If asked when I was 18, I might have hesitated and then said no. But here, when I'm approaching 29 (omg 30 is on the horizon...), well I've been saying it for almost a decade. It's kind of a weird little path I wandered.