Category: writing

Categories
feminism rants writing

You know what else is part of the beautiful spectrum of human experience?

Not having kids.

Articles like this one seem designed to piss me off and make me pound out ranty things on my keyboard.

Yet putting yourself last is one of the best things that can happen to a writer. I make no moral claims for motherhood ­— which can bring out the worst in a person, in the form of vicarious rivalry, bitchiness, envy and even mental illness — but going through the ring of fire does change you and bring about a deeper understanding of human nature.

Well, Mrs. Craig, I’d argue it hasn’t given you a deeper understanding of the human nature of people who aren’t particularly interested in having kids.

I arrived at the essay by way of one of Amanda Marcotte‘s tweets. She made the very excellent point that you don’t see concern trolling of this sort going on about Gore Vidal or any other male author that dies. I would hope that children are a similarly transformational experience for the men who are invested in them, and that does seem to be the case from my own personal observations. A little unfair to the men, hey?

Really, it’s unfair to everyone. From start to finish, once I got past the sound of blood rushing in my ears, the essay reads like a personal justification. Sure, Mrs. Craig has less time to write, but she’s traded it for a deeper understanding of human nature and therefore that choice is superior! Or something! Everyone should do it! Have babies, it makes you more awesome and a better writer!

I am not here to make fun of the choice to have children. It’s obviously been very meaningful for Mrs. Craig, as it is for many people who go that route in their lives. But I am going to challenge this implication of inherent superiority. Having children is one branch in the path a human life can take, a major direction. It leads to one set of unique experiences and feelings.

Not having children is just as major of a path, and diverges from itself even when you consider the question of if it was by choice or not. That leads to a whole different sort of life, a different array of feelings and experiences.

Neither is superior.

The whole point of art, whether it’s painting or writing or interpretive dance or covering yourself with pudding and being an installment piece on the sidewalk for an afternoon is that you are trying to communicate and imagine through the lens of human experience. Frankly, if we all had the same experiences, I think it’d be pretty goddamn dull. It’s about getting out there and living your life to the fullest extent you can and then sharing what you’ve learned and felt and loved and lost and hated with everyone else.

Because none of us are immortal. We can’t feel every feeling and experience everything that there is in this constantly expanding world of ours. It’s not possible. That’s why there’s art, because it’s one way to share, to help people taste a life they will never otherwise know.

For some of us, living life to the fullest is having children and watching them grow, feeling all that love and pain. For some of us, it’s using the extra time and money to ride a bike along the Great Wall of China and dance until three in the morning and kiss a stranger and then have the worst hangover ever. What matters is that we’re living and creating. Unless the person you’re squaring off with does nothing but pick their belly button and watch Real Housewives, your life path isn’t inherently superior. It’s just different.

And different is good, right? Because I don’t want to live your life, as fulfilling as you find it. I want to live mine.

Categories
write-a-thon writing

GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAL

With 19 hours to spare, I finished the last of my six short stories for the Clarion Write-a-thon. Woof, what a slog.

I had eight donors total. Thank you, all you lovely people! I’ll be drawing a name out of a hat (or, more likely, using an RNG) to pick who will be the lucky winner of naming a character in one of my steampunk stories. Expect that in a day or two. I just don’t even have the brainpower necessary to write names on bits of paper right now, I swear.

If you’d like to read an excerpt from this last story, you can check the blog for my write-a-thon team.

This has definitely been a learning experience for me.

Total, I wrote around 35,000 words over six weeks. Last year, I wrote 99,000 words over those same six weeks. And let me tell you, for all that’s over twice as much, those 99K words were a hell of a lot easier.

I have a rough time with short stories. I did a lot of staring at blank pages and trying to figure out what the hell I was doing. It’s way harder than just having a big plot and writing until it’s done. Of course, one of the mistakes I made this time around is that I didn’t have six stories planned out. I didn’t even have base ideas for them. Of the stories, two were planned in advance. Generating the other four ideas quickly and under pressure was a lot rougher than I expected it to be.

My brain is toast. I’m definitely short-storied out for a while, at least for new writing. Two of the stories I think I can submit for open calls that are due on August 31, so I’ll be doing some editing between now and then. The rest can percolate a while longer.

I still have plenty of work that needs doing. I owe my patient editor the first round from Murder on the Titania. I want to get this damn novel draft finished some time soon. I need to start outlining the next Captain Ramos story, since the first draft of that will be due by the end of the year and once I get back to school my writing time is going to be very limited.

I also came up with an idea that I’ve fallen in love with, just randomly as I was leaving work today. I’m letting it percolate, and we’ll see if I’m still in love with it when I can start working on something new that’s long. Because this feels big. But the working title for this project is The Bridge Over the Graveyard of Whales. I know, I know, my title fail. Right now my excuse is that my brain is just juiced. I’ll come up with a different excuse tomorrow.

Categories
writing

I write a horrible story (also known as: trunk stories, what are those?)

It happens sometimes. It kind of has to, if you think about it. Not everything you write is going to be wonderful. In fact, particularly when you’re starting out, more of it will suck than will not suck.

The difference for me is that normally, when I hit a story that I just start hating, I stop writing it. Then delete what little I have written, often while doing my best Bela Lugosi laugh. Unfortunately, since right now I’m the Clarion Write-a-thon’s bitch and I’m on a strict timetable, that wasn’t really an option. So even though I’d decided that this story and I weren’t going to be friends by about word 1500, I kept plugging away at it because I was past the point of no return. I needed to finish this thing or risk missing my goals.

Writing something awful that you hate is a uniquely bad experience, I think. I discovered all new levels of procrastination, trying to avoid engaging with this story. I eventually had to unplug my router so that I’d have to focus on the task of just ripping the bandaid off and getting it done.

This all, of course, segues nicely into the question what the heck a trunk story is. Since this thing I just finished is, without a doubt, a trunk story.

I was very confused by the term when I first started submitting stories to magazines. There are quite a few that say something to the effect of, “And don’t send us your trunk stories” actually in their guidelines. I figured that if I didn’t know what a trunk story actually was, I probably shouldn’t worry about it.

Well, yes and no.

My little writerlings, the definition isn’t really a set one, so here’s how I think of it. Trunk stories are stories you know aren’t good. Stories that don’t quite work and you can’t seem to fix. Stories you no longer believe in. Stories that taught you something valuable about the writing process but have no outer redeeming value. Stories that are effectively a waste of an editor’s time.

I know this is a weird place for us as writers. We are always and forever our own worst, nastiest critics. But at the same time, you still need to believe in the stories you’re trying to sell. You need to believe that they are the best you have to offer, and they are worth fighting for and taking rejection after rejection over. If you find yourself thinking, “Well this story is crap but maybe publication X will still give me a penny per word for it,” stop. It’s a trunk story.

There’s no shame in having trunk stories. I have a sub-folder in my writing file literally titled, “The Trunk of Awfulness.” That’s where all my bad stories go. It’s also the place for stories that I think are all right, but not something I believe in enough to keep throwing them at editors.

I think part of the process of writing and writing a lot is learning to recognize earlier when one of your stories is just not going to work. It sucks a bit when you’ve invested a lot of time in something and then realize that it’s terrible.

But also think of it this way – every story you write teaches you something. And if you’re writing terrible stories, it also means that you’re going to write good ones too. I suggest that, like your rejections, you consider your trunk stories a point of pride. It means you’re working damn hard.

Categories
writing writing advice

Submitting short stories (part 2/2)

Continuing on from yesterday, let’s talk more on with the nuts and bolts of submitting short stories to magazines/anthologies.

The Cover Letter
I feel like that heading should come with a dramatic flash of lightning and a crack of thunder. This is the number one thing that scared the hell out of me when I was starting out. It’s the first thing people see before they ever get to your story.

Trust me, it’s not worth the angst. This is a cover letter. It’s not a query letter, like you’d use to try to convince an agent that your novel is amazing and they should totally invest the time reading it. With cover letters, you want it simple, short, and to the point.

First, remember how yesterday I told you to read the submission guidelines? Start there. If there’s something in particular the editors want in the cover letter they will tell you. (eg: a short biography, etc.) Otherwise, this is all you need: the title of your story, its length, your relevant publication credits, and courtesy. I’m not going to claim I’m an expert at cover letters, but I’m guessing I’ve managed to do something right since I’ve sold some stories. Here’s an example of a cover letter from me:

Thank you for considering my story, “Most awesomely Mind-Blowing Story Ever.” It’s about XXXX words long. I’m an associate member of the SFWA and part of the Northern Colorado Writers Workshop. I’ve published:

“Entangled” in Specutopia issue #1 (July 2012)
“Comes the Huntsman” in Strange Horizons (July 2, 2012)
“The Jade Tiger” in Penumbra (March 2012)
“Transportation” in Anotherealm (September 2011)
“The Falling Star” in Aurora Wolf’s New Fairy Tales Anthology
“The Book of Autumn” in Beneath Ceaseless Skies #49

Thank you and I hope that you enjoy reading my story!

Exciting, I know. But the point is, your story is supposed to be exciting and interesting. Your cover letter is supposed to convey the absolute minimum of necessary information so that you’re not wasting the time of someone who you’d much rather have reading your story.

Don’t tell the editor at length that you’re a new writer and have no publishing credits. If you don’t have any listed, it’s obvious enough and you shouldn’t belabor the point. It’s okay to be new, everyone was at one point. Don’t describe your story or even highlight the genre of it in the cover letter unless the submission guidelines tell you otherwise. Most editors/slushpile readers like to go in to a story without preconceptions. Help them out with that. Don’t apologize to the editor about the quality of the story, point out that you have no self-confidence, or defensively state that your friends totally liked the story.

I mention all of the above sins, mind you, because at some point I’ve committed them myself and had some kind editor (BLESS THEM) ask very sweetly if I would please knock it the heck off. I made the mistakes so you don’t have to!

Wait.
After the angst of the cover letter and the terrifying, stomach-churning moment where you send the e-mail or click the submit button, this is the worst part. You have to wait for what is often a long (3-6 months or more!) time and can really just look forward to a rejection e-mail, likely a form letter, at the end of it. It sucks.

Don’t query about your story unless you’ve waited long enough. Period. The submission guidelines (remember those?) will normally tell you at what point you ought to query to make sure your submission didn’t get lost. If not stated, you should wait at least 90 days.

So you know what you do, while you’re waiting? Write more stories. Edit them. Submit them.

I describe it as playing story ping-pong, where every time one is rejected I bounce it back out to another potential market. (Sometimes with a little additional polishing if someone has been kind enough to send a note along with the rejections.) Right now, I have thirteen stories out and waiting for rejection or the much, much more rare acceptance. And I’m writing more.

Because we’re writers. It’s what we do, right?

Upon rejection:
I have a lot more to say about getting rejected, stuff that deserves its own blog post, but really quick: DO NOT ARGUE WITH AN EDITOR. EVER. EVER. EVEREVEREVER. 

You might think your art is the best thing ever. No one is required to agree. And the last thing you want is to gain a reputation as someone who is combative, nasty, or just plain crazy. You want more chances to catch the attention of these editors, since maybe they’ll like another story of yours. You don’t want a permanent place on someone’s spam filter.

Also, if someone sends you a nice note along with a rejection – and it does happen! – take it as the enormous complement it is. Most editors are incredibly busy, and even a sentence or two, particularly if it’s advice about your story, is a real gift. That said? Don’t send them a note back. They’re busy. Their inboxes are full. Don’t clutter them up.

Finally, unless the submission guidelines (those things again!) say re-submissions are okay, they’re not. It doesn’t matter how much you’ve edited and re-grooved a story, you get one chance per market and you’re done. The only exception to this rule (other than the submission guidelines) is if the editor e-mails you specifically to ask you to re-sub the story once you’ve done some editing.

Questions? This obviously doesn’t cover everything.

Categories
writing writing advice

Submitting short stories (part 1/2)

A friend of mine asked me for advice when it comes to submitting short stories for publication. Which actually surprised me a little at first, but hey. I’ve finally gotten to the point where I’m dropping things off my cover letter publication list to keep it down to six items, so I guess I must be doing something right on occasion.

This is not meant to be exhaustive (please ask questions if there’s something I haven’t covered) and neither is this meant to be a guide about writing. Here, we’re starting with the assumption that you have a short story that you’ve polished to a golden shine, which you believe in enough to fight for it and put up with rejections.

Nuts and bolts all the way, baby.

So let’s imagine: you have your golden, shiny story. You want to knock the socks off of an editor with the emotional power of your art, and as a result be showered with dirty handfuls (hah!) of cash. Where do you start?

Pick a market.
I use Ralan.com and Duotrope for the most part to locate markets, though I have other ways now. These sites are good places to start, however. Duotrope is lovely because it’s searchable, and has parameters like payscale, genre, sub-genre (though this is of limited use at times), and story length. Ralan is for scifi/fantasy/horror in particular. I like it for its list of open anthologies.

So what is your story? Scifi? Fantasy? Horror? Dark fantasy? You need to have this figured out before you can even really start picking and choosing; sending a magazine a story in a genre they aren’t interested in will get you a guaranteed rejection. Once you’ve decided that you’re, say, scifi, you can do a search in Duotrope for markets that publish that genre, and additionally tell it what length and payscale you’re looking for. (I don’t normally bother with subgenre, myself.) Hopefully you already read some of the publications on the list that comes up, so you have an idea of what kind of stories they publish. Otherwise, when you think you might want to try a market, read at least a few of their stories first. This helps you get an idea of the general type of stories the editor likes, though that certainly doesn’t mean they want carbon copies of their current offerings.

The other thing you should think about is payscale. I advocate the principle of go big or go home. Start with the pro-paying markets and then work your way down to semi-pro, and token. (I don’t believe in giving work away for free.) If you aren’t confident that your story is worth $.05 per word, you’d better keep working on it until it is. It’s hard to get into even free markets. You need to have your best work, work you are willing to set in front of any editor without shame.

Read the submission guidelines.
Read the submission guidelines.

The submission guidelines? Read them.

No, really. Read the submission guidelines.

The guidelines will tell you everything you need to know about submitting to the market. If they want your manuscript formatted a particular way, do it. No matter how magically delicious your story is, if you don’t bother to format it properly, it’ll get tossed because you couldn’t be bothered to read the guidelines. (Hint: most places use a variation of William Shunn’s excellent format, so I recommend starting out having your manuscript formatted like this. The only major difference I’ve seen is that italics are normally okay to be left as italics instead of underlined.)

The guidelines also tell you what the editors want, story wise. They tell you what the word count limits are. They tell you how to send the MS (file attachment? plaint text in email? electronic submission form?).  The guidelines are the source of all manner of useful information. Read them. Love them. Read them again. Live by them.

Do not submit your story to more than one place at a time.
This technically fits under “read the submission guidelines” but I feel it’s important enough to need its own section. Unless a market specifically says “simultaneous submissions okay,” do not do it. Period. And if one market is okay with simultaneous submissions, the other markets you send your story to had better be as well.

I know it’s frustrating. A lot of markets can take 3-6 months to get back to you, or more. The waiting sucks. But too bad. You have to wait for one market to pass one your story before you send it to another. It’s the height of rudeness to withdraw stories once submitted because you’ve gotten them picked up elsewhere, and don’t think editors don’t talk to each other, or don’t have memories when someone annoys them. I’m not guaranteeing this would be a permanent black mark in your record, so to speak, but it’s just really not worth risking it. Be polite.

Okay, this is running kind of long, so I will continue on tomorrow.

Categories
writing

Read me in Specutopia issue one!

The first ever issue of Specutopia is now online! Please go check it out and pick up a copy. I’ve got a story in there of course – Entangled. Unfortunately, it’s not one of the stories that will be available as a free read online, but I assure you the magazine is well worth the cost. And not just because I’m in it! I got a copy as part of my author payment and I really enjoyed reading the other stories.

I wrote Entangled about two years ago for the short story competition for Aussiecon. The story was much shorter and less complete then, but still made it to semifinals, of which I’m very proud.

It’s taken a bit of traveling, but I’m really glad this story finally has a home, and a good (shiny and new!) one at that.

Also in writing news, I just finished the rough draft of my third short story for the Clarion Write-a-thon.   This one is a hot mess of a story right now since I didn’t have a clear plan starting out, but I think I’ll be able to edit it into something I can be proud of once the write-a-thon is over.  If you want a peek at the excerpt (and the awful title) you can see it at the blog for my team.

This puts me at halfway to my writing goal, and right on time, too! I’m also just two sponsors short of my ten sponsor goal, so please consider throwing a little bit of money in the ring! Remember, you have the chance of winning naming rights to a character in one of my awesome steam punk short stories that will later be published by Musa.

Categories
tom hiddleston writing

Donation made!

As I said before, I wrote Comes the Huntsman as a gift, and as such didn’t feel quite comfortable keeping the payment for it. I e-mailed Mr. Hiddleston’s publicist and asked if there was a charity I ought to send it to. He told me that Mr. Hiddleston supports UNICEF, which helps children all across the world.

So:

=

I had a horrible day today. This makes it just a bit better.

Categories
write-a-thon writing

I want YOU to be the underwire in my authorbra.

Well, it sounded funny at one in the morning. What could possibly go wrong?

But seriously, I would love your support. I’m now 1/3 of the way through my self-imposed Clarion write-a-thon torture and chugging right along. I’ve finally set myself a donor goal, and it’s not for some amount of money – I just want ten (or more) supporters. I don’t care if the pledge is a nickel a story. I want – nay, NEED – to be well supported! Cross my heart!

Like a… well, you get it.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE! (she says in a sad parody of deep announcer voice guy.)

Ever wanted to take part in a steampunk adventure which may or may not include zombies? I mean, who doesn’t? And who wouldn’t want to do that while simultaneously supporting an amazing scifi/fantasy writing workshop?

I’ll be writing at least four more stories about Captain Ramos and her pirate crew in 2013. If you donate to the write-a-thon cause, no matter the amount, I’ll throw your name in my awesome kangaroo leather hat. At the end of the write-a-thon, I’ll draw a name from the hat, and if you’re the winner, you’ll get naming rights (within reason[1]) to a character in one of these steampunk pirate adventures. Want to be a pirate? A drooling corpse? One of the lawmen hot on the trail of the notorious Captain Ramos? We’ll get it figured out.

Sound awesome? Want your name in the hat? (Of course you do.) Head over to my write-a-thon page and pledge your support!

Also, if you’re curious about my progress thus far, here are my two reports from the team blog:
Report one: Eyes Burning With Smoke
Report two: Significant Figures

1 – No, I am not going to name one of the characters IP Freely, or Mike Rotch, or name a zombie after your least favorite politician no matter how much I agree with you about them being a giant turd bag. Of course, I know everyone who reads this is way too mature for those kinds of shenanigans, but I figured I ought to throw that out there just in case someone has had one too many espresso shots today.

Categories
free read tom hiddleston writing

Comes the Huntsman

And I am done with my graceless heart
so tonight I’m gonna cut it out and then restart
– Florence + the Machine Shake It Out

As of today, my story Comes the Huntsman is online at Strange Horizons, available to be read for free. (Though you should consider donating to SH if you like the story!) This is my best work to date, so please go read it, and tell your friends if you like it! Being published in Strange Horizons has been my dream since I started writing seriously again, so today feels unreal for a multitude of reasons.

You see, Comes the Huntsman was not a story I actually intended to write. Nothing remotely like it, in fact.

I wrote it all in one sitting on February 8th of this year, because it was Tom Hiddleston’s birthday in less than 24 hours. I am an unabashed fan, and I’d been intending to get something written to send in with all the other fanworks for the big, gleeful happy birthday package. Unfortunately, I had a rough semester, then I was out of the country for nearly a month and a half for various reasons and it just didn’t happen.

So I sat in front of my computer and decided that damnit, I would write something, and then I’d post it online, spread it around Twitter a bit, and feel like at least I made the attempt and let my fan flag fly. I was vaguely shooting for something cute, fluffy, and quite possibly fan-fiction.

That’s obviously not what happened.

I was in tears as I wrote the story, not necessarily out of sadness but because writing the thing just felt overwhelming. I was in tears all over again when I re-read it. I sent it to my dear friend Rynn, not really sure what I should do because I knew why I’d set out to write the story, and it had gone where it needed to go instead of where I intended it to end up. I didn’t have time to write another story, and I didn’t know if it was any good, and and and–

Rynn’s the one that told me it was good, that I should try to have it published. I flailed at her via gchat about butbutbut and this was supposed to be a gift and so many other worries. Well yes, it can still be a birthday present. That’s what dedications are for, if you feel like it’s what you want to give.

It wasn’t anything I ever intended, but I looked at Comes the Huntsman and knew I’d written it with someone in mind.

So that’s the reason behind the dedication. I see no reason to act as if it’s some coy secret that the mysterious Mr. T. H. is indeed Tom Hiddleston, whom I have never had the privilege of meeting but respect greatly as an artist and a genuinely good human being. (In my book, there aren’t too many better compliments than that.) Sorry it’s a bit late, but sometimes I still have the bad habit of doing things at the last minute.

Since this story was intended to be a gift, and as far as I’m concerned is whether it ever reaches the intended recipient or no, I don’t feel right about keeping the payment. I might be a grad student but I’m doing okay, and I know there are people who can put the money to better use than I. If I by some miracle hear from the incredibly busy man himself (I’ll be holding the money for a couple of months just in case), I’ll be more than happy to send the money wherever he might like since I don’t feel it’s my story in that way.

Comes the Huntsman is a special story for me for many reasons beyond its emotional content. It’s the third short story I’ve sold at a professional rate, which means I get to – as I’ve jokingly said – wear the big girl writerpants from here on out. Three short stories at $.05+/word is a magical border (at least in my genre) that makes one a “professional” writer. I can no longer submit stories to Writers of the Future, or any other publications/contests that are aimed at non-professional or semi-professional writers. That alone is enough to make this a profound day in my life as a would-be artist.

I normally don’t write stories like this, ones where you just let your heart have its say without filtering it through your brain first. I was so out of my comfort zone as a writer that I’ve yet to find my way back. But even more so, writing a story for someone is a very powerful experience, full of uncertainty and churning worries. You spend a lot of time worrying about if this thing you’ve drawn from yourself and shown to the world is worthy, what other people will think, if it will be a welcome gift. When it’s a situation as odd as this, you take a lot of those worries and turn them up to 11. (Supposedly grown-up nobody writing a story for a famous movie star who is completely unaware of her existence? Psh. Give me a break.)

To hell with all of that. I refuse to be anything but proud of what I’ve written and why. I want to love, create, and give without fear. In my experience, you will always have more regrets about the things you haven’t done, as opposed the things you possessed the bravery (or madness) to do.

Or:
And it’s hard to dance with the devil on your back
So shake him out.

Sing it, Flo.

UPDATE: The payment money has now been donated. More here.

Categories
write-a-thon writing

It’s that time again!

The Clarion Write-a-Thon is now accepting writer sign-ups! So as you’ve no doubt already guessed, I’ve signed up.

Last year I wrote the rough draft for Fire in the Belly and even met that goal a bit early. However, I know I can churn out large walls of text on command, so long as I have a compelling story to write. I’ve done NaNo enough to know that, and the fact Clarion gives you six weeks instead of 30 days actually makes it a little more relaxed as far as pace goes. So I’ve set myself a goal that feels much more challenging – I’m going to write a short story a week, for six weeks.

As far as word count goes, this seems laughable compared to pounding out over 100k words in six weeks. But to me it sounds pretty intimidating because I have a hard time keeping it short, coherent, and interesting. I need more practice with short stories, so this will be my chance to do just that.

Oh yeah. And I’ll keep working on the current novel draft during that time too. Not sure if it’ll still be King’s Hand or if I’ll have moved that one to the percolating pot and gotten started on the next thing, but we’ll see.

Of course, the write-a-thon doesn’t actually get moving until June 24, so I can always change my mind and crank my writing goal up a notch. We’ll see. Maybe if you all heckle me enough, I’ll do it.

Either way, please consider supporting me in the write-a-thon!