fiction writing – Page 14 – meghan rose allen

wasting time

By meghan rose on Wednesday, April 15, 2015

I chucked the first fifteen pages of my wolf children story (fifteen pages in my writing notebook, so about three thousand words) because it was all wrong. So that was a waste. Restarted and switched the narration from first person to third person omniscient. Like Tolstoi, I lord over all my dystopic characters, seeing all, deciding on their fates on my whims. I’m also going to delete any internal thought and adjectives. So basically I’m going for dry and unappetizing.

Still, wish I could have realized all this the first time through.

books short stories

colours and book arrangements

By meghan rose on Saturday, April 11, 2015

I was sick this week and spent six hours arranging my books by colour because I couldn’t think of any other clever way to arrange them. The perspective of the above picture is a bit screwy since it’s three pictures photostitched together with a ninety degree turn smushed flat.

The two days I managed to stay awake for, I did write some Wolf Children story. It’s not good. I’m not quite clear why I thought I could write fantasy, considering how little I partake it in. But I’ll keep going. Got to get back in the writing world somehow.

fiction writing

one week in the slush

By meghan rose on Monday, April 6, 2015

So no one saw my email query letters and immediately jumped up saying “I’ve been waiting my whole life to work with someone like meghan!” This was, obviously, to be expected, but one can still dream that one is so talented that people trip all over their internet feet to get to me.

Faerie story this week and start of wolf children rip-off. Or sinus infection. We’ll see which of the two win.

books short stories

a collection of stories

By meghan rose on Monday, March 30, 2015

Probably it’s apt that I started this in March as the snow starts to melt and mix into the mud on the ground, because I’m going in the slush piles. That’s right — I’ve started sending out a collection of stories to agents and publishers.

And rather than the fist-pump-feeling that at least I’ve gotten this far, I just feel resigned. Like I’ve already had the months and months and months of radio silence that will ensue.

Still, it only takes one.

(Obviously, if you are a publisher or agent, I’d love to send my work to you if you’d like me to. Contact me please!)

So now what – by the end of the summer I hope to have a full Book One of The Faerie Story completed. I want to have written my Wolf Children rip-off short story. I should probably plot out Book Two of The Faerie Story while I’m at it. I don’t know what to do with my faerie story. It’s about an eleven year old, so teenagers won’t read it. I don’t know if it’s an appropriate middle-grade novel. And I think adults might be bored.

I did manage to put up the floating bookshelf Neil gave me three years ago yesterday. So, if nothing else, a book win there.

shameless self promotion short stories

new story published yay yay yay

By meghan rose on Thursday, March 26, 2015

My story Deep Breaths Underwater is now available at Found Press: please check it out!

fiction writing

hook

By meghan rose on Wednesday, March 25, 2015

I am trying to think of a hook for my query letter. But all I can think of is a haiku that I wrote a long time ago when I had to run database extraction programs on an overloaded server:

Very slow server.

If my program does not run,

I will kill you all.

Obviously, a few edits to make it more appropriate to this situation can be made:

Hate query letters.

If my book is not published,

I will kill you all.

That is what I will be thinking about the next few days: how to describe my collection of short stories in a few intriguing and inspiring sentences so someone somewhere will take a chance on me.

Possibly, I might still kill you all :p

fiction writing short stories

productivity on the plateau

By meghan rose on Thursday, March 19, 2015

Continuation of here.

Even with a snow day on Monday and Wednesday, I finished my story-that-I-can-never-actually-publish-since-I-took-a-bunch-of-things-that-actually-happened-to-my-family-growing-up-and-storified-them. I even typed it up. Almost four thousand words in three days.

Don’t expect this pace to last. I keep getting distracted by horror films in Spanish on Netflix and meditation apps.

short stories

plateau

By meghan rose on Tuesday, March 17, 2015

Taking a break from rewriting, I am writing a brief short story about a cutlery drawer, that likely I can’t ever publish anywhere because it steals things that actually happened and makes them funnier (like I do with conversations I have with Geoff, which he complains about even though I almost always take his wittiness and Oscar Wilde-ify it so everyone can marvel at how clever he is). At first, I was all happy because I’m tired of fixing my old stories and I thought that writing new stories would cheer me up. Then I remembered that writing new stories is just as miserable as fixing old stories. In fact, writing is miserable. Especially when there’s still snow everywhere. Especially when I have to shovel it.

Winter. Awful.

But I can see, with this new story, where I’ve plateau’d. All I do is tell, when the whole point of fiction is to show. I used to show everything and people were confused. Now I tell too much and people are bored. I’m bored.

At a plateau, you’re supposed to keep going. It should even be easy because unlike going up, you’re just walking straight along. It’s not like I enjoy hiking up. In fact, any incline, no matter how small, I whine from top to bottom because I hate it so much. But, apparently, I don’t like walking straight along a path either. I’m a self-entitled child of the eighties and nineties: why can’t I be great at something instantaneously and without having to work at all?

fiction writing

first run-through

By meghan rose on Friday, March 13, 2015

I did a first run-through of my possible short-story collection. Some previous published, some brand new, about fifty thousand words, sixteen stories in all. Now we’re on to run-through number two. I think I use the word “realise” a bit too often. Maybe after run-through two, I’ll make an epub, just because.

Had fight with cat over the printer. Yep. That’s been my day so far.

fiction writing

I need Writer’s Termites

By meghan rose on Tuesday, February 17, 2015

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY8horf6KRE

After my January vacation-from-writing month, and my February it’s-a-school-day-so-school-is-cancelled-looking-after-Tesfa and proofreading-big-file-of-short-stories, I seem to have developed writer’s block, which in turn means I can’t sleep, because I get to sleep by laying in bed and telling myself stories and I have no stories to tell.

I miss having ideas. I should just get back into practice by writing for ten minutes a day about nonsense until something comes out.

I should. But it’s another snow day and I didn’t sleep last night because I had no stories to put me to sleep.

You know what other cartoon I liked. Ewoks. Here’s the only Ewok episode I remember, which seems to be a contraindicate me loving it so much.