Is the day I have realized that much of what I have written is overwritten drek.
Now the question – fix drek or simply write new stories? A toss up. A punch up at the wedding.
Sometime soon I should have a link to my new accepted story Deep Breaths Underwater, which is to be published by Found Press.
To pique your interest, here is what Geoff has to say about Deep Breaths Underwater: “Oh, I really liked that story.”
There you go, Geoff approved!
By the end of the month, I hope to have two submittables – first book of my faerie saga (YA/crossover but I actually think it’s more for adults maybe) and collection of my best (i.e. generally most recent) short fiction. Faeries Story Book One is about fifty thousand words and, theoretically could stand alone. Fiction work is currently sixteen stories and also around fifty thousand words. I named my fiction story file big file.tex. If nothing else, at least I know have a file on my computer called big file.
So wish me luck, pray for me, cross your fingers, whatever you’d like. Hopefully I won’t get demoralized in this rewriting stage. Hopefully something will come out of all this.
Another rejection, but personalized. I am still on the plateau of writing where people apologize to me for rejecting me. This time I have “strength of writing.” Is that like “strength of heart” in a Final Fantasy like quest? Where is my chocobo in that case?
So back to the submitting slog goeth I.
It shouldn’t take any reading between the lines for you to know that I’m not particularly enamored with the end-process of writing lately. Yesterday I got a rejection saying my story was too plot focused. I can’t win. I write things that don’t have enough plot. Now I write things that have too much plot. I feel like giving up.
So I am. For January at least. I’ll keep working with my online writing group (my FtD-peeps, you know who you are!) and I’ll write a plot outline for my wolf children story. But other than that, I’m just going to read books and make some soap (I ordered ginger ale fragrance oil and will make some ginger ale smelling soap.) I might play Nethack and watch a lot of Netflix. But I think I’m done with writing for at least January.
I knew writing would be hard, but I never thought it would be this hard. I thought I would just go along the way I was in 2013, small magazines, online ones, new ones, but that wasn’t the case for 2014. I don’t have much hope for 2015 either. My writing is better than average (over the entire six billion population of the world) but lower than publication level right now. So I’m going to step back.
See you fiction-writing in February!
(I’ll still write book reviews and random writing thoughts here. Don’t fret. I won’t vanish forever.)
I finished Draft 0 of a story today, a story about a cup of spoiled milk. I think it’s called When my father left my mother. Tesfa found a cup of spoiled milk in our house once, and brought it up to show us, while we had guests over. Those guests haven’t ever visited again I’m fairly sure.
I wanted to write twelve stories this year. I think I’ve written nine. Plus faerie story work. So maybe that’s not too bad. I came into the year in a distance-ed creative writing course that was not working for me, and I pulled through, which is better than I might have done.
It might only be eight stories though. I should go count.
In 2015, I’m trying to plan. I’m going to do a conclusive proofread of the faerie story. I think it’s the first of a pair or a trio or a dodecalogy. But I will proof it and test it (i.e. read it to Tesfa) and maybe start sending it around to YA publishers.
With my nine/eight new stories, I will make a book, adding in a few of the older ones that aren’t too MFA-y. I had some interest last year from a publisher, but I didn’t follow up very well, so I’ll more more proactive in 2015. I know short story collections aren’t a big sell, but maybe I can make a poetry book of rejection letters or a mural or something.
I’m going to read Finnegan’s Wake. I have established I will do this by not caring about understanding it. I will read it phonetically, the same way I can read Russian phonetically (I know the Cyrillic alphabet) but only understand maybe one word in twenty. I think Finnegan’s Wake will be like that. Considering I couldn’t get through Ulysses, Dubliners, or A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, I am likely engaging on a fool’s errand. But I will read ten pages a day. My copy is six hundred pages, so it shouldn’t take too long. Then I will read the Bible. Then I will read the Quran, which is meant to be read aloud, and in Arabic, but I will read it anyway. And the Bible I will read is the New Jerusalem, because I have a copy, and unlike most Bible’s I’ve found, the pages are regular book pages, not that thin tissue paper nonsense that rips and you can see the words straight through the other side.
So that’s 2015, big books and sending things out to publishers. Also saving money for an overseas trip. And I think I should make some more friends. So if you want to be my friend or have an idea where I should go on holiday, feel free to let me know.
I got a rejection today, which is normal. It isn’t even a story that is truly special to me the way a few of my stories are, the way some of my stories feel like my children while others are children I’m babysitting; I’m not going to let any of them run in front of a truck but I’m only going to pay university tuition for the kids that are actually, legally mine, you know? And the rejection wasn’t even mean, just standard, thank you but we aren’t going to use your piece, so I don’t know why this particular rejection felt worse than any for a long time. But it did, so I spent my afternoon post-rejection in a funk.
Story was re-read, re-worked and submitted elsewhere by the evening, but funk lingers. Blah rejection. Love me literary world instead of this! LOVE ME!
It’s nearing a thousand. Every time I read a review that looks positive or some of the bloggers I trust say something positive about a book, I put it on my wishlist. Every time someone mentions Oh, you should read this book to me, I put it on my list. Every time I see a cover I like, I put it on my list.
There is no way I am going to read all these books ever. There isn’t time. Well, there is time if all I want to do is focus on reading and give up the writing dream (an idea I’ve been mulling over lately as I slouch into winter with no acceptances coming my way). If I turn off the Internet and read every second of the day, I’ll get through them all. And if I don’t add any more books to it. And I ignore the rest of my life.
I wonder what would happen if I simply delete my wishlist. If I didn’t feel compelled the tell myself I should read this book. What would happen? Would I be more free if I simply let these books fade away?
I also think I need some more writer friends. I have an online writing group and they are my writing friends, but I’d like more. I will search some out and ask them what to do about my wishlist. Maybe someone else will know because really, when I look into myself, all I really want is for someone wiser and better than me to tell me what I should be doing next.
Recognizing that the likelihood of me having all the quiet free, time I need stretching out in front of me, uninterrupted, is nil, I put it to myself to write today and yesterday with life going on. A playdate, MLP:FiM, Arsenal vs Manchester United, low-grade cats fighting in the background, and I wrote a story about buying a Chagall. So, obviously it is about rich people, but it’s also in the Kawarthas, and it’s short so hopefully no one will notice all the mistakes since I am neither rich nor living in the Kawarthas.
I think I’d like to live in the Kawarthas some day. Then I could write about them all the time.
On to typing and proofreading. The worst parts.
(I’m guilty of this too, so if you ever see me doing it in my fiction, make sure you tell me!)
I keep reading stories where the protagonist sees things. Okay, yes, assuming generally decent eyesight, we all see things, so please stop telling me that the protagonist sees things unless you want to draw attention to the act of seeing rather than what is being seen. Isn’t there a whole page in Burroway about that? Like one doesn’t need to write Jane watched the cars keep driving by outside the window if we have spent the last page in Jane’s head and if one writes The cars kept driving by outside the window we’ll understand that it is Jane seeing it as she is the protagonist.
Three things I’ve read today have this. Uggg. I am annoyed, pretty much like usual.