Tag Archives: online

Mid-month update

by

Since I don’t have any new writing to post, it’s time for Another Update. Here we go.

As I probably already knew, I haven’t kept up with my February Challenge. At this point it’s very unlikely my final Daily Average will reach 5 pages. I’ll be lucky if it ends up being 3 per day, and I seriously doubt I’ll have 100 pages by the end of the month. However, if I’m better about sitting down and writing for the rest of the month, and have at least finished the exposition part of the plot by the 28th, I’ll be happy with the final result. I have great faith that I’ll meet my “deadline” of tax day. My first draft is likely to need a lot of work, but I still plan to publish the ebook of Sleeping Beauty this year. Assuming I can find an editor who’s willing to wait a while to be paid…

 

And how are my morning pages coming, you ask? About 50%. I think it’s going to take a while to get into the habit. I’m still forgetting a lot of the time, and I don’t wake up 15 minutes earlier when I have to leave early in the morning for work. I’m doing slightly better now than I had been, remembering more often. As to the usefulness of it, that has yet to be determined. Maybe that takes a while to kick in, too.

End of Year Update

by

I’m going to take a moment right now to do something I hate to do – talk about how little I’ve written.

Totaling everything up, I’m fairly certain that I didn’t write nearly as much this year as I did last year. I did that thing, where I made a New Year’s resolution to write every day. It didn’t have to be a lot, just a few sentences would have been enough to get me into the habit of productivity. The trouble with New Year’s resolutions, I find, is that most people make them at the New Year but forget to renew the resolution every day, which is what you have to do in order to stick to it. Me, I didn’t make my daily resolution to write, so I didn’t write every day.

This year I won’t make a resolution. I’ll just kick myself every once in a while instead, and say, “Hey! Why aren’t you writing?”

I bring this up because, since my last post, another Another Life installment, I really haven’t written anything at all, aside from Christmas cards. Between finally having some work (and being out of the house for large amounts of time because of it), making holiday plans (much traveling involved), and watching lots of Buffy with several of my housemates, most of my time is forfeit. The good news is that over the holidays, I expect to have at least a few hours with absolutely nothing to do, and I hope to take advantage of those hours for a bit of productivity. Maybe in Helen, maybe in an adaptation of Sleeping Beauty which I might self-publish (more on that later).

I expect that I’ll do another flash piece or two before 2010 does end, but here’s what you might expect in 2011:

– more Another Life pieces

– Chapter 3 of Helen, as well as updates about the process and progress of this project.

– links posted for my fictionpress.net account, where I plan to publish some of my fairy tales, and possibly other short stories. For those of you who are unfamiliar, fictionpress.net is a free site, where all writing posted is free to read i.e. the only payment I’ll get for publishing my stories there is publicity – maybe. The site itself is the original fiction version of fanfiction.net, which… I’m not going to explain that one.

Assuming I ever actually write/edit these short stories I want to submit to online publications and fiction contests, the ones that are not published elsewhere after being submitted to multiple places will end up on this site. I would like some real publication credits, but I also want to have these stories read. If no one else wants to publish them, I’ll put them up here myself. The downside to that – I am very certain that my blog has a lot less visibility than those sites to which I submit.

 

Ah, well. Perseverance is the thing. I’ve hardly had enough rejections to merit a publication accepting my work. Who was it who got 38 or so rejections from publishers? It was someone famous, I know, for a very well-known book.

So, in short, have some happy holidays and look out for one or two more posts before the end of the year.

Submitting!

by

I have a story ready for submission to whatever writing contests/publications seem appropriate. I have only one in mind right now, but I would like to submit it to other places.

The story is a semi-futuristic tale – that is, it’s set in the future, but we haven’t gotten to the point of flying cars, A.I., or intergalactic space travel yet – commenting on several things, most importantly certain problems with the world and how most people who know about them don’t really consider it to be their problem. It’s between 1,000 and 2,000 words. All of my feedback from my beta readers has been excellent. They love the story, and I think it’s in the right condition to submit. I would put the story on the blog, but I want to make absolutely sure it won’t be rejected due to being “previously published.”

If, reading this, you can think of a writing contest, online publication, or literary magazine that accepts simultaneous submissions and might consider my story, comment and let me know where to look for them. If you don’t know whether they accept simultaneous submissions, that’s okay – just give me a link to a website. They usually have that information with submission guidelines. I don’t expect much response to this, but if you do relate any info to me I thank in you advance for your help! ^_^

Someday, I Will

by

I’ve been considering lately how much I would enjoy creating my own publication. Whether it would be a one-time endeavor or an ongoing pursuit, I haven’t decided – perhaps it would have something to do with how it went the first time. Just the idea of creating something from start to finish completely by myself – not including the writing, as it would be a thing requiring submissions from other writers – appeals to me. With my own writing I’d rather it be published by someone else, but I would really enjoy making a publication using other people’s writing.

I might not be the best person to create a largely successful writing publication. I have good editing skills and a good aesthetic sense, and I could create a website that would appeal to readers and would display the writing well. Getting submissions, and then getting it in view for a wide readership, is another story. I don’t know much about publicity, as you could probably tell from looking at the views on this blog. I know things that one can do in theory to publicize a website (or print publication), but they don’t always work as you might expect. I suppose at that point it’s the writing that does the work, and if that part is well-chosen I would certainly get more views.

Of course, this is very speculative. I don’t have money to pay for a domain name, which means that I would most likely have to create another free blog for it – and I have two, and only maintain this one. I would enjoy the experience but it would not be lucrative, and so I’d still have to manage gainful employment. At the moment, such an endeavor might just be too much for me to manage.

I am keeping this idea on the table. “The” meaning my table – my list of things to do. Who knows, maybe I’ll pick it up again a few months from now – or maybe I’ll wait until I’ve got a reliable fan base from works being published, and then start an anthology project, or a semi-annual online literary magazine. I love the idea of this. I will continue to consider it.

What do you think?