Sci-fi, fantasy, and everything in-between
Writing
Posts about the art of writing.
Out with the ugh, in with new
22 years ago
It’s time for another one of my semi-annual self-adjustment breaks. When I find I’m in a rut, or spending too much time indulging in time-wasting, unhealthy endeavors, it means it’s time to take a good, hard look at my life and discard the unneeded, unwanted, and unnecessary.
I’ve got a lot going on right now, all of it important. I’m trying to write a novel. I’m trying to finish upgrades on my house. I’m trying to be a good parent, a good husband, and a good friend. And I’m recovering from surgery to correct my deviated septum. (Long term prognosis: I’ll be able to breathe! Short term prognosis: Oh god, my face!)
So, I’m going to spend the month of May abstaining from several psychologically unhealthy habits.
First, I’m taking a news sabbatical. This especially applies to political news, which tends to suck me in and slaughter any spare moments I have in the day, moments better spent writing.
Second, I’m going to refrain from an activity I’ve been thinking of as “exhaustion surfing.” You know that nighttime moment, right around 10:30, when you think to yourself, “Self… You ought to be in bed, Self.” And then you stay up another hour surfing the web without any real direction or purpose, and gain absolutely nothing, not even mild entertainment, from the wasted time and lost sleep? Yeah… No more of that.
Third, I’m going to strictly limit what I do on the internet in daylight hours. The internet is a useful tool, but I’m not using it as one right now. I’m using it to distract and exhaust myself. So for the month of May, I will use it as a writing research assistant, and a communications medium. That’s not to say I will avoid all other uses of the web entirely — for instance, to watch a show on Hulu one must go to hulu.com — but what I won’t do is surf aimlessly. Too much of that is wasted time, night or day.
Finally, I’m going to read a book. I’ve gotten out of the habit, and reading is good for my writer brain. Failing to read is a bad habit all by itself, and it’s high time I broke this one.
Writing parallel novels
02 years ago
The novel editing proceeds more or less on schedule, which means I’m still wondering what the hell I was thinking, but I guess that’s basically my natural state as a writer.
One of the challenges I had with this novel in its first draft is that one of the most important characters is off-screen for much of the story. Her scenes and activities are conveyed in summary form after the fact, interspersed throughout the novel. There wasn’t any help for this at the time. I had to get the story out from the main protagonist’s perspective first. But now that it’s done, all that summary is just a godawful drag on the story, and needs to go.
So I’ve been taking those summarized details, and expanding them into full scenes that shift the point of view to the secondary character. And as I do this, I’m converting the info dumps that exist in the first draft to drama that actually appears on the page. The protagonist’s chapters are beginning to shrink to manageable sizes while these new chapters grow.
In essence, I’m writing the novel again from the secondary character’s perspective. It will be shorter, with fewer overall chapters — right now the pattern seems to be working out to one secondary character chapter for every two primary — but it still feels like writing the novel again. And I’m finding that to be a good thing: I’ve recaptured the excitement of writing it in the first place.
It’s very liberating. I don’t feel any stress over ripping out huge swaths of talking heads and info dumps, because I’m going to make those into shown-not-told scenes for the secondary character. And I don’t feel any need to wax loquacious with the new chapters, because everything else is already in the first draft chapters. Can’t say for sure this will work out in the end, but so far so good.
And so it begins…
02 years ago
I have officially started editing the manuscript that, Squash willing, will become a marketable novel by the end of the year. I’m starting out by mapping out the plot, characters, and storyline threads, with the goal of breaking the novel down into bite-sized, easily digested chunks complete with cross-referencing links so I don’t lose track of details like character descriptions.
I have never done this before. I have no idea whether this will be a useful exercise or a waste of time. But I do know I was terrified of opening the manuscript up until I started doing this, so it’s already accomplished that, at least.
Of novels, short stories, and pascalines
02 years ago
Not too long ago, I found myself writing a zombie horror story. Not my usual thing, but a great deal of fun. That story is done, and sitting in my rewrite queue, growing rancid and moldy — like its subject matter. I’ll take it out, cut off the bad bits, polish the good ones, and send it out after I feel like enough time has passed.
Most of the writing I’ve been doing for the last few weeks has been of that nature, rewriting stories that are complete but need work. At the end of the month, I plan to submit a few of those to short story markets prior to the big novel push.
But right at this moment, I’m working on a pre-Victorian science fantasy story. It’s got Renaissance-era cybermancy, mystical pascalines, heroic aethernauts and… Well gee, it’s an awful lot of fun writing it. And somewhere down the line, the world its set in might have room for a novel. That would be nice.
Calling all tax experts
02 years ago
by Damon Kaswell
in Business
Does anyone know where I might find a good list of tax deductions for writers living in the United States? I know a lot of expenses can be deducted, and since this year I’m going to be so heavily focused on novel editing and writing, I figured I should go all the way pro and try to make writing a full-time business, but I’m not really sure where to start in the tax department. I already know about the basics, like the cost of printing and postage, and business meals, but I’d like to graduate to Super Elite Writing Taxation Expert Hyper Force. Especially if it comes with an awesome costume.
February goals update
02 years ago
Egads, I had no idea what a mess some of those “almost finished” stories actually are. I think I’ll probably end up with no more than 16 or 17 stories in the mail by the end of the month. But it’s all well and good. I’m really pleased with some of my edits, especially the rewrite I’m doing of a rather tragic necromancer story.
Speaking of fantasy stories and tropes, I’m embracing fantasy more and more lately. I’ve always thought of myself more as a science fiction writer, but if the muse is filling my head with magic, who am I to argue?
All this is leading up to March, wherein I will begin my descent into novelist madness. By the end of the year, I will have an 80,000 word novel. It will be fully edited. I will submit it to an agent.
Obviously, I’ve lost my goddamn mind.
Accidents happen
02 years ago
I recently found out I accidentally submitted two different stories to the same market at the same time. Somehow I lost track of the first submission, so thought the market was free.
When I got a rejection for the first submission, the one I didn’t have a record of sending, I was mightily confused. My tracking database only showed the second submission, but here was a rejection for a story I thought I hadn’t sent at all. No biggie, I thought… I must have just put the wrong story title in my tracking database. But since I didn’t know for sure, I decided I should email the editor and ask. The first response I got seemed to validate my thinking — the editor was kind enough to double-check the story title for me. Case closed.
Then I got another email from the editor. He’d located the second story, further down in his submissions queue. Oops.
For the record, most markets want writers to send them only one story at a time, and this one was no exception. So I made a mistake, and violated their guidelines. But again, the editor was very nice. He recognized that this was obviously an accident and shrugged it off. He even went ahead and read the second story and gave it a quick critique and rejection along the way.
Moral of the story: Accidents will happen. Writers are human and make mistakes. Fortunately, editors are also human, and recognize this fact. Don’t tread in terror of a vicious, bloodthirsty editor blacklisting you and ending your career because of a simple mistake even long-time pros make.
A novel idea
02 years ago
Hah! I pun! Am I not clever?
…
Here’s the deal: Over the last half-decade, I’ve written four novels. Not a single one of them is in any sort of publishable shape, but each has its strength, making it a candidate for The One — as in, the one I’m going to spend this year focusing on, as I mentioned here. I’m having trouble overcoming my fear of each deciding which one I should choose.
So here, in chronological order, are the pros and cons of each:
Novel #1
Pros:
- Completely finished. This one has a beginning, a middle, and an end, and it’s in three solid acts.
- Consistent. It’s been edited multiple times for consistency, so there aren’t any characters in places they couldn’t be, doing things they shouldn’t do, and so on.
- Not NaNoWriMo. This is the only novel I’ve written outside of National Novel Writing Month, so it’s considerably less messy than the rest.
Cons:
- Long. Hoo-boy… This is a monster. 120,000 words. Unpublishable at that size, for the most part. I suppose I could change my name to Stephen King…
- Simplistic. I wouldn’t have said so when I wrote it, but the plot isn’t terribly complex, and frankly, it’s a little hackneyed, because…
- Old. This novel is the first piece of fiction I ever wrote. The prose is undoubtedly immature, the characters unrealistically portrayed… In short, it’ll be as messy as a NaNoWriMo novel to clean up, because of basic storytelling mechanics problems.
Novel #2
Pros:
- Completely finished. As above, this novel has a proper end.
- Well-developed world. This novel takes place in a world setting I’ve been working on for years. I’ve written several short stories that take place in it, so I know the mechanics inside and out.
- Fun. Since I know the setting well, writing in it is like wearing a comfortable old shoe, so I know I’ll enjoy working in it again.
Cons:
- Broken. This was my first NaNoWriMo novel, and I hadn’t yet gotten the flow of things when I wrote it, so there are many places where a scene will retcon things that happened before.
- Complicated. The first novel suffers from simplicity. This one goes the other way. There are many characters, intense intrigues, and complicated situations. I’m afraid of this novel. I may not be a good enough writer to work on it yet.
- Short. It came in at almost exactly 50,000 words, by skimming and summarizing things terribly. It’s an 80,000 word novel in compressed form, and rewriting it would essentially amount to writing it all over again.
Novel #3
Pros:
- Awesome idea. The idea that led to this novel gives me a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. I would love to do it again, and do it right.
- Better prose. I’m a better writer than I was when I wrote the first two novels. There will be more I can save and reuse in this one.
- Good length. It works out to 60,000 words. I think it’ll work out to 60,000 words again if I rewrite it.
Cons:
- Bad characters. Ouch… The characters are cardboard cutouts. Reworking them into likable people looks like quite a challenge.
- Nebulous world. I never did make certain key decisions about how things work in this novel. Making those decisions now could result in large swaths of text down the drain.
- Unfinished. It didn’t end so much as stop.
Novel #4
Pros:
- Well-developed world. I did a lot of world-building prior to writing this novel, knowing I wanted a story set in it.
- Good prose. As the most recent novel I’ve written, the prose in this one is easily the strongest.
- Strong plot and characters. I did a better job laying this one out than any of the previous ones, and the characters are good, especially the protagonist.
Cons:
- Unfinished. Stopped writing. Ran out of steam. No idea how the damn thing ends.
- Complicated. Again, I’m not sure I’m a good enough writer to fix the problems and tie everything together, even if I do figure out an end.
- Controversial themes. This is by no means an adults-only novel, but there are issues of sex and sexuality in it that might make it a non-starter even after I’ve polished the heck out of it. I’m not at all sure that’s a landmine I’m ready to step on.
Of course, all this leads me to option #5… Write a new goddamn novel and throw these ones in the rubbish bin.
Well anyway, I’m open to suggestions.
Time for some rejectomancy
02 years ago
With all the submissions I’ve been making, at least a few (read: all) of them will come back as rejections. I’ve already racked up quite a few, and I thought I’d analyze them a little here. Don’t worry, I’ll be filing off all the serial numbers and identifying marks.
Rejection #1:
Dear Damon,
Thanks for submitting this story, but I’m going to pass on it. It’s nicely written
and I enjoyed reading it, but overall it didn’t quite win me over, I’m afraid. Best
of luck to you placing this one elsewhere, and thanks again for sending it my way. I
hope you’ll try us again with something else.
Sincerely,
[Editor]
I love these rejections. The editor clearly read the story, and even liked it. While this is still definitely a form letter, I interpret it as the one for stories that almost make the cut. There are all kinds of reasons a story might not cross the finish line — it doesn’t fit thematically with any upcoming issues, there were too many other good stories in the running, and so on. But the story is a good one. A very heartening rejection for a writer.
Rejection #2:
Thanks very much for sending this story to [Magazine].
Unfortunately, it’s not quite right for us. [Identifiable story locale] are a more
[time period] setting element than we’re looking for.
I appreciate your interest in our magazine. Please feel free to submit
again.
Regards,
[Editor]
Oops. I misjudged this market’s guidelines and sent them a story that didn’t quite fit the theme of their magazine. I need to read a few more stories they’ve published and get a better feel for them. However, there’s a lot of hope here, too. They encourage more submissions, which means they weren’t immediately horrified by my atrocious writing or the inclusion of tribble-porn (kidding), so after I’ve reset my barometer on what they want, I should comb through my submissions queue and send them something else.
Rejection #3:
Dear Damon,
Thank you for the opportunity to read [Story]. Unfortunately, your
story isn’t quite what we’re looking for right now. Each month, we receive hundreds
of submissions and while I may like many of them, I can only publish [some of them].
[Identifiable information redacted]. I appreciate your interest in [magazine] and hope that you’ll keep us in mind in the future.
Take care,
[Editor]
This one is definitely a form letter, but my rejectomancy senses indicate it’s the one reserved for stories they actually liked. It’s hard to say, though. The phrase “while I may like many of them” could be taken to include mine… Or it could be a way of side-stepping the question of whether they liked mine personally. For the sake of ego gratification, I choose to believe the former. I believe I’m justified in that choice, because once again, they encourage me to submit more stories in the future.
So there you have it. Three rejections I’ve received within the last month, all generally positive. I forgot how much I enjoyed receiving them during last year’s dry spell; they’re proof I’m a working writer.
January goal wrapup, February goals, and looking ahead
02 years ago
So January is done, and I feel very much like I kicked its ass. Sure, I didn’t manage the 25 story submissions I hoped for, but that was largely because I managed to get everything worth circulating back in the mail. For those keeping track at home, that’s 15 stories total, with something like half of them edited (or re-edited) and pulled out of submissions purgatory.
Yes, I feel like a writer again.
I have some new goals in mind for February. I’m going to maintain my short story circulation, obviously, and I’m going to take any remaining stories that require only light edits and get them polished for submission. I figure I should end February with 20 stories out, assuming none of them sell. I’d be happy to fail at this goal for a reason like that.
Another business-related goal: Get my financial tracking in order. Writers — if they’re trying to make a profession of it — can deduct a lot of writing-related expenses on their taxes, but only if they know what writing-related expenses they’ve had. I need a simple application I can enter such expenses with, preferably on my Android-powered mobile phone. I don’t need a full-fledged financial app, just something I can make quick, easy line entries in. I’ll be researching that myself, but I’m happy to take recommendations.
Finally, it’s high time I became a novelist. This month, when all my short stories are in order, I’m going to figure out which of the four novels I’ve written is actually good enough to bother rewriting. For the rest of the year, that novel will be my writing focus. You read it here first… I will query my first agent by December 31st, 2010.
Aw yeah.