Editing a NaNo Novel

So NaNoWriMo is all finished up. It's been over a week and it's time for things to get swinging again, despite the December rush. I flipped through the NaNo site today and got my code for Createspace. Anyone that managed to complete their 50k words during the month of November gets a code that gives them a free proof copy of their novel from them.

Prior to this year, I never would have really looked at the whole self-publish realm. Basically, it's just like self-aggrandizement. People self-publish their crap just to feel good about themselves. Nothing of real quality comes out of it, and there's no way to take it seriously or make any actual money off of it. Yeah, that's what I used to think. Then I met Randolph Lalonde, the author of the Spinward Fringe series.

Randy has been writing his series for a while, and currently lives off his self-published novels. Most of his writing is available only in e-book format, though you can now order print copies as well. His books are actually really good and addicting, so it's no wonder he's doing well on the self-pub market. Taking a chance and actually reading some self-published stuff has given, in my mind, some legitimacy to the style.

Sure, I still want to see some stuff get published through traditional sources. I plan to submit some queries once I get the first book polished, and have all three books in my Werewolf & Witched Trilogy drafted. So why did I bring up Createspace then? Well, I want that free proof copy. And if after a couple years of shopping around the first novel (which can stand alone if I so choose) no one has picked it up, I can go ahead and put my approval on the Createspace publication and give a go at the self-pub market. Scrounge up an e-book version for Smashwords and Mobipocket, and I'll end up seeing whether I can get some coin back from my efforts.

But more important, the Createspace thing gives me a deadline. Basically, it tells me that I must have my novel fully polished by Mid-May 2010 at the latest. Moving along those lines I did a couple of things today: I formatted things for Createspace submission (5.25" x 8", size 8 font, 3/4" margins), cut the file off at the end of the first book, ran the thing through spellcheck (an hour-long process), and then began editing. I made it through the 26th page. This is going to be painful.

It turns out almost every character other than the MC has the same name in these first 26 pages. People take on other character's speech habits, and there are already inconsistencies of character. I've cut almost half of what was there, and will have to rewrite a good chunk of the other half. This is the chore of a NaNo novel I suppose.

While I'm moving my way through the editing of this novel, I'm going to have to continue to work on the second novel. As I said, I won't be shopping the book around until after I have all three done at least in first draft form. I want to have the first draft of the 2nd book done before February, and the first draft of the 3rd book complete before April so I can focus on Script Frenzy.

Lots to do, little time to do it in. Wish me luck!

Rejections are In

So, the big news. Finally got a response out of Poetry Magazine. It was a nice little rejection letter. So there are now four poems that need to move out to the next possible location. Not quite sure where to send them next, but I think "Arrogance" would kinda work in Aasimov's Science Fiction, "Tinted Mirror" would work well in Necrology, and the other two, "Invisible Eris" and "Two Days", may not quite work anywhere.

Some may take rejection as defeat. I take it as a necessary evil. If things weren't rejected, we'd never be able to get non-serious writers to pursue something else. You gotta have a tough skin to write. That's not a secret. I know that I've had some poetry published in the past, and I know that it's been a while since I wrote poetry with much commitment. I expect to have a lot of places reject my work before anything is accepted. A few successes here and there couldn't hurt any though.

Since I was rejected, I've finished the first draft of a new short story, "Tactical Medics", and am about six drafts through a fresh poem, "Ignorance." The short story, is a bit of a fun slap in the face. I'm pretty excited about the first draft, but I won't be getting too far ahead of myself. I want to give it a couple good thick edits before turning it over to the Underground Writers on October 1st. That'll give me feedback for October 15th, and I can clean it up and maybe submit it somewhere (On Spec ?) for November 1st. I'm saving "Ignorance" for my next set of 4 poems to ship out to Poetry Magazine, which I also hope to be able to do on November 1st.

Speaking of work in progress. The Underground Writers currently has "Bloodspurt" in their hands, and I'm sure they'll be ripping it up good. I've already read through a few of the pieces that I need to have done for Thursday. One of them is absolutely fantastic, the others are pretty good starts of which I hope to read more. When I get "Bloodspurt" back, I'll know how much time I should really be editing that piece. I'm sure its a lot. With a bit of luck, I should be able to send it out for the beginning of October, but that may be optimistic given the piece itself.

Dug up a couple of fantasy pieces I started a couple years ago, and I think with some work, I can finish them and get them sent out somewhere. I'm betting on Tales of the Talisman for one of them, but figure it won't be going out until the new year. With National Novel Writing Month sitting on the horizon, I won't be putting words down on anything but Hedged in November. Still have some time this month I suppose.

Anyhow, enough writing in the form of procrastination. I need to turn my writing to one of my WIPs. Good luck everyone!

On Words and Working

Always busy with this business. I've done a lot in the past month since I last posted here. I haven't written nearly as much as I had hoped in the past while, but that's because I've been doing a lot of other work in other areas. Trying to get things running smoothly all around can take up a lot of time, but now that things seem to be hammered out, I think I'll be able to crank-up my word count, tune up the ticker, and get myself on the healthy track.

I managed to finish the first full draft of "Bloodspurt" (4189 words) on September 1st. I knew while writing it that it wasn't quite turning out the way that I wanted it to, but that may be mid-project dislike and boredom, the bane of writers across the world. It seems whenever you hit the mid-point of a project, other ideas start battering at you and you find it difficult to keep going, and then, you have to decide whether the ending you originally thought up will still work with the piece and things fall apart. I managed to hammer my way through it so that I could call the first, unedited draft finished. I had a very concrete deadline, and I'm glad that this was provided for me, though I'm sure about half my story is going to get itself ripped to shreds.

I have my writing group to thank for the concrete deadline. The Underground Writers decided about midway through August that we needed to have deadlines and that we needed to critique in order to help each other grow as writers. I know that I have a lot of room for growth, so I was very eager to get some stuff out. We have a 1st of the month deadline for pieces, which means that we essentially have to complete one piece, or at least 5k words every month. That may not seem like many words, but in some cases, that could be a huge difference, and even if the pieces being sent out never get seen beyond the group, it's still a good way for us to learn from each other.

Of course, "Bloodspurt" wasn't the only piece I worked on over the past month. I've also managed a number of writing exercises that I may be able to make use of in other pieces, a short science fiction song, and a handful of words for my novel, The Fall of Order. Not nearly as far along as I had hoped, but it's something. I need to get the first draft fully wrapped up by the end of October so I can step into NaNo 2009 fresh.

Still no word from Poetry Magazine about getting published. So I'll have to wait a bit longer on that front. I'm hoping to sit down sometime this labour day weekend and scribble out five or six decent poems to send them after the current batch is accepted/rejected. If rejected, I'll cycle the current batch to the next publisher on the list and work my way from there. I know two of the four can definitely be picked up, the other two probably can as well. I have high hopes.

Submissions Outs

It's time for another of the many periodic updates of writing in my neck of the woods. There's been a few ups and downs since my last entry, and I hope to cover them all without sounding like I'm bragging or whining, a difficult feat. I just hope I don't forget to cover something important.

First off, in regards to The Fall of Order, I've managed to squeeze out a measely 2044 words since my last update. So much stuff has been going on in the real world that I've been struggling to bring myself to edit this piece. Still going to crank away at it. I actually have two hours tonight set aside to work on this project. I'm hoping to get past the roommate's story and move into a nice little betrayal scene. Should be fun stuff. Wish me luck.

For my NaNo novel, I've come up with a sort of "Epiphany Summary" and drawn the main ideas out of the main group of character's epiphanies. These will be something of a guide for the novel. If a scene doesn't somehow move one of the character's closer to their epiphany, or have them get blocked in trying to reach that goal, then the scene should have no place in the book. I then scribbled down a list of some 32 scenes, 11 locations, and 9 research topics I'm going to have to dig into. I took a bit of time the other day to do some research at The Townhouse. Since one of the characters comes from the big city, I was thinking of making her a bit of a metal-head. Went out to a Wolven Ancestry concert and scribbled notes while I pretended to drink. Not sure if I'll use those notes in this story, but it's still useful research. Floated the story synopsis by a few writers and got some nods and "neats." Not overly useful criticism, but I can trust them to tell me "It's not my kind of thing" if it's a shitty idea, so I think I'm safe.

I've also begun work on a couple of pieces of flash fiction. One story, entitled "Bloodspurt" managed 485 words in the skeletal draft. The other piece I've barely touched on and sits around 118 words so far. I hope to clean up "Bloodspurt" and have it ready for submission by late-September. The second piece, I hope to have cleaned up and ready for submission by the end of October. That should leave me free to work on NaNo during November. I also have two short articles of approximately 150 words taking opposite sides on the Death Penalty debate that I may be able to put aside for a piece some point in the future.

Yesterday I sent four poems (Arrogance, Tinted Mirror, Invisible Eris, and Two Days) to poetry magazine. They have an 8-week response time, so by October 5th, 2009, I should know whether or not they'll be picking up any of my work. I have hope for two of the four poems that I sent. The other two, well, I had been told they were worthwile a couple years ago but never made use of them. I don't feel as good about them as the people that told me to send them, but we'll just have to wait and see. According to the site, they pay $10/line, minimum $300 (though the Writer's Market says min $150). If all were accepted, I'd be looking at a $760 US cheque. That's nice to think about, but I'm not going to count on anything. Just going to keep scribbling some poetry and see if it takes me anywhere.

On the writing group and arts Sudbury side of things, there's been something of a cataclysm. The Sudbury Hypergraphic Society has split between those who beleive the point of the group is to write, and those who beleive the point of the group is to promote arts activities and their own work locally as a non-profit organization. I had always thought the purpose of the group was to inflict hypergraphia (a neurological disorder whereby one is unable to stop writing) upon ourselves, and thus fell firmly in the first camp. It's sad to see something that I helped form rip itself apart, but many of us have seen it coming for a couple months but had been hoping that it would blow over. It hasn't and thus a split has become necessary. Unfortunately, that means I have two red shirts with the SHS ironed across them that I now need to toss at Value Village.

On the bright side, the new writing-side of the group has agreed to meet weekly instead of bi-weekly. We will be writing and critiquing. That is our goal, our purpose, and our endeavour. We will see ourselves published when we are ready, and we will support each other in our writing endeavours. The "Underground Writers" as our blog has been called for the past 26 days, will continue to carry on the spirit that many of us though the SHS was supposed to embody.

That pretty much brings everything up to date. Time to get to work on editing The Fall of Order. Stay tuned for future updates.

The Next Project

Hello once again. There's always a tonne to do when you're trying to get into making money off your writing, and when you volunteer and run writing activities. Needless to say, I've been making with the writing. I've worked on three different projects over the past couple of weeks, only one of which I've spoken about here, so I'll review my progress.

On The Fall Of Order I've managed to crank through a fair number of words of editing and even a little bit of new writing. In a span of about five days I managed to edit/write about 10k. That's not too shabby a number. The problem is where I'm sitting with it currently. I know exactly what needs to occur next in order to link my sections, but I'm having trouble getting down to actually write it. The idea just doesn't seem concrete enough for me to take it to the next level. As a result, the last four times I've sat down to work on it, I've barely managed to get through any words. I'm pushing it aside for a couple days so I can hammer on with it fresh instead of frustrated. That may put my final deadline back a few days, but I'm hoping once I get past the roadblock, I'll cruise.

During the most recent meeting of the Sudbury Hypergraphic Society, I managed to crank out a fresh, 16-line poem. Normally cranking out a poem wouldn't excite me overly much and I wouldn't even mention it. But today, I feel I actually wrote, and re-wrote (9 time) a pretty decent piece. I'm going to get it cleaned up and titled, and then send it out to see if I can't get five or ten for it from a magazine. I think it stands a fair chance.

This past Monday night, when I sat down to work on The Fall of Order, I couldn't do it. Instead, the idea for this year's National Novel Writing Month popped into my head. I managed to crank out an idea statement, two character sketches, and then a one-page treatment giving me a really good idea about the direction of the novel. I was very excited when I left the library, continued to work on the idea while on the bus, and decided to float it by a few peers. So far, the reaction is very good. Very good as in "when are you writing this novel because I want to read it right now." Working out another pair of character sketches today for a couple of important secondary characters. I have confidence that I'll be able to write a really workable piece this November. I just hope I can wait until November to write it.

Enough for today. I need to get back to my other job.

Spring Cleaning

I've been a pretty busy little writer the past little while. I've come up with a few good pieces in the past little bit, and with some editing, I should have a piece sent out to a small press in the maritimes by the end of the month. New Found Spec Fic is looking for pieces for their second issue (with more to come I'm sure). Payout is at $0.01/word with a max of $45 plus one contributer copy. The piece I'm hoping to send out, "Raccoons", currently runs about 1100 words. It won't be much for income, but it will be a piece properly paid and published if I get accepted.

I've also begun work on two other short pieces. "Rifters" is a space-based economic adventure piece. It's coming along a little slower than I would have liked, but I should be able to call the first draft finished in a month or so. I figure I'll probably submit it to NFSF or another Canadian-based Spec Fic magazine in September.

The other piece, "Elder", is a horror piece that I'm getting a little excited about. I won't say too much about it other than it involves a crazy old guy and a spurt of blood. Hooked? Didn't think so. That little bit sounds so general that no one can pull my idea from it. Afraid I don't want the word leaking and someone stealing this bit from me. I don't really have a market for horror at the moment given than most places aren't accepting submissions at the moment.

Of course my big focus for the summer has nothing to do with these short stories. I have to crank out and fix up my necromancer piece. I began weaving the chunks together this past week and cranked out a half decent, but unfortunately melodramatic opening. I want a dramatic opening, not a melodramatic one. So I'll end up having to cut and shuffle about that portion and maybe have it come up as a segment of very vivid backstory after the main story problem arises.

The Sudbury Hypergraphic Society is still having meetings and trying to get things going in the Sudbury area. The radio show idea was supposed to be put into action this month, but so far no one seems to be putting a foot down and saying "Clay, book us a recording time." That means our short-shorts will not be heard on air as soon as we had wanted.

The Sawyer visit in May went off very well however. There were fourteen people present at the Buddha after Sawyer's reading at Chapters. He seemed very pleased to have the chance to talk about the craft with people that were looking to get into the field. Apparently we're only the second group to invite him to a small session like this. There were tons of questions asked and answered, plenty of experiences shared, and lots of learning accomplished.

For the first weekend of July, the SHS has a booth setup at the Northern Lights Festival. This is only a short distance away and we've done very little to prepare for it. I'm busy getting our new web page in order so it can be launched prior to the festival. We're also trying to find ways to pair some of our writing challenge pieces with art so we can have a sort of presentation of the types of things we do at our meetings to help hone our skills. On top of all that, I'm going to need to come up with some pamphlets for National Novel Writing Month so that I can try to promote the event during the festival. Someone else is going to have to come up with some sort of pamphlet to promote the SHS and the book sale at the end of the summer.

Speaking of the August book sale, it seems we've found our charity. The hope is that this will be an annual event, with word hopefully arising from this years event. We will be donating the fund to a particular school in the area for the purpose of helping them buy books for students to read. School libraries are nearly nonexistant and it's hard to convince kids to read when the options before them are their parent's age. So we'll be donating the funds to one school this year, a different school next year, and so forth. The book sale will be taking place downtown at The Market Square on August 22nd, 2009. Anyone in the Sudbury Area interested in donating books for resale is asked to drop them off with Danielle at Mimi & Lulu's or to contact me and make arrangements for drop off.

That's enough of an update for now. I need to BBQ some burgers and get back to writing.

Ad Astra

This weekend I head down to Toronto for the Ad Astra science fiction, fantasy and horror convention. This will be my first year attending the event and I hope to get a tonne of advice out of it. At Ad Astra, there will be numerous fans of the genres, but more importantly, writers, editors and maybe even publishers may be in attendance. It's fully possible to hang out at the bar with someone like Robert Sawyer and pick up a few tricks of trade. That's why I'm heading down there. I'm not a well-published author, nor have I had much experience in the field. There are a lot of areas within which I can learn and grow. This will be a working weekend for me. Although I would love to see the Steampunk Fashion Show, or attend the Masquerade and Dance, that's not what I'm heading down to see. Instead of enjoying that stuff, I will be attending panel after panel. Check out my time-table:

Friday Mar 27:

7:00pm Opening Ceremonies
8:00pm Paranormal Research
9:00pm Hectic Day Jobs: Sparking Creativity?
10:00pm Instant Fiction
11:00pm Urban Legends

Saturday Mar 28:

10:00am What's in a name?
11:00am Effective Combat Scenes
12:00pm How Not to Submit Your Work
1:00pm Editing Yourself
2:00pm Different Kinds of Fantasy: Epic, Urban & Everything in Between
3:00pm What is Real Evil?
4:00pm Creative Block
5:00pm Supper Break
6:00pm Strategies for Short Stories Publication
7:00pm Gore and Torture: Is it Horror?
8:00pm Free time?
9:00pm Move over Meatbrains
10:00pm Evolution of the Zombie

Sunday Mar 29:

10:00am Conflict Within
11:00am Working with a Smaller Press
12:00pm Dueling Openings
1:00 pm Marketing Yourself
2:00 pm Tesseracts Anthology
3:00 pm First Contact
4:00 pm Closing Ceremonies

Maybe next year I'll be able to take in a few of the lighter events!

Syllables Sound Sexy

Alliteration strikes again! Muahaha.

Ok, so I'm just planning on doing a short little post today. I know I promised one on the 7th to keep people up to date on how I've been doing. Things have been coming along pretty good on most fronts. Still don't have any queries or submissions out, but that's a part of what I plan to work on this week since I'm stuck up here in Timmins anyways. I've a week of vacation and will end up getting my driver's licence at the end of it finally. As such, I'll also be doing a lot of driving.

I will tend to have the mornings and evenings to myself however. This puts me in a good position to work on researching and writing letters of submission. I've three pieces that I feel are complete enough for me to send out to a few different places. Will have to wait and see how it turns out. I will be sending out "Lakeside", "Through a Window", and "Last Tuesday". I've a couple pieces from my Necromancer series that could probably stand on their own pretty well, but I'm thinking of trying to get them out as a single piece once they're completed. If I can't seem to find a way to get them through that way, I'll split them up and see if I can get parts published separately. After the stories have gone through their hold, I can see about putting together an anthology.

I could look into going the self-publishing route. That sort of thing works really well for some. Randolph Lalonde immediately comes to mind. Randy's been self-publishing through CreateSpace for the past year, and now manages to make enough from his self-publishing to write full-time. The thing that keeps Randy going though is his following and his frequency of publication. His following will rabidly devour his latest pieces, search the web for hints about his next work, and try to find out all about him. I know Randy through the Sudbury Hypergraphic Society, so I know that he's really a pretty down-to-earth kind of guy. He's easy to talk to with some of the same troubles the rest of us have in terms of writing, but with the added pressure of having to get his work finished and out in limited time because of upcoming bills. I have my job at The Source for my bills, though I hope one day to use my writing to more than cover that.

In other news, Ad Astra is swiftly approaching. The latest list of panels is somewhat uninspiring, but I should still be able to get something out of it. I'm very excited and have just about everything ready for the event. The Northern Lights Festival will definately be a goal for the SHS, though we won't be doing a performance piece. We will be having a booth and will be advertising some of the events that we're involved in. There's to be a book sale this summer, plus I get to advertise NaNo and SF.

Speaking of Script Frenzy, I've been racking my brains for an idea and finally stumbled upon it in my crap-file. Dug through a handful of my older work, mostly stuff that I had a couple pages, barely an idea from, and stopped on years back. I found a small folder of research from when I was thinking of doing a novel for WoTC back in '04. I've since taken the idea and worked out a pretty good outline for a screenplay. Think of it as Pygmalion (My Fair Lady) meets Saw. I think it'll turn out really good, and after the script is done, all I need to do is fill in some description and it's a dialog driven novel. I think its a good approach. Certainly something different. I just hope that I can finish up the rough of my Necromancer novel before the end of the month. It's going to be busy between now and then!

Anyhow, back to work with me. I've a lot more to do.