wordwhacker

Man, I need a title, and I need one bad.

This is the second draft of the Christmas story I wrote for the Telegraph Journal (yet to be submitted). Any comments would be wildly appreciated.


( Christmas Cookies - Draft 2, short story, 500 words )

So considering I'm a writer, and I like short stories, I don't read them NEARLY often enough. In an effort to rectify this (and scope out some possible places to submit You in the Mirror, after a substantial snipping session) I am reading some sample stories from a few lit mags.

I have found two such mags, and have randomly selected short stories from both to read. Both are written in the second person.

I do not like it, Sam I Am.

(For the record: my biggest pet peeve with the first one wasn't the tense/POV thing, amazingly enough. It was the giant deus ex machina that served as a big fiery ending with explosions (no, really!) which somehow managed to also wrap up absolutely nothing about the story.)

So remember when I submitted a story to Glimmer Train Press the other month?

Got my "autonotify" rejection response today. I win!

I'm going to shop it around a bit now, pick some magazines that are looking for rambling chick-themed lit. And in the meantime, I'm going to write something better.

Did half an hour of editing, finished Chapter 7. This chapter wound up being almost 100% rewrite, rather than "mass deletion-style" edit, and is actually being cut into two separate chapters. I always knew the meat of the editing work would be here, which is probably why I stalled here every time I've tried to tackle it so far.

Got my file set up and my author's notes ready for Chapter 8 so I can dive right into it tomorrow. This chapter is going to be a lot of rewriting, too - I know I said I'm trying to avoid major structural edits, but this part needed it badly, and I've had the re-written outline for this part finished for a while now. I knew where I wanted it to go, and now I'm making it go there. Great hunks of text are being deleted, and it feels pretty darn good.

And now, sleep.

Whoops, did I say I'd update this on... what, Saturday? And now it's Sunday. It's the last day of my work week, and I am mildly bloated and ache-y. I think I will use a "Get out of jail free" card and update properly tomorrow.

Something I'll jot down as a reminder to myself, though: I need to remember that this edit of the SF kids novel doesn't need to be even close to a finished version. I don't need to worry about the overall pacing too much, or whether I need to edit in a new sequence of events HERE or THERE, or anything like that. What I need is to clean up what I have. Getting bogged down in the nitty-gritty is for LATER. For now: first solid draft.

Though I've been slack on the editing, I HAVE got my requisite weekly short-story critting done for Critique Circle. I love that place.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a date with some honey brown beer, a hot-water bottle, and a good book.

I was bad - I skipped Day Two. However, I did a solid hour and a half of editing today, so that partly makes up for it. Another hour and a half tomorrow and I'll be caught up and laughing.

Got Chapter 6 edited down to 1,300 words! This one needed some substantial re-writing, too. I borrowed an event from later and used it here, where I think it fits better. This chapter needed more tension, anyway - or so my lengthy author's note tells me.

For your amusement: ( here is the author's note I left myself mid-way through this chapter. )

Ah, self-loathing. It never gets old in the writing world.

I should start posting the chapters for this again, but not until the week is up. (The urge to procrastinate is strong.)


From here on in I have done absolutely no editing since I wrote this nearly two years ago for NaNoWriMo. The waters, they be getting rough. And I be getting excited.

Success! Narrowly avoided the procrastination blues today. I'm at the stage where I'm mostly having to cut, rather than re-write, so the editing is going fairly swiftly. I got Chapter 5 down from 3,100 words to 1,600 words. That seems to be about par for the course for this story, and leaves me in a decent range for the market I'm aiming for, I think. Need to look into that.

Also got Chapter 6 ready to be edited and made my notes as to where I want to go with it. This is where the editing is going to get sticky - until now, a solid hour was all I needed for each chapter. I think that's going to double and triple as I go. That's fine - I'm just going to take it an hour at a time, for now.

Besides, I'm not editing War and Peace, here. I'm editing a SF Adventure novel for kids, and this is only the second draft. What I finish with won't be publishable, but it WILL be a heck of a lot closer.

So I got tired of saying, "I'm not published - I haven't even submitted anything yet!"

Time to get rid of that excuse. I need me a good kick in the pants.


Hence, a submission (a slightly reworked version of You in the Mirror - remember that one?) to Glimmer Train Press. Basically an auto-rejection.

Folks, it's time to start this thing off right.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have some more potential rejections to start working on.



Alas, the romance challenge seems to have died. Eh. Why write something I can't even stand to read?

Well, it hasn't been a bad week. I think my "FAILs" are about even with my "TOTALLY OWNs", though. I can do better. Still - three or four solid hours of editing, and about the same amount of writing. I'm not allowed to treat myself anyway, so that will be my excuse.

I'm making a slight change to my plans - I'm going to aim for one solid hour of writing and editing over my whole weekend, rather than on each day. Mondays in particular usually wind up PACKED with stuff to do.

I think my cat just farted. What a stinky, stinky fart.

Right. Bedtime, I think.

So, apart from having some general projects to work on, I'm feeling the need for some goals. I'm not sure what the best way to go about this is - should I set a goal of a certain amount of time spent on writing/editing per day? Per week? Should I reward myself for going above and beyond? Or should I focus on individual stories and when/how I want to finish them?

One thing's for sure: I want to have Boringville edited and in decent shape before November. And I need to finish my Big Honkin' Edit ^tm well before then, ideally at the end of August just before school starts up again.

I'm not sure where I wanna be in terms of odd short stories... maybe I should go with the "alotted time per day" formula and see how that goes. I think that's a better approach than word count. I'm worried about Butt In Chair, not Words On Paper.

All right. Here are my goals - very modest to start with (and playing on my knowledge that once I'm DOING something, I get carried away):

- 15 minutes of concentrated editing every day
- 15 minutes of concentrated writing every day

No exceptions. It's a half-hour out of my life - NO MATTER WHAT, I can manage that.

In addition, on my days off I want to get an extra hour of work in, each day. Writing or editing, my choice. And that doesn't carry over between days unless I do a CRAPLOAD of work on one day (like, five+ hours.)

I'm gonna keep note of how I'm doing, including the days I FAIL and the days I TOTALLY OWN. I figure if each "fail" is cancelled out by a "totally own" I'll end up in the black and can reward myself somehow. Maybe I can tie my food issues in with this whole thing, and make a week of being 'in the black' worth an extravagant meal of my choice. (Two birds with one stone.)

Sounds good. I'll start today (why wait?) and post every Friday with my results for the week.