There are two voices in my mind right now. One voice says “you should be writing! You’re good at it. People like your writing. You like writing. You like creating worlds and relationships. It’s like playing with dolls. It’s a lot of effort and takes a long time, but it’s worth it.” The other voice just wants to consume. It’s the one that tells me to spend my lunch watching YouTube videos instead of writing. See, I’m at a new job and it’s not so easy to watch while I code anymore. Kinda looked down upon. In fact, unless you have special permissions, you can’t even get to YouTube. I…
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The Year in Writing
This has not been a great year for writing. I finished Defender and started sending out the queries. Only two agents bit. The rest never responded or sent rejections. This is my third novel I’ve written with intent for publication and again, no one was interested. I know most novelists don’t get their first novel published. A lot don’t get their second. But three novels with ~93 rejections a piece? I am doing something seriously wrong. Art is one of those things where no one can tell you what you’re doing wrong. When you put together a bunch of ingredients that don’t work together, no one can tell you how…
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Unenthusiastic is Hard to Type
It’s still hard to stay enthusiastic about writing. I’m still writing, so it’s not like I stopped. But what I’m writing now doesn’t require me to bring my “A game”. It’s fan fiction, so it’s nice to write with no pressure. But I haven’t sold a short story since (goes to look up answer) since July 2014. A whole year and nothing. Did the market change and no one told me? My acceptance rate is down to 3.3%. Guess I had my peak year. I haven’t written any new short stories in quite some time either, so maybe that’s part of it. I’ve been trying to write them, believe me, but they’re not…
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Is 90,000 Too Short For a Fantasy Novel?
So the other day I got a rejection for Defender that said “most publishers require a word count of 100,000 or more from a fantasy novel”. And that got me thinking, is that what’s been stopping me? I’ve sent 46 e-mails since January and only gotten two bites, no acceptances. Is it just that agents/publishers are expecting something longer? And that no one’s been telling me because they send form rejections? This is why I hate the query process. You get rejected, but no feedback on why. Probably most of them are just “it didn’t grab me/interest me”, but it’d sure be nice if they could be a little more…
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I Cannot Finish This Short Story
I am in a world of shit now. I am trying my damnedest to finish this story I’ve been writing, about the military using little demons to disarm bombs. The problem is I have no fucking idea how to end it. Everything is too cheesy, too easy, too consequential, too non-conclusive, too pro-war, too anti-war. It’s always something that doesn’t make it feel right, no matter what I think of. I sit here staring, hoping for some idea to germinate. And if one does, it’s just a weed and it gets knocked down. I might say chuck it, but good artists finish things. And I’m too determined not to finish…
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The Day That Never Comes
You ever have those days where everything on your body itches? Like little gnats are nipping you? Or spots of your skin are dry? And then you get irritated and depressed? I feel like that these days. Even though I’m writing like a madman, I feel like I’m making no progress. I’ve got 100,000 words of written prose that won’t see the light of page, it’s all fan fiction. Plus it’s nowhere near done yet. Plus my acceptance rate’s been low. My high was 17% at one time. Now it’s steadily dropped to 4% in the last six months. Haven’t been getting feedback from any agents or ideas. It’s been…
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The Snooze Button
I frickin’ hate the snooze button. I don’t use it, and I don’t think you should either. First of all, it’s the biggest damn button on the clock. When my alarm goes off, I don’t want it to come back, I want it to turn off permanently. I don’t want to get ready then, ten minutes later, wonder why I hear the radio upstairs. Why do they make the “alarm reset” button the same size as all the others, but “snooze” is eight miles wide? You have to maneuver like a blind man to avoid pressing it. And why set an alarm if you’re going to turn it off anyway?…
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Too Many Things To Work On
There’s something about all the stuff coming down the line lately that’s starting to paralyze me with fear, at least according to my writing. Merm-8 is supposed to be published on 9/5 (mark your calendars), but there’s still a lot to do. I’ve gotten through content edits three times. But now I’ve got to go through grammar edits. And the problem is the grammar edits haven’t been marked, because they want me to go through the whole text and make sure it’s all right. Which sounds like a bad idea to me. I wrote the story to the best of my ability regarding grammar rules. How would I notice something…
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Bad Writing Days
I hate it when I have bad writing days. It makes me feel unproductive and logy and worthless as a writer. Sometimes if you’re in the middle of a story and you’re not excited about it and it just fizzles. I was trying to write a space story, and I didn’t have an ending for it, and couldn’t come up with one, so I tried just writing it to see if something would pop up during composition. It didn’t. The first part was working out fine, but nothing creative occurs to me during the composition part. Maybe it’s got something to do with the fact I’m working from an outline.…
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Whining and Depressed
It’s getting harder and harder to stay motivated to write. I sure could use a sale or something to keep me going. Right now it feels like I’m shouting into the wind. And everything I’ve been writing has the emotional depth of a piece of toast. I’ve also had trouble concentrating on anything lately. Maybe it’s because there’s too much Internet to distract myself. Instead of reading, I find myself wanting to play Candy Crush Saga instead. It also doesn’t help it’s so damn hot. I can’t stand being hot, and I don’t know why a state like Minnesota is getting ninety degree temperatures all month. Not much holds interest…
