It's June Already?

Wow. Time flies when you're up to your elbows in a novel. I began my second novel, a science fiction story, at the beginning of April. By the end of April I had 60,000 words done. May went rather slower--about half as fast, in fact. By the end of May I finished the novel with 98,000 words. It's not done, of course. Not by any means. That was just the first draft.

I'm letting it sit for a couple of weeks. I'll spend the next two weeks* working on short stories. Then I'll print the novel out, and go over it, rearranging a few scenes, maybe tightening some and lengthening others, and cleaning up typos. That'll be the second draft.

Then I'll let my spouse--and my first reader--have a look at it. Assuming Spouse doesn't point out any major problems, I'll give it another quick polish and send it out into the cold, hard world in search of a home. That should take me until the end of June.

At which point, it will be time to start a third novel. My goal for 2010 is to get four novels written and circulating. The longer-term goal is to do the same every year for the next four years. That should result in 20 novels in the hands of publishers, which means a) I'll have that much more practice** at plotting and writing novels, and b) with practice and persistence, the odds should be pretty good that I'll have sold at least one. And to a major New York publisher, mind you. That doesn't count shorter novels I may or may not write and submit to smaller, possibly online epublishers.

In the mean time, I intend to start posting to this blog more regularly. Beginning on the 16th of this month, I'll be posting every Wednesday on the topic of How I Write. I'll be participating in a multi-blog effort, wherein all the bloggers will be posting on the same topic each week. It should be fun, and with any luck, educational for everyone involved. Stay tuned for that!

*I spent most of the last week suffering from a summer cold and doing very little writing.

**Assuming I'm starting from scratch (which isn't true), and assuming that, as it is often said, a writer has to produce a million words of crap before writing anything good, twenty 100,000 word novels is TWO MILLION words. Given that I've already sold a number of shorts, I like to think that I'm closer to breaking in than that. But the only way to find out is to keep writing and pitching, so that's the plan.

Writing The Novel

I'm writing my second novel, as noted in a previous post. I'm averaging more words per day on this one than on the last one. It's a higher per-day average than I've done in anything so far. I ascribe part of it to trying harder to write, write, write every work day. But part of it is that I've gotten better at stifling my interal critic.

I set a kitchen timer for sixty minutes, start it, and begin writing. For the next hour, I write--as non-stop as humanly possible. I don't revise, I don't delete anything and start over. I just write the current scene, transcribing it as simply and explicitly as possible. I try to stay in a "flow" state, trusting my process (or my subconscious, if you will) to be creative and to produce something worthwhile. After all, I have decades of experience at reading and watching fiction. I've soaked up the rules, just the same way I soaked up the English language as a small child, learning by immersion.

Now, like a child learning to speak, practice (and correction) are necessary. But that's what writing every day, and trying to produce workable short stories and novels is: practice. Artists practice. Musicians practice. Actors practice. Athletes practice. World-class examples of each of those spheres practice more than anyone else; they don't practice to get good, then stop. They practice to stay at the top of their game even after they've reached the pinnacle of their professions.

Writing is no different. Every novel, every short story, every scene I write is practice. One of the great things about writing is that you can get paid to practice. Once you've reached minimal level of skill, enough to sell your work, you can continue to practice, and sell the results.

Ideally, I'm doing focused practice, working a specific skill or technique. Whether it's writing convincing dialogue, character voices, plotting, scene description, or some other facet of the writing, I try to focus on one skill or technique and consciously work to use/improve it. In my first novel, I focused on cliffhangers. I tried to end each hour-long writing segment, and each writing day (of several such hour-long writing intervals) on a cliffhanger of sorts. Not necessarily a classic cliffhanger--sometimes I simply stopped in mid-scene, so I could pick up again easily when I started the next writing interval. But I tried to end each scene with a real cliffhanger--a revelation, a threat, or both.

In this novel? Well, I'm not prepared to admit what I'm working on just now. Better not to reveal that until it's done. But there's practice going on.

April Showers Bring May...Novels?

Yes, they do.

At least in my case they do. As one of my goals for this year is to get at least three and preferably four novels written and into circulation, that means one every quarter (for four). And as April begins the second quarter of 2010, I began work on my second novel this month. Unlike my NaNoWriMo effort in November of last year, I'm aiming for 90,000 words rather than a mere 50,000. At an average of 3,000 words daily (Monday thru Friday) it would take 4.5 weeks to reach 90,000 words--or a little over a month. Assuming I don't make quite that many words daily, it should still see me thru by the end of May at the latest.

The current novel effort is science fiction. I read a fascinating article about people who make a living repossessing aircraft--especially big passenger jets. Immediately I began to envision repossessing starships for a living. Like real world aircraft, they're huge, they're very expensive, and people who buy them on time are sometimes going to default on the payments...and then the bank is going to have to foreclose and take them back. That's a job for a pilot, and for the canny folk who have to track down starships the owners don't want to surrender, and who may try various schemes to keep the starship in their possession regardless of the law.

How will the tale turn out? I have no idea. I'm a seat-of-my-pants writer. I began with a vague idea, and now I'm just seeing where it takes me. Ultimately I'll start to see a story emerge and I can craft it more deliberately into a proper story structure. But for now, I'm just along for the ride to see what happens.

Ssssssh! Novelist at Work!

In November of last year, I gritted my teeth and jumped into National Novel Writing Month with both feet. It was my first attempt at a novel, and I wrote it in eighteen days. All fifty thousand words of it, which is the goal of NaNoWriMo. It was an interesting, informative, sometimes frightening experience.

I worked without a net. I've never been able to plot out a story beforehand, though God knows I've tried .It just doesn't work for me. So I worked out a very general idea for the story, then on November 1st I sat down and started writing. Within a day or two I'd changed the names of my characters (and thereby their personalities) because what I'd started with wasn't working. Fortunately, that was a quick and easy search-and-replace task. I also changed the setting of the first scene, but only in the sense that I made a note to myself to change it upon revision and thereafter wrote as if I'd written it that way all along.*

Some days I thought I doing pretty well. Some days I thought I was writing crap. But I kept plugging along because, after all, it doesn't have to be good. It just has to be 50,000 words long. I placated my Ego (which wanted to spare me itself the pain of failure and rejection by giving up ahead of time) with that mantra. Some days were a struggle, but I did it. I wrote a 50,000 word novel and I finished it in eighteen days.

Then I promptly saved it and swore that it would never see the light of day again. I was convinced that it was awful. It was my first attempt at anything longer than a short story. How could it be anything but awful?

But my writing gurus, Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Katherine Rusch, have repeatedly told me (and anyone else who'll listen) that a writer is not the best judge of his own work, and especially while he's writing it. They have over a hundred novels and hundreds of short stories published between them, and they still wrestle with that tiny voice that says "this is crap." It's such a common and predictable reaction, usually coming about a third of the way into the novel, that when one of them tells the other that the latest novel isn't working and they may have to start over, the other asks, "How far into it are you?" At which point, the other turns and goes back into his or her office to continue writing.

So I thought, I really ought to listen to them. Plus, my spouse (and trusted first reader) gently nudged me to reconsider. So I grudgingly pulled it up on the monitor and started reading it again in January. And it wasn't half bad. In fact, some of it I liked a lot. So I let my spouse read it, and got a rave review.

Okay, Spouse also had a few criticisms. I couldn't argue with them, either. So I decided, what the hell, I'll polish it up and send it out. Let some actual editors tell me if they thought it was worth buying or not.**

There was a problem, though. The minimum length for a publishable novel (with rare exceptions) is 70,000 words, but my novel was only 50,000 words long. So I had to revise and extend it, as Congressmen so often do their speeches in the Congressional Record. I've spent the last month or so doing just that.

It was slow, tedious work. In part, that was because my Ego gibbered and capered and jumped up and down, screeching and flinging poo, in a Herculean attempt to make me give up. Change is scary and difficult, even when it might be a good change. Writing and revising (and ultimately trying to sell) a novel meant changing my self-image. It meant thinking of myself as a novelist. It meant risking rejection (almost certainly repeated rejection, even if the novel eventually sells). My Ego hates that, so it tried hard to stop me, clinging to my ankle and crying piteously as I dragged myself (and my Ego) toward the finish line.

Some days, I confess, it succeeded. On other days, forcing myself to ignore that voice was difficult. On rare days, I successfully throttled it and managed to write several thousand words. But I'd set a goal of getting the novel finished and out the door by the end of February.

And today I finished the revisions. The novel weighs in at about 72,000 words. Shorter than I'd have liked, but as long as it's gonna get. This evening I scoured Publishers Marketplace for editors and publishers to whom I could send it, looking for editors who'd bought books in the same genre. I have a list of five I intend to start with.

Tomorrow...I'm taking the day off to celebrate finishing the novel. Friday, I'll write the cover letters and the synopsis, and get everything ready to mail. Saturday, the queries will go into the mail. I'm going to meet my deadline, and I'm very pleased by that. In March, I'm planning to work on some short stories, but in the not too distant future, I'll be starting another novel. My goal for this year is to have at least three novels written and circulating. More would be better, but three is the absolute minimum.

Look at me. I'm a novelist!


*A technique I learned from the Book In A Month workbook, and one I highly recommend.

**Robert Heinlein's fourth and fifth rules for writers:
4. You must mail your story to someone who will buy it.
5. You must keep it in the mail until someone buys it.

Happy 2010, everyone!

So it's the year 2010 A.D. We're living in the future. The far future, at that. Far from my childhood, at least. I distinctly remember lying bed one night, having watched a television special about the (then) unimaginably distant year 2000, and all the technological wonders it would hold. I remember calculating how old I'd be in the year 2000, and was slightly shocked--and more than a little horrified--to realize I'd be OLD. At least, from the perspective of a child who was only ten at the time.

The year 2000 is now a decade behind us, and I don't feel old. But then, I suspect I'll always feel like that child on the inside, no matter how old I look on the outside.

But, anyhow. 2009.

In 2009 I Got Serious about writing. Starting if February or March, I began working at writing stories on a regular basis and sending them out. At the end of April, I was handed my walking papers by my employers of fifteen years. After consulting with my spouse, much of which occurred during a weekend at the coast, we decided that we could afford to let me pursue the goal of being a professional writer.

To that end, in the year 2009, I completed 18 stories and sent them out. I have received 24 rejections, have 9 stories outstanding (no response yet), and sold 5, all to Cobblestone Press. I also wrote a 50,000 word novel for National Novel Writing Month. It was my first novel, but it won't be my last.

For 2010 my intent is to continue writing short stories--to write, finish, and submit one story per week, and to keep the stories in circulation until they sell, or until I exhaust all the markets, whichever comes first for a given story.

In addition, I've set the goal of writing three novels this year. And, again, with the intent to write, finish, and submit them to at least five publishers each, and when/if a given publisher rejects my query, to send the rejected novel to another publisher. And to continue doing so until either the novel sells, or I run out of publishers.

It's a numbers game, really. If you're a halfway decent writer, you can sell your work if you're persistent. The trick is to write a lot, finish what you write, and keep it out there, where editors can see it and decide to buy it. You have to be willing to face rejection--everyone gets rejected. Even the biggest of big name writers get rejected; it never stops. But if you're focused on writing the next project, and the next, and keeping the work in circulation is just part of the job, rejections don't sting so much.

It's like being a salesman. Or a world-class home run hitter. The salesmen who get a lot of yeses get a lot more nos. Babe Ruth struck out far more often than he hit homers, but if he wasn't swinging for the fences, he'd never have made all those home runs. So this year is the Year of the Numbers.

Lots of stories written.
Lots of stories finished.
Lots of stories submitted.
Lots of stories kept in circulation until they sell.

I hope "Lots of stories sold" will be at the end of that list on January 1, 2011. But that part isn't in my control. Everything on that list IS in my control. So that's the part I'll be focusing on.

The Writing Life

I wrote a novel in November. Not a great novel, but a novel nonetheless. From now on I can speak of the next novel, because now I've written one. It was a interesting (and sometimes uncomfortable) experience. While I knew, intellectually, that writing a novel is simply a matter of eating the elephant one bite at a time, emotionally it was a much bigger deal. I was anxious before and during the Nanowrimo project, at least for the first few days. At some point it really sank in that, yes, if I simply sit down and write on it every day, I can and will eventually reach the finish line.

And I did, on the eighteenth of November, a little over halfway through the month--an average of 2,777 words a day. Not that I wrote every day. Some days I didn't write at all, most days I did 3,000 words or more. At that pace, a full month's work would net me roughly 83,000 words--and that's in the ballpark for an actual, publishable novel. Fifty thousand words isn't really long enough for a novel. But 80,000 words? Now we're talking.

On the flip side, I haven't done any writing to speak of since the week of Thanksgiving. Little or none prior to Thanksgiving, then none during Orycon, and none this week while I've been dealing with con crud. (Although, in retrospect, I suspect I picked up this bug from the grandbaby on Thanksgiving rather than at the convention. I started feeling puny on Sunday, which would have been fast work for a bug I picked up Friday or Saturday.)

I got an email last night from Cobblestone Press. They've accepted a fourth story--Three On A Rooftop. That's the working title, which I'm not entirely happy with, but unless I come up with one I like better, and soon, it's probably what we'll stick with. I just signed and emailed back the contract for that one.

I also learned that "Queen Bee", which I figured would come out in late December at best, or more likely in January, will be published in December 16th as part of their Twelve Days of Christmas--a story a day for twelve days leading up to Christmas. Go me!

But lest I get too full of myself, I got an emailed rejection for "Ink" from Shock Totem today. But I've already turned it around and sent it out to the next market on the marketing list. A hint from the workshop I attended in September with Kris Rush & Dean Wesley Smith in Lincoln City, Oregon has been very useful.

To wit: when a story is ready to mail, sit down and make a list of the top ten markets you want to send it to. Send it to the first one. When and if it gets rejected, just send it to the next one on the list. Lather, rinse, repeat. If necessary, when you get thru that list, list the next ten markets and keep going.

It's not quite that simple, in practice. I always check to make sure the market in question is a) still active, b) accepting submissions (a lot of electronic publications, in particular, have "windows" when they're accepting and when they're not), and c) hasn't changed their focus so they're no longer an appropriate market for the story. But once that's done, I send the story out. And it really does make it easier than researching potential markets for each story every time it comes back.

And speaking of stories in circulation, I've taken one story ("Unconventional") out of circulation. I've exhausted the markets for it in its current form, but I think with a little reworking, it would likely find a home elsewhere. So that's on my to-do list, along with getting back to writing every day. I have several story ideas I need to write (or finish) and get out there, several for Cobblestone Press, who seem to like my stuff.

Oh! And I got a review for each of my first two stories at the Got Erotic Romance website. Four and a half diamonds for Flying High, four for Bound by Convention. You can see the reviews for Flying High and Bound by Convention at these links.

Wow. Two weeks? NaNoWriMo jitters

Times flies when you're having fun. Or busy. Or busy having fun!

I've been writing. Trying to write a story a week, and succeeding more often than not. I'm also gearing up for National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo as it's often called. The object, for those of you who don't already know, is to write 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days--in November, specifically.

I've not attempted a novel before. But it's time. I've been writing short stories, and I've sold a couple, but novels are where it's at if you want to be a professional fiction writer, or so I'm told. It may be technically possible to make a real living writing short fiction, but it's going to be a tougher row to hoe than writing novels.

Short stories appear in one issue of a magazine, or an anthology, and then they're gone. Oh, it's possible that they can be resold--and they often will be, especially if you are (or become) a big name writer. But they're more ephemeral than novels. This may not be quite so true in th e-publishing world, where even shorts remain available for purchase for two or three years, maybe more. But in traditional publishing? There it is.

Novels, on the other hand, can remain in print for as long as they're selling. They can be sold to foreign markets. They can be resold and reprinted if they go out of print. (Again, this is easier if you're a name author, but if a publisher thinks they can make money from a previously published novel, they'll buy it.)

So. Novels. I'm still hammering out exactly what my novel will be, but I intend to write it this coming November. It's a little frightening to contemplate. A whole novel? Am I insane! But as has been pointed out by others, you can't eat an elephant all in one bite--but a bite at a time is quite doable. That's what I have to remember. I don't have to pour out a whole novel's worth of words (and characters and plots and settings and conflicts and dialogue and action) all in one go.

A mere 1,667 words each day for 30 days will generate 50,000 words at the end of the month. If I write only five days a week, taking weekends off, that's 2,380 words a day. Also eminently doable. I can do this. I will do this!

I'll just keep reciting my mantra: "I'm not nervous, I'm excited!"

Long day today...

I spent quite a long while today finishing another Iron Maiden story to send to Cobblestone Press. (They seem to like them, and I like writing them, so....) The main reason I spent so much time on it today, though, was to reach my goal of getting two stories completed and in the mail this week--and that was the second one.

The first story, "Reunion", is a short short. About 1900 words. Not a flashfic, but much shorter than most of the stuff I've written of late. I like it. My lovely and talented wife likes it.

Tomorrow the cycle starts all over again, with a goal of getting two stories written. However, November is now less than a month away. I'm going to participate in Nanowrimo this year--for the first time ever--so next month I'll be scaling back to one short story a week plus work on the novel.

I'll be guest blogging tomorrow (well, today now, actually...) at Rebecca Going's blog. I've been invited to guest blog elsewhere this week as well. More details later.

Weekend Writing Workshop

My lovely and talented spouse and I spent four days at the coast this past weekend. We drove down on Friday morning and enjoyed lunch at Kyllo's, a great seafood restaurant there. We enjoyed the beach for a while, then checked into the inn where the workshop was to be held. The workshop was all day Saturday and Sunday, with extra bonus activities on Saturday evening. While I was workshopping, my lovely and talented spouse was busy enjoying the coast. We ate lots of good food all weekend and had a wonderful time. We even stayed over Sunday night to spend the next morning on the beach and eat lunch (Kyllo's again) before heading home.

So. The workshop. It was a two day introduction to life as a professional fiction writer, aka The Kris & Dean Show, taught by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Katherine Rusch. With nearly a couple hundred published novels and hundreds of short stories between them, to say nothing of experience as editors and publishers at one time or another, they had a lot to convey. There were nine students there, including myself.

First thing they brought up was Heinlein's Rules for Writers:
1. You must write.
2. You must finish what you write.
3. You must not rewrite except to editorial demand. (Harlan Ellison's addition: and only if you agree.)
4. You must mail your story to an editor who will pay you for it.
5. You must keep your story in the mail until it sells.

That's it. That's the whole secret of being a successful fiction writer. Simple in theory, but hard to do in practice. Fear will stop you in many, many ways--Heinlein's rules are largely designed (intentionally or otherwise) to circumvent those fears. If you follow the rules faithfully, you'll do what you need to do even if you fear rejection or failure. Afraid you're no good? Write anyhow. Afraid your story sucks? Finish it anyhow. Afraid it needs rewriting--an excellent way to avoid sending it out? Mail it. Afraid a rejection means you're a failure, an awful person? Keep sending it out. Just because one editor (or a hundred) rejected it, doesn't mean the next one will.

Kris Rusch mentioned that she'd recently just sold a story that's been circulating for TEN YEARS. Sometimes you let a story rest--when you've tried all the markets you can find--but when you discover a new potential market, out it goes again. Never say die.

They spent time busting some of the myths that have grown up around writing. Myths like "Good writing takes a long time.*" Lots of classics of modern literature were written very quickly. Many if not most successful fiction writers write quickly. Writing quickly helps keep your internal editor out of your way.

Myths like "You must rewrite to write well." Again, many successful writers do no substantive rewriting*. That is, they write a first draft, spellcheck it, have a trust first reader look it over, make any minor changes the reader suggests (assuming they agree) and then sent it out. Rewriting (actually changing character actions, plot points, and so forth) generally doesn't help-- it does, however, allow you to sand off the sharp edges and rawness that gives your work your distinctive voice.

Myths like "You need an agent to sell your story." No, you need an agent to negotiate a contract once you have an offer on the table. And to play attack dog for you when you need one to shake loose overdue checks, maybe. But that's it. You don't need an agent to submit your story to a publisher, no matter what the publishers tell you. And you never, ever, ever submit stories to an agent, or listen to any agent who wants to tell you how to improve your manuscript. Agents don't buy stories. Editors buy stories. See Heinlein's Rule #4 again. If the editor is paying for the privilege, HE gets to suggest changes. Nobody else.

Myths like "Nobody but a handful of big name writers can make any real money writing fiction." That's just not so. They went into a lot of detail about this one, explaining just how you can make a very good living writing fiction. I may go into the details in another post. But suffice it to say for now, that making a living as a writer of fiction is not only very possible, hundreds of thousands of people do it very comfortably. It only requires that you write a lot (so writing fast is good), and that you keep your work circulating.

They also had lots of practical advice on writing--physically writing, I mean. You can't spend hours every day sitting at a desk wiggling your fingers over a keyboard without serious physical issues if you don't a) make sure your desk, chair and computer are aligned properly, and b) get up and move around regularly, including lots of exercise. Writing is a sedentary job, but you have to take care of your body all the same.

They also gave us advice on other issues--tracking your manuscript submissions, making sure your stories and documents are safely and redundantly backed up in case the worst happens (Dean's house burned down many years ago and he lost a lot of his early manuscripts in that fire), and other practical issues.

I'd heard much of this before, of course. I read both of their blogs. But a good part of the material was also new to me. And it was all very inspiring. I came home with a renewed desire to write, write, write--and get my stories out in the mail (or e-mail, as the case may be).

My goal for at least the next few months is to write and mail two short stories (or one novelette or novella) a week. The more stories I can get in circulation, the better.

*A caveat: there is no one Right Way to write. Some writers DO write slowly, and some do rewrite extensively. If that works for you, go for it. But at least as often as not, and maybe more often than not, that's not the case.

End of August Report

I'd hoped to get several stories in the mail this month. I managed one. A second is nearly done, but won't be ready until tomorrow at the earliest, so it won't qualify. I've done considerable writing, but not much has jelled this month. I hope to do better in September.

On the other hand, I'm now into the third round of edits for Flying High with Cobblestone Press. This is the final round, and then I assume I'll be slotted into the publication schedule and get a date certain for its release. I will, of course, let all and sundry know the moment I hear anything.

The editing process has been interesting. We've been sending drafts back and forth using Microsoft Word's Track Changes and commenting feature. Or they have, anyhow. I've been using either Word (on the laptop) or OpenOffice (on my primary PC). OpenOffice can handle Word's formatting, so it works--but either a) the translation is not 100 percent, or b) my unfamiliarity with the Track Changes and Style features of these programs is causing me trouble.

I've almost never used the Styles or Formatting features of Word or OpenOffice. We never made much use of it in my late, lamented day job, and I never used it at home. Any formatting I did I generally did by simply inserting italic or bold coding where needed, or justifying the text, or changing the font size on an ad hoc basis. Which was all I needed at work OR at home 99 percent of the time. Plus, mostly I formatted things to be printed, not electronically published.

That's a whole 'nother kettle of fish. I'll master it in the end, but it make take a couple of days of reading up on it and practicing. It'll do me good in the end. It'll add to my skills with Word, which won't hurt when job hunting, and since I fully intend to sell more stories to epublishers, knowing how to use these features to write and edit my manuscripts won't hurt in that arena either.

So. On to other things. My goal for September: to get at least three stories finished and submitted for publication. I'll also be attending the Kris and Dean Show in Lincoln City two weekends from now. I hope to learn a lot there. I will report on how it went.