Short Story Progress

First of all:  I wrote 4k words today!  I think that's pretty cool, considering I'm composing a first draft (as opposed to revising).  My general goal for composition writing is 2k words/day, so doubling that feels pretty good.

This story's process has been interesting.  It's a short story that I'm planning on submitting to the Writer's of the Future contest for Q4, and my original word count goal for the story was 10k.  Well, I hit that today, but I'm still only about 2/3 done with the story; I think it'll be closer to 15k when all is said and done.  That's kinda pushing it for this contest.  Technically they accept stories up to 17k words in length; I don't think I'll go beyond that, but the longer a story is, the higher expectations are for that story.  There is more room to develop characters, expound settings, and complicate plot.  That's not to say that a novelette-length piece will inevitably trump a short story, but I do think expectations play a role, there.  So the more I write, the more I need to be absolutely sure that what I'm writing is top-notch stuff.

I'm not sure I've hit that point with this story yet.  I mean, I rarely feel like I have top-notch stuff in a first draft, but often I'll get a writerly gut feeling that what I'm writing has the potential for that kind of thing.  So, while there are some good ideas bouncing around in this particular story, I haven't fallen in love, yet.  Sometimes that happens in the beginning of the first draft for me, sometimes it happens when I'm reworking the ending on the third revision.  And, sure, sometimes it doesn't happen at all.  Either way, I'm definitely hoping I can get to that point with this story; I'm not sure I'll have a winning piece without that feeling.

I've also been outlining this story, which is different than what I've normally done, especially for short stories.  I'll have to tell you more about that process in a later post.  But, for now, I'm happy with what I've done today.

Lonestarcon 3 etc.

First and foremost:

My novel Duskfall, formerly known as Before the Dark, formerly known as The Rising Part 1, is now officially finished(ish) and ready to be sent out to agents, editors, etc.

WAAAAAAHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Also, word to ya mayumz.

Also, I just stayed up all night.*

Also, guess what I am decidedly NOT right now:



Yeah.  I am, like, the exact opposite of that.

In other news, I went to Worldcon (Lonestarcon 3) this last weekend, and it was pretty cool.  Hung out with some old friends like Rob and Steve the Bookstore Guy (who, incidentally, was nominated for the Hugo "Best Fanzine" category for his book review site), and met some new friends like Paul Genesse and Genese Davis (no relation, and unfortunately they are both married to other people so a "Genese Genesse" situation doesn't look like it's going to happen).  Also, met many other awesome fans, writers, reviewers, and in general all-around awesome people who are too numerous to name.

Had a workshop with Martha Wells and Greg Wilson, and they actually were kinda okay with my Duskfall manuscript.  Like, they said they would totes keep reading it and everything.  And here's a shameless plug:  In a panel about writing combat scenes, Martha Wells totally mentioned me and said I did a good job with the writing of the fight scenes in the workshop.  So, yeah, that was awesomesauce.

And, best of all, hung out with and met lots of awesome agents and editors and the like, to whom I shall now ever-so-gallantly-voraciously-dynamically-suggestively-combustively-graciously(?) begin sending my manuscript.

Oh, and saw two sets of long time friends and their respective babies, both of which were frickin' adorbs.

So, basically, things are awesome and I am happy right now.  That may change depending on if/when I crash, today, but there you have it.

Cool things are in the works, by the way.  I'm re-starting the next novel in the Duskfall world, working on another WOTF short story, and might even be playing some The Last of Us in the nearish future.

I'll try to keep you posted on the goings-on.  So, like I said earlier...word to ya mayumz.




*  In these cases, in which I stay up all night/very late/get little sleep, my propensity towards speaking like a teenage girl increases exponentially.  So, like, be ye warned.  Totes.

Here's what I've been up to:

Bryce Canyon National Park,

featuring hoodoos;

 Desolation Trail to the lookout over Salt Lake Valley,

featuring three of the coolest people you'll ever meet;

and the Subway canyon in Zion National Park,

featuring twelve more of the aforementioned coolest people you'll ever meet.

Also, I received an Honorable Mention from the Q2 Writers of the Future contest to go along with my Semi-finalist entry from Q4 of last year (Semi-finalist is in the top 1%-ish; Honorable Mention is in the top 10%-ish), and submitted another story for the Q3 contest.

Submitted a modified version of my Master's Thesis to the Utah Arts Contest in the Short Story Collection category.

Received feedback from my alpha readers on my current novel, and have now begun ROUND 2 of revisions on said novel.

So, all in all, it's been a fun time.  There are many more to come.

Finished! (Kind of...)

If you'll ever-so-kindly glance to the right at my progress bars, you'll notice that I've finished revisions on Duskfall, which was once titled Before the Dark, which was once known as The Rising, which is the novel I've been working on for some time, now.

The manuscript is now in the hands of some alpha readers/writing groups, and I'm awaiting their feedback.

It feels good to be finished, even if it's really nothing more than a hiatus.  I'll be working on a couple other projects in the meantime, as you can also tell by the progress bars to the side.  These projects include, but aren't entirely limited to,

• two short stories that I'll submit to subsequent quarters of the Writers of the Future contest,
• a top-secret steampunk project that I can't discuss but I'm REALLY excited about because, hey, steampunk, and
• revising some of my older stories and submitting them to journals/magazines and forming a new collection that I'll submit to the Utah Arts Contest.

So, I have some things to keep me busy until my alpha readers get back to me.  I'm excited for these new projects, but I'm also surprisingly excited about (eventually) getting back to the novel.  There were some pretty rough parts of revision, and I suffered many a moment of "this sucks and I can't write!" syndrome.  The manuscript still has a long way to go, I think, but there just might be something there.

In other news, one of my other goals for the next couple months is to, ahem, blog more.  So, there's that.  I have a lot to blog about, honestly, I just need to be disciplined enough to do it.

So, here's to discipline.

Proof!

As promised:

PROOF THAT I'M AWESOME!

Or, at least, semi-awesome :-).  Look, there's me, third one down on the semi-finalist section.  Hopefully there's a lot more of that (and better) to come.

Some Good News!

I've been waiting to post about this until I actually had some tangible proof on the interwebs to prove it, but that may not happen for a while (but as soon as it does, you'll see the link on this blog!) so, well, here goes.

I'm a semi-finalist in Q4 of the 2012 Writers of the Future contest!!!!!!!

Okay, so I know that doesn't sound like much.  I mean, semi-finalist, who cares, right?  Well, turns out making semi-finalist in this comp is actually kind of a big deal.  Just a brief run-down of how things work in this competition:

First of all, it's the largest and most prestigious competition of it's kind.  It's an international competition, and every quarter the competition receives somewhere between 1000-1500 stories.  Of those entries, eight are chosen as finalists.  Of those finalists, three are placed first, second, and third, sent to a writing workshop with a bunch of pro writers (most of whom are judges for the comp), and some crazy gala awards ceremony thing they put on every year.  Oh, and those that place get a fair chunk of cash for winning (between $500-$1000, I think), too.

As far as I can tell, only a few semi-finalists are named for each quarter--usually between three and ten.  The general feeling I get from speaking with people on the WotF forum (many of whom have been semi-finalists, finalists, and winners of the competition) is that a story is marked a semi-finalist if it was essentially a finalist-quality piece, but just didn't make the cut for one reason or another.  Essentially, making semi-finalist means that the story was in the top 10 or 15 of 1000+ entries...pretty cool, no?

Each quarter, a hundred or so (usually a tenth of the entries, it seems) Honorable Mentions are named as well.

So, basically, I feel pretty awesome about my story making semi-finalist.  Part of the awesomeness of being a semi-finalist is getting a personalized critique from the coordinating judge (David Farland).  In his critique, Mr. Farland actually told me they actually received three apocalyptic stories that were finalist caliber material during Q4, but could only choose one (they generally try to keep a pretty wide genre spread each quarter, as the stories that place are compiled each year into a short story collection and published--check out last year's collection here).  So, yeah, that's neat.

It's basically a glorified personal rejection, but it feels pretty good to receive.  And, of course, I'm going to continue submitting to the comp (I submitted a story for Q3 of 2012 but received a flat out rejection), and continue hoping for the best.  But I must say, it's nice to hear some good news every once in a while :-).



8 Feb 2013 EDIT:  Apparently there are a bit more semi-finalists each quarter than I'd originally thought; the numbers are closer to 8-10 than 1-5, so I've changed that number above.

Wretched Queen

Some of you may have noticed that the progress bar for "Wretched Queen 1.1" reached 100% last week.  That's right!  Draft 1 is finally complete.  This has been an interesting project to work on.  The story, in a nutshell, plays with the tropes we all know and love about Dark Lords (aka Evil Overlords, aka Big Bads, etc)--in this case, an Evil Queen.  This idea first came to me some time in 2008, during which I wrote what I thought was backstory for the piece.  As I've written this first draft, however, that back story has sort of wormed its way through the main narrative.  I'm preliminarily pleased with the results.

Why am I working on a short story (a novelette, actually) when I've got an entire novel burning a hole in my hard drive, just waiting to be revised?  The Writers of the Future contest, that's why.

WOTF is great.  If you can win that contest, you've got a pretty good "in" as far as the publishing industry is concerned.  Problem is, the contest is uber-competitive.  Which is why I plan on submitting a story every quarter of the contest until I win or they tell me to stop*.  We'll see which happens first.

Anyway.  I was talking about "Wretched Queen," right?  Here are some brief facts about the story:

Title:  "Wretched Queen"
Total Word Count:  11,688
Total (manuscript) Page Count:  56
Sections: 7
Viewpoint Characters: 2 major, 1 minor
File Size:  74 KB
Start Date:  I think it was March of 2008 when I started brainstorming and planning the idea, and drafting out the "backstory."  I returned to the idea for WOTF in mid October of 2012
End Date:  16 Nov 2012

Now, of course, this is just a first draft.  I'm planning on doing a major first revision starting tomorrow, and taking care of some of the major glitches in the story.  From there, I'll give the story to some first readers and see what they think, make more changes after that, and so forth until I submit the story--hopefully by the end of December to get it in to the contest in time for Q1 of 2013.

And there are, indeed, some major issues I think may need fixing.  The amount of viewpoint characters, for one, may be a bit too much for a novelette.  I also play with a number of things as far as form is concerned (tense, person, etc.), and I'm not quite sure whether I pull that off or not.  But, that's what revision and readers are for!  So, without further ado, that's what I'll be jumping into in the next couple weeks.

Wish me luck.


*  Now, I may not submit for the second and third quarters of next year (however long it takes me to finish BTD 2.0).  While the contest is important to me and a good way to "break in," even if I do happen to win, that doesn't do me much good unless I have a novel waiting in the wings and ready to go.  But, once that's taken care of, I plan on submitting essentially every quarter.