Morning Star Rising

38,370 / 150,000 (25.6%)

A bit of progress yesterday and thanks to back tracking, I'm now at a pretty important part of the first section and probably have a chapter or two, at most, left in it. And I've pretty much worked out in my head how to combine the next two sections into one.





In sub news, had a flurry of stories come back over the weekend and so sent out three this morning and am debating a fourth (which was a rewrite request but I'm not sure I've cleaned the story up enough to send it back to them. I'll probably wait a couple more days and look at it again before making a decision.).

Morning Star Rising

25,898 / 150,000 (17.3%)

Made really excellent progress today, caught up to where I left off before restarting over and pressed on a bit beyond. Still haven't finished the scene though, hopefully tomorrow. At the back of my mind I'm worried again about word count, for I'm precisely at the same word count that I was at this point in the last draft too, but I've been feeling a bit more comfortable straight out writing this rather than consulting the previous draft. I could do an excerpt, but I'm running low on time to get it prepared tonight (we're going out to dinner for Father's Day as soon as Jeff gets home).

On the sub front, more queries sent out in hopes of finding out where my stories are in line. 7 of my 9 subs out are in the red over at Duotrope and some I'm thinking I should just withdraw because they've been out so long without responses to queries and such. I feel I'm in a severe dry spell when it comes to market responses in general, for I haven't gotten a rejection (let alone an acceptance) since April 22nd and I'm starting to feel a bit desperate for news of one kind or another. I think it comes from working on the novel and not having new material to send out: I don't feel like I'm being particularly productive on the sub front if I'm not actively sending out new subs.

Morning Star Rising

15,768 / 150,000 (10.5%)

It's been a difficult week writing wise, probably because I'm not yet adjusted to both kids being home full time and it's been distracting me. I wrote a bit yesterday before frustration set in and I felt I needed some relaxation time, so I instead spent most of the day reading (which is something I don't do nearly as much as I should these days). I've been reading The Mists of Avalon and I'm struck by just how similar it feels to MSR--they are completely different mythologies but stuff keeps happening that reminds me of stuff I'm doing in MSR. I'm trying not to read too much into the similarities though, lest I let this third draft languish and never get done. I am enjoying the book though.

Jeff's home from work today and the kids want to go to the zoo, so probably not much writing will get done today. I have kept them cooped up in the house most of this week after all and with family stuff to do over the weekend, it would be nice to let them go out and do something fun.

On the sub front, I did get a query response on one sub and was told the editors will make a final decision in a week or so. I also joined Codex and was relieved that this time gmail or internet didn't chow-down the welcome letter, like last time.

Morning Star Rising

10,798 / 150,000 (7.2%)

A wee bit of progress yesterday and am hoping for better today. Here's today's excerpt:

 

Also did some sub maintenance this morning, since two thirds of my subs are in the red at Duotrope. It's been a very long time since I've gotten an expected response back from a market (the Dark Discoveries one I definitely wasn't expecting, seeings how I withdrew the story from them a year before the rejection came). I should be working on more short stories, since I only have 9 out at the moment, but the novel calls to me instead.

Made a tad bit of progress on a new One World story yesterday, only about 250 words, but a start. I've had the story in mind for a while now but still don't really know what it's about (hence my failure to have started it sooner), but maybe I can muddle my way through it. Today I'm going to work on it some more, but first will go over "The Place That Makes You Happiest" one last time then get it printed up and into an envelope and ready to go (though I won't mail it for another two weeks).

Finished up the rewrite of "The Hearts of Men" today and employed my new editing technique, and found it very useful for finding typos and making final changes, so I think I'll add that to my checklist of stuff to do prior to submittal. I'm a little too high-strung right now to work on anything so I think I'll treat myself to some Age of Empires 2 for the rest of the day.

And big congrats to aliettedb, who just sold a story to Realms of Fantasy!

Getting a super late start today on the writing (I spent a good deal of the morning researching answers for GUD's copy editor and explaining some of my choices. It's good practice for hopefully some day having to defend my choices to a novel copy editor:-)). I did make a start on the actual rewrite of the novel yesterday, after spending an half hour trying to figure out what I was doing wrong with the header/footer format (I was trying to make the page numbering to begin at 1 on the second page of the document. Finally got it to work though). I only wrote 2 paragraphs, but it's a start (I also need to start up my research documentation document. It felt good to get started again.

But lunch first before I get going for the day.

It's been too quiet and I'm feeling antsy for responses (I'm obsessively consulting Duotrope for signs of life from several markets I'd expected responses from already and feeling highly left out because they're sending responses to everyone but me! Though maybe that's actually a sign of something good?:-) ). Though now that I've openly mentioned it, the rejections will likely arrive today. Such is the ways of the submission gods.

Yes, I'm procrastinating working on the outline....

Yesterday's writing resulted in about 3 different versions of a tag-line for my novel, none of which are right yet, but I feel like I'm on the right track, just mostly a matter of rearranging things into a coherent sentence (it seems incredibly long too, about 70 words for a single sentence, which makes me wonder if I'm trying to cram too much into the sentence). I do have an article from SFWA to look at to help me, so I'm confident I can whip this into shape.

In other news, for the first time I've had a copy-editor fact-checking a story of mine prior to publication and I'm really glad the mag does this because in fact she found a few errors in my Nahuatl in the story, all of which thankfully appear to be transcription errors on my part. This of course makes me wonder how many other errors I've made in my other stories that were never caught because no one's ever taken the time to fact check it (and if I misspell a difficult word the first time I use it, I will misspell every time after because I refer back to that first spelling, not the reference book). I'm very pleased that GUD takes its fiction serious enough to make sure they're putting out a quality product, and while initially I felt sort of foolish for making such dumb mistakes, I feel its much better to catch them at this point in the process rather than having them pointed out by a reader after publication. This has also made me resolve to keep a research file on every story I write, so that I can fact-check myself later before sending out (use those history major skills like I would in college). Given that the story in question is a pretty old story, the first one I wrote in my One World series, I have practically no memory of which sources I pulled my information out of and so I had to go back and look in all my sources and figure things out. I had the same problem when I was going back through the recent rewrite I did of "The Place That Makes You Happiest." I grabbed a Nahuatl phrase from one of my Codex Florentine books and put it in the story about a month and a half ago, but when I went back and reread it the other day and came to that word, I had no idea what it was and even after scouring the book I thought I took it from, I couldn't find it again. Frustrating, to say the least, and of course then I had to cut the word completely because I didn't even know what it meant in order to make it coherent with context. I think taking the time to record my sources for myself while I'm working will save me a bundle of headaches later on.

My 200th submission since starting to submit in earnest back two and half years ago went out today, "Water Mecha Songs" to Murky Depths. throws a bit of confetti

Still working on the outline. Not much else to report. Boring, I know. :)

Finished my preliminary 3rd draft outline, which came in at a whopping 27 pages single spaced (though a good portion of that can be attributed to me being excrutiatingly detailed with my new material, plus I outlined every section of the parts that I intended to keep. Most of that will be tossed out of the final outline.). Tomorrow's agenda is to work out the parts that I didn't have worked out the first time through and make some decisions about what I'm going to cut out of the first section (I've got my eye on shortening one scene in particular and possibly cutting an entire chapter and moving the pertinent information later. I'd like to get to the plot catalyst quicker than I do at present and cutting that chapter would bring it at least 30 pages sooner.). I'm feeling good about the changes I'm going to implement, for they keep my antagonist more to the forefront, keep him involved in events; in fact, now he has his hand in everything that goes wrong for my protag, causing almost all of it, with the exception of one thing, but even the guy responsible for that one is in my antagonist's pocket. The next draft will undoubtedly be longer, but I think it will also be better.

In sub news, finally got to the post office and mailed out "The Hearts of Men." I also heard from ASIM that my story passed the first reading, which is actually only the second time I've made it out of round one with them.

I don't have any cool April Fools pranks to spring on anyone so I'll just have to settle for pulling out my April Fools Snape avatar.

Finished up the proofing the galley for Arcane Whispers and managed to cut about 100 words from "The Hearts of Men" and have it printed and ready to go out. Planning to hit the post office later today. In the meantime I'm not sure whether I should start a new story or get back to outlining the third draft of my novel, or if I should perhaps take another look at what I've done on the rewrite request on "The Place That Makes You Happiest" (I do have two months left before I can send it back so there's no hurry there.). We'll see. I'm not feeling particularly ambitious today.

No work done on the outline today, but I instead decided to spend the day getting caught up on my critiques at LH. I did three today and plan to do two tomorrow. I also noticed that I was down to 5 subs out at market so sent a couple out today, to Weird Tales and ASIM. I'm planning to send a couple more out by early next week, to F&SF and RoF.

I'm also giving serious consideration to going to WFC in Calgary this year. I've heard such good things about WFC, and it could be a chance to get to meet aliettedb (you are going, right? I didn't misread you on that?). I'll have to get a passport, of course, and I'd be going on my own, but hell, I went to Seattle for six weeks on my own so what's one weekend in Canada? Jeff and I haven't really discussed yet; I mentioned it briefly at dinner last night and I got the response I'd expected to get: concern about me going off to a foreign country on my own, but not a yes or no. I think I can pretty easily sway him. I don't want anyone mistaking that for overprotection though; my jaunt to Clarion West back in 2002 is the only time I've ever flown off somewhere on my own--I'm quite the home-body and never did any traveling without my brother when I was younger--so I too feel a certain trepidation about venturing out on my own. Pathetic, I know! But really, Canada does seem a good place to start broadening my travels outside the US.

Worked on an outline today and made it through 8 chapters. yWriter has a nifty feature that lets you import a txt file of your work into it and it will automatically separate it into chapters and scenes. Saved me a bunch of copying and pasting. On the actual plot front, I've been mulling over some new ideas for changes but haven't settled on actually doing them yet (though at the moment I feel they might be a good idea to pursue.). On a somewhat funny note, I got to a scene that I didn't really know how to "synopsize" and ended up writing "[protag] has a dream about her brother that will only make sense at the end of the next book". Well, if I'm looking for candidates for cutting, that looks like a prime one. :)

I'm off to cook dinner now.

ETA: and another sub out tonight, to Aeon Speculative Fiction.

Very happy the Giants won. I was expecting the Patriots to play much better than they did, but they just never seemed able to bring anything together (though big kudos go to the Giants' defense, which kept Brady eatin' dirt most of the night). It really was a very good game and I ate entirely too much, but awesome!

In writing news, received a hold notice from Aberrant Dreams yesterday after passing a second reading with the horror editor and am now just awaiting final word from Joe Dickerson. I feel all tickled because the editor called my little Aztec zombie story "tragic, horrific, and poignant" and "the depth and details were perfect." Even if they don't end up buying it, the long wait was worth getting to hear that. :)

Morning Star Rising


A slower day today, with me stressing over pretty minor plot points and finally I had to stop because I felt I was losing a grip on what I was trying to do. I've been attempting to tone down the romance element that comes in at the end of the novel because I let the muse spew giddiness and giggles all over the manuscript in the first draft and I think the sheer magnitude of it all will have many male readers rolling their eyes and saying, "Okay, get on with it already!" Plus I changed some back-story elements for the object of my protag's desires because the way I had it, the protag's uncle was just getting too creepy and "ewwww!!!!" for my comfort level. What I changed it to is, I think, a little more believable and gives my protag some interesting new emotional nuances to deal with.

I'm also a bit distracted because I'm wondering if I sent something that's content-inappropriate for the PG-13 rating of IGMS when I sent them "The Jade Bones" and I'm wondering if I should withdraw it before they have a chance to read it and clunk me on the head and tell me, "Stupid! Don't ever send us anything with any sexual content in it!" The scene isn't graphic and isn't even talked about it in actual sexual terms, but I think it's quite obvious what's going on. So would that qualify as "detailed"? Using a movie-based rating system for writing is, I think, inexact and sometimes confusing, and I find it hard to discern what the line between R and PG-13 is in written fiction, so naturally I'm stressed and wondering what to do. Though after seeing Kathy Wentworth's post about no-nos for entries to WotF, which lists sex scenes as number one, it's obvious now why both "The Jade Bones" and "Morning Star Falling" didn't score better than quarter finalists (or honorable mentions, as they're called now) and I won't send them anymore stories like that. This is all just giving me a big headache.

Got some rejections this weekend and so spent tonight sending stuff back out, to Ideomancer, Clockwork Phoenix, and Weird Tales. I spent most of the weekend reading a novel for critique then today watching football games. The Patriots and Chargers game was a tough one for me, because I hate both teams, though honestly I hate the Patriots a little less (though this is soley because I despise Philip Rivers on the Chargers, who knows nothing about good sportsmanship and conducting himself like a decent human being. He taunts other teams QBs and their fans like he's hot-shit or something. You don't see that kind of behavior from Brady or Payton Manning, no matter how much I think they're primadonnas). I was happy to see the Giants win; I kind of like Eli Manning and it's good to see him doing so well when it seems he lives mostly in his brother's shadow. I'll be pulling for the Giants come Super Bowl Sunday.

Morning Star Rising

102,023 / 150,000 (68.0%)

Really a rather pathetic outing yesterday. I didn't get to the part I'd hoped to, which is kind of puzzling since I did work on it almost non-stop yesterday until about 3:45 when I had to leave for my haircut appointment. I'm not sure why I got so little done. Oh, wait, that's right, I spent about an hour and a half working on getting three stories ready to sub to AnthologyBuilder. I'm pretty chipper that I've actually sold two copies of "Dedication". I'm also planning on putting together an antho of my own in the next few weeks (particularly since they've got some really cool cover art now). So this morning I'm going to check the last two stories for errors, make sure they're in order, then get all that submitted and get back to work.

No writing. I have a novel to finish reading and critiquing today, so that takes precedence. I did sent out a couple stories this morning, one to Space & Time and another to Fictitious Force. I also gathered together my Christmas money and bought 3 volumes of the Codex Florentine from Amazon. I got volume 1 (The Gods), volume 6 (Rhetoric & Moral Philosophy), and volume 10 (The People). The Codex Florentine is the original source that all other scholars go to for their research, and unfortunately Amazon only has about half of the full 13 volumes (though after some poking around, I found that the entire set can still be purchased directly from the University of Utah Press website), but I'm thrilled to have three of them. It will be a while before I can afford the others, since the three I bought set me back a chunk of change. I need to make more sales. >:)

I didn't work on the novel yesterday, instead opting to go Xmas shopping for Jeff and get some wrapping done. This morning though, after much debate, I decided to submit "Someday" to AnthologyBuilder, since it did sell to a semi-pro market. I'd like to submit "Dedication" and "The Last Arabian Prince", but most of the markets they have listed so far have been semi-pro and above, so I'm not sure these ones would qualify, since they only paid like 15 bucks total. I'd hate them to be turned down because they originally sold to low-paying markets. For right now, I'm going to start off with my one available semi-pro.

Anyway, I'm planning to get back to work on the novel today, so we'll see if I can concentrate enough.