Life on the Fast Lane

I can only apologise for missing last week's post.

Luckily, there is little to report these past two weeks. Things have been progressing very nicely with the novel with chapters 21 - 25 now complete (until draft three, that is). I still have niggling feeling about them. There's still a lot of stuff I want to put in on the theme but I think any more might be too much, these things need a delicate touch, I fancy.

All stories are still with magazines, especially hopeful about RevolutionSF and F&SF, either one of those on my credits will be a godsend.

Should check my logs and see when I sent Of The Father to Something Wicked. They did say they have a long response time but maybe I should just double check. Hmmmm.

Anyway, back to work.

Thanks for reading.

Rejection with Comments

A slightly late blog this week.

Well, the twenty-fifth birthday celebrations are over and what fun they were.

Amanda Palmer was utterly amazing and who was on stage with her for a bit? Neil freaking Gaiman!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! How's that for a birthday treat?

As predicted, twenty-five is feeling pretty good and has been off to a good start.

I don't know if I've mentioned this before, after two years of blogging I can't remember and can't be arsed to look, but for each story I write I put it in a file of its own along with a small excel document to track where I've sent it. Each has a status. There's 'pending', 'rejected', 'accepted' (this, of course, appears only once) and the much loved 'rejected with comments'. In the past few days I've received two of these bad boys.

RevolutionSF (who have published the likes of Gene Wolfe and Ray Bradbury) rejected Earworm Turns saying:
"I like your writing style, and the story kept me engaged to the end."

Which was nice.

And I received my first non-standard rejection from F&SF (Stephen King, Daniel Keyes, Ray Bradbury again) who rejected No Longer Living while saying:
"There's nice writing here."

So there we go. I seem to be impressing the right people, now if only they'll bloody accept something I've written.

Oh, well, Promises, Promises is off the production line. Let's see what they make of that.

Almost Something

This time next week I'll be 25 and 25 is feeling like the next chapter of my life.

I'm not one to worry about my age. I look back and find a number of short stories behind me, a novel that is progressing, another waiting in the wings and four aborted ones; a time of skills being built, groundwork being done. I don't see my youth as wasted and know there's still a good few years of youth ahead of me that I plan on turning into something to be proud of. I look forward, almost, to turning thirty and seeing what I've achieved in the next five years.

Two of the track titles of Amanda Palmer's album have been haunting me this week.

A Short History on Nearly Nothing
and
A Short History of Almost Something

I know which one of those I want to be able to call my life and though right now I find the redrafting a bit tedious, tiresome etc it's still groundwork that needs to be done and I'm determined to have something at the end of it that will make the past five years make sense.

In this new injection of passion (thank you, Amanda) I gave my new short story Promises, Promises to some people at work who said that they enjoyed it and gave a few pointers and some helpful criticism. I've spent the past week implementing them. Hopefully, it's near completion, I'm putting it aside one last time to see how the changes I've made settle into everything else, make a few changes and then it's off to Weird Tales.

The novel is still going. I've just bought a new printer. This one plugs right into my laptop! Before, I had to save my stuff on the memory stick, go to my old laptop and then print it out as my printer couldn't connect with my current laptop. But this one does! And it prints so fast! How did I survive without it?

My mind is still plagued with doubts about the first chapters of Act Two, I see things I don't quite like and I'm annoyed that there's still changes to be made and then get more annoyed when I don't sit still and make those changes because I want this thing finished. I feel I'm getting to that point where if I edit these parts anymore I'm going to start damaging it. I think they're almost as good as they're going to get. I need to move on to the next part but I'm terrified that they're not good enough.

Man up, boy, I tell myself. Don't be afraid of sending stuff out into the world, you've sent out worse and these days your worst is another person's 'not bad'.

Need to get back to work. 25 is looming and I'm going to use the last of 20-24 as something to look back at, nod and think Almost Something.

Rejections and Promises

A fairly productive week this week.

I finished working through the second draft of the first half of Act Two. The last two chapters aren't great and may need to be redone but that's because I'm setting up things for the second half. As soon as I get a new printer I'll print out chapters 21-30 and do a third draft read-through and see how it stands.

I was rejected by F&SF and Weird Tales this week, which was nice. Those stories are going elsewhere now and this weekend I'm doing a final draft of Promises, Promises which is looking to be a very strong story if I can just get the ending right.

Joe Abercrombie has a great entry on his blog about his second drafts. In a word, Intimidating.

My Own Little World

For the past hour I've been writing with the light off. The only light comes from the glow monitor and the only sounds are the gentle rush of traffic outside, the hum of the heater beside me, heating my cold room and my fingers on keys. Nice to be in my own little world for a bit.

But now it's time to switch the light back on. Grrrr. But this week has been good. I'm roughly half way through Act Two and its ok. I'm a bit apprehensive about the second half but I'll deal with that next week.

No new rejections and I still haven't sent RWBW to Black Static. My printers out of ink and I just want to get a new one. I should also get a couple of lamps.

What do you get the man who has everything? Lamps, it would seem.

Thanks for reading.

Meeting with the Man

All is going well, this week.

Still in the swing of Act Two, a wobble here and there, there are still bits I'm not happy with, that I don't find convincing just yet but I feel I'm coming to a point that for some scenes I'm going to have to move on, leave them alone and see to them in the third draft. That the story and everything that happens in them is fine, it's just the language I don't like and that's what draft three will be about. Draft two is about the story, Graeme, let draft three sort itself out when the time comes.

Cemetery Dance rejected me with a standard letter, which is nice. It's been a while since I've heard from any mag, I was beginning to worry. RWBW will go off to Black Static next, I reckon.

And, of course, yesterday, I went to the Terry Pratchett signing and was so excited about talking to himself I almost cried. It was a bit weird because after all he's just a guy but I asked him why his bog computer had six monitors and he told me it was like having a big desktop (I'm paraphrasing here). Instead of all that minimizing windows and such it's just easier and more intuitive to have the window on another screen. Plus, when you have six big screens with the Matrix screensaver it looks awesome. He signed my book, we both agreed we disliked editing and left it at that.

Was nice to have seen him. Will hopefully have more news next week, maybe I'll even be working on a new bit of the novel I haven't before. That'd be nice.

Thanks for reading.

The Buggerallto Report

Hello,

little to report this week. Now that I'm sort of back in the swing of novelling I was hoping for a relaxing weekend writing. Instead, I had a relaxing weekend of sleeping and being ill.

Doubts still linger with the book, blah, blah, blah, I'm not enjoying this why would the readers etc, etc. But I'm shoving all those deep down and just getting on with it.

The magazines are quiet. Kinda worried that they just haven't received the stories. I can't wait to get a good old rejection.

Thanks for reading.