The First Blog of the Year

I like that my blogger spell check has highlighted both 'blog' and 'blogger'.

Anyway, hello!

I haven't written a blog in a while and so now I am!

Things are well. Part Two was put aside a few days before New Year and I had the rest of the year, hell, the rest of the decade, off!

I have since been working on Part Three. There's been a read through with the general idea being that most of it needs to go. Parts One and Two are both so different to their originals now that Part Three (first written perhaps three years ago) is almost a completely separate entity, like Theo and co's exploits in a parallel universe. What wasn't totally different was simply deemed 'boring' so that has to go too.

So I have been planning and writing and planning more and writing more and so far the new draft stands at 38,000 words and is already so much stronger than its predecessor. Nice.

Murky Depths rejected Promises, which was a real shame. I was so sure that they were meant for one another. Editor, Terry Martin had this to say about it though: "We loved this story. It's melodramatic, romantic, affecting and well-written. I'd like to take it, but it just isn't right for Murky Depths, so I'm reluctantly passing."

Very nice but also a bit of a bummer. But hopefully the next magazine will have it.

Also, Electric Velocipede have turned away Kids, so that needs somewhere else to go as well. This means that I now have 52 rejections in my writing career.

On the 50th, me and some friends had drinks to celebrate as no writer worth his or her salt hasn't at some point been rejected a whole bunch of times.

Anyway, that's it from me for now.

Thanks for reading.

A quick catch-up

Just a quick update.

Still working on the final few chapters of the novel, still hoping to finish Act Two by the end of this year / very early in the new one. Think I'm still in for a chance to manage it even though lots of Christmas commitments have slowed me down this past week.

There've been no new rejections but I need to put another couple of irons in the fire and make sure to send a couple of stories off to magazines as soon as I can.

Chris Wooding has recently been putting up writer's tips on his blog, which have been very good, I've been enjoying them a lot. Catch them here.

Now it's off to see Avatar. I'm not expecting another Aliens or anything but hopefully it should be fun.

Hope you're all enjoying No Longer Living on RevolutionSF. It's no longer on the main page but has been shunted down into the archives but you can still find it here.

Thanks for reading.

Author's First 'Review'

It's been a couple of weeks since No Longer Living went live on Revolution SF. Unfortunately, it is no longer on the front page, having made way for even more recent stories, but you can still find it here.

It also got its first 'review'. It was written by Michael Bey (no, not that one), one of RevSFs Fiction Editors, so it might not technically count, but I've been writing so long and waited so long for a review that I'm counting it.

He says:

"This is an exceptional zombie story. I like how it focuses on the personal anguish of the main character who is left to suffer with the death of a loved one day after day after day. Freeman doesn't pull his emotional punches with this one."

Which is nice.

In other news, I'm fairly confident that Act Two of the novel will be redrafted by Christmas, which is nice. Might even have the novel finished this time next year.

Abyss and Apex Magazine turned down Earworm Turns saying: "It was well received here, but after some thought we have decided not to accept it for publication."

Which is a shame. I'm taking this to mean "Good story, but wouldn't fit in with the rest of the mag."

So, that's it from me, for now.

Thanks for reading.

It has Arrived

No Longer Living has arrived.

It can be found on the front page (for now at least) on http://www.revolutionsf.com/

Enjoy!

A Glimpse of Sunshine in November

Strange Horizons sent me a rejection today for Earworm Turns. So, I know, that means the title is a little misleading but SH has an acceptance rate of 0.92% so I'm not that annoyed. Abyss & Apex are next, whom I've never submitted to before so that should be interesting.

But today, I finished another sweep on Act Two and think that this might be The One. I shall begin reading it again tomorrow and hopefully the new novel structure will stand, then it's a case of tidying it up and then on to the third and final act.

It's days like this that I think I might actually finish this novel. So my head is full of dreams of literary agents and publishing contracts.

So today, I love writing.

On Praise

A bit more of the novel is done. I hope.

There was a lot of sitting and thinking, thinking about what I was going to write and writing whenever a thought of what the next line should be popped into my head. But this was happening a lot slower than I would have liked and I thought back to the time of the first draft when 2,000 words felt like they took a minute. I would think about how Richard Laymon says it takes an hour to write a page if an average author is having a problem.

I've been talking to a few authors recently, or maybe that's rather, friends who write. Of them, two others have said they're having problems. One who says the stuff they write now isn't as good as the stuff they wrote before and the other professed that their second novel isn't as close to their heart as the first had been.

I think it's something to do with experience. We know we're capable of writing a story or a poem but are any of us capable of writing a good story or poem? We know what we're capable of, we see it everyday, but is that good enough? Could we be better? We want to see in our own work what we see in other people's. We think it's good but is it really? There's plenty of overconfident amateurs who think their new piece is The Bomb and then find they're the only person to think so and writers, who pride themselves (sometimes) on being overthinkers can think 'Hey, I like what I've done. I'm pretty good' and then think 'that’s how one of those overconfident writers think. Ulp!'

There have been stories that I've written and then read months maybe years later and thought to myself, 'hey, this isn't half bad' and actually enjoyed it but when you try to see that in something you're writing currently that very rarely happens.

That's where praise comes in. I think right now, I need some. Just some sign that what I've written is at least readable, if not actually good. I would even like a 'it isn't there yet but it has potential. You should do this, this and this then it’ll be good.'

But who to get it from? There are always friends, colleagues and family members (if you can persuade them to sit down and read what you've written, which is sometimes tricky if they have other things on). And if they say it's good? Then you don't believe them because they know you and don't want to criticise or perhaps don't know how to criticise beyond an 'I like it'. So it's the praise of strangers you need. People with no stake hold in your emotional well-being. But how to get them to read it? Well, you either give it away for free or you get published and so there's the rub.

I suppose a writer at our stage needs to be strong, to just work at the novel, tell the story and let others read the good in it. To just keep going and hope that all those things you can't see are still there because in the end there are no words that scientifically make someone laugh or cry on command. You need them to bring the emotional content and enthusiasm for the story that you lament that you can’t simply write in for them.

At this stage you don’t write for what comments an imaginary person might give. You write in despite of them.

Thanks for reading.

Don't be hasty...

Things are ticking along this week.

Ghostlight Magazine rejected Kids today but kindly informed me, "P.S. This one almost made it. Please submit again," which was very nice of them.

I'm still final drafting Outlined in Chalk at the moment, but I'm worried I'm rushing it in order to be ready to tackle the novel again in time for my week off. These things can't be rushed, even though I don't expect Outlined in Chalk to really see the light of day for a good long while.

So there we have. There's all the news that's fit to go to print.

Thanks for reading.