I'm a bit behind on posting - my novelette "Horses" will be published in Postscripts, sometime late next year or early 2010. Yeah, it's a long way off, but very much worth the wait. FYI, it was accepted only after Peter Crowther rejected it a first time, but with an invite to resubmit if I could edit it down. I did so, cutting a whopping 5,000 words out of it (down to 8,900). It was relatively easy, which makes it very clear that the story never needed to be as long as it was. I'm learning to love my words a little less, and I think that's a good thing. :)

Labels: horses, sales

My fifth sale of the year - a horror novelette to a very well-known, well-regarded print magazine. I'll post all the details when the contracts are signed. The novelette won't be published until sometime next year (or maybe longer), but it'll be worth the wait.

Labels: horses, sales

It's been so long since I posted, I had to go back and read what I'd blogged about almost three weeks ago. Since then, a couple of interesting things have happened:

1. I turned in 1/2 of my sooper-sekrit project. Yes, 1/2 - it's been split in two, and I'm right now polishing Part Two (this is what has kept me so busy, along with sending out a few more submissions). I already have news about the fate of Part One (it's good news), but the future of Part Two is very much up in the air. It all depends on the needs of the project as a whole. More I cannot say. Why like Yoda am I speaking? :P

2. After this project is completely out the door, I'm pretty much finished with the short stuff for the rest of the year. There are a few stories that I finished earlier in the year that I'll edit/revise and send out, and a couple more prose poems I want to work on, but those are going to take second place to rewriting my old biomechanical spider/steampunk novelette "The Girls of the World" into a full-blown novella. And I want to start working on the outline for my novel. Those two projects will take up the rest of 2007.

3. Travel news! My sister will be staying in Leuven, Belgium this August and September (as a guest lecturer at the university), and she's invited me to come visit her. So, at the end of August, I'll fly over to Belgium for a few days, then we'll both take the train to Paris for a bit to visit friends of hers, then it's down to Venice for four-five days, before heading back through Germany to Leuven. It's my mid-life version of the Grand Tour, and I'm pretty excited about it. Especially amazing is that to date, I've made enough money from my writing to pay for the plane ticket. That's something to be proud of. I've also made tentative plans for an even more spectacular trip in 2009, but I'm not going to spill the beans until it's finalized. Let's just say it involves tropical things, and maybe some ruins and dormant volcanoes!

I guess that's all the news. Ok, so maybe my life is still not very interesting. I think this is the part where I should insert some Shakespearean dialog. ;P

Labels: horses, travel

...because my life is. Seriously. All I've done the past couple of weeks is work on the secret project - which I finally finished this afternoon. Of course I've overshot the word limit by almost half. Bleh. But on the other hand, at least it gives me something to work with when I start chopping. I have to admit, I get a perverse pleasure out of editing the bejesus out of my words. It's a form of masochism that I doubt most writers would reveal that they embrace - embracing booze or depression or miserable living conditions seems to be far more acceptable ways of torturing ones artistic side.

I'm currently watching old episodes of "The Outer Limits", downloaded from iTunes. Right now I'm watching the one with Robert Culp as the scientist who undergoes radical experiments in order to "turn" himself into an alien. I think it's rather amusing that the more alien he becomes, the more Shakespeare he quotes - in fact, in the most extreme moments of duress, when one might suppose he'd have forgotten the most basic human concepts and forms of expression, he gives Olivier a run for his money. Then again, this seemed to be par for the course with many of the SF shows of the 50's and 60's (don't get me started on "Star Trek", lol). I'm going to try this the next time my characters run out of ideas or find themselves in a bind. Throwing in a massive chunk of iambic pentameter from "Richard III" or "Hamlet" should pretty much solve all my problems from here on out. Yay! ;P

Labels: horses

Despite an onslaught of insects (ants and spiders), and some slight noise of a new person moving in upstairs, the mini-Clarion was largely successful. I managed to crank out a small but respectable amount, and the wordcount now stands at:



It's not as much as I wanted, but I tend to not beat myself over the head if I miss my own targets. I don't believe in "muses" or the like, but I do believe that you can work your imagination at full throttle for only so long, then you have to give it a rest. No need to force it, if you don't have to. The goals I set are to keep me on my toes, not to discourage me. I was on my toes, I wrote a lot, I dealt with life, and that's the way it goes.

From now through the end of the month, if I write 500 words a day minimum, I'll have it finished in full by the end of the month. Problem is, I don't have the exact due date of the story, which makes me nervous. If I find out it's due June 1, I can do it - but it gives me no time for editing or polishing. I don't want to bother the editor, but I'm going to have to bug him for an exact date. I hate being so anal, but having a date to work toward helps. Because I'm, you know, anal. :)

Labels: horses, mini-clarion

Wednesday was lost due to my going to KGB to see Sarah Langan and John Crowley read from their new novels - I think that's a pretty good excuse for not writing. The best part of the evening was watching Nick Kaufmann's eyes bug out when Peter Straub revealed that he reads Nick's blog. I myself was sort of googly-eyed-fan-girlish, and didn't contribute much to the conversation, but if Mr. Straub noticed my idiocy, he was kind enough to ignore it.

Tomorrow will be nothing but writing, writing, writing. Lots of coffee (my bathroom trips will be about the only exercise I get) and lots of iTunes for background. Don't worry, I'm not going to post a word count update every hour. I will, however, post something at the end of the day. It's been a long time since I've devoted an entire day to writing, and even though parts of it will be torturous, I'm looking forward to it.

Labels: horses, mini-clarion

I have a massive, massive spreadsheet that I take everywhere with me on a little memory stick. It has, among many other numerous things, a page devoted entirely to the word output of each and every one of my projects in progress. Right now, the little group of cells that make up the chart for Secrit Project 07 show a measly output for last night:



I imagine this number will rise by very small increments throughout the week - that's how it always seemed to go at Clarion, and that's how it goes when you have a full-time job as well. So, each row in the chart will have a date, the daily word count, and the cumulative word count. Slow but steady progress.

Then I'll hit Saturday.

On Saturday morning, the daily word count will be switched over to HOURLY word count. Each row will no longer show a date (5/14, 5/15, 5/16), but this: 7-8am, 8-9am, 9-10am. At the top of every hour, I'll stop to check my word count, input it into the spreadsheet, and tally up my total. I'll spend all of Saturday doing this, from about 7am to 9pm. My word count for the day will probably be around 5-6,000 (not including what I racked up during the week). Sunday will be a slower day, with maybe about 2,000 words added (assuming I haven't finished the story on Saturday - 10k is the maximum allowed word count, not what I have to hit). And that's how I'll get this thing finished. It's like ripping off a bandaid - for fourteen freakin' hours. Heh.

But I've found that with the spreadsheet open, it holds me accountable for every hour I work on my writing - I have to write something, I have to keep up with the pace I set, and I can't stop and ego-ponder over the beauty of my words or whether anything even makes sense. I pound it out in a weekend frenzy of writing, then give it a rest before editing. That's how I wrote at Clarion, and I think it's the best way for me to approach this story. Because, if I stop and think about what I'm writing, I'm going to be physically ill. I won't be able to do it. And I can't let that happen. And no, I can't elucidate any further. Hopefully the story will be accepted and published, and then you all can read it, and see for yourselves what I mean.

Labels: horses, mini-clarion

So, let's try this one more time: after scrapping everything I previously wrote on the "secret project", I spent a week (while on a business trip in Sarasota) researching and just generally stewing over a new direction. And now I have to begin again. However, I'm horribly, horribly behind - so I've decided to do a "mini-Clarion" to the project. That is, I'm going to write as fast as I can, as much as I can, for the next week. I'm going to attempt to finish the entire thing by next Sunday.

I want to do this not just because I'm behind in my schedule, but because I think that this is going to force me to write without having the time to worry about perfection or editing as I go. That tends to slow me down and trip me up over things like single word choices, rather than pushing through to the end. I also think this is going to be a very difficult story for me to write, along the lines of what I went through while writing "The Unattainable". While IMO the writing of "The Unattainable" is some of the best I've ever done, it was one of the most stressful and emotionally disruptive things I've ever inflicted on myself. While I think it's good for writers to have a deep emotional connection to what they're creating, I also think that they need to have a good handle on their personal shit, and put the craft first. Trying to get through this in seven days will give me less time to wallow in my own crap, and force me to focus on the character's emotional journey. I can cry and wail when I write the end - just not before. ;D

So, starting tomorrow, I'll write like a madman possessed - just like I did at Clarion. I'll post word counts starting on Tuesday. Right now the word count is this:



Bleh. I've got a long ways to go....

Labels: horses, mini-clarion