Category: Writing

Retiring My Byline

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For a long time, one of my bylines (in addition to small hard details like rock candy) was, “Be prolific, not perfect.”

I gravitated towards the desire to be prolific and not perfect because my perfectionism was not doing me any favors with my writing.

I have since come to accept the desire to be prolific is/was also not doing me any favors.

I have fatigue from chronic insomnia all day every day. There are multiple things I’m told to prioritize by well meaning people in my life: my diet, my health, my movement, my living space, and more, but the reality is, I’m one person who frequently can’t make it throughout the day.

I don’t know if you struggle with fatigue. If you aren’t, imagine that you are as tired as when you went to bed, and that feeling never fades. It doesn’t matter how much coffee you drink. It doesn’t matter if you drag yourself out for a walk. You are so tired, you call fall asleep.

Then insomnia is being that tired, making it through until bed time, and either being unable to fall asleep or stay asleep.

So, if you are also lucky not to be cursed with insomnia, that hour or so you experience before bed, is my every day life with no reprieve.

Because on the few days I do get a good night’s sleep, my body just wants more of it.

I’ve decided, for so long, that I’m going to just power through, that I haven’t learned to accept that I am going to be tired all the time. And that reality comes with deciding what gets sacrificed. The day job, the main battery hog, can’t get sacrificed. At the end of the day, I’ll need to decide between chores, between eating, between derby/movement, and yes, between writing. And writing won’t always win out, and that’s okay. I greatly admire people who can seemingly write without flagging even with their day jobs, but I’m not one of those people, and I need to stop trying to bed.

I don’t know what my new byline will be. Maybe I don’t need one.

NaNoWriMo: I Don’t Need To Do You This Year

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I’ve been writing off and on for about a decade. I have two short stories published, two novel length texts in need of editing and some decision making times about what to do with them, and a novella on submission that’s been rejected once or twice, and has been with a pretty major publication for 1.5 years.

I’m going to need to get two tattoos for that rejection when it finally comes around.

It’s NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month), which means the pressure to perform, to write, is extra high. I’ve noticed that I almost always completely check out during November, even though I wrote one of my novel length texts in November of 2020. For NaNoWriMo even. I mean, I had to take a week off work to do it, but you know. I did it.

I’ve never understood NaNoWriMo. It’s literally the worst month for a project of this magnitude. Not only is there a pretty popular holiday in the third quarter of the month, did any of the people who came up with NaNoWriMo work retail? Like, November is the month where things start to ramp up. Most times I tried to do NaNoWriMo I was getting burned out from my day job than trying to write 1667 words a day.

And for people who know that a 50,000 word novel isn’t really a novel in industry terms–some of those people are churning out a 90k-100k novel during this month. That’s what I did in 2020. And it was one of the hardest things I ever done. I don’t think it’s a surprise that 2020 was the last year I made substantive inroads in my writing. 2021 and 2022 have been pretty barren in comparison.

I know there are people in all walks of life who can do it, but I have never been able to. On top of the job, I also struggle with fatigue and insomnia issues, and I probably also have some form of OCD which, as everyone knows, is exhausting even when it’s not actively making it impossible for me to make a sandwich. Since I like having a place to live, the day job always gets first dibs on my energy. If I have any left over, it’s usually taken up by other stuff that needs doing like making sure those bills are paid, the house isn’t a death trap of undone chores, etc.

By the time November comes around, it’s just another reminder of how bad I am at writing every day, like I’m supposed to do, because you can’t be a writer if you don’t finish anything, and the best way to finish anything is to write every day, right??

November, more than any month, makes me question if I can actually do this.

So this year, instead of setting myself up for the inevitable NaNoWriMo failure, I just said, You don’t have to do it.

And I didn’t.

Now I’m thinking more long term about what I want to do, and more importantly, how I want to do it. Everything I learn about the industry is incredibly discouraging. I mean, how else am I supposed to take a novella that’s been waiting for a single publishing house to read it for over 500 days? Their submission guidelines still provide a 9 month timeline for submissions.

Self publishing is at least on your timeline. But then you’re running a business (and yes, you need a business to keep it all above board), and that’s on top of your full time job.

I still haven’t decided what I want to do in that arena, but I have decided that I miss writing (which is a big deal!), and I want to do it again in a sustainable way.

I’m going to try a seasonable approach to writing that I’m extremely excited for.

From Winter Solstice 2022 through the Spring Equinox of 2023, I’m going to focus on strategizing: this will include plotting out what I want to accomplish for the year, plotting out individual novels, novellas, and/or anthologies. It will also include doing market research both for agents, publishing houses that will accept submissions without an agent, and also learning more about an LLC in the context of a writer. If I had anything to submit, it’d happen during this period, or I would make note of guidelines throughout the year that I would be appropriate to submit then.

From Spring Equinox to the Summer Solstice, I’ll focus on the actual writing. There won’t be any looking back, no editing, no self doubts.

From Summer Solstice to the Fall Equinox, I’d focus on editing what I wrote in the summer.

And from Fall Equinox to Winter Solstice, I’d give myself permission to rest. Nothing. No writing, no editing. Permission to not even think about writing.I’m also going to be following the lunar calendar. As the moon wanes from new to full, my efforts will be at its maximum. As it waxes from full to new, I’ll wind down so I’m ready for a full push next new moon. New Moon will always be a rest day. Full moon will always be a work day.

My starting goal for full effort will be 15 minutes. I know it doesn’t sound like a lot, but I feel even on my worst days, I can make time for 15 minutes of planning, writing, and editing. I have to plan for my worst day, not my best day.

This is extremely structured, follows a cycle that’s familiar since it’s based on the seasons (despite how hard capitalism tries to convince us seasons don’t exist, and we are not part of the earth), and furthermore, allows me to rest so I don’t burn out. It also avoids the write every day rhetoric that is so pervasive in writer spaces because that just does not work for everybody, it doesn’t.

I’ve tried to do something like this before, but I think I’m in a much better place than I was then (which was when I was living with my roommate who, if this is your first blog entry I’m reading, was likely poisoning me unintentionally).

Did you decide to do NaNoWriMo this year? How do you keep yourself motivated to keep working on something you love?

June-July

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This summer has been a doozy. Heat waves, incredible drought.

It’s also the summer I’m on anti anxiety and anti depressants and let me tell you: wow.

After work, I would be so exhausted I would simply collapse in bed and nap for a few hours. That still sometimes happens, but generally I feel I have more energy, and I’m less likely to turn to tv binging or food to self medicate instead.

I’m excited about writing, including attempting to launch a freelance career as an editor. I don’t know if it will work out but the key word is try-try-try.

As such, I’m thinking about pursuing a hybrid career and have been watching a lot of the Courtney Project on youtube. My first two novels I think would do better via traditional publishing, but there’s some weird stuff I’d like to write that I think would be better served self-publishing.

I’m very excited to see where my writing career goes. I feel sky’s the limit, and I don’t feel that way very often. The fact I do feel that way is remarkable considering how many rejections I’ve received, but hey. Rejections are part of being a writer.

Imposter Syndrome And How To Deal

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What Is Imposter Syndrome

Imposter Syndrome comes up a lot for writers. For those who may not know,

Impostor syndrome (also known as impostor phenomenon, impostorism, fraud syndrome or the impostor experience) is a psychological pattern in which an individual doubts their skills, talents or accomplishments and has a persistent internalized fear of being exposed as a “fraud”.[1] Despite external evidence of their competence, those experiencing this phenomenon remain convinced that they are frauds, and do not deserve all they have achieved. Individuals with impostorism incorrectly attribute their success to luck, or interpret it as a result of deceiving others into thinking they are more intelligent than they perceive themselves to be.[2] While early research focused on the prevalence among high-achieving women, impostor syndrome has been recognized to affect both men and women equally.

Wikipedia

Moving forward, I’ll be using the term established writer to indicate someone who has consistent publishing credentials and non established writer to indicate someone who doesn’t.

In my own writing group, I have seen established writers discuss their Imposter Syndrome (sometimes by name, sometimes by symptom). I actually hear more self doubt from established writers than I do from the new writers in our group, which makes sense based on the definition above.

The Answers

Though I don’t want to dismiss anyone’s feeling or internal distress, I do wish established writers would take more care in how they discuss their Imposter Syndrome, especially in a public or widely open space (such as a writing group) where unestablished writers may feel the need to validate established writers. That is not inherently wrong. One of the great things about a writing community is how writers can support each other beyond the words put down on the page. But there is a line, and if an established writer establishes a pattern of talking about their Imposter Syndrome with an expectation of validation, that is taking advantage of certain boundaries, where other participants may feel the need to put forth the emotional labor of validation without necessarily consenting to that because they may feel they have no other choice in order to remain true to the purpose of the group, which is supporting other writers.

Questions about imposter syndrome come up a lot in contexts like writing conventions as well. I’ve heard various answers (two common ones that I’ll address later), but one that I’ve yet to hear is that people who struggle with Imposter Syndrome should speak to a therapist regarding it.

That’s it. That’s the answer. Talk to a therapist.

For those who don’t have the funds to do so, there are online resources that can help. The wiki link actually goes into some detail. Internet searching how to manage imposter syndrome brings up a plethora of links with guides as well.

I attended a writing conference, where the keynote speaker was a widely well known author and the inevitable question about Imposter Syndrome popped up.

Two answers were given:

  1. Channel the confidence of a mediocre white man
  2. The con man theory — which is basically just Imposter Syndrome under a new name since it relies on the idea that the person suffering from Imposter Syndrome is grifting those around them.

These are actually the most common answers I’ve heard. I’m sure there are others but these are the two I’m focusing on.

Confidence of a Mediocre White Man

As a white nonbinary lesbian, this does not speak to me. When I learned about feminism, it was presented as equality with white men, essentially gaining the equal opportunity to oppress communities alongside white men without impunity. You can read more about white feminism here.

A really good visual of this also was in a recent episode of New Amsterdam when Dr Goodwin tried to solve systemic racism at the hospital. He gathered the top paid doctors, white men and women, to see if they would cut their salary to address pay imbalances to their Black peers. Lauren Bloom’s response was to get back to her when they talked about pay discrepancies based on gender, even though only white people of various genders were already in that room. Her salary was greater than Floyd’s, a Black surgeon, top of his field, but she did not care about that.

Real life proof of this can also be seen in the hype when that white woman, ceo of Bumblr, became the first female billionaire. Yay. Feminism.

I know this sound bite of channeling the confidence of a mediocre white man isn’t supposed to be drawn to the conclusion that I have drawn it towards–and yet, as a white person myself, I feel this is the only logical place for it to end. The confidence of mediocre white men is what created the Joss Whedons of this world, and I know that I, as a white nonbinary lesbian, can just as easily become a Joss Whedon myself simply because I am a member of an oppressor class. Though I cannot change my whiteness, I can choose not to align myself with white masculinity, and I don’t think the confidence of a mediocre white man can be separated from said man’s whiteness.

Pretend You’re a Con Man

Like I said earlier, this is basically just imposter syndrome repackaged. Even if it wasn’t, I have to question if self deception or pretend is the right answer.

I do think there is a place for fake it until you make it, but I don’t think it should be the end all, be all. Imposter syndrome is created from legitimate issues regarding the self. This brings me once again to therapy, or self driven research to practice healthier and more positive thought processes.

What truly frustrates me about the con man approach is that it encourages hiding and putting away the Imposter.

The Imposter Inside You

When I thought I had IBS, I did a ton of research on it, trying to find ways to manage it. One site, I wish I remembered which one, posited that I had to address my situation mentally: you are going to be uncomfortable, don’t resist the discomfort and the pain.

I know this is hardly a new philosophy, but sitting on the toilet, gut in agony, it was new to me.

I’ve since attempted to extend this thought process towards the rest of my life.

The Imposter inside you needs kindness and compassion, not tricks designed to hand wave it away. What you need to tell the Imposter within you, who is also you the Writer, will depend on who you are, and what you need. But don’t hide it away under a grift or channel it into someone you don’t want to be.

I need to tell my imposter it’s okay I don’t write every day because I am busy managing an OCD flareup. That it’s okay I’m struggling editing my 90k word draft because I’ve never done it before. Of course I’m still struggling. Of course I don’t know what I’m doing. This is my first time, after all, but I will learn from it as long as I keep trying.

I tell my imposter I know they’re just the whisper of self doubt built up by years of everyone expecting perfection and great things from me during my childhood, instead of acknowledging that I was a child, and that sometimes I will fail, and that failure is natural, it’s okay, it’s the best way to learn. I still remember me as a child, dressed in my best dress because they wanted to look and feel nice, but became rigid with embarrassment while Mom yelled at them because they had made a mistake. Their brain looped with shame that they had failed while wearing their best dress, and why did they choose to wear it when they were so undeserving to look nice when they weren’t nice on the inside? Is it any surprise that that child secluded themselves in the caves of their heart, only to grow into the Imposter?

That kid deserved a hug, and so I hug my imposter, and tell them that it will be okay. We will get there together.

And I go to therapy.

Celebrating Wins

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My writing journey has been slower than I would like (this is entirely my own fault — becoming an expert at self sabotage can do that), but one of the things I started doing was celebrating my writing wins in a really tangible way.

I decided to start celebrating whenever I sold something. DO NOT DO THIS. You can’t control if something sells. You can control finishing it, you can control submitting it, but you cannot control selling it. Which is not to say that you shouldn’t celebrate selling something (in fact, do!) but I do not recommend celebrating only this part of the journey.

There are so many specific parts of the journey worth celebrating: drafting, writing (even if it’s just a few words a day), finishing something, submitting something, and yes, selling something.

I don’t do well finding ways to celebrate smaller wins, such as successfully writing for a day or even submitting something (though I do need to figure out something that works well for me), but I did determine on a celebration ritual for finishing something that really, really speaks to me.

And that’s getting tattoos thematically appropriate for whatever I finished.

So let’s start!

The very first story I ever sold was “You An Accidental Astronaut.”

I signed the contract on November 1st, 2015. I got my celebratory tattoo on October 15th 2017. It is NEVER too late to celebrate.

The second story I sold was We Lilies of the Valley, which was accepted in November of 2016. Yes, those dates are right! I sold a second story before I even celebrated my first one!

And listen,

A facebook entry from November 15th 2016 from my personal facebook shows a screenshot from September 27th 2016 with the text, "Another rejection today. I'm wondering if I should submit to shimmer since they close in three days but I am not sure if it's their thing" The post from November says, "Excited to announce that one of my short stories was picked up by Shimmer magazine! https://www.shimmerzine.com. I'm very excited to work with them! They publish great pieces. Also, see the post I mentioned on sep 27. Don't self reject!"

You would think after a story like that I’d celebrate my win, right? No! I didn’t get my celebratory tattoo for We Lilies Of The Valley about midway through the Covid Pandemic.

So here are the tattoos:

A tattoo of an astronaut, reaching with their hand, is on the top shoulder. A watercolor effect of a galaxy in purples and teals serves as the background. Below the first astronaut, is a second astronaut reaching in a similar pose. Yellow flowers with purple centers are in the shape of a crescent moon are behind the astronaut. A faint background of purples and teals tie the two images together.

The top astronaut on the shoulder was for “You An Accidental Astronaut” by Brandon Bopko.

The astronaut below was for “We Lilies of the Valley” by Lindsey Ercanbrack. Yes, I know those aren’t lilies. I chose orchids over lilies because it fit the story better.

Also during the pandemic, I chose to get a tattoo for a short story that I loved but haven’t sold. This is about the time I shifted to celebrating finished drafts as opposed to sold drafts because I really, really loved this story, and I wanted to celebrate it.

(spiders cw)

A spider with purple and cold dangles from a web along the bicep. The web is attached to a flying saucer with teal lights on the shoulder.

This art is also done by Lindsey Ercanbrack.

(the colors on this are actually more vibrant than what is showing up here)

I actually probably need to change this short story into a novel or novella, at which point I’ll add to this tattoo with something thematically appropriate.

(gore cw)

In May of 2021, I got a tattoo to celebrate the completion of my zombie novella. I don’t actually have a solid date for when I completed this since it’s been “done” a few times now, but I started this story before I even sold my first short stories. So, it’s been more than five years, and each time I revisit it as I grow as a writer, I see things that need to be changed. But I think it’s for real done–after I put in those edits from the sensitivity read.

A skeleton hand holds a golf puck between two fingers. A zombie eye, with entrails of blood, sits on top of the puck.

This was also done by Lindsey Ercanbrack. The reference I gave her was designed by Micaela Brody (yes, it’s the image on the side of this blog!)

I’m very happy with these tattoos, and I do intend to continue the tradition. I need two more for the novel drafts I finished in late 2020, and I have ideas for a short series I intend to self publish.

Which writing wins do you celebrate, and how do you celebrate them?

Salt & Sage Books A Review

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Sometime before 2016 I reached a point of fed-up-ness with The Walking Dead I decided to write my own zombie story for NaNoWriMo of that year. I wish I could remember the exact moment, but when I reviewed the TWD seasons, there were simply too many times I reached that point to accurately pin point a specific year, and I wasn’t using the NaNoWriMo site at the time.

Needless to say, I have been working on my zombie novella for five or more years. It used to be just a hair beneath 50k words. Then I edited it ruthlessly to a smidge under 40k words.

Around this time, #ownvoices was becoming popular and I took a long hard look at my story which stars an Iranian woman, a Jewish woman, two Black siblings, and a white woman who is the main character’s antagonist.

As a reminder, I am white.

I struggled for several years on whether or not I should tell this story or if I should edit everyone to be more or less ambiguous. People who know me might remember various self imposed deadlines to self publish the novella, only for each of them to pass by without it seeing the light of day.

I chose these characters for a reason. I had just gotten to know my brother’s girlfriend (now wife) when I first drafted the story, and she immigrated to the United States from Iran when she was young. She helped me with the Farsi that appears in the novella. I wanted a Jewish character because I was tired of Christianity saturating everything. It was also important to have two Black characters simply because the genre historically can be very antiblack, even though one of the earliest zombie films makes this precise point (Night of the Living Dead).

When crafting these characters, I did as much research as I could. I listened to bloggers share how their experiences are portrayed. Researched the no-nos. But I wanted to do more than avoid the easy pitfalls.

I extended this level of care to all the characters, but for my Jewish character, I specifically wanted her to be recognizable as Jewish without explicitly calling her Jewish in the text. The reason I did this is because I didn’t want to have an “easy out.” I didn’t want to fall in the trap of the main character observing her friend’s Jewishness and leaving it at that.

I was hesitant to do a sensitivity reading because I knew that a sensitivity editor can provide only their perspective, and I didn’t want to fall into the pitfall of looking at one sensitivity edit as the source of truth. My ideal scenario would have been multiple sensitivity edits for the various characters. Though my financial circumstance is more secure now than it was when I started this novella, I knew that to get the amount of perspective I needed for my novella would cost hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

Eventually, I decided removing these characters’ identities for my own comfort was not the right course of action for me (I know there are some people who will disagree with me, and I’m okay with that). I would rather make a mistake trying than stay in a safe zone that would inevitably perpetuate a focus on whiteness, which was one of the things that had frustrated me about TWD in the first place. I decided I would go for a sensitivity edit.

I researched sensitivity readers. I wanted to procure an editor from an established company of some sort as opposed to finding someone on a social media site like twitter. My main reason is that I wanted to be protected if something went wrong.

I stumbled across Salt & Sage Books. My initial inquiry email was answered quickly, and even when I delayed a full month or so in my response, they were kind and welcoming, picking up as if I hadn’t nearly ghosted them (which hadn’t been my intention, but what is time in the middle of a pandemic). They guided me through the beginning process, I chose an editor who had listed “Jewish” as one of their top areas of expertise, and I waited excitedly for my sensitivity read to come back.

When it did, the sensitivity editor told me there was no Jewish content in my story, spent the majority of the time discussing the lesbian romance, and provided very constructive feedback regarding the depth and believability of the characters.

Worse, the character the editor had interpreted as Jewish wasn’t supposed to be the Jewish character in the novella.

I was shocked. Numb to my core. I hadn’t actually read the novella again before I sent it out and my entire brain was trying to remember what I HAD written. Surely, I had put Jewish content in there–hadn’t I done all that research?

I dived back into novella and found multiple specific examples that countered the conclusions the sensitivity editor had drawn. These were facts contained in one or two sentences throughout the novel, and would not have been subject to interpretation.

I wasn’t sure what to do. I knew that writers who couldn’t work with editors got around since the circles are small, and I didn’t want that to happen, especially since I’m still trying to get my foot in the door. Originally my shock had been about my inability to write, but after I had gone through my novella, I began to wonder if my novella had not been read carefully by the editor I had chosen.

I decided to write Salt & Sage books with my feedback. I spent about three days drafting the email. Had a friend look it over to make sure I didn’t sound unreasonable.

I clicked “send” and I waited.

Salt & Sage responded back in several business days and ultimately agreed with me that I had not received a sensitivity read that met their QA levels. Their tone was validating, and when my original email raised questions regarding their QA processes, they assured me they did have one but they would need my permission to proceed. They offered me several methods of resolution, which included a partial refund or a chance to try again. I opted to try again, and they helped me find a second Sensitivity Reader, whom I asked to verify if their Jewish knowledge would match the Jewish character in my story. They assured me again this second read would be free of charge.

The level of effort on their part to make this right really struck me. When I said I didn’t feel comfortable choosing another reader who listed Jewishness in their list of expertise, and asked them to decide who would be best based on the Jewish elements in my story, they did take that effort on themselves. The amount of effort I, as a customer, had to take in rectifying the experience was as minimal as sending additional sample pages and a clarification on what I needed.

I’m very happy to say that when I received the results of the second sensitivity read, it was exactly the feedback I was looking for. The first read was about two pages long, with a minimal paragraph devoted to the lack of Jewish aspects in my story. The second read was about six pages long, each page devoted to the Jewish content in my story with feedback on what I did right, and feedback on where I was edging a little close to some negative stereotypes. I also got some line edits back on my actual manuscript! Exciting!

If you are looking for a place to find a sensitivity reader, I do recommend Salt & Sage. I need to do a sensitivity read for the remaining characters in my novel, and I’ll be going to them as long as they have an editor who matches my needs.

My main takeaway in this experience? Ask clarifying questions. Make sure the editor you choose (even if it’s not with Salt & Sage) has the knowledge to match your character. I had assumed any editor that listed “Jewish” in their areas of expertise would recognize the Jewish aspects of my story, simply because I, as a Gentile, had done the research, and surely any Jewish content would be recognizable from that alone. Don’t make that assumption. I believe my key issue was I did not specify I needed an editor with some experience in practicing Judaism, and that points to my own ignorance, and why I needed the sensitivity read in the first place.

My day job entails customer service. I know that no company will get it right 100% of the time. Expecting that will set people up for failure. Was I disappointed that my first sensitivity read was such a bad experience? Of course. But I deal with bad first experiences every day, and I wanted to give Salt & Sage a chance to make it right. I’m so glad I did because they went above and beyond to do so — and that says more about a company than when things go right.

Review of my experience written with permission from Salt & Sage.

NANoWriMO

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NaNoWriMo, also known as National Novel Writing Month. Also known as the Worst Month In The Entire Year To Challenge One’s Self To Write 50k words.

  1. November only has 30 days. Why not just make it February then for a “real” challenge.
  2. November is the beginning of the busiest holiday season of the year. Thanksgiving is right there towards the end of the month.
  3. Even if, like myself, you don’t celebrate the holidays, other people do. And their actions affect you. I say this looking at all the time off requests I’ve approved around Thanksgiving because I’m not a heartless scrooge.

For me, November would be a death knell for getting any sort of long sustained writing work done. Not only will I be more than likely working tons of overtime during the month, specifically around the holidays but it’s not unusual for me to pull 50 hour work weeks just in general, but my wonderful workplace decided to do their End of Year even in the first week of November.

I know. Right during the midterm elections. Register and vote people.

So, on Monday I’ll be working my shift then flying to Las Vegas, and probably have some time of work mingling event. Tuesday and Wednesday will be meetings and conferences and more meetings and will probably end up being 16 hours of work/mingling before crashing in a hotel room–and that’s assuming I don’t work late into the night to get a handle on the tickets we didn’t have time to process because of all the totally not mandatory Work Events. Thursday, the work still needs to get done but on top of that I’m also flying!

A whole week! Gone!

I’ve always been of the opinion that putting this challenge in November is setting one’s self up for failure. Writing is already hashtag hard, so to put such a challenge in a month with only thirty days, during one of the busiest holiday seasons of the year? Why!

So I will be doing the challenge this year–but not in November.

October, after September, is already the best month. Even in places without seasons it just is because Halloween is fun! The days are just starting to turn but are not so depressingly dark in the mornings and evenings. It has….thirty one days!

I’m calling it National Auxiliary Novel Writing Month: October or NAnoWriMO.

I’m also going to do a fanfic this year because inspiration, what’s that!

But yeah. That’s the plan. I’m ready!

Reader’s Corner: King & Riordan

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When I was a kid, I used to read several books at a time. I blame this on my home school education,  tv was a limited amusement, and that we used to belong to the Pizza Hut reading program: read x number of books and you get a free single-serving pizza.

I would read books that were beneath my reading level so I could chow through them in a single day, satisfactorily log it, and then read another one. Normally, I was reading other books that were not considered pizza fodder, though I took great satisfaction in logging those too.

Then I grew up. Got a major case of The Depression, and stopped reading!

I know, what a bummer.

I’ve actually been reading again for a while but not like I used to. Not like I did as a kid.

I’ve been starting small, again reading books below my age. For example, my coworker gave me the Percy Jackson books for Christmas. You’ll have these read over the weekend, right? She asked me.

Uhhhhhhh, I said, very intelligently.

To be honest, I was feeling the pressure. My mom had also given me two books that she wanted me to read, one of which was sitting on my shelf for over a month, the other languishing in my kindle for even longer. I also had my own list of to-reads which I had yet to get to–Amazon asks me how many stars I want to rate a book I’ve purchased but yet to read, and the guilt sets in.

I did not have the Percy books read over the weekend, but I did go through them at a good pace despite working full time, writing, being dog tired, and reading other projects.

Yes, I am back to reading multiple books at a time!

The primary book that I read while reading Percy Jackson was Joyland by Steven King. I chose to read Joyland to expand my genre horizons beyond science fiction and fantasy.

I consumed Joyland in a day and a half. Stephen King is a pretty good writer, obviously. His On Writing was one of the first books I read about the craft, though my thoughts are mixed on it now as an adult. I really enjoyed Firestarter, but couldn’t get into some of his more “heavier” stuff. Basically, I don’t read a lot of Stephen King for several reasons, and I started IT though stopped when I discovered what happens at the end of the novel.

I’ve never read any of Rick Riordan’s work before and, even though they are different genres written for different audiences, I couldn’t help but compare the two to each other craftwise.

One of the things I immediately noticed about Joyland was that it was not structured into chapters. The other thing I noticed is that, even though I could remember what happened as I was reading, the drama was written so smoothly it was sliding melted butter over bread. It’s the juxtaposition of feeling where you remember what happened–but you also don’t. The same sort of feel when you try to remember exactly what filled your hours on a weekend, but you can’t. The day was there, and it wasn’t. There’s just the feeling you had–that it was great or good or satisfying or bad.

I’ve always had this feeling when I’m immersed in a well written book. It reminds me of the feeling I get when I’m trying to write: how am I going to fill these pages when hardly anything is happening, when the plot is a slow boil? And here is Stephen King doing just that, nearly effortlessly.

I’m not sure if I’m explaining it right. Maybe if I finally bring in my point about Percy Jackson:

With Percy Jackson, I have the opposite feeling. I remember what fills the page because it feels very much like a video game. Each obstacle is like a punctuation mark. Again, this is probably because this is aimed at a (much) younger audience than myself.

But it also got me thinking about different writing styles, and the audience. Of course, you’re going to be changing your form and style as necessary, but I couldn’t help but feeling that my most mature writing is more like Riordan’s than King’s.

And there really is nothing wrong with that! But, especially since I am not writing for a younger generation, I want my writing to read more like King’s. Not in his voice, just the way people read the words without noticing the plot structure or other writing devices because they are so well hidden in the actual story.

It’s something that I’ll be aiming for in the coming months.

Writing Update

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With just barely a week to go before Strange Horizons’ deadline, I finally finished the first (haha) draft of the story I want to submit to them.

It’s been edited once since then, but it still needs a title, I’m still not happy with the name of one of the protagonists, and it needs further revision.

But it’s finished, and that means that even if I don’t get it to where it wants or needs to be, I can submit it to Strange Horizons and that’s really the only thing that matters.

Now, I still need to write the horror story, and there’s another anthology I’d like to submit to called UFO (Unidentified Funny Objects — deadline also April 30).

I’ve not written a lot of humor (actually more like zero humor) so I think it might be an interesting exercise.

I feel like I’ve been writing a lot lately, which is nice.

Story of My First Sale

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So when I was writing, “You, An Accidental Astronaut,” it was in a different format because I was writing it for another literary magazine.

When I heard about Mothership Zeta, I already knew that the format I was trying to push this story into wasn’t going to work. And that’s when I realized that I wanted to submit it to Mothership Zeta, and that when Mothership Zeta would reject it I would go ahead and try to submit it to the place I originally had in mind.

Then I promptly forgot about the deadline. I was fighting and struggling with the story, had fallen out of love with it, even, and I had only gone over it once or twice when I remembered the deadline after it was almost passed.

I never even had someone else look it over because I was too busy self-rejecting myself and the story. But I sent it out anyways and to my shock, I survived the first and second rounds of rejection until I received the email they wanted to accept it and have me sign a contract and everything.

It was funny, because the news came on the Worst Day of Work. I was already on the edge of a breakdown in the breakroom when I was on my lunch break. As people at work can testify, I never took my breaks, usually opting to eat at my desk as I worked on the emails that came in–but today if I did that I would have broken down in tears in front of everyone and We Can’t Have That. So I was checking my email, completely zoned out, and I was almost about to autoarchive the email on my phone. I had to re-read the email twice over, and by the time I had processed what it said, I was, as they say, over the moon.

The first thing I did when I went back to the office was announce the news and everybody was happy for me and I was happy for me and work still sucked but it didn’t suck as much because I had published my first story–a story I hadn’t even technically tried to get publish. A story that I had only sent out once and it had been accepted the first go around. A story that I had lost faith in.

That story was accepted.

In many ways I feel like I cheated somehow. I’ve only submitted about five stories for publication in my entire life. Two of those stories I submitted to Weird Tales when I was a teenager and got form rejections. Two of those stories I submitted only once and then self-pubbed them here.

And then this.

I feel like I didn’t earn my first sale, but I’m also trying not to think like that because I did earn it because I wrote it and I sent it out and everything. I just got lucky.

Anyway, that’s how I got my first sale.

While this post was percolating, I also read Sunil Patel’s Anatomy of a Sale Parts One and Two which I highly recommend reading. In the articles, Patel mentions several sites to make submit/rejection experience more engaging and interactive, which I am definitely excited to give a try (referring specifically to The Grinder and the Sink or Submit game).