Reflection: Nanowrimo 2021

Well. It’s the last day of Nanowrimo. I have five-ish hours to write about 1,200 words in order to reach my EXTREMELY modified goal. Originally the goal was the legit, old school Nanowrimo target: 50k. It became apparent very early on that I would not be making this goal. 

Given the past two years of Pandemic Bullshit™ and the fact that I haven’t written anything super long since I finished the Tavi rough draft in spring of 2019, I’m not surprised that this Nano was a major struggle. I expected it, honestly.

The fact that I could reach 15k on a single project in a month is a major win for me. Breaking 19k total for the month is a HUGE win. It’s more than I’ve written the rest of the year combined. I refuse to feel bad about such success. 

They say that comparison is the thief of joy, but we forget that it applies to not just the world beyond, but within as well. Comparing my output to years past is an exercise in disappointment, when really I should be celebrating this productivity that’s leaps and bounds beyond what I’ve done in recent memory.

I’m headed in the right direction.

Beyond Nanowrimo, I have MORE news! Say what?!

My microfiction piece “Unforgettable” made its way into the City.River.Tree. 2020 Anthology. I may have missed the email about the anthology’s release, and I’m just now realizing it. Whoops.

Point is! My story is available in print! And that always feels amazing! As indicated by all these darn exclamation points!!!!

Ahem. Anyway. That’s the news. If you’d like to read my story, you can find it online here. OR you can support a small, indie microfiction magazine and buy the 2020 Anthology. It’s like, $8. Just sayin’.

All right. That’s enough procrastination. It’s time to get these final words on the page. See you soon, Bloggarts.

 

BZ

Proof I don’t read so good

Okay. All right. What gives?

Since when does WordPress have “Sponsored posts” on my blog? Also, why do I have to pay almost $50/year to make them go away?

I basically treat this space like an over-glorified LiveJournal. How dare they try and monetize my crappy takes and mental health rambles? I feel increasingly disconnected from and disinterested in WordPress. Their stupid Gutenberg, block writing BS and now ads? Like, come on guys. Just let me virtual journal in peace.

But, I’ve been here for 10 years now. TEN YEARS! I missed that particular anniversary back in September thanks to the afore mentioned mental health, but it’s a pretty big deal. I’ve spent ten years of my writing life — basically ALL of my writing life — in this virtual space.

And now it has ADS?!?!?!?!

Are there even any viable alternatives? I know that if I left this site would basically be dead and I’d have to URL link things on the new site, which sounds like a big ol’ hassle. Ughhhhhhhhhh. Does this mean I’m FINALLY going to give WordPress my money?

Gross.

I’ll consider it. I guess. But I don’t like it. So there.

…..

…..

…..

Ok. Lemme just write this thought through. There are pros to paying the $50/year. No more ads. No “Sponsored Posts”. I get the domain name, which honestly it’s a little embarrassing that I don’t already have it. And, let’s be real, it’s a bit more legitimate if I pay for the ding dang thing.

… I’m just grumpy about it.

I could go all in and pay $100/year and get better customization, Google Analytics integration, better social media integration, and more storage.

But I’m extra grumpy about that.

BUT! I think next year could be a really good year to make the blog more of a site. I need to get back in the blogging habit, and I’m going to have publishing news and the anthology to promote. It’d be really nice if the blog could work less as an over-glorified LiveJournal and more as an actual, professional writer’s website.

Hrmmmmm. Lots to think about.

BZ

In Which I “Do Words Good”

So, I kinda, sorta announced this already, but figured it ought to have its own post.

I got my first professional sale!!!

“The Lament of Kivu Lacus” will be in Laksa Media’s Life Beyond Us: an Anthology of Original SF and Science Essays, forthcoming in Fall 2022. My story was one of two stories selected from the open call for submissions — the other 28 stories are all by authors invited to submit (including heavy hitters like Mary Robinette Kowal, Premee Mohamed, Bogi Takács, Tobias S. Buckell, and more). What’s even better is that this anthology is partnered with the European Astrobiology Institute, and each story will be paired with an essay addressing the science presented in the work of fiction!

There are a lot of reasons to celebrate this sale, the obvious being that it’s my FIRST PROFESSIONAL SALE! I know that, ultimately, that doesn’t really change anything for me or my writing. I’m still going to get rejected. A lot. I will not suddenly be contacted by agents and editors begging for my manuscripts. I will not become an overnight award winner or a contributor to a Year’s Best Anthology. Okay… that last one isn’t AS unlikely as the other two, but the other two are literally not going to happen so…

The point is, this professional sale sure is validating. I do words good and someone else thinks I do words good too!

Another reason to celebrate is the fact of the sheer numbers I was up against. Only two stories were selected out of 250 submissions. That’s… not insignificant. The selection process is a difficult one — I’ve been there as a slush reader for The Audient Void. You know what stories won’t make it, but it isn’t always so clear which ones will. And, submitting to magazines is so subjective. There’s a lot that can factor into an Editor’s decision. Is this the third story about space whales they’ve read today? Are they a monster who hates cetaceans, even earthly ones? Did they skip breakfast and they’re grumpy? Who knows, man? Certainly not us!

But another reason to celebrate is this: the submission guidelines specifically said that stories about [REDACTED] would be a hard sell because they already had a story about that. I almost didn’t submit because of that one line in the guidelines. But, I thought about it, considered the weird, wonderful, heart-wrenching story I had written, and thought, “don’t self-reject.” I also honestly believed that whatever story they already had would be wildly different from my strange little tear-jerker. It was worth submitting.

And guess what, Dear Reader? It was. It was so, so worth it.

BZ

My Process™

Here’s a detailed bullet-point list of my process, for those interested. Because, c’mon, you know you are. Just a little. Please remember that this is not prescriptive. My whole previous post was about how very unique each writer’s process is. I’m sharing mine because people seem to love hearing about writing processes, and because it’s kinda fun to talk about every now and again.

Ahem. On to the list.

1. Get a weird idea for a story. Usually a line of dialogue or an image in my brain.
   1. For instance, the upcoming Pioneer Oregon Weird Western was born from my brain showing me a woman in a leather rain slicker on a horse in the middle of the Santiam Canyon getting drenched and looking rather unhappy about it.
2. Ignore it for awhile.
   1. Stories need time to percolate. The longer I can ignore the siren call the better prepared I’ll be when I actually sit down to write the thing. It’s cooking and it needs to be left to its own devices for a bit.
3. When the time to draft is getting close, start doing any necessary research.
   1. Usually about a month or two before I sit down to write a book, I’ll dive into pretty serious research.
   2. Short stories don’t typically require much research, so I can skip this step for most of them.
4. Make a playlist.
   1. This may seem silly, but this is a very important step for me. Every story, big or small, gets a playlist. I spend a few days searching for songs from all kinds of genres. Songs are usually not only lyrically related, but tonally as well. They sound like the story. I don’t know how better to describe it, but there’s a vibe, okay?
   2. This step helps me cement the tone/atmosphere of the story. But it also becomes a sort of psychological conditioning. I listen to the playlist whenever I work on the story. It becomes the soundtrack and hearing it helps me settle down to the work that much quicker. This is an absolutely vital step in the process for me. It’s my version of prewriting.
5. Write.
   1. This is the Wild West of the process. Every story is different. Some write themselves in a handful of sessions while others are arduous and painfully slow.
   2. Stories take the time they take. Some short stories take a week to write, dumping out over the course of a few days. Others take months with only a few writing sessions here and there. Novels tend to be a much steadier process for me, with dedicated (some would say obsessive) work over a span of six-ish consecutive months.
6. Ignore it again.
   1.  When I reach “The End” I save it and close the document. I get away from it for as long as I can. For short stories a month is usually long enough. For novels… well, they live in my head longer so they require a lot longer to gtfo.
   2. I haven’t perfected the timeframe between the rough draft and edits for a novel. I’ve only done it a few times and each one was different. This current one had a lot of mental health issues to contend with. I was laid off the summer I finished it. Then I started a new, very stressful job. Then there was that whole global pandemic, and then a LOT of political and social unrest.
      1. My novels might not take place in the real world (very often) but I am a person living in the world and I am not immune to its effects. All of this plays into the process too.
7. Revision, Round I
   1. Ugh. This round is all about reading the book. I print out the entire manuscript and read it in one sitting if I can. I take notes if anything good or bad stands out to me. I dread this moment of reading the book for the first time, but so far I’ve always been pleasantly surprised.
   2. So, I’ve got notes. I make goals based on those notes, and then I go back through the book and meet all those goals. This is typically big picture stuff. Scenes that don’t work, holes in the plot, restructuring scenes, etc.
   3. Try not to line edit, but inevitably do. Put all on-paper changes into the computer.
8. Revision, Round II
   1. Read it again. Print it out and take notes again. Note if any of the previous revision’s changes don’t work as planned.
   2. Make goals based on this read-through’s notes. These goals are still fairly big picture, but they’re getting smaller. More specific.
   3. Try not to line edit, but inevitably do. Put all on-paper changes into the computer.
9. Revision, Round III
   1. Read it again. Print it out and take notes again. Note if any of the previous revision’s changes don’t work as planned.
   2. Now, at this point, it should be pretty solid. If there aren’t any major notes, this is the point when I’ll give it to some trusted readers for feedback. Probably some sensitivity readers too.
   3. Try not to fiddle while I wait for feedback. Fail. Make changes in the computer too.
10. Revision, Round IV
    1. Gather feedback and decide what I agree with and what I don’t. This can be tricky because stories are subjective. I live by this quote from Neil Gaiman: “When someone tells you something is wrong with your story, they’re almost always right. When someone tells you how to fix it, they’re almost always wrong.”
    2. Make changes.
11. Revision, Round V
    1. Yep, still reading. Print it out. But this time, it’s less about notes. By now I’ve made all the big things work. I’ve done all the tough stuff and tweaked scenes and pacing and filled plot holes and added emotion where it’s needed. Now, it’s the fun stuff!
    2. LINE EDITS BABEYY. Now, knowing me, I’ve been doing some line editing all the way through because I can’t help myself. But this is where I get to wield my red pen like it’s a scalpel and just shave the book into something… glorious. Powerful.
    3. I love this step of the process. Can you tell?
12. Submit
    1. So, I come off the line edit step of the process and jump feet first into the Submission step. I send it out and let that editing high carry me into the abyss of publishing.
    2. Start the whole process over on the next project. It makes the next step a bit easier to bear.
13. Wait.
    1. Publishing is SLOW. Very, very slow. So, we wait. Often for months. The doubt trickles back pretty damn quick and I start to think I am an idiot for doing this and why would anyone ever want to read what I wrote?
    2. Ignore the doubt monster and keep working on the next thing.
14. Rejection.
    1. Look. This is part of the process. The more you submit, the more you’re rejected, the less it matters. Rejections don’t hurt anymore. They are simply part of the process.
15. Submit again.
    1. Keep throwing that story spaghetti at editors’ walls until something sticks!
16. Acceptance?
    1. This is never guaranteed. As a writer, I have absolutely ZERO control over which stories get published and which don’t. But, with persistence, I have a decent hit rate.
    2. If I do get an acceptance, I celebrate. I reward myself with dinner or a drink. No matter how small the magazine, a publication is worth celebrating.
    3. Tell EVERYONE. Scream about it into the void of the internet. That’s the whole point of publishing, right? For people to read what you wrote? To share it with the world? Why wouldn’t you promote your work? PROMOTE YOUR WORK!
17. Start again.
    1. I am always in the process. It looks a little different for each story, but I’m still always in it. Even when I think I’m not. And you know what? I find that oddly comforting.

BZ

It’s Monday.

I haven’t started my week with a blog post in a very very long time. I don’t have a ton to say today. There weren’t any writing activities over the weekend since we were at the coast partying it up with a good friend for her Bachelorette Party.

I have received some feedback on Abbie from my Elite Reading Group™. Nothing concrete that I can make edits from, but some general “It’s really good!” and “I liked it a lot” and even an “It’s so different from your other stories!”. And while that’s all fine and good, I need to give them all a little nudge to give me something a touch more substantial.

Now is about the time where I worry about where the heck I’m gonna submit this story. It’s quiet. So so quiet. The fantasy element is very thin, just a sprinkling of spice. I know at the start of the pandemic there was talk of a magazine being put together that would focus on these sort of stories… but I don’t know if that every truly came to be. I have a feeling this is going to be a very long submission process.

*sigh*

In other news, the newest episode of the podcast is OUT NOW! Give it a listen, and prepare yourself for another episode this Friday! We’ve been busy little library worker bees and have lots of good books to share with you!

Other than podcast editing, I’m going to start back on Tavi this week and see if I can get this very big ball rolling. I’ve got ~3 months to get it DONE. And I mean, done done. Like… start sending it to agents done.

I think I need to do some deep breathing exercises…

Anyway, that’s where I’m at. That’s what’s on the plate for this week, revisions of all kinds. I’ll pop in every now and again, either to tell you about all the progress I’m making, or to avoid all the progress I’m NOT making. You know how it goes.

Until then,

BZ

The Recap – November 2020

Hahahahahahahahahaha. What even are goals in this shit-heap of a year? I definitely didn’t set any (official) goals going into November. But, I still managed to get quite a bit done. Let’s talk about it. I basically have to thank Willamette Writers for all of my success in November. I signed up for their Month of Mastery program, which was a virtual community support for Nanowrimo. Basically, throughout the month of November they offered three workshops and weekly “cohort” meetings. There were several cohorts with various themes that met at different times each week, and you could go to any of them. This meant that I was thinking/talking about writing at least three days a week, and actively writing two days a week, beyond any discipline I managed to dredge up myself. Now, I didn’t have a novel to write this Nano, and I didn’t want to do a Nano Edmo (editing/revision month), so I decided to set a custom goal for the month. I had five short stories in various states of doneness. I wanted to get at least three of them done and/or write 20,000 words. Thanks to Willamette Writers, I achieved both of those goals! I finished three stories and very nearly finished a fourth. Plus a little bit of fanfiction sprinkled in.

Total Word Count: 20,795

Thankfully, Willamette Writers is considering doing more of these Months of Mastery, so I look forward to participating even more. I made writing friends and acquaintances, and even have a new weekly writing group, where we join a zoom call for two hours just to write together on camera. It’s awesome! All because I was willing to spend a little bit of money to get my writing butt in gear again. And it seems to have worked.

So, thanks Willamette Writers!

What else can I catch you up on? I have a story being held at a pretty big name magazine and I’m slowly dying from the anxiety of waiting to hear back about it. Like, the fact that it’s made it to the Editor-in-Chief’s desk (“awaiting final assessment” was what the email said) blew my mind. This is a magazine that has published Rebecca Roanhorse and Sam J. Miller (among many many others). A magazine that has won awards, and so have the stories its published. I. Am. Freaking. Out. But in a very very calm way. It’s all internal. Outside I am the coolest of cucumbers. So, in order to stop thinking about this, let’s talk about December!

December Goals

• Revise Nano Stories
• Submit to The Timberline Review
• Work on Santa Sarita
• Keep Reading!

Yep. You read that right. I’m working on my giant Mass Effect: Andromeda fic series again. I’ve already written two new chapters, so I’m hoping to just keep busting those out until I can finally put Sara and Reyes to bed. That way I can get back to Dragon Age, haha. I have about 500 words to cut from a short story to get it in shape to submit by the end of the month. I’m making good progress and expect to have it done by the end of the week. I’m basically giving myself a week with each of my Nano stories to revise them and see if there’s anything worth submitting. Kinda fun. I also only have another scene or two in another short story and it’ll be done drafting. I’ll be able to revise it in January. So lots of writerly things happening! And I have less than two weeks left of work until winter break!!!!! Hell yeah! Things are looking up, Blogland! Until next time. BZ

Goals Summary 2020 – Wk Who the Heck Knows?

Can I just say something? I really hate the new WordPress editor. I don’t want to have to select the “Classic” block every damn time I want to write. It’s WORDpress motherfuckers. Let me do the thing with the words!

Anyway I’m here to talk about some goals I set for myself, quite unofficially last week. 

Wk #???

• Write
• Read The Silent Patient
• Enjoy my birthday!

How’d I do?

• Write
  • Yeah, a little. And a little is better than none.
• Read The Silent Patient
  • Yep! Got it done in like two days once I actually sat down with it.
• Enjoy my birthday!
  • You know it! It was a wonderful weekend full of loved ones and relaxation.

Weekly Word Count: 324

Well, will you look at that. I did things. Writerly, readerly things. That’s… novel. 

(insert eye-roll gif here)

Yeah. I’m sorry about that one. I couldn’t help myself. Anyway, I’m being productive again for the first time in a long time. Or, at least consistently productive. I’ll have another post up soon talking about November and December goals, but first — what’s going on this week?

This Week

• Edit A Lullaby for Mattie Barker
• Write
• Read something

So, yeah. Keeping things simple. I want to submit Mattie Barker to The Timberline Review by the end of the month, but I need to shave off about 500 words, so I have my work cut out for me. I cut over 200 so far tonight, so it’s going well. 

I’m working on Santa Sarita again, which was wildly unexpected. I’ve written two chapters in the last week and hope to hammer it out and finally put a big ol’ DONE stamp on this fic series. You know, so I can get back to writing Dragon Age fanfic. 

Reading-wise I’m a little adrift at the moment. I just finished a craft book, and now have a couple of weeks before I need to pick up The Ten Thousand Doors of January for my work book club. I should finish reading Harrow the Ninth, but for some reason I’m hesitating. Probably because I want to read anything and every Dragon Age at the moment, because I am OBSESSED and need serious help. Also, I’m waiting to get Sam J. Miller’s new book delivered so I might pick that up instead. Who knows. Point is, I’mma read SOMETHING this week. 

So, yeah. That’s where I’m at. Nothing too crazy, nothing too ambitious. Just around, typing things and crossing out things until it all gels into something vaguely story shaped. And reading things. 

Until next time Bloggarts,

 

BZ

 

Goals Summary 2020 – Wk #27

Hey-o Bloggos,

I didn’t formally set goals last week, but I did manage to write the following on my whiteboard:

• Write every day
• #aStoryaDay

Um… neither of those things happened. I did manage to read 5 stories over the weekend, and have two more to read today to get caught up. I did not write every day but I did get a lot of outlining done and started in on one branch of the story.

Weekly Word Count: 47

That’s an abysmal word count, but there was a lot of formatting, assessing bits and pieces from previous attempts at this story, and a LOT of outlining. Work was done, it’s just not the sort that’s quantifiable. Hopefully that can change.

What’s Next?

• Write every day
• #aStoryaDay

That’s it. That’s all I’m striving for. I have a lot of household chores to catch up on and a hike planned for tomorrow, so it’ll be a busy-ish week outside of writing. Hopefully I can focus up and get some work done too.

Talk at you all soon.

 

BZ

The Cost of Rain, OUT NOW!

Blogland!

One of my short stories was published today!

Read it HERE.

Talk at you all soon, Bloggarts.

 

BZ

Summertime, and the livin’s… all right?

Heyo Bloggos,

Just wanted to let you all know that I am still around. The last couple weeks of work/the school year were pretty ding dang intense. I’m sure I mentioned it (here and here). Rightly so, I’ve taken this first week of summer break to breathe, chill, and come down from the frenzy that was closing down my library for the summer. I’ve watched a couple movies, way too much Jeopardy, read a bunch, and have generally just pretended I’m on vacation.

But, y’all know me. I don’t sit still well. A week in and I’m all ready getting antsy. But, I’m doing some writing (fanfic) and some outlining (new short story) and I’m still waiting to hear about some stories that are still out.

So, yeah. I’m here. Just give me some time.

 

BZ