Tag: submitting

Twenty percent, Writers of the Future, and the INTERN

I am now 20% finished with Ashes of the Starry Sea. Huzzah!  The story is definitely picking up steam.

In related news, my seven day totals has peaked higher than it’s been in the last two weeks, up above 17,500 words.  Inshallah, that number will rise to +24,000 befoore the end of the week.

In unrelated news, I’ve decided to recycle my 2009 Mayhew story for the Writers of the Future contest this quarter.  I’ve got until July 1st to get it out, but I have a plan, and I don’t think it will require too much extra work.  That was the thing holding me back (since, really, it’s not a story, it’s just a scene), but now I’ve got something that I think has a chance of working.

It’s funny how reading other people’s manuscripts motivates you to send your own stuff out.  I mean, reading the Leading Edge slushpile, I said to myself “you know, that story you wrote two years ago could probably get a pass.” Lo and behold!  With Writers of the Future, it’s definitely worth a shot.  Definitely.

Oh, and as I skimmed through Genesis Earth 2.0 today, the thought occured to me that I’ve written a kickass story here (pardon the language).  I mean, it’s far from perfect, and it’s not the best book ever written (not by a long shot), but it’s a lot more than a “stuff happens, the end” kind of story.  Maybe I’ll even see it in print someday.  And to think I almost trashed the project a year ago.

As something totally unrelated to personal news at all, check out this awesome new blog:

The straight dope on publishing from publishing’s most fearsome figure—THE INTERN.

Nice tagline!

As I read about the exploits of this publishing intern, I can’t help but think to myself, “hey, that could have been me.” Not quite sure how I feel about that, but I’m really glad to have all this time to write and work on my craft.  I definitely need it.

Some updates

Just a few quick updates before I go to bed:

My short story, Decision LZ150207, is getting published in The Leading Edge! Hooray!  This will be my first publication credit.  It certainly won’t be my last!

As you can see from the progress bar to the right, I’ve started work on draft 2.2 of Ashes of the Starry Sea, the novel that I finished back in April of 2008 (my first “finished” novel–and the project that spawned this blog).  My goal is to finish this draft by August 1st, 2009.

It is a beast of a novel–I’m predicting it will be at least 150,000 words.  The draft is currently at 158,000 words, but I’m going to have to add several scenes as well as vigorously trim out the bad writing.

And boy, is there a lot of bad writing in this draft!  I knew, when I wrote it, that I wasn’t that good, but holy cow!  Way too much introspection, way too much “tell”-iness, not nearly enough concrete details.  Too many adverbs, too much wordiness, especially in the scenes with the action.  This is going to be a deep revision.

BYU’s writing conference was a blast!  I’ll try to post more about it in the near future, hopefully tomorrow if I can get around to it.  The three editors who attended are open to submissions from the conference, and one of them prefers full manuscripts to partials, so on Saturday I printed up the full 2.0 draft of Genesis Earth.

Holding the full manuscript in my hands was surreal.  It’s one thing to write it out digitally and see it on your screen, but it is something else entirely to hold the tangible, physical thing in your hands.  I just…keep wanting to hold it.  It feels so real.

But yeah, I’m kind of uneasy sending the full manuscript off to this editor, especially since she hasn’t asked me for it specifically (she just told all the conference-goers that she prefers full manuscripts).  I don’t want to get in trouble sending my full ms out to multiple places, so my game plan is to send this to her ASAP so it can get rejected within the next 1-4 months (what she claimed was her turnaround time).

Because of that, I’m sending her a draft which could be more polished, but oh well.  Anything could be more polished–eventually, you just have to send your stuff out.  Besides, as pessimistic as this might sound, I do think that my mss has a fighting chance.  We’ll see what comes of this.

Running the gauntlet

In the past five days, I have written somewhere on the order of 10,000 words. None of them has been fiction (at least, not explicitly–more BS, if anything).

One monster history term paper, one middling poli sci essay, and two exams requiring 2,000 and 1,000 word essays. Blegh. Like pulling teeth.

The upside is, it’s almost finished! Just got my history exam left, and it shouldn’t be too hard. There is an essay, but the teacher already gave us the two questions from which he’ll pick the one on the test, and a short answer section. The rest is multiple choice. Not too hard, especially because I’ve really enjoyed the class.

The two exams I took today…let’s just say I’m glad it’s behind me. The deeper you get into your major, the more you have to take dumb classes about things you don’t care just to graduate. Blegh.

There is one other exam besides the history one, but I’m not counting it because it’s Brandon Sanderson’s English 318 class. His final exams consists of the first three chapters of you novel, plus a query letter and synopsis that he’ll mail out to the editor/agent of your choice (sending out the submission is a required part of the final). I did some research, found an agent, sent out a query email. If I get a response, I’ll send out the chapters to her. If not…I’ll send it out somewhere else. It didn’t seem like she wanted people to send her partials without her requesting it, so I didn’t send that out.

You know, it’s funny how the title of your novel seems a whole lot less clever when you’re finally sending it out to people.

And, as if things weren’t crazy enough, Utah decided to play jokes on us with the weather. We got our worst snowstorm of the year…on April 15th? Holy cow! WTH? (that’s “what the heck,” for all of you non-Utahans)

Here are some shots from my photoblog, before and after (or rather, before and during).

Crazy!