writing – Page 2

First original submission goes out tonight…

[UPDATE] Annnnd it’s submitted. Thanks for the encouragement, folks.

…I finished it this afternoon, and I’m going to give it an hour to cool down before I do a revision and send it out for the Rejection Circus. I try not to overdo my revisions; I get the feeling that a lot of people get snagged on that and spend so much time rewriting their stuff that they never actually go out and submit it for publication. I’m mostly just looking for spelling, lost text, and bad autocorrects.

I have some hopes for this particular story: I’d let you folks read it, except that doing so immediately flips it from ‘original’ to ‘reprint.’ This is one heck of a racket; I ought to host my own quarterly contest or something and rake in the cash that way. The hoops people will jump through to get even twenty bucks…

It has been a busy enough week.

I’ve been sifting through the various sands for publishers who will do reprints – as I’ve noted before, everything published either here or on Patreon counts as a reprint – and submitting the various stories that I’ve created so far. And so now it’s just a matter of sitting back, and watching the rejection emails flow in. Although I still have a bunch of stories that I have yet to prep for sending out, mostly because I want to have a nice, even flow. I figure that getting into a routine of making sure that I send out at least one story every day to be rejected will keep me productive.

This is, by the way, not despair talking. The expectation here for me has to be that I will gather a plethora of rejections. That’s just simply how it works. That’s how it works for everybody. And while I am of course a brilliant writer, I am also competing now in an arena that has its own rules and ways of doing things. So there’s that. Besides, eventually they’ll start sending me rejection emails that explain why. Feedback that I can use, in other words.

Moe Lane

PS: Scrivener? Totally worth it. Continue reading It has been a busy enough week.

In which I abruptly develop empathy for my fellow-writers.

Good God, but I just got filled in on the original/’reprint’ racket. Long story (heh) short: everything counts when it comes to whether a story’s a reprint, apparently. Including things like, say, Patreon accounts or websites. And the rates go through the floor. I say this with bemusement, not anger: it’s a hell of a racket, particularly since nobody seems to be actually making a mint off of it.

I’m just grateful that I discovered this on Day Two. Looks like I’m going to have to write more things that just go straight out to the publishers before anyone else sees them. I’m also contemplating whether I need to seriously reassess how long I wait before I put Patreon-generated works on this website: there’s some debate about whether things published via subscription count as reprints, and absolutely none on whether things published on websites do.

So join my Patreon, dagnabbit.

Moe Lane

PS: None of this should affect the gaming stuff, though. Different rules and I expect that I’ll be mostly self-publishing, anyway.

Well, back to less spooky posting tomorrow.

Halloween being over and everything. I’m not doing NaNoWriMo, before anybody asks: instead I’m going to be actively starting up trying to sell something. In my experience, the single best way for motivating me into perfecting my craft as an writer has always been to wave money in my face. Obviously, this is just my particular artistic kink, not a general rule; but since it seems to work for me as an impetus for artistic growth I see no reason not to go with it now.

So I figure that we’ll see what November brings.

Need opinions on writing workshops.

On the one hand, I’ve been writing for twenty-five years. I actually get money for doing it, too. Heck, I’m one of those strange people who actually gets to use the stuff that he learned in his English degree. On the other hand, I’ve spent the last fifteen years writing things that aren’t, say, science fiction short stories like the one that I’m totally procrastinating on writing right now. So, you know, maybe I should get a refresher? And on the gripping hand: even if I need to touch up my skillset, is a writing workshop the way to go there?

Opinions welcome. I still got a few days before this online class that I happened across closes, anyway.

Words can express how appalling I find this…

…the problem is, some of those words are blistering. And I mean that almost literally; if there was ever a time for an old-school Old Irish satire attack, this would be the time. Below is from a spam mail that I got this afternoon:

Speaking as a very talented writer, this is a horrible thing to do to people. And it’s not a horrible thing that’s being done to very talented writers: we generally end up doing all right for ourselves. No, targeting the people who aren’t very talented is what’s horrible. Writing is a skill as much as it is an art: and improving that skill takes discipline and a willingness to learn by doing (usually badly, at first). Telling people that they can write crap and it won’t matter anyway does nothing to help those people stop writing crap.

So, for God’s sake: don’t listen to these dudes. Write as well as you can, for as long as you can. Don’t give yourself permission to be second-rate.

Quote of the Day, Write Because You Must, Publish Because SHOW ME THE MONEY edition.

~~Sarah Hoyt~~ [Amanda Green], shaking her darn head:

Yesterday, on one of my few forays onto Facebook, I saw several authors debating the so-called wisdom of an article posted in the Huffington Post. The article is basically a warning for self-published authors not to write four books a year.

Yep, you read that correctly. The headline for the article implores indie authors not to write — not publish — but write four books a year.

…Speaking as somebody in a not-completely-unrelated field: you can’t just tell people not to write. Oh, you could, but it won’t do any good. It’s, among other things, a habit. One with nasty withdrawal symptoms, as Bob Heinlein once noted (and note that he wrote about it). Continue reading Quote of the Day, Write Because You Must, Publish Because SHOW ME THE MONEY edition.

This is a remarkably fascinating S/F conversation…

…about gender identity in one’s works that I would like to avoid like the plague. Not because I don’t want to take sides – Glenn Reynolds, [Sarah Hoyt, Kate Paulk], and Larry Correia (followup) are perfectly correct that raw story should take precedence over politically-correct bullshit – or because I think that it’ll wreck my non-existent non-political writing career (you try being a too-open Republican in the role-playing game writing community sometime). No, I want to avoid it because it’s so freaking dreary and futile. I find that more and more of my genre fiction reading is coming from sources that are not big publishing companies: e-books, Amazon, Kickstarter, and POD will probably end up being my default options*. It’s already a matter of marketing irrelevance for me whether a book’s won a Hugo or a Nebula (never used to be); I kind of expect that trend to continue.

And it is kind of diagnostic that, of all the people in those links who are arguing the other side, about the only one I read is John Scalzi. And while I enjoyed Redshirts and Old Man’s War well enough, well… he doesn’t make me keep reading him the way that, say, Charlie Stross can.

Moe Lane Continue reading This is a remarkably fascinating S/F conversation…

Quote of the Day, I Dunno: We Just DO It edition.

I’ve had this exact same reaction as Tycho.

People occasionally compliment me on my writing: they will say something like, “I like your writing,” which is constructed in such a way that I cannot wriggle from it. I accept the compliment because my momma raised me right; refusal of a gift is the first sin. But this is respiration for me. This is the sound of me breathing out; I can’t not do it. Though I suppose I could stop, and die.

I know what shape a piece of language has to conform to, and once I have the mold, words just fall into it. [snip] I’m not telling you this to make you think that I am clever or interesting – I’m trying to explain why it is difficult to absorb compliments for what feel like autonomic responses. Most of the words I’m using are just English words, right off the shelf, with the occasional aftermarket mod. I’m not sure I’ve ever done anything that could not be accomplished as well or better with refrigerator magnets.

Continue reading Quote of the Day, I Dunno: We Just DO It edition.

“Discouragement for young writers.”

This is brilliant, bitter, bitterly brilliant, what have you: but if nothing else, it is a fascinatingly brutal essay, chock-full of absolutely necessary advice to aspiring writers. A taste:

Buzz is nothing. Getting your name out there is nothing. All of the positive mentions and trackbacks and Facebook hits from that piece you did for somebody’s vanity project website are nothing. Money isn’t everything. But you can use it to buy food. Want to call yourself a writer? Get paid. Eat. Pay the rent. Never doubt that a generation of young “writers” is publishing endlessly, never getting paid, convinced that tomorrow some magazine will call and they’ll get to sign the Rich and Famous contract like from The Muppet Movie. Those people are idiots. They are also your competition.

It’s a tough life, to be sure.