NaNoWriMo Approacheth

NaNoWriMo begins in three months' time. I've failed to edit and prepare my manuscript to submit for a free proof copy, so I have to win again this year if I want another shot at it. It's times like this I feel low, like someone who quite simply can't get the important tasks done. I had eight months to get my manuscript in order and I barely touched it. I had the opportunity to get a free hard copy of my work and I squandered it.

As I've said before, the editing and revising process is far more daunting to me right now than the writing process. I'm not really intimidated by NaNoWriMo any more, but the idea of editing a 50,000 word manuscript is enough to make me hide under the bed. NaNo has taught me a lot about myself as a writer, and I feel as if the format of the contest is not conducive to good writing for me. Editing while writing is not a good plan, but the pace of NaNo is such that there's no room to pause every few chapters or the equivalent and look over the work, tweak it, just make sure it's not completely insane.

NaNoWriMo is fun, if maddening, but at the end of it I have a huge work that I don't even want to think about untangling. Having an outline at the start of NaNo may help. I may try that this year, to build a road map of the story that will help keep it from becoming an unwieldy mess.

Contemplating Rejection

Erika Dreifus writes the Practicing Writer blog. In Thursday's post she showed a photo of the binder which contains her rejection letters for the collection of stories in question and makes reference to a far larger binder of individual story rejections.

I have no rejection letters in my collection. That's because I haven't submitted anything for publication anywhere since my goofy poem got published in my college literary magazine in 2000. The lit mag doesn't give out rejection letters; if they don't select it, your piece just doesn't appear. I had submitted a short story which was not selected for publication in that same magazine.

It's a foregone conclusion that in order to be published, one must submit content to a publisher. It's always a risk, though, because if the editor doesn't like your work, your work is unsuitable for their publication, or they just don't have room at the moment, they'll send you a dreaded rejection letter. Rejection is a milestone I haven't yet reached. I don't have the experience of receiving a rejection notice, but it's precisely because I haven't put myself out there yet.

I've read writers' advice that states that a writer should never take a rejection letter personally. The letter refers to the content itself, and not the writer. If a magazine rejects your article, it doesn't also mean they think you're a bad writer, have stupid hair, and smell funny. It just means they chose not to publish your work. When I receive my first rejection, I'll try to keep that in mind.

Have you had a piece of writing rejected by a publisher? I'd be interested in hearing about your experience.

Godzilla post hits snag: film at 11.

Yesterday I started what turned out to be a huge post I'd planned to break down into several individual sections. I got a bit hung up on it, so it may be in the works for a bit until I figure it out.

I heard back from Johnn Four about the article I edited for him. He went over it with a fine-toothed comb and tightened it up even more. It's in the current issue of the Roleplaying Tips Newsletter (http://www.roleplayingtips.com/readissue.php?number=493">#493), which has been sent to subscribers but isn't on the site yet. The RPT newsletter is a great resource for GMs and gamers alike. It tends to favour fantasy RPGs, but occasionally something suitable for other genres turns up. You can submit your own articles or tips to the newsletter, too! Check it out at http://www.rolelayingtips.com. There's an easy signup in the upper left hand corner, so you can get the tips delivered right to your inbox as soon as they're published each week.

Well, I'm out of tea. Must be time to move on for today. Have a creative day!

The Reward

I submitted my edits for Johnn Four's article on Friday and received a reply from him praising my punctuality, among other things. Johnn's letter made my day on Friday. I haven't yet heard whether or not he needs any adjustments made to the article, but on first look he seemed to think pretty highly of it.

This week has been pretty busy and/or rough, so this blog's been getting neglected. I'm finding I need to take some time to get some things sorted out, and so I may be a bit scarce here for a little while.

In the meantime I will recommend Steven Pressman's "The War of Art". I have it on audiodisc right now from the library. It talks a lot about "Resistance", also known as "writer's block", and how to overcome it.

Editing and the Rambling Process -- er, check that: reverse it.

So I'm working on editing an article for Johnn Four's Roleplaying Tips Newsletter. I meant to send it in on Wednesday, but it's due today. My process goes something like this: I print out the article, grab up my red pen, and go to town. Comma splices, repetition, a plethora of em-dashes fall beneath my nib. Then I update the computer copy and print it out again. I look it over. I find x - 0.5x things to red ink, where x is the number of things I found on the first go. I update again and print again. I find x - 0.5x things to red ink again.

I've done this about five times. I thought I had the final copy last night, but I sat on the couch, red pen in hand (because it generally is when I'm editing) and found more inkables. In case my algebra is just that horrible after all these years, I'm meaning to indicate that each time I'm getting a somewhat smaller number of things to red ink. But still, it seems as if this will never be finished.

But I'm submitting it today. This morning. Probably in under an hour, once I look it over One More Time. Sigh.

It's not to say this is a horridly-written article, by any means. It needed some filing and sanding and now I think I'm polishing it. Why I'm using carpentry metaphors I don't know -- I messed up while making a box in wood shop in seventh grade. Carpentry is not my thing. But there's a parallel, at least in the process.

Forgive my rambling -- I seem to have failed to properly budget my energy supply for the week and I'm running a bit low. These sorts of posts happen at those times. But half an hour ago I was plinking around on the internet and despairing I wouldn't have anything to write for this blog today. So chalk up a success on that front.

My weekend, starting today, will be busy and full of stuff. I hope I can go the distance... *thud* Have a great and creative weekend!

Editing. More. Again. Repeated.

A few months back I volunteered to help Johnn Four with some edting on his Roleplaying Tips Newsletter. He responded that he had received a lot of offers and had selected someone, but that he would keep me in mind for the future. Sunday I received an e-mail from Johnn. He needs someone to edit and proofread an article and he offered it to me! This is, as I said, a volunteer gig, but it's an opportunity to show my stuff, as well as a feather in my writing/editing cap. I've got until June 4th to finish it up. I'll carve out some time this week to take an in-depth look at the article he sent me.

What I haven't done is pick up my manuscript for editing. The deadline is steadily approaching, and I have to carve out some time for that, too, before it's too late. There's a reminder on the desktop of a VirtualBox Kubuntu install, because KDE 4.4 has, among its nifty new Widgets, a countdown Widget that spans more than 24 hours. But I don't run that every day, so I don't always see what it says. Right now it says 66 days, 5 hours.

I'd better get a move on.

Excerpts and Editing

Part of the process of writing involves sharing your work with others and requesting critiques. I've occasionally been given to put excerpts of my work in here for you to read. I'm my own worst critic (aren't we all?) and I often convince myself no one wants to read that drek until it's at least polished drek that shines in the sun. With less than three months until the CreateSpace deadline, I have a lot of work to do on my manuscript, The Rise of Umbra. That manuscript has been lying, mostly ignored, on my bedroom floor for the last month or so. Not a dignified position for a novel manuscript. Not the most respectful way to treat such a thing, either.

Yesterday's post never quite made it live, but in what I managed to write I mentioned that things have been a bit stressful for me lately, and I think I managed to soldier on these last few weeks only to be faced with cashing that stress check this week. That's one of several excuses I could give for my shameful treatment of my work. Poor manuscript, gathering dust on the floor, spiders walking across it, and it just lying there, its metallic binder clips winking in the sun as I pull the shades open. Yes, manuscript, I'll get to you. But only after the eighty-seven thousand kajillion other things that are more important.

And they honestly are important things I've placed ahead of my editing. In part I'm dragging my feet, because facing that editing and revision task is not something I'm looking forward to. It's like anything else, in writing or elsewhere: it seems scariest before I start it. I have gotten into it before and it has been scary, but also refreshing. Cutting most of an entire chapter out terrified me, but, as I mentioned when I did it, it was for the good of the book, and I think it was necessary. Drawing big 'X's across my pages with a highlighter was freeing in a way. But now that I've made the mess, I've got to go clean it up.

So, right, excerpts. I might be posting some of those in here. Some more. Aside from the couple I've posted previously. Yesterday I couldn't get going on my blog post, today I can't shut up. So look for those, or look away, perhaps, when they hit the screen. And I'll leave it at that.

Editing While Writing: Not Advised.

I've found myself thinking about things I'm picking up from Self-Editing For Writers whenever I read something. Mostly with respect to my own work, but sometimes I read someone else's and think, "Ooh, bit of weak language there," or "Hey, easy with the semicolons, buster." I've also realised I've become a bit confused as to what should or shouldn't be done with my novel or my short stories, which have been woefully neglected so far this week.

I mentioned previously that I've struggled with editing as I write my short story, striving to keep it tight and short while in the process of creating it, which is not a good thing. I fear that if I sprawl too much in the initial writing phase that editing and revising the piece will be a lot harder. I'm finding out how much of a mess it is to try to rein in a NaNoWriMo novel, which is designed to be written pell-mell and in a hectic fashion. How much harder will it be to go through that with a short story? And should I do it anyway, for the work of it and to perhaps learn something?

I must say, though, that I am, in my own geeky way, enjoying grabbing a highlighter and marking out mechanics, as advised by Self-Editing: beats, narrative summary (not too much of that, now!), etc. Self-Editing is one of those books I may well grab for myself rather than endlessly checking it out of the library. They've even got me coming around on the subject of -ly words. A little. Kinda. Where was I? Oh yes - break out the highlighters, there's work to be done! Hyah! *whipcrack*

It's clear to me that I was in one certain mood when I began this post yesterday and now I am in a rather different state of mind. I'll be busy today and it's better to be a bit wired and weird (anagram!) than sullen and grrar.

I must now away. Have a good weekend. Write/draw/paint/sculpt/compose something this weekend! It will make it better, I promise.

Intestinal Fortitude

I was reading Sol Stein's 'Stein on Writing' yesterday. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny early spring day and I took the book out into the yard to read for a bit. I read a few chapters, then got to the one about suspense. In it, Stein challnges an author to find the weakest scene in his or her novel, and eliminate it. "It takes guts," he writes, "but do it!"

I did it. There's a scene in The Rise of Umbra that has been bothering me for a while now, and I just grabbed up the closest thing to hand -- an orange mini-highlighter -- and drew a big 'X' through most of the chapter. It was painful, terrifying, and wonderful all in one. But I couldn't heal the patient without cutting him open, so to speak. It's left dangling a bit of continuity, but that can be fairly easily rectified. It's like knocking down a bridge between Town A and Town B. Now I have to find another route to Town B. I have some ideas.

I later received an e-mail from a writer friend who had finished reading this early draft, and he offered some suggestions for improving the chapter I had just carved out. I'll look into that in greater detail, hopefully at some time today.

In the meantime, I need to spend half an hour writing on my short story. Ass In Chair must go into effect, no matter how tired I feel this morning. When I write, I can talk about the process of writing. When I don't, I can't, and that means meaningless blather in here. No one wants that.

Art Brain Confession

Time for me to 'fess up: I'm supposed to be composing more awesome bloggage for you folks, but... I watched willowing's vid that I put up here yesterday, and then another one (my favourite and very first willowing video I ever saw, "Treat Yourself Like You Treat Your Best Friend"), and I think I might be doing art today instead of writing. Hm. I've started prepping two sheets of watercolour paper (forgetting until just now that I should be taping them down and not using rubber bands, duh, so they don't dry buckled), and... well, I have watercolour crayons and Inktense pencils and all kinds of good stuff.

So, er, yeah. Not much going on in my writing brain right now. I got that one short story started earlier in the week, but I find myself editing as I write to keep the thing tight and keep out unimportant details, and I could, and probably should, be doing that type of work after the story's finished.

When Art Muse attacks, she does not take 'I should be writing!' for an answer.

Critiques, Revision and Story, Oh My!

It's been said it's dangerous to show your fledgling work to people. Lawrence Block echoes this opinion in "Telling Lies for Fun and Profit", and I can't say I disagree either. Block argues against showing unfinished work on the grounds it gives you an excuse to interrupt your progress on the work, especially if the work is going well.

The piece I've tossed out to a couple of writer friends recently is a 26,000 word novel(ette) I wrote in 2005 for National Novel Writing Month. I've previously shopped the first few chapters around at my college's critique group, but that was a few years ago, and most of what that group did was circle every adverb I had written. So far I've heard from one of the readers, who has offered only that the story was interesting, that she wanted to find out what happened, but didn't care about the characters.

As a self-professed character-driven writer, this critique is more than a bit troublesome. If my characters are flat, I have a serious problem. This is but the first in what I hope will be a collection of critique comments on this work, but it's an inauspicious beginning. See Block's comment above.

The story is complete as written, inasmuch as it has a clear beginning, middle, and end. But it certainly could use some tweaking (or carving up, as the case may be), and fleshing out. I fully intend to sit down with Holly Lisle's one-pass manuscript editing instructions and do what I can, though it's easy for me to get lost. It's like trying to clean my disaster of a bedroom when I was a teenager: "where do I start?"

The more I think about it, the more I think I need to really dig into this story and determine if it's actually a complete start-to-finish novel. It's probably a bad idea to attempt to revise an incomplete manuscript.