Brief sales (well, not sales, but activity) update:

• submitted to Abyss & Apex magazine and got rejected after three weeks. Not sure whether it's a form rejection or not. It says the story was "well received here, but after some thought [the editors] decided not to accept it for publication". Probably form, but a form letter that is mindful of the author's feelings :-)
• submitted to the Hadley Rille anthology Destination Future, just today, so no results yet. They seem to be quite fast to respond, according to Duotrope stats.

In a delightfully phrased response to a reader e-mail, Neil Gaiman writes up a powerful reply to any fanboy who is outraged at the fact that the authors of their favorite series spend their time doing anything other than writing the next sequel.

You're complaining about George doing other things than writing the
books you want to read as if your buying the first book in the series
was a contract with him:..

Good point there. It's not because we fork over a puny fifteen dollars to buy volume one of a series, that we get any sort of claim on the author's time. Gaiman also puts it a little more strongly, with his characteristic direct verbiage.

In other news, I saw a powerful documentary on the landing at Omaha beach yesterday night - in between baby feedings. Amazing to hear the veterans talk about the build-up towards the landing, and how they were unaware of the danger that waited. They said "they were just going to do it" and they "did not think much of what was ahead".
Sadly for them, the Germans had fortified the beach in the months after the Allied decision to land there had been taken, and the artillery and aerial bombardments missed their targets completely, turning the beach into a desperate killing zone. I don't have anything useful to add about this, other than express my wonder at how those young people ever were able to jump out of the landing craft and press on, despite the carnage that surely they must have known (or did they really not see it coming?) must follow.

The internetz giveth, the internetz taketh. Just wanted to mention that while the net saps away a lot of time, as I am wont to spend far too much time browsing to my favorite author blogs, agent blogs, message boards and whatnot; but on the other hand, at some points the people you interact with there do stimulate you to get back to it.
A fairly chance conversation with someone on the sffchronicles Publishing board, followed up by some private messages, while not completely writing-related, has brought back the urge to write. And to write right now, tonight, as soon as possible. Strange how some little things do that to you.

Well, not my commercial success, obviously, because no one seems to want to read my scribblings so far, but about Dan Brown's. I spotted a thread on the SFFChronicles board where someone mentioned that his new novel, The Lost Symbol, has an initial print run of 6.5 million copies. That's a lot of paper.

On the board, a whole debate ensued in which some claimed Dan Brown is unable to write decent prose - and the undertone there is clearly that he does not deserve this success because of this perceived lack of skill - whereas some others claimed his prose is simply not "up to literary standards" but because it is so successful, you cannot uphold that it is "bad prose".
I tend to agree with the latter opinion. If he sells so incredibly well, he must be doing something right. For the masses at least. For a novel to become so popular, it must touch a large section of our population in a shared psychological soft spot, and the writing must at least be good enough not to detract from the story.

I feel that to malign people like Dan Brown, Ian Rankin and others who were mentioned on the board as "bad writers" is a little sad - especially when the comments come from unpublished or relatively unsuccessful (commercially speaking) writers. It always sounds a little like "I'm not enjoying this huge success but that's because I don't want to stoop so low, I'm a much better writer but the masses don't get, and the agents don't get it because they're all so focused on bestsellers...".

What do you think?

It's been almost a month since I wrote anything here. I had not expected the impact of our baby boy being born two months early to be so big; it's hard to imagine how that affects your "real life".

I've noticed that I miss writing. I know now that it makes sense for me to keep trying to write stuff that other people might want to read, because I at least enjoy writing it. I feel "useless" when I'm not doing anything creative at night, and it's a feeling I've had a lot lately, even though I know - rationally - that I cannot take on any other projects at the moment. Between spending time in the NICU, spending time with my kids, and high pressure at work... I'm all spent. But it feels awkward not working on anything else.

It probably makes no sense if you don't have this same - drive? But there it is. It's a bug gnawing away at me, an itch that keeps driving me in circles at night. And when our little boy comes home and life returns to normal, I'll finally be able to scratch. I look forward to it.

Finally got around to some wordage tonight. Nothing dramatic, but an important five hundred words nevertheless - as they're the opening scene of a new short piece. Tentative title Galton's Dreams.



WIP:

Frozen in fearful panic, I could only stare as the intruder swung through the opening in the fractured panes of glass, and stepped crunching onto the shard-littered corridor. She straightened and only then spotted me in the doorway ahead. The figure was a she, that much was clear, and the sharpest edge of the fear ebbed away as I realized the girl was alone. No police squad in sight.

We were both absolutely still, studying each other. It was difficult to make out her features; she wore a dark training suit and the moonlight slashing through the broken window was the only illumination. It leeched all the color from her face, and the sharp shadows cast across her narrow face gave her a ghostly aspect. Then she turned her head a little and the shadows shifted favorably - No, it could not be.

Just for your and my reference, I submitted The Snow Fell Fast to Futurismic on Monday. I changed some minor things based on some helpful crits on the OWW. It's now out there, on its own feet, living its own life and I had to let it go...

There. I think I've done editing my third ever story, The Snow Fell Fast and Final. I have a good feeling about it, but I'm still not quite sure it is really finished. As such, I'm contemplating resubmitting it for crits. Then again, I might just submit it to markets instead, and get on with writing a next story. I need to up the pace a little on the output...

Word count: 3,964 words
Total writing/editing time: approx. 5 hours

Excellent read here:

Pitfalls of Prophecy: Why Science Fiction So Often Fails to Predict the Future >> Gary Westfahl on predictions of "the future" in Science Fiction literature, and why the predictions are almost always dead wrong. Very interesting, and quite along the lines of my own thinking when I construct the near-future world in which my stories seem to naturally take place.

Today's healthy dose of linkage:

Ireland's most wanted reckless driver has been caught >> A wonderful story I heard this morning from a few Irish colleagues here in the office, but apparently it's also on the BBC today [via Jay Lake and said colleagues].

Scalzi on writing media tie-ins (i.e. Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica,...) novels >> A bit discouraging, this defense of the media tie-in novel by blogger-extraordinaire Scalzi. Especially the bits where he mentions how hard it is to make any money writing SFF. Perhaps I ought to rethink this whole venture?

A lengthy, interesting post on shifting POV (point of view) by Jacqueline Lichtenberg over on Alien Djinn Romance >> haven't read all the way through this article, but I will do just that later tonight. A lot to learn about the craft of writing on this blog. Thanks to the peeps at OWW for pointing this out.

Here's my first submission to Outshine. It got rejected so I'm just going to post it here. My accepted piece is a lot stronger, I can see that. But still. I feel like it's a waste to let this die in an e-mail thread, and it may give you an idea of just how concise twitter fiction (why not call it "twiction"?) is.

Shielding my eyes from the solarfield glare /
high on the hill,/
I saw her delightfully dark /
against the azure of pools and panels below

So. I got some great news yesterday - I made my first fiction sale!

Three cheers for myself, and all, even though it's quite a tiny sale. More specifically, a nanosale for twitterfiction. If you haven't heard of the concept, check out my Twitter feed. Twitter is a social site that allows you to broadcast tiny little updates about what you're doing, random observations, or short haiku-like statements to people who subscribe to your twitter feed. Very short, in fact, because posts are limited to 140 characters.

Jetse de Vries, formerly of Interzone and currently preparing the Shine positive SF anthology, runs a "twittermag" called Outshine. What's a twittermag, I can hear some of you thinking back at me? Well, it's a dedicated twitter feed on which he publishes SFnal "tweets" (twitterspeak for posts) that speak to the imagination. Sort of an instant SF magazine.
My second submission to Outshine was accepted. It will be published on April 29th, if the current planning holds up.

In other news, I am editing my third short story, The Snow Fell Fast and Final, after getting some majorly useful crits from an online workshop. More on that in a later post.

Two quickie links for you writerly people out there:

::: Nathan Bransford hosts a discussion on writerly auto-terminology
Nathan is a SFF-representing literary agent working at Curtis Brown, and he has a highly interesting blog (to which I subscribe). He sometime asks pertinent questions to the sizable crowd of authors, writers, aspiring writers and fellow agents who frequent his journal. This week's question sparked quite a debate:

So. When do you start calling yourself "a writer?", as in, "I'm a writer, please go easy on me with the bad news."

When you finish a novel?
When you spend a certain amount of time doing it?
When you decide it's what you want to do?
When you have an agent?
Upon publication of your first novel?

And what about "author?"

::: Pitfalls of Writing Science Fiction & Fantasy, General Useful Information & Other Opinionated Comments
You've probably seen this before, but I came across some broken links to this interesting list of Do's and Don'ts for new writers in the SFF field; so I decided to repost it here.
Actually it's more of a list of Don'ts only, but it's still really useful. Vonda McIntyre knows her stuff, she has quite a few SFnal novels to her name, though I have to admit not having read any of her work. I'll have to keep an eye out for her work. As to the Pitfalls, a recent crit of my latest short story highlighted a flaw that is listed in the Pitfalls: the Expository Lump of Dialogue. I need to work on that...

There. I was strong and resisted the lure of Fallout 3 last night, and instead I finished off a short short story that I am provisionally calling The Snow Fell Fast and Final. It weighs in at almost 3,000 words and I think it will be just over that after an editing pass this weekend.

This is really quite an achievement for me, or so it feels, at least. I wrote this short in two sessions on consecutive nights. That's about 1,500 words per night.

Which is exactly the type of productivity level I want to aim for. Wordage is important, that's what reading lots of author blogs over the past few months has taught me (reaching a Jay Lake-like level of superhuman hypergraphy might be out of the question, but there seems to be a consensus that when you're drafting, you should just sit down and write, no matter how you're feeling or what the distractions of the day might have been).

Anyway. I'm feeling quite happy with myself!

Wrote 1,200 words in an hour and a half last night. For the first time since I tried to take up writing, I felt as though I "got it right", "it" being the drafting of fiction in a fast, enjoyable manner. Perhaps it helped that it's an idea that I had been turning around in my head for a while, so I knew where I was going. I managed to put a lot of personal feeling into it as well, I think, and that helped.

I hope to write the remaining 1,000 words or so tonight.

WIP:

I edged out of the command unit, ducked through a hatch and stepped into the lab. When I reached the panoramic observation window, I drew a visor onto it and resumed our conversation. "I suppose you're all really busy right now."

"Well, yes. Most of us got pulled away." Alex shifted in his seat. "Look, Jon, maybe you should spend some more time in the SimUnit. Psych says you're getting a little too stressed out. They uploaded some new programs that will help you."

"I'm fine, Alex, but thanks. Tell them I'll do just that. I've seen the view, after all," I replied, gazing out over the plains of endless rust-colored rock. Wisps of thin reddish cloud, almost invisible to the naked eye, streamed across the murky sky. The last vestiges of a dust storm that had shaken the habitat quite badly.

A little update was overdue here. In between Fallout 3 sessions (I know, I know, it's Evil Procrastination Incarnate, but hell is it a great game) I finished the rewrite of Total Immersion. It ended up at almost 8,000 words and at that it's on the borderline between a novelette and a short story.

Of course, typically for my luck, that makes it harder to find a market for. Anyway, it just goes to show that I need to write up one or two of my other ideas right away. Tomorrow, perhaps...

Off to bed now!

It's all down to Persistence, baby. Psychotic Persistence no less. Jay says, in with characteristic clarity and eloquence, that all the successful authors he knows share a single trait:

What they have in common is psychotic persistence. Almost all successful writers exhibit behaviors which would be unhealthy perseveration in the everyday world, but are critical success factors in publishing.

Well said, as usual on Jay Lake's blog. Sadly, I have yet to exhibit this trait.

While I have the persistent feeling that I should be writing, I'm still in the "learning/thinking" phase of things, studying how writers I like go about constructing their stories, picking up bits and pieces of story ideas and collecting those. I guess it is a step in the right direction, but something still holds me back from just writing.

I think it's fear of failure. Stupid really.

I haven't posted anything for a while, for a variety of reasons:

1. Reading. Yes, I've been reading. Lots of reading - rather than writing. I was a voracious reader in my teens and tweens, right until our son was born. I kind of stopped making time for reading then, but now, as I picked up my pen and tried to write stuff of my own, I realised I had gotten out of touch with the voices that I love, with the stories that make me ache and burn inside.

So I started reading again. I finished Gibson's Spook Country, which had been lying around for a while, rushed through A Game of Thrones (and am now barreling on in volume two of A Song of Fire and Ice) and now, ten minutes ago, turned the last page of Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book. More on that later, I'm still too touched to analyse why it resonates so profoundly with me.*

2. Life. Work in times of Depression. Things that interfere and take away my drive to create.

3. Rewriting Total Immersion based on some valuable input from the SFF Writing Workshop people.

* Still listening to Sigur Ros, also to their previous album Takk, which is even more dramatic and makes for a great soundtrack to George RR Martin's epic fantasy!

My literary prowess is growing by the hour. I have just received my second rejection for Total Immersion - hurrah. Well okay, maybe I'm not quite feeling that hurrah deep down, but still, I am somewhat proud to have received a personal rejection this time.

Chris East from Futurismic sent me a little e-mail that commented on the writing and the story, and in short it came down to "there's some good stuff there but it's not up to par throughout". 

And you know what, I cannot agree more. I really have to sit down, go through the second half of the story and give a good, critical edit. In my hurry to get my stuff out there, I never paid as much attention to the second part of this short story as I did to the first half. I knew that, but I still sent it out, violating one of the basic tenets of writing as testified everywhere on the net, i.e. "Write, edit until polished, and only then submit".

The Futurismic editor did include the magical comment "We hope to see more of your work", which, if I can believe what various editorial blogs out there have taught me, really does mean they would like to see more (better) work. 

Time to start writing in earnest again, I suppose. After my previous writing post I haven't really written much, I've been chewing on some plot hooks that have going in circles in that foul broth of half-baked ideas and unrounded characters that is my mind at the moment. But I feel as though a few of them are nearing the point where I can sit down and write. Fingers crossed!

Story: The Singer Unsung (working title)

Word count: 300

Total word count: 1690

Reason for stopping: still not sure of where to take the plot. I know the boy is going to lose his friend, the only question is how and when.

To come back to writing process, I find that listening to some mood-setting music on my good pair of headphones is about the only way to get over my innate fear of failure, my automatic self-censoring mechanism that refrains me from writing freely. I'll try and use that to write sooner in the evening, which should give me some more time and allow me to go beyond a few hundred words per day. Should being the key word here. Oh well.