So the summer semester is over for me and I've finally found myself with only a honey-do list to hang over my head. My hope was that I could take this month before the Fall semester starts to catch up on some "me time" but I'm still unsure about how much of that I'll be getting.
I don't really have anything profound to say here, but I thought I'd update my current plans. I hope to catch up on some writing and maybe even get to the editing stage of my novel (that's not going to be much fun). Fishing and other total recreational things will be crunched between watching the munchkin and taking care of household chores. I need to baby-proof the kitchen, which might require extensive home modifications...
On the writing front, I got around to submitting the stories that have been sitting around and I want to find a Halloween short story contest for a story I wrote last year. Still waiting on two more stories that have been out for WAY too long. I might have to query them to make sure they didn't get rejected and I just never got notified.
That's about it for now. I hope this is the beginning of regular postings again.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Hello? Are you in there?
The title of this post has actually two meanings: I haven't written anything here for a while, and so I thought that it might be what anyone who is foolish enough to follow me might be thinking, and that my writing has kind of fallen into a stagnation period.
As I've said before, my writing tends to go in spurts, so I might just be in a dry spell, but I think that there is more to it than that. By way of explanation, I'll tell you that I'm currently finishing up my summer semester, which consisted of 3 online classes (one that required me to read 4 textbook chapters a week!) and that I haven't really found all that much time to work on my writing lately. In fact, I've had a few stories that got rejected a while ago that I haven't even submitted again.
The academic writing that I've been doing has not been cutting it, and the lack of any semblance of writing lifestyle is starting to wear on me, I think. Next year won't be any better, but I can hope that I figure out how to balance finishing school, finding time to write the nightmares before they take over, spending time with my family and maybe even spend some time on hobbies like fishing, playing video games, etc.
In the meantime, I thought I'd throw this out so that people don't think I'm dead and hopefully I can get myself back in the swing of finding a few minutes to scribble a post here and there.
As I've said before, my writing tends to go in spurts, so I might just be in a dry spell, but I think that there is more to it than that. By way of explanation, I'll tell you that I'm currently finishing up my summer semester, which consisted of 3 online classes (one that required me to read 4 textbook chapters a week!) and that I haven't really found all that much time to work on my writing lately. In fact, I've had a few stories that got rejected a while ago that I haven't even submitted again.
The academic writing that I've been doing has not been cutting it, and the lack of any semblance of writing lifestyle is starting to wear on me, I think. Next year won't be any better, but I can hope that I figure out how to balance finishing school, finding time to write the nightmares before they take over, spending time with my family and maybe even spend some time on hobbies like fishing, playing video games, etc.
In the meantime, I thought I'd throw this out so that people don't think I'm dead and hopefully I can get myself back in the swing of finding a few minutes to scribble a post here and there.
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
Professionalism, rejections, and perseverance.
I don't read it regularly, but the editor of Shock Totem, K. Allen Wood, has a blog that is usually pretty good. I did, however, read this one, in which there are two links to less than desirable ways to respond when someone doesn't particularly like your writing. I found them entertaining, but they made me think about the fact that writers and editors are all people, and as such, are not always the most professional people.
I like to think that I demand a high level of professionalism of myself, even when faced with a less than professional response to my own writing. While it hasn't happened often (I usually only receive form rejections) there are times when I really have to wonder what happened on the other end of the submission email. There was one instance in which the editor, who provided a synopsis as part of the response, clearly didn't understand the story at all. I would normally consider this a problem, but my wife understood it just fine, and she hasn't read that much of my genre. Others have similarly had no issues understanding the story and it definitely was not a "you're not supposed to understand it" type (which I loathe, by the way). That was not an example of lack of professionalism, just an example of editors being human and just as prone to mistakes as the rest of us.
An unfortunate example of unprofessional behavior that I've experienced in my writing career was a personal rejection that I received that felt like the editor was attempting to make a personal attack against me. The funniest thing about it was that I quite clearly got an emotional response, which is generally considered to be the sign of an exceptional story. But this editor decided to pass, and in an appallingly unprofessional manner.
All of that aside, rejections are a way of life for writers who do not have a household name. Even writers that have dozens of published stories still face rejection, and when you have a string of them, it gets a little hard to take. I'll admit that even thought I consider myself to have a pretty thick skin, it has gotten to me at times. The funk generally only lasts a few days at most.
So the name of the game, as far as I can tell right now, is perseverance. Keep trying until your story gets in the right hands. There is an editor that will love it, and the job of the writer is to find that editor. It's really as simple as that. Not always an easy task, but simple nonetheless.
I like to think that I demand a high level of professionalism of myself, even when faced with a less than professional response to my own writing. While it hasn't happened often (I usually only receive form rejections) there are times when I really have to wonder what happened on the other end of the submission email. There was one instance in which the editor, who provided a synopsis as part of the response, clearly didn't understand the story at all. I would normally consider this a problem, but my wife understood it just fine, and she hasn't read that much of my genre. Others have similarly had no issues understanding the story and it definitely was not a "you're not supposed to understand it" type (which I loathe, by the way). That was not an example of lack of professionalism, just an example of editors being human and just as prone to mistakes as the rest of us.
An unfortunate example of unprofessional behavior that I've experienced in my writing career was a personal rejection that I received that felt like the editor was attempting to make a personal attack against me. The funniest thing about it was that I quite clearly got an emotional response, which is generally considered to be the sign of an exceptional story. But this editor decided to pass, and in an appallingly unprofessional manner.
All of that aside, rejections are a way of life for writers who do not have a household name. Even writers that have dozens of published stories still face rejection, and when you have a string of them, it gets a little hard to take. I'll admit that even thought I consider myself to have a pretty thick skin, it has gotten to me at times. The funk generally only lasts a few days at most.
So the name of the game, as far as I can tell right now, is perseverance. Keep trying until your story gets in the right hands. There is an editor that will love it, and the job of the writer is to find that editor. It's really as simple as that. Not always an easy task, but simple nonetheless.
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