08.08.2008
So... I still haven't heard back from Abyss & Apex or Asimov's regarding the stories sent there, which is weird and long for them... But I figure they just had larger piles of stories to go through this time.
No, this is not a rejection update. I have no new rejections to report. This is something else...
I think I mentioned in another post that I was going through and rewriting my older stories to bring them up to spec with my current level. I had intended to work on The Three Lives of Slugger Joe a nice little baseball story I wrote... oh... way back when. Needless to say, I never got to it. Instead, I found myself distracted by Your Never Too Far From Gelassenheit a sort-of novella I also wrote way back when.
I always like the story. Of Gelassenheit I mean. But it was 9,300 words and I always thought that I tried to capture way too much for even that word length. (Just for context, most online places won't except a story longer than 5,000 words and even print magazines have issues with stories over 10,000.) So I set it aside after one or two rejections to ponder on.
Initially, I was just going to flush out the description. You know... make it better! But then I found a paragraph that should have been a scene and a scene that should have been a chapter. And off to the races I've gone.
I'm on the second chapter right now and it's about 20,000 words--or, for those of you who don't know what that means, about a hundred pages. And the sucker keeps on ticking along.
I saw a piece of advice from Elmore Leonard a while back that said something to the effect that anyone who wants to be considered a professional or working writer should crank out two pages a day. At first I scoffed, thinking, "Yeah, that's going to happen. I'm creative. I need to be creative when I write. Writing when I'm not creative will crank out two pages of shit a day."
Well... guess who's been writing two pages a day?
Yeah.
And sometimes it is shit. There are just those days, you know? But, more often then not, I struggle for the first two pages and then, before I know it, I'm at six. Then ten. Then fifteen. And I'm liking it.
Last night was interesting. Typical shit day at work. My buddy Dan and I couldn't even play our usual round of Guitar Hero because I was so frustrated and didn't want to throw his controller against the wall. Not only would he and his wife not appreciate it but it's just not a very couth thing to do. So I got home by about 5:30 or so and dicked around looking at porno. Finally, around six, I began writing and the first two pages were... well... they'll be included into the list of those that will require a rewrite or at least heavy editing when I'm done.
Anyway...
Sure enough, I look up a little later and it's 11:30 and I've written 3,000 words--or fifteen pages--and have really done a number on the couple of scenes. And it felt good. It felt creative! Yeah, you know what I mean.
Normally, I don't announce this kind of thing. Every wannabe writer says they have a novel in the works. And sometimes they do but mostly they start and stop the first scene over and over again and just keep rewriting the first 5,000 words without really getting anywhere. But I feel like this is different.
For one, I've made significant progress. Enough progress that inertia can carry me through the rest. For two, I've already got the damn story plotted out. It was a short story, now it's longer but it's following the same road map. So it's not like I get those moments where I sit and think, "Where the fuck do I go from here?" No, sir. None of that. And for three, I've got my routine down again. That routine where I now budget the time to sit down and work. I haven't had that since I finished The Terror Of Barcelona in fucking November of the year five.
I'll admit, when I'm in novel mode, I'm kind of a boring person. It's literally: write then work or work then write, go to the bar, drink, come home, eat, watch something on TV, sleep. Rinse and repeat the next day. There's not a lot of time for great adventures and my parents are always disappointed when I don't have some great New York story to relate because I've been holed up in my shit apartment staring at a laptop and making shit up in MS Word.
But... hell... fuck that.
And, if things continue apace, this won't be the thirteen month project that Terror was. That was 117,000 words long. That means I was averaging 264 words a day. Or, one page. I'm now averaging 952 words a day--or, about four pages--with a minimum of two per. At this rate, the entire project should take no more than a little over three months....
Sweet, yeah?
(And seriously, did you expect me to write about writing without also bringing stats into it? Com'on, for fuck's sake! I'm a goddamned computer programmer. I really don't think you could expect anything less.)
So... that's where I'm at. The year eight has been a banner year for submissions and rejections of short stories but the year nine may be one for novel rejections. I will let you know...
Oh, and this by no means implies that I will cease my second favorite hobby of getting rejected. So stay tuned for updates on the continuing failures of my short stories...
Cheers, kids.