Realized and Unrealized

I've been quiet. I apologize for the silence. It was the sort of silence that occurs when you take a breath and hold it.

I feel like I've been holding my breath. Waiting to exhale, as it were.

I've finally heard back from all but a couple of my previous batch of short story submissions, and none of the news has been good. I had my one lucky break, and now I starting to feel very far away from my dreams again.

I'll keep at it, of course. Even as I fought with myself whether to send the same stories back out or not, I researched markets and sent them today. I keep plugging away, expecting rejections and not acceptances now.

I've lowered my sights a little bit, too. Instead of choosing by highest paying market, I'm aiming for exposure instead, so I'm targeting markets with higher acceptance rates. Smart or stupid business practice, I don't really know, but honestly I just want my stories out there. The money (at this point) doesn't matter.

Someday, of course, I'd love to support myself solely on writing. But I'm not dedicated enough to the craft yet. I'm still learning. I'm still feeling my way through the process. I still need to learn how to edit longer manuscripts.

This past year has been a lot of trial and error and revamping of my writing goals. I've written at least one flash fiction story every month over the past year. I've learned how to edit shorter works. I've learned how the submission process works. I'm also figuring out what I want.

So while I'm falling short of a lot of my goals this year, I realize that it's because they were unrealistic. Or uneducated. Not because I'm not capable.

I won't give up. Not again. That's one of my goals for the up and coming year: no quitting. But I have accepted that there will be slumps. And that I might feel like quitting sometimes.

Looking forward, I probably won't be submitting anything else for awhile after this current round I just sent out: it's time to focus on National Novel Writing Month and try remember how to write novels. I've been a short story writer this year, and while I'm nervous to put my noveling pants back on, I think it's time.

I just hope flash fiction hasn't ruined my ability to tell a story in more than 1000 words!

A Super Long Shot

I am behind.

I suppose as a writer whose full time job is not being a writer, that happens sometimes. The reason I'm worried about it is because I'm behind on an assignment for the Confabulator Cafe. Other people are counting on me there, so it's not my own success that's on the line.

But I have no plans tonight, so I will buckle down and get it finished.

It's a story for flash fiction week next week, and the reason it's late, aside from the fact that I just haven't worked on it, is because I really like it. It's like, one of my favorite things I've started writing all year, and it has so much potential to be awesome, that I'm thinking about it too much. I need to just drink a glass of wine, let go, and finish writing it. There are major changes I'd like to make some day, but I can clean it up and edit it for submission later on down the line.

I need to finish what I started first.

In other news, I took a huge gamble today. Well, truly it wasn't a gamble at all, because I don't have anything to lose, really. I submitted a story that I wrote almost ten years ago and have spent at least once a year every year in that amount of time polishing it. It has been sitting there on my hard-drive all that time, wanting to be told, and I had resigned it to something I might someday self publish.

Instead, I decided to clean it up one more time - polish it within an inch of its life - and submit it to Tor.com.

See? Insane crazy long shot. They receive hundreds upon hundreds (maybe even thousands) of submissions a year, and I'm not confident this story is good enough to be part of the Tor catalog, even if it's only an online short story version of Tor. It's still freaking Tor.

Tor. One of the big names in sci-fi and fantasy.

I decided, though, that it was better in their hands than doing nothing on my computer. The only drawback is that now I have to wait around eight months or more to receive the likely rejection.

That's ok, though. I have lots of other projects to keep me occupied while I wait.

Wish me luck. Check back in about a year to see whatever came of it!

http://www.tor.com/

I Heart Flash Fiction

I love flash fiction more and more every month that we write it at the Confabulator Cafe.

I love being able to tell a full story in a quick little bite. Deciding exactly what details belong and which ones don't matter enough to be left in. I love to play with word choice. It's easier to work on the crafting of sentences when you only have 1,000 words to make them with.

It's also given me the opportunity to explore my darker side. The thing about horror is that reading (and writing) an entire horror novel can be exhausting. It takes a lot out of a reader and a writer to have to constantly maintain that suspense and continually add more horrifying things. In a short story, you don't have to sustain it for long, so it can be short and intense and then you can put it down.

Every time I sit down to write flash fiction, I'm worried my idea will be awful or won't work, and some weeks I don't get it done until the night before it goes live. But I'm four for four now and I'm happy with every story I've written. It's given me a lot of confidence in my ability to write. And even edit, since I have to be so meticulous when it comes to a 1,000 word story.

One of the best parts is, I am developing a portfolio of short stories, so I've been able to pick my best ones and start sending them out to anthologies. It's great practice, and once a writer has something published, it's easier to get the next thing published. Not to mention, submission is a goal I've had for years. Now I've finally done it. Twice!

The last part that I love about it isn't so much about me or my writing career, it's about my love of reading. I love to see what stories come out of the minds of my fellow writers. They just blow me away every week. And I find the stories ever so much more enjoyable knowing the faces and the personalities behind the tales.

Maybe after a year or so of all of us doing flash fiction, we can collect all of our stories and put them in an anthology of our own. I'd love to found the Confabulator Press someday.

Kindergartners have it made

As I walked through Wal-Mart yesterday, a splash of color caught my eye, and I felt a thrill deep within my cerebral cortex.

Guess what time of year it is, friends.

It's Back to School time! Which means stores have put out all of their lustrous school supplies.

I think it goes hand in hand with being a writer, but I am hopelessly addicted to school and office supplies. Notebooks, pens, colored pencils, crayons, markers, folders, binders, divider tabs, note cards, glue, scissors, rulers, sticky notes, legal pads, pencil boxes, backpacks, even the little boxes of watercolor paints: I am held in thrall by all of it.

So, due to the culmination of Back to School sales and my Creativity Constipation, the Writing Buddy and I are meeting this weekend to regress into kindergartners. We're going to bust out all of our school and writing supplies to brainstorm and outline and make an artistic mess. She and I are both in that dark space between projects, so this is exactly the retreat we need to revitalize our muses. It should be wonderful chaos. I'll try to remember to take a couple of pictures so you all can share in the madness.