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I Can't Believe I Read That !
Mar. 29th, 2004 04:34 pmIt's Monday and I'm back on the writing track. I only wrote a couple of paragraphs of fiction today (about 125 words total), all of it on "Move Along Home", bringing the story up to 3600 words so far. I just started the next scene, letting my protagonist go home from the hospital, and recover his car and luggage from the airport. I realized that, while I like where I am with the story, and I think where I've been in the story works well enough for a first draft, and I know HOW the story will end, I'm not completely sure HOW I'm going to get there.
So I spent a chunk of the day creating an outline and battle plan. I usually do this before I start a story, but I failed to this time for unknown reasons. Fortunately, I haven't written myself into a corner or anything, so I just need to make sure I understand clearly how I'm getting from point A (or actually, at this stage of the draft, point D) to point M, or Z, or whatever point is the end.
I read two stories on the Online Writer's Workshop, figuring I could get in a couple of crits, before I post my next story to the workshop, but frankly, the two stories where so dreadful that I just couldn't do anything with them. I don't mean these stories had some problems. Problems I can deal with in a crit, which's why we all submit to the workshop, to get help and advice working out problems. I've done crits for bad stories before. I've faced stories with poor plotting, unbelievable characters, lousy dialogue, and riddle with cliches. But these two stories, well, these two stories were just drek. A complete waste of my time.
My plan is to send "Anansi" out the door again by Friday. I looked the story over after its recent rejection, and decided to not make any adjustments. I think I'm going to send it to Amazing, since they are back in business, and not overloaded with stories yet. I'm also pushing to get "Callooh Callay" out on Friday, though I still haven't decided where to send my little (I mean little, like under 2000 words little) piece of whimsy. Perhaps I'll send it to Realms of Fantasy, or the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I'm even considering trotting out an old piece of whimsical poetry I wrote about a guy who keeps losing his food in the refrigerator to an imp. Asimov's and F&SF both still print that kind of stuff.
In the mean time I have to start thinking about what to cook for dinner.
In Deep Peace
Michael
So I spent a chunk of the day creating an outline and battle plan. I usually do this before I start a story, but I failed to this time for unknown reasons. Fortunately, I haven't written myself into a corner or anything, so I just need to make sure I understand clearly how I'm getting from point A (or actually, at this stage of the draft, point D) to point M, or Z, or whatever point is the end.
I read two stories on the Online Writer's Workshop, figuring I could get in a couple of crits, before I post my next story to the workshop, but frankly, the two stories where so dreadful that I just couldn't do anything with them. I don't mean these stories had some problems. Problems I can deal with in a crit, which's why we all submit to the workshop, to get help and advice working out problems. I've done crits for bad stories before. I've faced stories with poor plotting, unbelievable characters, lousy dialogue, and riddle with cliches. But these two stories, well, these two stories were just drek. A complete waste of my time.
My plan is to send "Anansi" out the door again by Friday. I looked the story over after its recent rejection, and decided to not make any adjustments. I think I'm going to send it to Amazing, since they are back in business, and not overloaded with stories yet. I'm also pushing to get "Callooh Callay" out on Friday, though I still haven't decided where to send my little (I mean little, like under 2000 words little) piece of whimsy. Perhaps I'll send it to Realms of Fantasy, or the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. I'm even considering trotting out an old piece of whimsical poetry I wrote about a guy who keeps losing his food in the refrigerator to an imp. Asimov's and F&SF both still print that kind of stuff.
In the mean time I have to start thinking about what to cook for dinner.
In Deep Peace
Michael
