Skip to content

Posts from the ‘Writing Life’ Category

Dec 10

1 Comment

Goal Line in Sight

I’m looking at you December. You’re almost gone and I’m trying not to notice. The fall has gone quickly and now I am staring at the end of the year in my sights. This is the last week of classes for me. I’ve completed everything for the class, save showing up and having one last discussion in class on Bluebeard. (Side note: I had no idea there were so many stories about Bluebeard! Really, it is a bit nuts.) So the pressure is off. I have registered for my thesis class, worked on my stories, completed the form for the class, and have a few short weeks before I will begin my final work.

In the beginning of the year, I laid out some goals. Currently, I have 11 completed pieces and I have no doubt that I will get the last one done by the end of the year. I have 15 days of vacation in December, so I have lots of time to write.

Other goals might not happen. I left the goal of buying books wayyyy behind earlier this year. But I won’t meet my reading goals. In truth, school just kept my too busy. Even though I read books for class, I just didn’t get to all the other books I have on my list to read. The class I’m in now is for short stories and those handouts came first. So it’s hard to read for pleasure when you have to get through 100-200 pages of short stories for class. All in all, I’ll get through about 20 books. My goal was 25, but I’ll take the 20.

I got one story published. So that goal was hit. Yay!

Ah the credit card… Yeah, grad school is still expensive. If I hadn’t gotten furloughed this might have been a kept goal, but two weeks with no pay hurts. Writers need all the money they can get.

Finally, I have my goal of completing one longer work. I haven’t finished it, but I have more words than I did before. I don’t know if I will finish by the end of the year, but I am not disappointed. It is coming along. Maybe I will get to it too over vacation.

It is vacation after all. I gotta hit some of those after X-mas sales!

Looking ahead for 2015, I still think I want to try the One Year, One Hundred Rejections. I have lots of material now, so time to submit more stuff. Also, I want to keep up the pace of one new piece each month. I can speed up after I graduate, but I want to keep it low for now.

Back at the end of December with final numbers.

Oct 20

Books that Inspire Me #2

Borderlands Books 005

I found the first book in this anthology series in the UNM bookstore. Perusing the general fiction shelf, I saw it sitting in the corner. The cover was so black, I couldn’t make out the title. But when I turned it over and read the back blurb, it hooked me.

“No ghosts. No maniacal slashers. Nothing that goes bump in the night. Borderlands is a horror anthology series not concerned with traditional elements of horror fiction. Borderlands is about breaking the mold and pushing the genre and its finest writers to the edge. Hailed as the anthology series of the 90’s, Borderlands will remind you that horror can indeed be horrific. Discover a vampire of an altogether different sort… a man who sows the seeds of his doom in his lawn… a dutiful son whose last duty is his parent’s murder… and more.”

I spent a good part of my teenage years reading Stephen King and Anne Rice, but I wasn’t really familiar with the complete horror world. This was in the 90’s before the internet and you had to go the the bookstore to find a new author. The small bookstores in my area barely had a horror section. I tended to pick up whatever looked interesting or, if the person was famous, whatever seemed to be their latest tale.

This anthology opened me up to a whole new world of authors. Although the first one came out in 1991, I didn’t find it until that day in Albuquerque in 1998. It was the only copy on the shelf and I consider it a blessing that I found it.

That semester, Spring 1998, was a real turning point in my writing career. The previous semester, I had my first creative writing class… and it was a disaster. The professor acted more interested in writing his own work rather than teach us anything. I left that class dejected and thinking that I had no business being a writer. For the first time in my life I wanted to quit. I jetted off to New Mexico (I studied in Maryland for most of my degree.) on an exchange program and figured I would just enjoy my experience and not worry about writing. After all, I wasn’t a writer anymore.

In New Mexico, I took another creative writing class (It was too much of a hassle to drop the class.) and it opened my eyes. This was a real class, with assignments and homework and a professor who worked with the students. She was so kind and thoughtful that to this day, I think she pulled me back from the edge. Finding Borderlands became another stepping stone in my growth as a writer.

For the first time I read works by Harlan Ellison, Bentley Little, Elizabeth Massie, Poppey Z. Brite, etc. This anthology showed me what the horror genre could become. What a story could become. The stories weren’t scary, they were horrific in the old fashioned sense of the world. What truly horrifies us? A run of the mill serial killer? Or maybe a lady who buys a purse made of human skin and likes it? (That’s in volume 2.) None of these stories scared me, but they stuck with me. Even today, I think about some of them, turning them over in my mind at odd moments.

Borderlands Books 003

After I read the first book, I toted it back with me to Maryland. A few years later in 2000, I was living in Virginia and found Book 2 in a dusty corner of Borders (remember them?). A couple years later, I ordered Book 3 and 4 off the internet. As I said above, the first four came out in the early 90’s, but the last edition, From the Borderlands, came out in 2005. Unfortunately, I think most of them are out of print. But if you can get your hands on one or all of them, I would snatch them up. They have sat on my bookshelf for years and I do reread some of the stories from time to time. Answering the Call by Brian James Freeman (Book 5) is one of my favorite short stories of all time.

Borderlands Books 001

Once a year, I go over to Borderlands Press website to see if there are any forthcoming. Sadly, there haven’t been any more. Maybe one day, they will put together another collection. Still, I am happy there were these five. They made a difference in my writing life and I am grateful.

Oct 16

Doing What You Love

A few weeks ago, classical musician Joshua Bell played at a Metro station in DC. Years ago, he played anonymously and the Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten wrote an essay on the experience. A few days ago, singer Erica Badu sang in Times Square. She made $3.60. Both of these experiences got me thinking about doing what you love.

In 1993, I was 16 and took the Strong Interest Test in high school. The result? The first career that popped up for me was Author. Scanning down the paper, I read that my salary would be $16,000. I had no idea what that would be in real world money, but I did know that was low. My classmates had careers like lawyer, or accountant. Their salaries started at $50K. Still, I stared at the paper and thought, Well it’s a start.

Since that moment, I view, any salary I get that is over $16K is a win. I don’t earn any money from my writing and don’t expect to ever get rich. (Unless I get very lucky.) Money will come in time. For now, I’m more focused on building a body of work and getting better at my craft. I’m working anonymously (without the famous reveal of course).

Just out on the corner of the internet, doing my thing.

When you do what you love, there is still hard work. You work and give so much of your time, attention and yes, sanity. Some will think you are crazy, standing out on the corner singing for three bucks. While Erica did this as a stunt, there are plenty of us who are doing for real.

Sing on I say. Not because you want the money, or the attention. You simply want to do this. Everything else is a win.

Sep 30

End Point – Short Story September 2014

It’s the end of September and the last day of my personal challenge to finish four stories this month. Technically I did, although one story was a creative piece for class. I am also ¾ of the way from finishing one more story, but since I wanted to post today, as of now, it is not finished. Still the day is not over and I will probably knock it out tonight in between watching NCIS and Person of Interest.

You may have also noticed a more consistent posting schedule. I’ve decided to try to post every 5th day and see how well I stay consistent. So far, it is not too hard and more importantly, easy to remember. In the past, I honestly forgot about this blog and when I did remember to post months had gone by. Not good.

Speaking of not good, right now I am on a furlough from my job. It happened at the last-minute and caught me off guard. For the next two weeks, I’ll have no day job to work on. In a way it is an unexpected gift. What would you do, if someone said, “Here you go. Have a couple of weeks off to just live your life.” Me, I think I’ll work on more writing. For once, I’ll be able to see what a full-time devotion to writing will look like.

Still, I don’t want this to be permanent. I kinda need my day job for stuff like rent and food.

Finally, you may have noticed a few changes in some other pages on this blog. Earlier this month, I got my first acceptance letter. My story “The Blind Woman and Her Spiders” was accepted for publication in the anthology Magical: An Anthology of Fantasy, Fairy Tales, and Other Fiction For Adults. I will now be a published writer by the end of the year.

I have a lot of thoughts (and emotions) about this moment in my writing career. Last winter, I got a really harsh rejection letter that bothered me for months. I think I will post in the future about that experience, but for now I want to focus on the enjoyment of having that moment when the conversation changes. Most writers know what I’m talking about. The conversation usually goes went like this:

Other person: So you are a writer? Can I read some of your work?

Me: Well, I’m not published yet.

Now the conversation goes like this:

Other person: So you are a writer? Can I read some of your work?

Me: Yes, I have a story out (insert name of publication here).

And that, folks, feels pretty damn good.

Sep 25

What’s Your Goal?

I’ve been thinking about goals. Maybe because I’m less than a year from graduating. I find myself googling various writers to see what comes next. I said to myself, a few times over the summer, that I won’t know what to do in a year. I’m so used to the routine of work, school, home. Again in less than a year, I’ll be back to pre-2011 me. A me that took vacations and traveled!

Oh, and I had disposable income!

Recently I found this article by Tobias Buckell. In it, he details the difference between goals and milestones. In a nutshell, goals are things you can control. Milestones just happen. I really love this way of thinking and it is helping me put things into perspective. I reread my goals for the year and I realize I am going about them in a wrong way.

My goal should not be to be published. Being published is a milestone. My goal should be to mail out the story twenty times (or more)before I give up and bury it in the trunk. I have no control over editors and what they will buy. But I do have control over my stories. So, I write the best story I can, polish it up, and send it out into the world. That’s what I always do and that’s what I will continue to do.

This can also apply to other things in life. Instead of a goal to lose 100lbs in a year, you could say the goal is to exercise 5 days a week. Who knows if you can even lose that kind of weight in a year. But if you make the commitment to eat your veggies, lay off the sugar, and move your body, you can see some changes. Forget the number, that is a milestone. Aim for the things you can control.

So next January, I’ll think long and hard about my goals. I’ll aim for things I can control. I’m already thinking of the One Year, One Hundred Rejections challenge that was popular a few years ago. Poets employed this method, but I wonder what that would be like for a writer of a longer form. At the very least, it will make me more productive and more aggressive with submissions.

Still writing my own September challenge, but we’ll see where the chips lay in a few days. Until then, think of your own goals and where you want to be. A friend said, “Everyone should have a goal in life.” It can be as simple or abstract as you like, but I think you should have something.

Sep 20

Books that Inspire Me #1

Slipstream Anthology

In the fall of 2004, I sat in a small annex room at George Mason University, waiting for a panel discussion on speculative writers who cross genres to begin. It was the only panel I made a point to see (although I did stick around for a couple other panels on science fiction writing). The panel consisted of John Kessel, Gregory Frost, and Michael Swanwick. Kim Stanley Robinson sat in the back, along with a smattering of college students and adults. I suppose it wasn’t a popular topic. This was years before The Road, Game of Thrones, The Hunger Games, and dozens of other books and movies that infuse speculative elements became popular. Don’t get me wrong, scifi movies and books were still popular, but the idea that they could be more than a scifi book was not yet embraced. At least, it didn’t seem that way to me.

And that is why I was interested in this panel. It was sort of a moment happening when scifi authors were breaking out. The attitude seemed to be Yes this is a story about witches and warlocks, but look, I can make it about love, ambition, life, death, etc. Neil Gaiman’s American Gods arrived a few years earlier critical acclaim. Conjunctions 39: New Wave Fabulists also, got a nice mention and when I look through it now, I see quite a few writers who are still popular, such as Kelly Link, Nalo Hopkinson, and China Miéville. This panel address a growing wave that now looks so natural.

It was a good discussion and the big take away I got from it, was not that crossing genres was a new technique. That had been done for centuries. Instead it was that writers were doing this on purpose and people now noticed this phenomena. John Kessel also mentioned that he had put together an anthology that showcased many of these writers. A few months later, I bought it.

I have mentioned this book before. The stories contained are fantastic and sometimes I find myself rereading them and getting the same enjoyment. In March 3013 I reread “Bright Morning” and rediscovered a beautiful, inspiring story. This collection makes me want to right smart, ambitious stories. After reading, I want to push myself, because good stories aren’t just thought up in the air. They are crafted, carefully in my mind. (Other writers may create differently.) After so many years of writing, I realize that I’ll never run out of ideas, but an idea is not a story. This collection shows me how an idea can grow into a great story.

Also, I don’t think my reading habits have changed much. To this day, Amazon will still recommend this book when I log in.

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »