Tag Archives: writing community

2Q23 Update

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Wow, is the second quarter done already? That one flew by. There was a spring break trip. There was a last minute Memorial Day weekend trip at a place I found on Airbnb (that I really wanted to be haunted). There was the family’s summer vacation. And I caught COVID in the middle of the quarter just for fun. Let’s see how that all impacted my writing productivity.

  • Words written = 6365
  • Submissions = 31
  • Rejections = 25
  • Acceptances = 2
  • Shortlists = 1
  • Publications = 2
  • Rewrites = 0
  • Withdrawals = 0

That’s a fairly standard quarter for me. The words written equate to one long short story and small additions to two existing stories. It’s still not a ton of writing, but I’m happy with it.

The submissions (and rejections) are on track for my 100 goal. I shouldn’t have any problem meeting that.

The acceptances and publications are doing better than expected. I’ve already exceeded my acceptances goal for the year. I may need to set that one higher next year. Let’s see if the second half of the year is as fruitful.

I’ve also progressed nicely on my goal to publish a collection of short stories. I have the story content and title nailed down, and I’ve worked with an editor to get the manuscript into tip top shape.

Now I need to format the thing. Conveniently, the speaker for the August meeting of the Northern Virginia Writers Club will discuss book formatting. Once I have it formatted (and therefore have the final dimensions), I plan to put the cover art out for bid. In the interim, I’ll put together the front and back matter and buy some ISBN numbers. I plan to get at least 10 of those to be able to have one each for physical and ebooks for this collection, another short story collection I hope to put together in the future, and the middle grade trilogy that desperately needs editing. I also want to get to that this year, as well as edit the short story I wrote last quarter. Then the later can start making the submission rounds.

I’ve come up with a stretch goal for the year too. For the last three years, I’ve worked on a middle grade novel during each NaNoWriMo. That series is complete, at least the first drafts (see above). I have an idea for another middle grade or possibly YA trilogy.

If you’ve followed this blog, you know I’m a plotter. However, my plotting is not overly detailed. It usually consists of a sentence or two per scene. I map out the scenes this way before I start each November, but not much more.

For the first book in this new trilogy, I’d like to try my hand at a more detailed outline. I recently read The Mercenary Guide to Story Structure by Kevin Ikenberry. He goes through several different types of story structures. There’s the original three act play from Aristotle’s time. There’s the “hero’s journey” structure, described by Joseph Campbell in The Hero with a Thousand Faces, which we see often in fantasy and sci-fi stories. There’s the well-known seven-point story structure, and then there is an even more detailed structure laid out in Jeffrey Alan Schecter’s My Story Can Beat Up Your Story. I’d like to see if I can use the seven-point story structure and map out all of those plot points before starting this November. I’ve never plotted with this much detail. I’ve always simply developed scenes in my head and decided when one or more needed to be added. I’m wondering (hoping?) this approach will make my books longer and more entertaining. Even for middle grade, each of the books in my WIP trilogy are on the short side.

That’s the second quarter of 2023. How’d yours go?

The Next Thing

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I have a quick one for you today. My flash story “Polynesian Disbursement” will be published at http://www.gohavok.com on Tuesday, May 23. Set your reminder. It’ll be free to read that day. I’ll also be responding to comments. Please feel free to stop by, give it a gander, and let me know if you have any questions. Normally, I’d go into more details about the story here, but I’m saving that for the commenters that day. Here’s hoping for a quiet time at the day job.

Behind the Stories – Agenda

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In my continuing series where I describe the inspiration behind my stories, I have one that’s hot off the presses. (It felt old to type that. Do kids these days even know what a printing press is?)

My story “Agenda” appears in Planetside: Science Fiction Drabbles, which was released yesterday! As the anthology’s name suggests, mine (and all of the other stories in the anthology) are 100 words–no more, no less.

It’s hard writing exactly 100 words. There’s a lot of counting for starters. For this particular story, I took a work that was 160 words and cut it down to 100. I think that was even harder than setting out to write only 100 words from the start–killing your darlings an all.

This story has a very unique, and I dare say experimental, format. The title gives it away, but the story is in the form of a meeting agenda. I wrote this a couple of years ago when I was president of two volunteer organizations, both of which required me to prepare agendas for the organization’s monthly meetings. At some point in doing this every month, I had the idea of trying to tell a story solely through a meeting agenda. I’d seen other authors tell stories through lists or even recipes but never an agenda. I thought using an agenda format was creative at the time and still do.

I plan to include the 160 word version of this story in my forthcoming short story collection of related tales. (I say “forthcoming,” but I haven’t made much progress on putting it together.) This summer I realized over the last several years that I’d written at least three stories where aliens invade Earth, and it didn’t go well for us humans. I decided those stories should all be in the same universe, so I plan to harmonize several details, such as the name of the race of alien invaders. These I’ll include in my short story collection, along with several other groups of related short stories, i.e. each story in a group is related to the other stories in that group but not related to stories in other groups.

And that’s “Agenda.” Have you ever tried an experimental format in your writing? Did it work or not? Let me know in the comments.

3Q22 Update

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It’s that time of year again. Yes, the Halloween decorations need to go up. Yes, the decorative gourds need to be put out. Oh, and I should provide an update on my writing progress during the third quarter.

Words written = 6,591
Submissions = 42
Rejections = 32
Acceptances = 0
Shortlists/Holds = 0
Publications = 1
Rewrites = 0
Withdrawals = 0

Those numbers on the top look amazing. Outside of a quarter with NaNoWriMo, I haven’t written that much in ages. Even more impressive, only about 1700 words of that were additions to existing stories, which has been where a lot of my writing has gone this year. Instead, I actually wrote 5 new stories – 4 flash and 1 short story. I had an awesome vacation in August to thank. Not only did the family go out west to see some amazing national parks, but work left me alone enough that I could write in the evenings rather than catching up on things.

Also, that submission total is one shy of my all time quarterly record. I’m basically sneezing distance from reaching my goal of 100 submissions this year already.

On the other hand, the big fat zero in the Acceptances column hurts. While I still have 3 acceptances on the year, thus meeting my one acceptance per quarter goal, that zero in the Acceptances column looms large. Thankfully, a ton of markets opened to submission as of October 1, and I’ve already fired off 5 this month. I just need one to hit to meet my acceptances goal.

The sole publication snuck in at the end of the quarter in the Virginia Writers Club Journal. I wrote about that here including the inspiration for the story. If you like humorous science fiction or are a fan of dad jokes in general, give it a read. You won’t be disappointed.

Now it’s time to look forward to an exciting time of the year. Yes, there is Halloween, then Thanksgiving, and then Christmas (at least in my household), and I love all three of those holidays. But the 4th quarter also means NaNoWriMo in November. I already know the book I plan to write, and I’ve been plotting it in my head all year. Honestly, I thought I’d have the entire book mapped out by now, but there are still a couple scenes missing. If past experience is a guide, those will come to me while writing what I’ve already got.

I’m excited. The book I plan to write during NaNoWriMo is the third in a middle grade series, the first two of which I wrote during NaNoWriMo 2020 and 2021. Chronologically, this one will be the second in the series. It’s just how things have worked out. Next year I plan to have them professionally edited, and then I plan to make the tough decision of whether to query agents or move directly to self publishing. I’m sure I’ll be blogging about that next year.

The only goal I’m worried about for the 4th quarter is finishing my NaNoWriMo middle grade book. Last year, I got a great start during NaNoWriMo but didn’t finish the first draft until the calendar rolled over to 2022. This year, I’d like to finish the first draft in November. If I can do that and then give it a very rough first edit before the Christmas break, my first reader for these middle grade books (my 8 year old daughter) can read it over the holiday break.

That was my July – August 2022. How’d yours go?