Abandoned Houses

Since I was a kid I have been fascinated by abandoned houses.  Growing up in the corn belt I saw plenty of old farm houses falling down from the inside out.  Most of them would be out in the middle of a corn field, set well back from the highway or road.

To this day, I look at them and can't help but wonder about who built it, who was the first person to walk into it and  call it home?  Who was the last person to leave it?  Did someone die there, born there, have their first kiss, or heart broken there?

courtesy of 100abandonedhouses.com

Houses like this:

They don't make houses like that anymore.  That house was made for someone.  Someone saved up enough money, and had it built just for them.  Not as a part of a housing development.  Not some master planned community.

What were their dreams and their hopes?  Did they imagine their children's children living there?  Was it supposed to stay in the family, providing shelter for generations?

Or did they mean for it to be used once, and thrown away like houses are today?

Both of my Grandfather's built their houses themselves- that's right, they built them.  By hand.  They were amazing men. They knew they would die owning those houses.  They would raise their families in those houses.  And they did.  I was a child in those houses.

I picked my house out of a MLS data base, toured it once and said, "good enough."

I see these kinds of pictures, and wonder what the original owner would say.  Would they shrug and walk away, not really caring or would they weep?

I think they would be let down.  Saddened by how cheaply someone regarded their sacrifices and efforts.  I can't help but think that we are somehow less because of it.

Mission: innocent cover leak

Exciting news!

A friend of mine Suzanne Lazear just got in the cover for her upcoming book Innocent Darkness (book 1 of THE AETHER CHRONICLE).

I know!  Exciting!

Suzzane is so happy with the cover design she's totally leaked it to her friends.  And  now I'm totally gonna leak it to the internet.  I'm joking, she said I could do this.  

No, really, she did.

Anyway, here it is:

 

Now, normally I'm really "meh" about covers but I like this one.  What can I say?  I'm a sucker for red head's in goggles.  Or just red heads.  And airships.  Seriously, that one in the back?  You could have a couple of adventures on that thing.  That thing will certainly take you to a lost jungle with giant monkeys or dinosaur's or something. Maybe something with a lost temple.

You're thinking you want to pre-order it now, right?  Well, you can't (it doesn't come out until 8-12).  But you CAN add it to your Goodreads "to read" shelf.  Here.

You can also sign up for Suzanne's (the afore mentioned friend) non-spammy newsletter. I signed up for it a while ago, and it has yet to taste of pork shoulder.  Or spam me, for that matter.  

Oh, and Suzanne is so excited she's having a contest where you can win something.  I'm not going to reveal what that is (but you can totally find out by going to her blog).

So, yeah, cover leaked.  Mission accomplished!

Time for some breakfast tea!

September the 11th

Ever wonder how an event a 1000 miles away can change a life?

Here's how 9-11 changed mine.

I had been married for a few months when my wife and I decided to settle down in Austin. We were working dead-end, nothing jobs.  I was working early mornings in a stock room for Target, and she worked nights for the IRS.   We had dropped out of college because we couldn't think of a reason to stay.

I had that day off, so I slept in until she got home.  We made breakfast, and I put her to bed.  We had just watched a movie on DVD the night before.  Fight Club.  I considered watching it again but decided not to because a cartoon I had wanted to see would be on that morning.

I turned on the TV.

Instead of the cartoon I wanted to watch every channel had the same thing- one of the towers of the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane.  I sat there, enraptured by the devastation, watching the smoke pour out of the one tower.

I decided to wake her up when the second plan hit the other tower.

We sat there and watched it all unfold, unable to look away.  She screamed when the first tower fell.  I cried. We knew the world was changing.  We knew things would be bad for a long time to come.  Her brother was stationed in Korea.  My sister lived north of the towers.  A few months later she would leave New York for LA, moving across the entire country in the aftermath.

As we laid down that night, unable to really sleep, I couldn't stop thinking about the movie from the night before- Fight Club.  A specific scene kept playing out in my head- the convenience store scene. Tyler had a gun to the clerks head, and asked him if he were to die right now would he have anything to say for  his life.

The clerk said no.

I knew that was my answer too.  If I had been in those towers, if I had died when they collapsed I wouldn't have anything to say for my life either.  It wasn't enough.

  I had fancied myself a writer.  But I hadn't ever produced anything.  The most I had ever done was in high school, writing character biographies and two page stories for my RPG group.  We played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons.

But all that that was going to change.  A month later I enrolled at a University near us.  By January I was back in school full time while working a full time job.  A semester later my wife joined me at school.

By chance, or maybe fate, the school was one of the tops for its fiction writing program (in the top 5 for the nation), and I threw myself into it.  By the time I graduated I was a leader in my classes.   While I spent the next years working equally pointless jobs, I kept writing.  Getting rejections, but I kept at it.  If you've read my other blog entries, you know how long I kept at it.

If I were going to die tomorrow, I would have something to say about my life.  I could leave something behind that people would remember.  

That still drives me to this day.   Before 9-11 I had been the poster-boy for slackers.  My biggest ambition was to wake up to watch a cartoon. Now?  now I own my own house.  I have a son.  Now I want to write stories that touch people's hearts, that make them stay up way past their bed times to read just one more page.  I want to leave something behind when I die that makes people say, "He really got it.  He really understood things."

And that's how an event a 1000 miles away can change a life.

super hero story

Well, I've started it.  A tale of super hero-ness.

Well, not really.  It's set in a world of super heroes.  And he wants to be one.  He's got the powers and everything.  It's just set in a more realistic world. 

Why does everyone cringe when any one says "setting the hero in a more realistic world"?

Because, generally, that is pretty cringe worthy.  Usually the writer forgets to bring in the bits about super heroes we love- the super heroics, and it's a lot of whining about their job.  Which we can get plenty of that at home, so why buy a story about it?  

Don't worry, plenty of heroics.  Lots of laser breathing penguins.  Inter dimensional threats.  a plot to destroy the world. Giant Lizard robots.  sled dog robots.  A Hammer of Justice. 

No, this is more realistic in how I think a world of super heroes would be.  It would be like professional wrestling mixed with major league baseball.   Trading cards, product endorsements, and big money contracts.   They'd have twitter accounts.  Reality TV shows. 

The whole media thing. 

The matches would be fixed.  They would arrange betrayls and double crosses well ahead of time.  Images would be marketed, and product lines in place.   Product ready to be shipped.  People would willingly believe their heroes were geniune rather than another facet of the entertainment machine.

That's what I mean by real.

Oh, and this guy is going to have to deal with cancer.  because this all started with the thought, "What if Superman's mom got cancer?  He can't punch cancer." 

This story has been burning to get out of my head for weeks now.  I am going to rip through this thing like...the French through cheese!  The English through tea!  American's through transfats! 

Perspective

Personally, I hate it when someone asked, "What perspective do you write?" It's seriously cringe-tastic.


 
Because, really, the answer is mine.  It's the only perspective I have.  But that's not what they want to know. They want to know if you write in the 1^st person or the 3^rd person.

And the answer there is both. I prefer the 1^st person for short works. It delivers a more powerful experience, and allows me to lie to the reader using the narrator.

What? You thought you could trust a 1^st person narrator? They're the last person you should trust in the story. No, really. Read Turn of the Screw or Fight Club to see what I mean. 1^st person narrators are liars because it's their story, and they want you to be on their side. They want you to like them, and believe their side. And like real people, they should be willing to misrepresent the truth and outright lie to get that.

I also write in the 3^rd person for longer works. While I can't lie to the reader using the 3^rd person, it does allow me to misdirect their attention, jump narratives, and most importantly, jump in time and space. You see, a 1^st person narrator is limited to what they could see or know. A 3^rd person is a voice of God. They can travel through time. They can be anywhere. They can know the inner most thoughts of others. They can accurately report the story to the reader. It's also easier to maintain tension with the 3^rd person, because you can always jump away to another part of the story. Like the camera cuts to a different scene in a movie or tv show. It's easy to maintain tension when no argument is ever finished, just interrupted.

Invariably, someone is thinking, "Why can't a narrator lie to the reader?" As soon as the narrator lies, the reader has to question who that narrator is. Wonder about their motives and personality. Which then brings on questions about how does this character (who has motives and personality) have these god-like powers to see into the minds of others and why are they telling me this story?

And while having an omniscient telepath tell us a story is an interesting meta concept, it would make for really boring reading.

So, no, don't have your narrator lie to your audience, unless it's a person telling their story and then lie away.

But what makes that questions so cringe worthy for me is the inevitable crazy responses you'll hear from people. Things like, "I write in limited 3^rd person omniscient with forward leaping abilities."

What? 
No, seriously, I saw that once and I still have no idea what it actually means. How can you be limited and omniscient at the same time? That doesn't even make sense. If I had to break that down, I am willing to bet that author writes in the 3^rd person, and the other stuff at the end is how they describe their voice. You know, follow a limited number of protagonists, occasionally peeks into a head when it's dramatically appropriate and limits the use of foreshadowing.

That's if I had to guess. Which I don't, thankfully, as I think it would drive me mad. Mad, I say!

Am I the one?

Okay, so this other question comes up a lot between rookie writers- do you think you have what it takes to get published.

No, seriously, hang around on a writing board long enough and that exact thread will show up.  Like clockwork.  Invariably there is a predictable variety of responses.  Usually the first one is a ‘Hell Yeah!’  followed by more humble responses that range anywhere from I hope so to I don’t care if I get paid.

Most of us come to writing the same way- a creative impulse and native intelligence combine with a love of reading or stories push you to write a short story or two, or occasionally write a chapter to some vast epic fantasy playing out in your head.  And the few souls you share your stories with tell you that they like what you give them.

Maybe you take a writing class at the local community college. And the teacher gives you lots of + signs on the shorts you write for class.   

Sometimes maybe you daydream of people telling you how much they loved your story or how much your book changed their life.  You imagine people sitting quietly by themselves, feeling the emotion you put on the page. 

Then you ask yourself if you’re really good enough to make it as a writer?  Do you have what it takes?  Let me give you a formula to answer that question.

This was given to me in my first year at college in the undergraduate writing program.  The precise numbers are broad, and likely inaccurate but the scale is correct.

On average there are 100,000 novels being written every year in the US.

Of that 100,000 only about 10,000 are actually readable.

Of that 10,000 only 1000 will get a partial read request from an agent or publisher.

Of that 1000 only 100 get a full read request.

Of that 100 only 10 will be up for publishing.

Of those 10, only 1 will actually get published.  

A novel has a life span of about five years. 

So, when you send out your novel to the agents and publishers, not only are you competing against the 100,000 novels written this year but the 400,000 from the previous years.  All competing for that 1 spot.

So, when thinking about competing against those 400,000 other stories if you have a moment of doubt.  Even the merest sense of hesitation…

Don’t do it.

Keep that idea of being a writer as a cozy warm dream you trot out on the winter nights as you fall asleep.  It will be a wonderful dream to have.  It will keep you warm, and you always be on the best seller list. 

You’ll have the weekends free to hang out with your friends.  Mow your lawn.  Show up for your kid’s birthday party. You won’t have that cynical part sitting inside your skull gleefully writing down every emotional nuance to be used effectively later on in a story.

You’ll have a life.

When it comes to writing you have to believe in yourself on an unimaginably arrogant level.  You must believe that you are better than anyone else.  That you are writing great stuff. You will need to stay up late to keep writing.  Get up early to edit and head off to the day job.   

Because your competition doesn’t take breaks, vacations or holidays.  They don’t have to pay rent or bills of any kind.  They get to sit at home and write their hearts out.  Getting better than you every day. 

The writing life is a life of rejection.  Even after you “make it” and get that first novel out there, you have to follow it up.  You have to pitch new ideas to publishers and agents.  You have to write even better than you did last time.  You have to start the process all over again, and compete against those numbers all over again. And again.

So, if after that you have a moment of doubt.  Go home.  Save yourself a lot of pain and regret. Save yourself a lot of rejection.

But…

If you don’t.  If you believe without hesitation that you’re that 1.  If you know it down to the very core of your being like you know the sun will come up in the East tomorrow…

Do it.  And don’t ever look back.

Excited!

So, as you all know I've been cranking out work on the steampunk novella.

Okay, maybe I didn't tell you.  I've been laser focused for the last month on writing  a steampunk novella for Carina Press's open call for...steampunk novellas.  They had a specific subject in mind, holiday/christmas theme.  So, it's been fun writing about the chill of winter as things get hot here in Texas. 

So, anyway, I've been doing that.  It's been fun.

But I got an message via Twitter today.  It was an invitation to write a short story for an upcoming anthology release.  How exciting is that?

I got asked to write a story for something.  Not, I have a story and are you interested? 

That's freaking sweet!  I'm like this close to busting out of the amatuer circuit and getting into the minor Minor Leagues. 

How I got started, quit, and came back.

Well, Aoife's Kiss finally got back to me. And they bought the story!

How sweet is that?

Pretty damn sweet, if you ask me.  Which you didn't.

But with this sale, I'm batting 1000 for steampunk stories.  Which is way better than I was doing writing Lit-Fic.  With that I was batting 0.  For 4 years.

Yeah, no joke.  Let's take the way-back machine to December, 04.  I finished up my last year of college, and had my newly minted Bachelors of Arts, English with a focus in Fiction Writing clutched in my sweaty hands.  I had two short stories that had been excessivly workshopped through the last year in school ready to go.  And, like a good n00b writer, I started submitting them like mad.   

I had vision of the works I would write.  I was going to write about the human condition.  I was going to write about the pain of life.  I was going to write Literature, damn it!  I was going to write Art. 

I should take this moment to explain something: imagine that writing is like the Olympics. 

If you get published, you won the gold medal.  You get to stand on the highest podium and your anthem gets played.  Everyone applauds.  That's the gold medal.

If you get a personal rejection from the editor with relevant feedback about your work or some other encouragement, that's a silver medal. 

If you get a standard form letter about how "it's not what they're looking for but feel free to submit other works more in their vein" you've won a bronze.   I should add that they have to say it's okay to submit other work. If they flat out reject you and tell you to submit your work in other places, that's bad. 

Anything else and you didn't make it to the podium.  No response means you got cut in the first round. 

Got that?  Okay, good. 

So, back to the story, fresh outta college I started submitting my excessively work-shopped Lit-Fic stories.  And, just as I had been trained, I started writing new ones right away.  For the whole year of 05 I cheerfully wrote short story after short story, and submitted them.  I even wrote a novel and sent off to agents for consideration.

And outta all those shorts, and that novel how many medals did I win?  How many golds, silvers, or even bronzes do you think I got?

0. 
Nadda.
Zip. 
 
None. 

Now, I should add that in school I was the star student.  I was the guy in the creative writing class that had the best story.  The one that most people said, "I love it.  I think it's great like it is, I don't have any feedback for it."  The one the prof's held up as an example for the class.  If there was a vote, I would have been "most likely to succeed."  

And I went from that to not even getting a response.   I was getting cut in the first round, with no feedback as to why.  Most of the time I wasn't even getting a form letter about rejection.  Just no response.  If I did get an email back, it was a straight rejection and they didn't tell me to submit other works I h ad written.  That's bad.  I may as well have been sending my stories to the local landfill. 

And that went on for 4 years. 

I wrote one more short, and sent it off.  Swearing in my heart of hearts this would be the last one.  If this one didn't get any traction, I was done.  Clearly it had all been a massive waste of time, money, effort, and years of my life.  I targeted several lit-fic magazine's that I hadn't submitted to before, and emailed it out. 

After a few weeks I got a response from just one of the 4 I had submitted to. 

Let me tell you, I was excited.  I think my hands actually shook when I clicked on that email.  Had all my pain and suffering finally paid off?  Was I about to get my first credit?  Was this the first step on the path to glory? 

No.  It was another rejection.  Although this one was personal.  Well, sort of.  It said, "Your writing is strong, but it's not what we're looking for right now.  Best of luck submitting it to other places."  At least he'd taken the time to write "Your writing is strong," before pasting in the rest of the form letter.

I'll be honest.  Right then and there I gave up.  I was done.  I quit.   I heard Mark Twain's quote, "write for 5 years, and if no one is willing to pay you at the end of 5 years, go back to chopping wood." ringing in my ears.  My dream of writing for a living was dashed on the rocks of reality.  I decided to call it a year early, and stop after 4.  One more year wasn't something I could take.  In May of 2008 I called it off.  It was over.

I settled down into my day job, and decided to make the best of that life.  I even bought a house.  With a yard.  Which I should be mowing now.

About a year or so later in 09, a co-worker looks over at me in the break room and says, "You write short stories, right?"

I admitted that I used to do that, yeah. 

"Oh," he said.  "Blizzard is looking for writers now.  They have an open contest going on.  Winner gets flown out to California to talk with the head writer for World of Warcraft about a job offer.  You should give it a shot." 

I checked out the Blizzard website, and sure enough, there it was.  A global writing contest.  You could write a story for either WoW or for Starcraft.  I thought, "why not?"  It's not like its real writing.  This should be easy to knock out.  And I enjoyed just about anything Blizzard ever put out.   After some research on the forums for Blizzard, I decided to write a Starcraft story. 

I figured fewer people would be doing that.  And to make it stand out from the crowd more, I decided to write about how a Marine went AWOL and then came back to the fight.  It was a pretty good story.  I made sure to use plenty of details from cannon material (without plagerizing, of course) and like the game itself, I made some sly referrences to Alien and Aliens.  I even borrowed quotes from Smedly Butler (the most decorated Marine officer in the history of the Corps. He got 2 Congressional Medals of Honor. Think about that for awhile.  2 of them.)

I should add at this point that while I was researching cannon material for Starcraft, I also picked up Jeff Vandameer's first Steampunk anthology at Half-Priced Books. 

I mailed off the story. 

I didn't hear back from Blizzard beyond acknowledgment of receipt of the story.  6 months later, that co-worker says, "Hey, they put up the winners.  Did you ever hear back from them?" 

I admitted that I hadn't, and that probably meant I didn't make the cut.  But that wasn't a shock to me.  I was used to not hearing anything back from a publisher already.   When I got back to my desk, I checked out the site, sure enough there was the finalist on display. I decided to read through the story, to see what I could learn from the winner. 

It was a World of Warcraft story.  I made it 4 pages before I had to stop.  I remember the very last sentence I read.  It was, "The blueish gate was hovering impressively in the middle of the room." 

I don't remember too much after that.  I remember clearly saying, "What the fuck!?!"  out loud.  Well, to be honest, I may have shouted it.  My co-workers assure me that I spent the next 5 hours ranting unrelentingly about the sheer lack of skill, craftsmanship, and general personhood it took to write a sentence like that.  I was livid about that story for the next 3 months. 

It's been over a year now, and that sentence still galls me.  How do you win with a sentence like that?  Seriously!  Well, I was going to show them a thing or two. 

Now, keep in mind I had been trained to write literary fiction.  I was trained to sneeringly say, "commercial fiction has its place, but it's not real writing.  It's not literature.  It's not Art."   In school, writing fantasy, science fiction, or even bad magical realism would result in a failing grade.  There was only one genre, literary fiction, and you would have no other before it. 

But I was going to show Blizzard.  I was going to re-write that story, remove all proprietary elements to Starcraft and make it work. In a fit of rage I fell from the faith.   I fell far.  I was going to commit the most egregious of sins; I was going to write genre fiction.

And not just any old genre fiction.  Oh, no.  I was going to make this story work for a sub-genre so obscure I had only just discovered it a few months ago; steampunk. 

So, in the course of a week I sat down and re-wrote that story from the ground up.  Instead of a Starcraft Marine, now it was a Steam Marine in a steam-powered battle suit that fought aliens.  Instead of being bugs born from the creep, it was mind-controlled alien apes hatched out of alien Jungles/ hive minds/plants things. 

 I poured all of my disdain and anger into that story.  He wanted to run away from a life of war, and I understood that.    I poured in every ounce of wantimg to quit, to run away from writing into that Marine.  I made allusions to Tarzan, the Jungle Book, and any other famous work involving apes.  It was a war story intended to be an allagory for the War on Terror.  The Apes hated humanity for just being human.  Hell, I even threw in the Fall of Adam and Eve into the subtext.  I held nothing back.  I even kept the Alien references.  It was on. 

And, as I had been trained, I researched online and print magazines looking for steampunk stories. There were 3.  And only 1, Steampunk Tales, was actively looking for shorts at that time.  I reformatted to how they wanted the submission, and sent it off.

I may have even said, "Hah!"  as I hit the send button.   And didn't think anything more of it.  I was done. That was the last bit of writing I was going to do. Ever.  It was over.

Now, I should clear something up.  I read a lot of commercial/genre fiction.  I have bookshelves full of the stuff.  I have 8 bookshelves stuffed full now, and probably should get a 9th one to clear the books off the floor.  I have several shelves of steampunk books now.  As it turns out, I liked the sub-genre.  It's fun.  But, as a trained writer, I didn't write it.  I could enjoy reading, but I sure as hell shouldn't be writing it. 

Anyway.  You can imagine my surprise when I got a response from the editor of Steampunk Tales a few weeks later.  You see, she liked the story and wanted to buy it.  I swear to you right now I sat and stared at that email for at least 10 minutes.  This had never happened to me before.  I got rejected.  I was numb to the pain by now, but that's what happened.  I never got to the podium, let alone a gold medal.   I had to call my wife in and have her read it to make sure I wasn't misunderstanding what I saw. 

She read through it, and confirmed what I had read.  They wanted the story.  She kissed me on the cheek and said, "Congratulations, honey.  I knew you could do it."

I saw a call for reprint submissions by Jeff Vandameer.  It seems he was putting together a 2nd anthology of steampunk short stories.  I thought, what the heck? Riding high on that success I sent off the short that was so recently had published at Steampunk Tales. 

He rejected it, but- and this is important- he sent a personal letter to me.  In it he said, and I am going to quote him here, "You have a great voice, and strong writing. I like it.  You should be writing great sweeping epic novels of adventure as your action borders on the poetic." 

In the space of a few months and 1 short story I went from not making the first round to getting a Gold and Silver Medal. After 4 years of no response, form rejection letters, and out-right quitting that personal message meant a lot to me.  It still does, actually.  But now there was no stopping me.  I researched the hell outta the genre.  As of November 2010, there isn't a steampunk book I haven't read. 

Since then I've written a total of 3 steampunk short stories. And I've sold them all.  Each one on the first time too.  I've never had to re-submit a short to a second publisher.  I'm 3 for 3. 

What’s the lesson here?  I’m not sure, really.  Don’t quit?  Put every ounce of emotion that you can into every story?  If you don’t succeed try something else?  Be asymmetrical in your approach to success?

Beats me.  I just know I’ll be writing steampunk stories for the foreseeable future.  No one can stop me now. 

It's on.

I'm back

Sorry for the dissappearing act.  My wife and I had a baby! 

Yes, it's our first and we're super excited.  I also get very little writing done as most of my time is spent changing diapers, calming baby, or doing the dishes.  All fatherly sort of chores in the first month of my son's life, but it doesn't seem too manly.

But that's really the sacrafice we make when it comes to life and children isn't it?  We can spend time on our careers, to make more money and get them a better life, but it's a life we'll miss.  We won't be there to see the series of firsts if we're out making that bank.  The flip side is we're always there, but that's at the sacrifice of the career. Which means less money.  And less of a life for the kid.

And, I know what you're thinking, you're thinking, "But kids don't care about that kind of stuff.  They just want to be loved."

Having grown up dirt-ass poor, I can assure you that children do care about that kind of thing, but they don't brnig it up to their parents. 

I think that's the real cruix of my fears as a father- that I'll put my son through the same crap I had to go through.  I see it with other parents all the time. Sending their children to places and activites because they had to do it, even though they hated it. 

As an example- a friend of mine just had a baby girl.  She's not a religious woman.  She's even spoken out about the hypocrasy of the church, and how she doesn't like the institution of the church.  But she's taking her daughter to be babtized, and has already told me how she plans to take her to church every Sunday. 

Which doesn't make any sense to me- why do that?  Why take your child to something you have actively dissapproved of and spoken out against?  You're the adult.  You don't have to put your kid through the things you hated. 

I guess I'll just have to muddle through it, and when the boy turns 18 ask him how I did. 

Outline or not to Outline

That is the question you will hear from time to time from rookie writers.  There are a lot of arguments for and some against outlining.    There are people who swear that outlining kills the creative process.  Some who, like me, swear by outlining.  But I don’t think that’s the real question.  The real question isn't whether or not to outline, it's how many times do you want to re-write something?

Me, I'm lazy.  I want knock out a piece in as few drafts as possible.   And since going to school to learn to write fiction, I haven’t written even a short story without an outline.   I like outlines.

I know you’re thinking that the program I went through must have been big on outlines. Actually, it wasn’t.   It was big on discovering your process, and building on what works for you.  Outlines work.  So, I outline a lot.

I start with a basic 4 beat outline (opening, turn point 1, point 2, close) and slowly build it out from there.  By the time I'm done building from the initial idea I have at least a paragraph written for each chapter, and it’s anywhere from 8 to 10 pages long for a novel and 2 to 3 pages for a short story.   I even outlined for this blog post. 

By the time I actually sit down to write the story I know 90% of it.  I know what the characters are going to do, how they’re going to do it, and what they’re going to say while they’re doing it.  When it comes to the creative process all I’m just coloring in the lines with descriptive phrases and colorful turns of language.   I’m usually pretty committed to the story when it gets to the writing part.    The vast majority of my rewriting happens in the outline part.  Surprise plot twists aren’t a surprise for me; they are built on and worked toward.  My guns are well planted in the first act so they can go off in the third act.  To borrow from Chekov.  (I just made that line up now, it wasn’t in the original outline.   See?  Colorful language added during the writing process)

And having said all that this novel has presented a lot of challenges to my normal work flow. 

As usual, I worked on the characters and the story via outline for weeks.  Months, actually.  I did my research.  Knew what I wanted to accomplish in the story, and how I was going to do it. 

And three chapters in, I was colossally bored with the whole thing.  It was flat.  Cliché.  Crap.  I was bored with the whole thing.   An unusual experience for me.  And if I was bored with the story, any reader certainly would be. 

So, I stopped writing and went back to outline. What was the problem?  Where had I gone wrong?   I had been watching a lot of David Tennant’s Dr Who, and reading a lot of Doc Savage and Sherlock Holmes in preparation for this story.  I wanted to be influenced by them in creating the protagonist.  He was going to be a super-awesome scientist dude that saved the world.

Which, as it turned out, was the problem.  He was great.  Amazing, if I do say so myself.  He always knew the right thing to do, right thing to say, or the right way to act.  He dominated the story, which was good.   A protagonist should be the star of their own story.  But it was bad because nothing was really a challenge for him.  He knew what to do at every point.  It wasn’t a question of “will he survive?” but “how badly will the antagonist lose?” 

And that’s boring. 

So, how did I fix the problem?    I don’t want to sound too arrogant, but the story beats were pretty good.  The stakes were high.  The goals were good.  The antagonist was well defined, and wasn’t a cut-out bad guy.  I had created a world built to challenge someone like Holmes, Savage, or Who but it wasn’t enough. 

I fixed it by killing Mr. Super-Awesome in the first chapter, and replaced him with an imposter.   So, now, there’s a perfectly ordinary guy who has to act like he’s the world’s foremost scientist, adventurer, and ladies’ man.  And he’s got to survive in a world built to challenge Mr Super-Awesome. 

And that’s a lot more interesting to me.  Hopefully readers will find it interesting too. 

So, what’s my point?  I guess it’s that outlining does work.  And it also doesn’t work.  I only found out that my story was boring after I sat down to write it.  Instead of plowing ahead with a novel I didn’t know anything about, I was able to stop and fix the issue early rather than being 20 chapters in and not being happy.    Now I’m back on track, writing a story I’m interested in and find compelling. 

Still waiting

So....

I submitted my latest short story off to Aoife's Kiss about 63 days and 4 hours ago, and I have yet to hear a response from them.  Normally this doesn't bother me, but Aoife's doesn't have a mulitiple submissions policy, they're sitting on the story until I get an up or a down from them. 

Usually I send a short story out to several publishers and get to writing what's next.   However, Aoife's Kiss doesn't like to share, so I have to wait until I hear back from them.  bleh. 

Duotrope has their average response time as 30 days, and I'm well past that. 

That's a good sign, right?