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Category: news

Clarion West

I have been working on my application to Clarion West for the last 5-6 weeks. I had 4-5 stories I was considering for revision and inclusion in the application, and in the end I chose one that is shows a personal relationship between a man and an alien aboard a starship. The second one was conceived during a run in the rain in late December and it is a story written from the perspective of…

NaNoWriMo win!

I totally forgot to update my NaNo status… I did it! I won! I wrote 50,450 words in 29 days (and then about 125 more on the 30th) and then have taken a bit of a break since then. My novel is up to about 70k words now, and I figure I have at least 30-40k left to get the first draft complete. I was ahead of schedule for the first week, but November was…

NaNoWriMo

I just decided tonight that I will be doing NaNo this year. I spent 3-4 months last year plotting and prepping and doing the snowflake method and then I stalled out and wrote short fiction. But I really need to do this for myself, so I am committing to it publicly. I will spend October reviewing my notes and outlines, reordering chapters, and getting ready to write. Nov 1… here I come!

News update

I realized that I haven’t done an update in a long time. I’ve been posting the books I read and I’m trying to include details about what I’m learning along they way, but what about me? Starting in about December of 2020 I recommitted myself to writing. I joined a biweekly writing group, I meet approximately weekly with an accountability buddy, and I’ve been doing a lot of writing. So far in the last 8…

NaNoWriMo 2020 Wrap up

My goal was to write a short story every day in November. I wrote from Nov 1 to Nov 12, averaging approximately 1000 words a day. And then boom, that was it. I wrote three more times for a total of 15, so I wrote half the days, and I got a total word count of just over 19k words. I’m going to count that as a success. I didn’t write 15 short stories, but…

NaNoWriMo 2020

I have been meaning to do NaNo for 9 years and just have never given it a try. On Oct 31, in a fit, all of a sudden I decided to do it. Jump in with both feet. I didn’t have a novel ready to work on (I know I need to work on my plot before I am ready to start writing otherwise it will be a disaster) so i decided to try to…

submission!

I made a goal for myself for the coming 12 months and that is to submit at least 8-10 stories over the next year. I have a lot of stories that are close to being submittable, and I just need to focus on them and just get over my fear of submitting. So, when I heard about the Cast of Wonders flash contest (https://www.castofwonders.org) I just knew I had to do it. The word count…

flights of foundry day 2

so tired. I took 36 pages of notes (9300 words). I have a lot to think about but now I am going to go check on my family and see if they are still alive.

Flights of Foundry day 1

My first con! I spent the whole day in my chair in front of 3 screens and multiple windows, frantically taking notes, listening to authors read their works. I got so many ideas on how to improve my writing… but I fear that I will slip into an “I’m not worthy” funk after all of this. There is so much to learn and understand. I mean, I get it, I haven’t taken a fiction writing…

Flights of Foundry

I am so new to this world. I don’t know what exists, I don’t know what I should know. For example, I frantically applied to the Clarion workshops at the last minute because I didn’t know they were happening. I now have a calendar of deadlines and workshops for next summer, so hopefully this pandemic eases up. I knew that there were SF conventions but I didn’t really know what they entailed. I have never…