This was my third FoF and it didn’t disappoint… again. I attended panels starting Friday afternoon well into the evening and the spend 12 hours both Saturday an Sunday (at least) frantically scribbling notes, listening, and learning. Probably my 3 favorite panels were the two that talked about the short fiction markets (Neil Clarke was in both, as was Scot Noel and David Steffen) and the one about how you need to consider the infrastructure…
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…
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…
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!
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…
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…
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…
I meant to add this last month when I found out but we are in the middle of a pandemic, and I was still doing my regular job and it got a little crazy. Let me follow up with a news update. First of all, I did not get into either Clarion or Clarion West. It was a long shot at best, and honestly, since they have cancelled at least one of them (delayed until…
About 2 weeks ago I learned about the Clarion West workshop that is held every summer in Seattle, and that the deadline for applications was March 1. To be fair, I had heard of this workshop, but something about that news sparked me into action and I have spent all of my free time over the past 2 weeks (admittedly, not a lot of time, but several 1-2 hour blocks) revising and updating 4 stories…
It seems like work always finds a way to interfere with my dreams. But I feel good about the next 3 to 4 months. Lets see what I can do.