6/4/08: Miscellaneous writing news

[davidlevine]

It's been an eventful few days for me, writing-wise. I completed the requested rewrite, and received an almost immediate acceptance: "Aggro Radius" will be appearing in Gamer Fantastic, edited by Martin Greenberg and Kerrie Hughes. I also received my contract and check for "Midnight at the Center Court" from Witch Way to the Mall and my contract for "Joy is the Serious Business of Heaven" from Realms of Fantasy. And today's mail brought a pleasant surprise: a package from F&SF with a copy of its French edition, containing "Titanium Mike à la rescousse!"

The French edition of F&SF is confusingly entitled Fiction and claims to be edited by "les moutons électriques." According to its web page, "Fiction présente chaque semestre le meilleur de la science-fiction et du merveilleux. Tout simplement." So I'm honored my story was selected for translation. And, even better, "tome 7" of this fine magazine features zeppelins on the cover.

I also took half an hour to whomp off a 500-word vignette for a nonprofit project. This was an educational experience. I remember at Clarion I protested mightily when Candas Jane Dorsey asked us to write a 500-word writing exercise as well as our weekly story. It was work! Eight years later it's like rolling off a log, and not only that I think the resulting piece is pretty darn good. (Admittedly it's funny and fanfic-ish, which made it easier.) Ever watch a professional jeweler replace a watch battery or watchband? It's like that. Do something often enough, even something fairly complex, and it becomes almost automatic. Which only goes to show the value of writing more.

As I was adding the Gamer Fantastic story to my spreadsheet I took a moment to tot up some figures. I've written 45 stories since I started getting serious in 1998 (wow, that's 10 years ago). Of those, 4 are in submission, 4 have been critiqued and are awaiting revision, 1 is awaiting critique, 5 have been trunked, and 31 have sold (some of them multiple times). That's a pretty decent sell-through rate, if I do say so myself.

Comments

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I'd say that's an excellent sell through rate. Yeah!

[seventorches.livejournal.com]

Neat numbers! Wow, somehow I always thought you were more prolific than that. I guess it's because I associate you in my mind with Jay and Ken.

Do you finish everything you start? What are your set goals--word count, or a story-a-[timeperiod]? How does novel work affect your short writing?

See you at JayCon?

[davidlevine]

I've tried to do the Jay Lake thing, believe me, but it just doesn't work like that for me. That man can draft faster than I can type. With three fingers, no less.

I can think of a couple of examples where I started a story and didn't finish it, but generally they were writing exercises that I didn't really have any investment in the story. I also have a couple of novel ideas where I wrote an outline or started the research but never even began drafting. In general, though, I don't have any partial stories or novels sitting around on my hard disk. My general practice is to start something and work on it exclusively and fairly regularly until it's done.

When I set goals for myself (I don't have one at the moment, as June is going to be largely taken up with the Taos workshop and I suspect my goals may change after that) it's generally been a combination of "write every day with a minimum of X words per day" (where X has varied from 100 to 1000) and "finish a chapter/story for each crit group meeting" (i.e. every 3 weeks).

When I'm working on a novel I don't do short stories at all, with the exception that I will take a break and write a story if it's an opportunity I can't pass up (e.g. an anthology invitation). Two of the three stories I sold in the past few weeks were invited anthology submissions, one I wrote on a break from my 2nd novel in December and the other I wrote right after completing that novel. The other one was a story I wrote at Clarion in 2000, didn't get around to revising until 2006, and went through 8 rejections over 2 years before finally being accepted.

See you at JayCon!

[amysisson.livejournal.com]

That's an impressive 10 years of effort and results. Well done!

Spreadsheets

[mystraveler.livejournal.com]

As usual, David, the insights you provide into the writing business are an inspiration. I'm currently working on submissions for a short story contest and a workshop -- both firsts for me!
--Karen