Writing–2013 Writing Goals

January 16, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Last year I gave myself the goal of getting 50 rejections and ended up falling miserably short. However, I did learn quite a bit when it comes to goal setting my writing like that. First of all, I need to be more realistic. Second of all, not every goal is going to work for me.

The idea of getting 50 rejections seemed like a good one at the time because it would motivate me to submit more of my short stories. The problem with this approach is that I really don’t have the short story inventory to generate that many rejections, particularly when the rejection process is on a completely different time table. I have no control over when I get the rejections. They can take days or months. Combine that with a limited inventory and I found out that I tore my ACL before I even made it out onto the track.

However, had I not given it a go, I wouldn’t have learned that. I’m a sucker for learning things the hard way.

This year, I’m going to take a different approach to my writing goals.

My biggest goal is going to be revising The World (Saving) Series to a point of doneness. Not THE point of doneness, but A point of doneness. That means that I want to get the novel to a point that I’m done messing with the story and the structure and all I’m worried about is consistency, word choice, and descriptions. I want to be satisfied with the big picture of the story, so to speak. Giving myself until the end of the year seems reasonable, I think.

I’ve got seven short stories waiting on my ready list. I want to submit them all at least once. I’ve got three stories still out from last year. If they all get rejected, then I want to submit them all at least once, too. Any new short stories I write, I want to send those out at least once as well. Not exactly a lofty goal, for sure, but sometimes I feel very divided with my writing. This is a way to motivate some progress without being too hard on myself and getting discouraged. It also encourages me to give all of my stories a chance on the market instead of holding them back, afraid to let them be seen by the world.

I haven’t abandoned my idea to edit Night of the Nothing Man into a novella and self-publish it. That will get done sometime this year.

My current sooper-sekrit project is under way. Even though I don’t want to talk about it, I’m working on it. And even if I don’t like the way it’s going or think it’s a flop, I’m still going to finish it. I need to develop a little faith in myself when it comes to working on non-fiction projects (that’s the only hint you’re going to get!).

I think these goals are good enough to keep me busy for the year. We’ll see how it shakes out.

If you’re taking bets on if I’ll be scrambling to submit stories in December, it’s probably a pretty safe bet to take. I know me.

Writing–January Projects

January 2, 2013January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Towards the end of December I got a real bee in my bonnet about ripping apart and revising The World (Saving) Series. I put it off because with the holidays and all, I didn’t want to get into it. And there were a few short story things I wanted to wrap up.

Hopefully, the bee hasn’t settled down and I can get some major work done on World. I’ve really got to be more consistent and dedicated to revising a novel to completion. This is my shot at doing that and I’m going to take it. I want to see how far I can get this month.

I’m also kicking around an idea for another project. I don’t want to say too much about it because I know how I am. I think something is a good idea, I talk about it, I start doing it, the idea dies, and nothing comes of any of the talking that I did. Talking about an idea that doesn’t have some actual substance to it in the sense that I am either done working on it or nearly done working on it is a jinx for me. Total jinx.

But there is a project idea I’m kicking around, so if it comes to being anything, we can all refer back to this post as the one in which it was first mentioned.

Because that totally matters and whatnot.

Writing–I Have No Idea What I’m Doing

December 12, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I feel like that sometimes, like I have no clue what the hell I’m doing. Not just when I’m working on my writing, either, though that happens plenty of times. For every day I think I know what I’m doing, there are two that I feel like I don’t.

I’m still not sure I know how to write a novel because I’ve yet to successfully revise one into completion. Working on short stories, more than once I’ve stopped to ask myself, “Is this right?” Even when it comes to blogging, I feel lost at times, like I’m just faking my way through it, looking like an idiot all the way.

But this feeling of not knowing what I’m doing goes beyond the writing doubts. It encompasses my whole career (if you want to call it that). Should I be splitting my time between writing novels and working on short stories? Is the Outskirts a waste of time? Should I really be self-publishing my novellas? Should I even be writing novellas? Should I focus all of my time and energy on getting one novel manuscript finished so I can start shopping it to agents? How do I connect more with the writing community? I need to get into it, but where do I start? Should I wait until I do have a novel manuscript finished and few agent rejections so I don’t look like the impostor I feel like? I consider myself a writer, but will they?

It feels like flies on a dead body in June when my brain buzzes like this. It freezes me. I can’t make any decisions, can’t even look for a logical place to start trying to figure anything out. I can’t even figure out what I DO know because I’m not sure I actually know it.

It’s kind of a bitch.

When this sort of overwhelming “where am I?” happens, I find myself throwing up my hands and yelling “fuck it!” at the sky and going back to work on whatever it is I’m working on. Do I know what I’m doing? Fuck it! I’ll do it anyway! That’s the spirit!

Which really doesn’t do me any good because it doesn’t fix the underlying problem, but at least I do get something done. And the productivity makes me feel better. It makes me feel like I at least know how to cross something off my To Do List for that given day. It’s a sense of accomplishment.

It’s just the rest of it I still need to work out.

Writing–December Projects

December 5, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

December is always a screwy month for me. I’m coming down from NaNoWriMo, I’m dealing with the holiday gauntlet, and in general my time and energy is in flux. I never know what to schedule for myself during December because I never know how this roller coaster month is going to work out. I either give myself too much to do, decide to take on projects that are too ambitious, or I don’t give myself enough and I end up feeling like a slacker.

I’ve decided to err on the side of slackerdom this time around. I think I’m going to end up working on some Outskirts stuff. I’ve got a Paxton story I’m working on and some ideas for some Maisie Day stuff. I’ve got this idea for a couple novellas as written by Maisie (since she is a writer, you know). I think that’s what my morning project is going to end up as and I think I’m going to revise and cut down the Ivy novel I wrote over the summer to be one of Maisie’s. I’ve also got an idea for another one, but I haven’t done anything with it yet.

Working on all of that is both productive, but also low-commitment in a sense. There’s nothing urgent about it.

I will also continue my quest for rejections. It’s because obvious that I’m not going to meet my goal of 50 by the end of the year since I’m sitting at 15 right now. But 20 is within reach and I’ve got five stories out and four ready to go. If I finish the revisions on “Just Visiting” (I’ve already done most of the heavy lifting), that’ll be five. I didn’t submit at all in November, didn’t even really look around much. I need to finish the year with a final burst.

Trust me. It only LOOKS busy.

Writing–November Projects

November 7, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

It’s NaNoWriMo time!

This year’s project is called Night of the Nothing Man. In addition to the challenges raised by not coming up with this novel idea until a week before the start, I’ve given myself some other guidelines that I’m going to try to follow as I write. I’ll reveal those at the end of the month.

If you recall, I wrote a novel manuscript this summer in a different fashion. I outlined a few chapters, wrote those chapters, and then revised those chapters before moving on. I’m going to be doing something similar with this NaNo project. I managed to get about six chapters outlined before the NaNo countdown clock wound down. This was partly by design. I do better during NaNo when I outline, but in the course of my writing, I end up changing or deviating from my outline that typically results in some frustrating revisions and rewrites. I liked the outlining and then writing of the summer novel experiment in that I stayed on track, but I could make changes. So I’m going to attempt to do NaNo in this fashion.

Dangerous business for me, but I like living on the edge.

Also during the month I’ll keep working on my Lucy and Jamie story. I’ve got a good idea where it’s going and I think it might be good for me to write a page or two of something else while working on NaNo. Kind of like a morning warm-up.

I may or may not start poking at The World (Saving) Series again. I’ve got an idea of some revisions I’d like to do and I’ve been kicking them around for the past couple of months. They wouldn’t be too taxing to do when I need an evening break from NaNo, but don’t want to be unproductive.

It should be a good month full of words.

Writing–Generating My NaNo Idea

October 31, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I wrote before how I was stuck on what to write for NaNo this year. I toyed with the idea of being a rebel and writing novellas instead, but even then I wasn’t too moved by the idea. I really wanted to stick to my November guns and go for my usual goal of 60,000 words before Thanksgiving. But I had nothing.

A NaNo buddy of mine whom I also follow on Twitter and also has a pretty rockin’ blog, Trinae Ross, told me that she was stuck for her NaNo idea, too, until she just started writing random words down on a piece of paper and then asking the usual questions of who, what, where, when, and why. It took her about four days for things to start to come together, but she ended up with something of substance that she could get to the point of outlining. She had a story.

At her suggestion, I decided to try it. Sitting and thinking wasn’t helping me any. The blank I was drawing was just getting blanker. So I grabbed one of my plentiful notebooks, flipped to a blank page, took pen in hand, and wrote down the first things that came to my mind.

“Guys like him aren’t very good at staying dead.” The 70’s. Nighttime. A face in a window. A room full of newspaper articles. A missing girl. An attempted abduction. Two teenagers.

And from there I started asking questions. Who is this guy? Why doesn’t he stay dead? Why this decade? Who is this face? Who are these kids? What do the articles say?

The page filled up pretty quickly with my answers and other scribblings. More importantly, I was pretty happy with what I was jotting down. Just like what happened with Trinae, my story started to come together.

Even at the eleventh hour going into NaNo I still have some work to do (I’ll get into the details next week), but I’m feeling so much better about this project than I was a week ago when I didn’t even have a project to work with. At least I have a place to start when the clock strikes midnight.

I am horrible at networking and socializing. I don’t work very hard at including myself in the writing community because there’s a still a chunk of me that doesn’t think I belong because I don’t have enough credits to my name. But through NaNo and through Twitter, I’ve met some pretty cool fellow writers that don’t hold me to the same high standards that I hold myself to when it comes to inclusion and for that I am grateful.

Without Trinae, I’d still be spinning my wheels.

Writing–A Morning Project

October 24, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Two or three days a week (depending on the week) I get up at 6:30 AM to supervise the neighbor boy before school and then I take him there. From 6:45 to about 8:10 every morning I sit at the table and let the boy know what time it is. Time for your shower. Time for breakfast. Time to go. In between this time monitoring, he plays his DS and I write.

I didn’t plan on writing during these mornings. When I first started the gig, I wasn’t sure exactly how much wrangling would be required. Turns out that there’s usually not much and since it is so early in the morning, Twitter isn’t exactly jumping. Once I’ve caught up on my timeline, taken my turn for SongPop and Words With Friends, and read a few blog or new articles on my phone, I still have quite a bit of time to fill.

So I started bringing a notebook with me so I could “scribble”. I didn’t really have anything in mind to work on that first morning, so to pass the time I decided to write Lucy and Jamie’s backstory. You might remember them from a previous blog entry about characters that pop up without a story. I had a pretty good idea who these to characters were, so I wrote about Lucy meeting Jamie for the first time, which began with Lucy talking to Jamie’s adoptive mother Lindy. It was a fun little thing with no expectations.

And from that bit of scribbling came an actual idea for a story.

That’s what I’ve been working on two or three mornings a week for the past month or so. I managed to get a page or two written while sitting at the table keeping track of the time. It’s a different approach for me, at least in terms of what I’ve been used to doing for the past few years.

First of all, I’m writing long hand, which isn’t that unusual when I’m writing short stories, but I sense that this will be longer (I’m thinking novella range). I usually don’t write longer stories longhand because what I write down, I must type up.

Second of all, when I am working on a project, I adhere to the write every day rule. For me, I feel like it’s important for me to get that first draft out as fast as possible. This first draft is only getting written a couple of pages at a time no more than three days a week.

Lastly, with my longer works I’ve fallen into the need for an outline. I prefer to know where I’m going when I start putting the story on the page. With this project, I’m just going one page at a time and not thinking any farther ahead than necessary. I’m just seeing where this story goes.

I have to admit, this is a fresh approach is rather freeing. It’s not quite so serious business. I’m not putting excessive demands on myself. I’m just supposed to write every morning while I wait for the boy to get ready for school. It’s just a way to pass the time.

It’s going back to a time when writing was just a hobby and not a career-in-the-making.

Call it a change of pace.

Writing–Gone Missing: Another Self-Published Experiment

October 17, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Gone Missing was a short story that went a longer than a normal short story and ended up becoming a novella. Once I was finished with it and had it revised and all polished up I went…”Okay, now what do I do with this?”

My first thought was to self-publish it as eBook, but then I decided against it. I thought I should at least give traditional publishing a try. So I looked into the possibilities, but couldn’t find anything that said to me it would be a comfortable fit. Remember, I’m that person that doesn’t want to waste anyone’s time so the criteria for a story has to match up damn near perfectly with what I’m trying to sell.

I debated on it for a bit and after an informal poll, I decided to bite the bullet and self-publish again.

My last self-publishing escapade, Rejected, was hardly a smashing success. It took nearly 10 months before I made the minimum through Lulu ($5) to get paid. I also ended up going through two different self-publishers (Lulu and Amazon) so I could get my book done in print and digital (Lulu covered everything but Kindle, which is why I had to go through Amazon). I still don’t think I’ve made $5 through Kindle sales. Self-publishing takes a lot of promotion and word of mouth and I’ll be honest, after about a month of it I felt like I was flogging a dead horse.

The idea of going at this all again was not an enticing one.

However, my ego driven need to be read proved too strong. Even without the informal poll of five people saying they’d read it if I published it, I knew that’s what was going to happen. Like going on the Tilt-A-Whirl after eating too much funnel cake. You know you’re going to puke, but you can’t resist the temptation to spin your car as fast as you can.

This time I chose to go through Smashwords. Several authors I follow on Twitter use it. It’s strictly eBooks and I wouldn’t have to go through more than one place for the novella to be available for different devices (distribution is a little different story). I felt like it would be a good fit.

So, we’ll see how this self-publishing run goes. I’m not expecting to make myself millions by this endeavor, but I’m curious to see if Gone Missing will be read more than Rejected just by going through a different self-publisher.

Don’t worry. Any downloads made after reading this blog entry will not be considered as tampering with the result.

Writing–October Projects

October 3, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’ve really only got two projects in mind for October.

The first is a freebie project. To celebrate my favorite holiday, Halloween, I’m going to post a new freebie horror story every Wednesday, the last coming out on Halloween and being directly related to my favorite movie related to the holiday (like “How the Night Haunts”). So check the freebie page every Wednesday for a new fix. I’m still in the process of selecting the other three stories.

And I have to write the fourth.

No worries. It’ll be fine.

The second project is self-publishing my novella “Gone Missing”. Five people on Twitter said they’d read it and that sealed it for me. Okay, maybe not. Maybe it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, but was on the fence because I thought I should give traditional publishing a shot at it first. And then I took a look at the market and went, “Yeah, okay, I’ll just do this myself.” My “not a fit” monster rises again.

I’m thinking it will be all digital unless there’s a sudden demand for print copies (I don’t think there will be). I just have to decide what venue to use.

The short story submitting continues. Battling my own insecurities about whether or not I should submit a story some place is rather tiresome, but it’s a very real obstacle that I’m dealing with. The finished stories are piling up.

It’s time to just bite the bullet and submit.

Writing–The Story of Four Stories

September 26, 2012January 22, 2016 ~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I’ve got four short stories in various stages of revisions right now: “Whistle While You Work”, “Aftermath”, “Just Visiting”, and “Lady on the Stairs”. They were all written about the same time, but in pairs (“Whistle” and “Aftermath” together; “Visiting” and “Lady” together). They’re different stories, but it’s just interesting to see how different they are in terms of writing/revising them.

Of the four, “Lady” needs the most work. I was sure what it was when I started writing it, but when I got to the end, I figured it out. It’s going to take a few rewrites to get the tone just right and make sure I get across what I’m trying to say.

I knew what “Visiting” was when I started writing it, but it’s taken quite a bit of tweaking to get the right mood, more than I anticipated.

I knew, but I didn’t know what “Whistle” was about. I had the scene in my head, but I didn’t know the why of the whole thing until the very end. It started off pretty straight forward and then my brain gave me the twist. It was kind of like “Lady”, except I had a much better handle on what was going on when I started the story.

“Aftermath” is basically done. The story came out as it should be. It just needs a little tweaking.

People who aren’t writers often think that writing short stories is like working an assembly line. You’re doing basically the same thing every time. The process is the same. So therefore, the idea that one story might be easier or more difficult than another is baffling. You’re doing the same thing? Why is it so hard this time when it was so easy the last time? Or vice versa.

Sure, the process is the same. But every story is it’s own beast. Going back to the assembly line comparison, it would be like I’m putting on the headlights, but every car that comes down the line is different. So even though I’m doing the same job, it doesn’t get done exactly the same way because I’m dealing with a different vehicle ever time.

While I’m following the same basic writing process (first draft, rewrites, revisions, polishing), different stories require different amounts of each step.

Non-writers aren’t the only ones that need to be aware of this, though.

I need to remember that, too.