Tag: projects

Writing–Canceling “Playing Chicken”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Last month I learned that due to lack of funds that the anthology that “Playing Chicken” was going to be published in was canceled. This bums me out for a few reasons. One, I won’t be getting paid. Two, I won’t be getting my story published. Three, one of my favorite small publishers (that’s published me in the past) is struggling.

It’s the third point that really troubles me. See, when I ask you to buy an anthology I’ve been published in, I’m not just asking for me. Yes, I want you to read the story I wrote, but I also want you to read the stories everyone else in the anthology wrote. I get paid a one time payment of a certain amount per word when the anthology is published. I don’t make royalties off of it. The money made from you buying an anthology pays the bills, allows the small publisher to keep publishing, and provides me with the future possibility of having another story published with them.

So, while I don’t reap the immediate monetary rewards from all of the copies the anthology sells, you are providing me with the opportunity to get paid by these people again. That’s important to a writer, especially in a time when the short story market is competitive, tough, and not paying a whole lot. Buying the anthologies and keeping the small publishers afloat help out not just the publishers, but the writers, too.

So, with that all said, the “Playing Chicken” ball is back in my court and I am charged with finding a new home for it. On one hand, that’s a pain in the ass. This story was sold, dammit! I should be done with it. On the other hand, it gives me another story to shop around which kind of gives me a boost for my goal to make more of an effort in my submitting. It’s easier to submit a story when you actually have a story to submit, which will be the key to reaching my submitting goals.

They say that when one door closes, another one opens. Let’s hope the next “Playing Chicken” door opens quickly.

Writing–January Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

January is going to be one busy, crazy month.

I’m rewriting/revising Spirited in Spite for a contest. The deadline is February 5th, but I’m going to try to have the novel done by January 30th. Yeah, considering most of the book has to be rewritten, there is no way this can end well. If I can get it in somewhat readable shape, I’ll be happy.

The contest is in three stages: pitch, excerpt, novel. I will declare this contest a success if I can get past the pitch stage.

Really, since there’s no entry fee, there’s nothing I’ve got to lose by doing this. The hard deadline, the goal, will help keep me focused. I’ve rewritten/revised one other novel, but I didn’t complete it in the sense that I would feel comfortable with sending it. I can’t imagine I can get this book perfect in about 30 days (okay, to be fair it’s more like 45 days since I actually started working on it in December), but what I will end up with when I submit my entry is going to be better and closer to finished than what I’ve got right now. There’s no reason for me to pass up the opportunity to really work on my novel revising skills in a specific time frame and with a definite goal.

There will be stress and frustration. Let’s just hope that it’s not so severe I end up pulling out my hair.

I’ve also got a few short stories that need to be finished from December. “Another Deadly Weapon” is done and ready to go. “How the Night Haunts” will be up on the blog shortly. The rewrites on “At 3:36” ended up separating the piece into two different stories, “At 3:36” and “Powerless”. “At 3:36” needs more work, but “Powerless” just needs some polishing up, I think. “Anniversaries” and the untitled short story need more work, too.

Aside from “Powerless”, every other story is going to wait in favor of the novel revisions. With “Powerless” done, I’ll have four stories (along with “Soul Sister”, “Playing Chicken” (the anthology it was going to be in was canceled), and “Another Deadly Weapon”) to shop around, which I plan to do in earnest. My goal is to submit a lot more short stories this year.

Let’s see how this all works out with my birthday and me being in Chicago for four days. Let’s just see.

Writing–December Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

After spending a month (okay, it was more like three weeks) with a novel, December is short story month.

I have three new ones I’m looking to write. “How the Night Haunts” will be a freebie for a the blog. “Anniversaries” and an as yet untitled one have no definite intention yet, but I imagine I’ll be trying to submit them whenever I deem them ready.

I also have three old ones that are in need of revisions. I need to rewrite “At 3:36” with the new angle and fix the ending of “Another Deadly Weapon” because I’ve never liked it. And then there’s “An Active Sleeper”, which needs something, but I’m don’t know what yet. All I know is I don’t think I’m achieving the affect I want. I’m guessing that one is going to be the big struggle of the month.

All of that, plus working on getting Rejected on Kindle should keep me plenty busy this month.

Writing–NaNoWriMo 2011 Thoughts

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

This year’s Nano was interesting.

As you may remember, I went into the month with only half of my outline done. Despite this, I still managed to hit 50,000 words in 16 days, making this my 5th NaNo win in eight years.

It was when I was doing the last half of my outline that I realized that I was just going in circles. I wasn’t getting anywhere with the story for the sake of a word count. I figured that so long as I hit 50K, I was good.  60K was my goal, but if I fell short while wrapping up with story in a satisfactory way, it was worth it. I figured I’d hit about 55 or 56K.

I finished the first draft of American Vampires on November 20th at 62,000 words.

Yeah, I’m a real good judge of my story. Oops.

The story itself is okay. I can’t say that I’m in love with it, but that could also be that I’m kind of bored with Stanley. Remember, I wrote about him last year and I’ve done a few short stories with him. So it’s possible that my burnout is clouding the quality of draft I have to work with.

There’s also the possibility that pushing myself to finish as early as possible fried my brain.

The point is that I’m done, I have yet another novel-length draft to work with, and I can forget about it for a month.

Or more.

Ah, bless NaNoWriMo.

Writing–Writing Novels and Raking Leaves

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My friend DaLette got hold of me at the end of October to offer me some work. She needed help clearing a massive amount of leaves from a massive yard. It was just going to be the two of us working. Two women, two rakes, and a leaf blower. And we only had two days to do it. It was all her schedule would allow.

The goal for the first day was to clear half of the front yard, the biggest chunk of the whole project. The second day, we’d do the rest of the front yard, the backyard, and the side yard.

Starting out, it looked overwhelming. DaLette started on one side of the half of the front yard with the leaf blower and I took the other side with a rake. DaLette had already been by the week before and cleared out the gardens (which were full again when we started) and I started moving those piles down to the street. I’d pile the leaves on a piece of plastic sheeting and then drag them down to the street and dump them for the city to pick up.

I cleared out the bulk of the leaves in the gardens again and raked up many of my own piles to drag down to the street while DaLette made her own piles with the leaf blower. When her piles got big enough, we switched places. She made piles on my side and I moved her piles to the street. It took six and a half hours, but we got that half of the front yard done.

The next day, we started in the backyard, piling up the leaves and moving them out of the little fenced-in area and into the front yard. From there, it was all piling it up and moving it to the street. By the time we got to the sparsely covered side yard, we were both tired and hurting, but it was the easiest part of the yard and it felt the sweetest.

It was during this epic raking exercise that I gave a lot of thought to Nanowrimo, specifically the process of it. Going in on November 1st, it looks like that yard did at the very beginning of the first day. 50,000 words is a huge task and in the beginning, it looks overwhelming.

When I was raking, I kept looking back at what I’d done to remind myself that I was getting somewhere. Word count updates are like that. It reminds me how much I’ve accomplished just in case I forget. Looking ahead, at the rest of the yard that needed to be raked and at the words that need to be written, sometimes it’s hard to remember that I am moving in the right direction.

Like climbing up a hill, eventually it gets to a point where there’s more leaf-free yard than leaf-covered yard. There are more words written than words needing to be written. And that’s when the second wind really kicks in. Sure you’re tired. You’re sore. You outright hurt.  The ideas are drying up. Your brain begs for mercy. Your fingers scream for a break. But you can see the end! It’s just right there! And you’re not going to stop until you cross that line. You’re not going to leave one leaf on the grass and you’re not leaving one word unwritten, not stopping short of that 50,000.

At the end of those two days, I’d made enough money to pay my cell bill for the month. At the end of Nanowrimo, I’ll have another manuscript first draft I might be able to revise and rewrite into something that could pay off in the future.

But, it’s not about the money (actually, the raking IS about the money, but I’m trying not to spoil a point here). It’s about the thrill of victory. It’s about the sense of accomplishment.

It’s about standing at the finishing line, looking back at the beginning, and say, “Yeah. I did that.”

Try not to feel invincible after that.

Writing–NaNoWriMo 2011 Project

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This year for Nanowrimo, I’m once again journeying into The Outskirts and once again writing about Stanley Ivanov, ugly shirt wearing vampire.

The novel is called American Vampires and it revolves around the possible existence of three, well, American vampires and what should be done with them. Stanley, his girlfriend Neda Kovar, and arch rival Nathan Vacek are sent to Mesa, Arizona by elder vampire Andrei Carp to track them down and deal with them. Unfortunately, two “hunters”, brothers Zeb and Zeke Heller, have been sent to Mesa to deal with the vampires, too.

Hilarity, bickering, violence, and blood-drinking ensue.

My goal for this novel remains the same as in previous Nanos. I aim for at least 2,000 words a day, 2,000 words to a chapter, with a target of a 60,000 word finished product with 30 chapters (it makes the math so easy). I’ve already got about a 4,000 word cushion in just this first week. I’m hoping that by doing an extra chapter or two on the weekends, I’ll be done before Thanksgiving again this year.

One thing I’ve deviated from this year is my outline. In previous years, I’ve had the outline done and ready to go for Nano. This year, I only had it about half done. So at some point, I’m going to have to outline the last half of my novel. I’m thinking that since I tend to leave the outline a little bit during the actual writing of the story, it might help in later drafts if the second half of the novel goes off of what was written.

It was planned this way, it just kind of happened due to laziness and apathy. I spent plenty of days in October in “I don’t feel like it” mode and ended up working on other things instead. I hope it doesn’t end up costing me.

Some days have been easier than others. I think yesterday stands as an accurate prediction of what this novel is going to be like. My plan was to do at least 3,000 words to add on to my little cushion. It took me over three hours to milk 2,000 words out. It was like trying to get juice from a turnip, just painful and pointless. I went out to dinner with some friends, came home, made some hot chocolate, and then managed another 2,000 words in an hour with no pain at all.

I’m just hoping for more of the latter than the former.

Writing–November Projects

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I know what you’re thinking. It’s November. Why don’t you just call this post Nanowrimo 2011? Because while Nano will be a huge part of my existence for this month, I do have a few little things that I’d like to be doing on the side.

There are two contests I want to enter (should I scrape up the entry fees). One is a short-short contest and I’ve already got a story finished and ready to revise that I’d like to submit. The other is a memoir/personal essay contest. I’ve never done anything like it before, but I’ve got a few ideas that I think will work and I’d like to give it a shot. I’ve been thinking about doing memoir stuff for a while now and I think this might be a good leaping off point.

Even if I’m not able to enter the contests, I’ll still have some valuable material at the ready for when another opportunity presents itself.

Of course, this is all dependent on how well Nano goes. I’ve done 2,000 words a day with a goal of 60,000 words total for the past couple of years. Let’s hope the trend continues.

And at the end of the day, I have a few words to spare.

Writing–The Nightmare of “At 3:36”

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Last week I wrote about how some stories seem to come to me as if by magic. That first draft comes so easily and requires very little revision to create a final project.

And then there are stories that are the bane of my very existence, the ones that I struggle with and can never seem to get them right no matter how much I mess with them.

All of my stories get revised. Whenever one of my short stories gets rejected, I always review it to see if there’s anything I can do to make it better. I admit that some stories get more than a little tweak after a rejection. Both “Erin Go Bragh” and “Elevator” (both published in my Rejection book) ended up getting significant rewrites more than once after being rejected. “Such a Pretty Face” required some serious work to get right.

But “At 3:36” is a story of a different beast.

It started off simply enough. I got an image of a scene in my  head, a woman looking out the window, watching as the world stops spinning for forty-five minutes at the same time over several days. I wrote it out, explored that scene, and came up with the first draft. The sticking point was that I didn’t want to explain why the world was stopping. It was just happening and the point of the story wasn’t that the world kept stopping and needed to be fixed (this isn’t a SyFy movie, after all), but how my main character reacted and dealt with this event.

But I couldn’t get it right.

No matter how I cut the story or rewrote it or change it (keeping two basic things intact: the world stopping its spin and the main character’s reaction to it), I couldn’t get the story to work. I couldn’t get it to feel right.

I go a lot by how a story feels. If I feel like I’ve told the story I want to tell and created the effect I wanted to create, then I’m satisfied and I can work on polishing and revising that story to make it the best it can be. I never got to that point with “At 3:36” and it was pretty disappointing.

The other day I was in the shower, letting my mind wonder over things I needed to work on, stories that needed to be told, money that needed to be made, the typical things that run rampant in my brain during my morning showers. It was during these mental gymnastics that the possible solution to my “At 3:36” story woes came to me. I think I’ve finally figured out how to fix this story once and for all.

I won’t know for sure until I actually do it, which won’t be until December due to Nanowrimo, but for the first time, I’m excited about this story.

Considering that I hated it as soon as I was done with the first draft, that’s a big improvement.

Writing–October Projects

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It’s getting into my writing busy season.

NaNoWriMo is coming up, which means I’ve got to start planning for it. The loose idea I’m kicking around right now is another Stanley novel called American Vampires. It would involve Stanley, Neda, and Nathan hunting down a trio of, well, American vampires that may or may not exist and may or may not be living by the unwritten vampire code (it’s all hearsay and Nathan’s the one doing most of the hearing and saying and since Stanley doesn’t trust Nathan, well…).

I’m also going to continue revising The World (Saving) Series. I finally got chapter one done after starting over. It’s still not great, but it’s a lot closer to what it needs to be and it’s good enough that I can move on.

Also on tap is more work on The Outskirts site. I need to, at the very least, get some bios up on some of the characters that inhabit the universe and try scratching out some ideas on some of their stories. I’m not expecting miracles when it comes to getting anything accomplished, but I need to get something done. It can’t just sit there.

And lastly (told you it was my busy season), I’ve got an idea for a memoir and I’m going to start jotting down some ideas for it. I have no idea if I’ll even write it, but it’s not going to hurt anything if I do some brainstorming on it. Who knows? If I decide not to do it, I’ll at least have something to come back to if I change my mind.

So, those are the writing projects on tap for October. I’ve got to get my butt out of low gear and into high.

Writing–Not Quite Ready For Primetime

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Earlier this month I invited people to pay some money to purchase a book of my rejected short stories and then give me their honest feedback about why they thought I couldn’t get anyone to publish them. Thankfully, nobody took me up on the invitation.

Why am I thankful for that?

Because despite trying to make this self-published venture look as professional as possible, I still made a boneheaded mistake that would make me look like anything but professional.

In reviewing my file to prepare it to be acceptible to distribute on Amazon, I realized that I had messed up the numbers on the table of contents. Okay, maybe it’s not an earth shattering mistake, but it’s still a stupid one and one I’m really embarrassed about and thankful that I caught.

But I should have caught it sooner.

The mistake happened because I’d originally set-up the book with a different template. I decided to go with a different one and switched everything over, neglecting to change the page numbers on the table of contents.

Even better is that I actually have a physical copy of the book and have looked at several times, but never caught the mistake.

It’s possible no one would catch the mistake, but that’s not the point. The point is that it never should have gone out that way and the fault is all mine.

I was in too much of a hurry. There’s a ticking clock in my brain that’s always telling me how behind I am and that I need to hurry. The sooner I get this book out, the sooner I can promote it, the sooner I can get the word of mouth going, the sooner I can build a fanbase, the sooner I can…the sooner I can…

I got ahead of myself. I rushed and I paid the price. Thankfully, not a heavy one. I’m embarrassed, but not nearly as embarrassed as I would have been if more people had bought the book before I caught the mistake.

This incident once again reminds me that nothing good comes of me rushing through something and I’m at my most dangerous when I think I know what I’m doing.