Tag: short stories

Writing–January Projects

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

New month, new year, new projects on the whiteboard of my writing life.

The big project this month is revising The World (Saving) Series. I’ve been itching to get my revising hands on this first draft since I wrote the last word. I love this story and I want to make it better.

I’m re-reading it and making revision notes on it now and for the most part, there’s nothing major story-wise that I need to overhaul, which is nice. Most of the revisions now are just little story things like fixing some details and turning the telling into showing. I think this time I got the story right the first time.

I’m planning on this round of revisions to take two months. Planning. If I can get them done sooner, I will not complain. However, I know they won’t be done there. Not only will the technical aspects still need to be cleaned up, there are certain details I’m still going to be lacking. I’m writing about places I’ve never been to and in some case, never seen. It’s a challenge I’m going to have to overcome, but at a later date.

As I like to say, one catastrophe at a time.

With a big project that’s going to take me all month and beyond, it’s nice to say that I’ve already accomplished something in submitting three short stories. It’s nice to be able to wipe something off of the whiteboard.

Stories By the Numbers

Submitted: 3
Ready: 3
Rejected: 2 (“Game Night” and “Another Deadly Weapon”; both no response rejections)

Stories By the Numbers for 2010

Submitted: 14
Accepted: 2
Rejections: 23

Welcome 2011!

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Happy New Year!

As promised, I’ve put a new freebie short story featuring my favorite vampire, Stanley Ivanov, and his favorite werewolf, Paxton Perlman. For the next six weeks, you can read (and hopefully will enjoy) “An Old Fashioned Vacation”.

I hope your new year is happy, healthy, and full of fun!

Writing–Rejection Subjective

~ Kiki Writes ~ 1 Comment

One of my biggest obstacles to changing my writing from hobby to job was the fear of rejection. I don’t do well with failure. Even as a kid it gave me serious anxiety. I’d be so afraid of failing or making a mistake that I’d just freeze and wouldn’t do anything. Then once I was forced to actually do it and found out that even if I did make a mistake or fail, it wasn’t the end of the world and then I had no troubles.

Writing was no different. The idea of being rejected (and therefore, not good enough) stopped me cold in my tracks. It was the combination of entering contests (because in my head that’s not being rejected, it’s just not winning, and I can handle not winning) and reading Stephen King‘s On Writing that helped me get past my rejection fear.

The first story that ever brought me any kind of validation that I might be good writing was “Such a Pretty Face”. It won 10th place in the Genre category of a Writer’s Digest story contest. It got me 25 bucks, but didn’t get the story published (I did get to see my name in print in a magazine, though, and that was pretty cool). I was really proud of the acoomplishment and proud of the story. I then decided to try to get “Such a Pretty Face” published.

And that’s when I learned a valuable lesson in rejection. It’s a subjective thing.

Despite placing in the contest, “Such a Pretty Face” has been rejected six times since then. SIX! You’d think that 10th place showing would count for something. It’s a GOOD story. Someone told me so. I’ve got a certificate to show for it.

It was very frustrating to have one person say the story was worthy of a ribbon, but everyone else not think it was worthy of being read.

Of all the rejections I’ve received for “Such a Pretty Face”, only one suggested I make any changes to it. The changes he suggested made me realize that he totally missed the point of the story. And that made me realize that I was forgetting the human element of the submission process.

Not every rejection I get is because the story was bad. Sure, I’ve sent out stories I shouldn’t have and they were rejected for very good reasons. But some rejections left me scratching my head. Now I realize that maybe those form looking rejections might not have all been form rejections and maybe they meant it when they said these weren’t the stories that they were looking for.

It seems silly, but up until that point it didn’t occur to me that someone just might not like my story. I never thought that maybe it might not what they were looking for or they’d already seen too many similar stories lately or they didn’ t think the story fit with the publication as well as I did. Yes, until that point, I didn’t realize that rejection might not have anything to do with the quality of the story.

If you’ve read any of my other blog posts, it should be no suprise that I am this slow on the uptake.

So  my attitude towards rejection has changed a bit. It’s still disappointing, but now that I know that it doesn’t automatically mean that my story is shit, the sting doesn’t linger quite as long. Getting back on that horse is quicker and easier.

And if it’s the last thing I do, I will see “Such a Pretty Face” published.

Stories By the Numbers

Ready: 3
Submitted: 3

Writing–A Change in Plans

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

Submitting my short stories is always a stressful activity to me. Not so much the actual submitting, but the finding of ezines, magazines, and anthologies to submit to is stressful for me. I’ve been doing it for a couple of years now and I have concluded that I’m just terrible at it.

I don’t think I’m a very good judge of my own work in terms of establishing that it’s a good fit for a publication. I typically teeter on the fence of decision for a bit before finally falling to the side of NO. Rarely do I hit on a publication that just screams PERFECT at me so loudly that I cannot deny it (we’ll just never mind the inevitable rejection). It’s when I get to the end of my futile search empty-handed that I start to wonder if the story I’ve written is just impossible to publish because it doesn’t fit anywhere. And then I feel like I’m just spinning my wheels and not getting anywhere in my writing career. This torture has made researching publications my least favorite part of being a writer.

After my latest round of torture, I decided that I needed to change my plan.

My usual tactic was to hit up Duotrope as soon as I had a story (or two or three) ready to submit, paw through the listings looking for a fit, and get incredibly discouraged if I couldn’t find something so I could submit the story that day.

My revised plan will be a little less stressful, a little more laid back, but hopefully (in the long run, at least) be more productive. I’ll keep a list of stories that are ready to go. I’ll hit up Duotrope once a week. If I find something, great. If not, there’s always next week. Meanwhile, I can continue to add to my ready list and not feel entirely like I’m failing.

This less-pressure method might work for me. It might not. But I’ve got to try something new because the old method isn’t working for me. And I’ve got to be more willing to acccept that something isn’t working and come up with a new game plan.

I’m a bit of goat when it comes to insisting on doing things the hard way.

As NaNoWriMo is done for me for yet another year, I propose to introduce a new Writing Wednesday feature to help keep me publicly accountable for my short stories. It will account for the number of stories I have done, the stories I have out, and any acceptances or rejections I get for the week, on the occasion that I get them (those are few and far between most of the time, but rejections are more likely than acceptances).

Stories by the Numbers

Ready: 3
Submitted: 3
Rejections: 3 (no response)

Suffering Seasons

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

The Cubs had a disappointing 2010 season and so did I. It has nothing to do with being a Cubs fan. It just so happens that we both had a similarly crappy year.

Like the Cubs going into Spring Training, I came into 30 so full of hope and ambition and promise. This was supposed to be my year, THE year, and I was going to make my waves and get things done and 30 was going to be a success. And like the Cubs getting hammered in their Opening Day game in Atlanta, it was very quickly apparent that was not going to be the case for me or them.

Very early on this year I realized that one of my worst fears had come true and that I had gained back most, if not all, of the weight I’d spent four years losing. I took a moment to berate myself and then I got myself a new exercise schedule, getting back into the moving groove that I had gotten out of the year before. It worked before; I was confident it would work again. Only it didn’t. Like Derrick Lee and Aramis Ramirez hitting 3rd and 4th in the line-up, my go to guys just weren’t producing. It wasn’t until August until I started seeing a change in my body and very tentitively thought that maybe I might have lost a few pounds, but because it took this long to lose so little, I’m not really encouraged about the long-term. I’d really rather not spend the next few years losing only ten pounds in 12 months. I need better production than that and it bugs me that I’m not getting it from my established methods.

The Cubs went into the season with four rookies, three of them in the bullpen and one of them on the bench. And they just kept adding them as the year dragged on.  I started off with a few rookies of my own; new short stories that I would send out. Success for all of us was pretty limited. “Land of the Voting Dead” was my Starlin Castro (it was the only story I sold); “Such a Pretty Face” is my Justin Berg (it had a little bit of success placing in a contest, but continues to struggle in getting properly published). But, I know that like rookies, you just keep sending them out there because they will benefit from the experience.  Meanwhile, I agonize for them and over them.

In July, Carlos Zambrano had a meltdown and ended up on the restricted list. My laptop beat him to the punch by a couple of weeks and my Internet beat him a few days. While Zambrano was off getting anger management therapy, I spent a month negotiating Christmas/birthday presents to get a new laptop, waiting on a hand-me-down desktop from my mother, and trying to wrangle an Internet service. After two false starts and nearly three weeks, we got it all straightened out. Unfortunately, as a result, I missed a couple of submission deadlines. The lack of computer also through a serious wrench in my writing mojo (though I did get caught up on my reading) that took me two months to reestablish. Zambrano made a much better comeback than I did.

Missing out on the deadlines hurt the worst because it meant I was missing out on potentially making some money. Like the Cubs with their expensive contracts, I got myself into my own monetary mess but not having a regular income since February of ’08. I know and accept that and I’m trying to work with what I have. The Cubs shed salary by trading Derrick Lee, Ryan Theriot, Mike Fontenot, and Ted Lilly (of all of these trades, losing Lilly broke my heart the most, even if we did get Blake DeWitt out of it). I ended up selling my action figures to make a buck, but still ended up borrowing money off of my dad more times than I’d like to make ends meet.

Without a doubt, the year has been rough and disappointing, but there were some bright spots. Where the Cubs had some promising rookies like Castro, Tyler Colvin, Andrew Cashner, Casey Coleman, and James Russell, surprisingly good returns from Carlos Silva and Marlon Byrd, and a strong finish to the season under Mike Quade, I got to meet up with family that I haven’t seen for a long time, spend lots of time with my young nieces, and cash in an early Christmas present from my mom: a trip to Wrigley to see the Cubs play.

Naturally, they lost 1-0 to the Giants.

But, that’s okay. It just further adds to my argument of how sympatico I was with my team. We suffered in different ways, but we suffered together. The 2010 Cubs will always have a special place in my heart because of that. Because of them, I didn’t have to suffer alone.

I appreciate that.

NaNoWriMo Update:

Total Word Count: 22,063

Chapter 1 Word Count: 2,239
Chapter 2 Word Count: 2,084
Chapter 3 Word Count: 2,163
Chapter 4 Word Count: 2,108
Chapter 5 Word Count: 2,100
Chapter 6 Word Count: 2,083
Chapter 7 Word Count: 2,032
Chapter 8 Word Count: 2,041
Chapter 9 Word Count: 2,342
Chapter 10 Word Count: 2,870