After a bit of a dry spell, I have a new flash fiction out, ready to read. “Shape Shifters Anonymous,” at Linguistic Erosion.
Check out Submission Guidelines, and their sister sites Smashed Cat Magazine, Farther Stars Than These, and Yesteryear Fiction, and submit today.
Thanks, Earl!
Four months into Write1 Sub1, and I’m still cookin’. I’ve kept to my goals, writing and subbing at least one piece a week, and I’m pleased with my progress.
Here’s my output to date:
Brand-spankin’-new stories: 25
The Poison of Its Filamentous Lariats (ss)
Jen-6 (ff)
Between Feathers and Fins (ff)
Traitor (micro)
Beneath the Eclipse (ss)
Patchouli, More than a Fragrance (ff)
Forever in these Walls (ss)
The Stage (ff)
Life in the Way (ff)
Technically Speaking (micro)
Happiness Guaranteed (ff)
Soul Raider (ss)
Baba Yaga and the Ewer of Bones (ff)
Shape Shifting Anonymous (ff)
7 Seconds (ss)
Screw Diamonds (micro)
Kindle vs. Paperback (ff)
Pliable Bones (ff)
Galactic Dinner (micro)
Hollowed Terrain (ss)
Homogeneous Equilibrium (poem)
XO (ff)
Payback is a Witch (ff)
The Junkyard (ss)
The Dead Quiet (ff)
Total submissions: 54
Rejections: 26
Acceptances: 6
The Dead River at The Fabulist – forthcoming 2012
Between Feathers and Fins at February Femmes Fatales
Life in the Way at Apollo’s Lyre – June 2012
Forever in these Walls at 9 Days of Madness
The Poison of Its Filamentous Lariats at Bards & Sages Quarterly – July 2012
7 Seconds at All Due Respect – November 2012
Total published: 2 (That’s gotta change)
Between Feathers and Fins at February Femmes Fatales
Forever in These Walls at 9 Days of Madness
Special Attention: 3
Letti’s Monsters – Honorable Mention at Allegory
Happiness Guaranteed – Shortlisted with Penumbra
Baba Yaga and the Ewer of Bones – Shortlisted at NewMyths.com
Tears / Drops of Blood: 2
Total Word Count: 159,896! (This includes my novel, novella, and edits on stories, but excludes blog posts)
If you haven’t heard of Write 1 Sub 1, you should check it out. It’s a forum for a “Ray Bradbury” writing challenge, and the people who sponsor it are cool in many ways: Milo James Fowler, Simon Kewin, Stephen V. Ramey, Madeline Mora-Summonte, Stephanie M. Lorée. It’s a great place to meet like-minded writers, and if you like badges, you’re going to love it.
The details for participating are HERE. You can enter weekly (write 1 story, sub 1 story per week) or monthly. The participants are all very friendly, supportive, and inspiring.
Writing, subbing, editing, subbing, writing, writing . . . that’s pretty much been the flow lately. Flow. Is that connected more to speed or direction? In any case, I’m in a rapid river downhill.
Flow is a recurrent theme in my writing. For some reason, I pay a lot of attention to the stream of it: when, what kind, how much, and maybe, why? I do so in hopes of maximizing my optimum output.
(Colonization: Rivers, by Tahlia)
I touched on this subject at the end of last year, Going with Flow, thinking that ‘going with the flow,’ would be my 2012 writing motto. Well, I’m finding myself back in the same boat. The river of creativity has me paddling hard, as I am already drafting a new story before I can finish the previous one. One side of me says, “You have to finish each piece before starting a new one,” but that feels like catching puppies, and so for now, I’m letting these little terrors loose.
When this occurred back in January, I decided to run a test, and ‘go with the flow’ of my writing, that creative, focus-negligent self, to see what happened—fingers crossed that my focus-diligent self would return. And she did. It might not have been the exact day or even week that I wanted to get it back, but it did happen. In that, I was successful in not only getting all those stories I started finished, but a few of them went on to be published and accepted too.
So, it’s happening again. Concentration? Editing? Pish, tish. I’ve got the momentum to create, and I’m going to paddle or die. (No kayaking withdrawals here.)
What about you? I dare you to take a risk with your own writing, whether it is flow, outlining, or however a new challenge may present itself. Greatness never landed on anyone’s doorstep, and you never know what cool, new writing pattern might better your writing.
A good friend of mine, Chris Allinotte, hosted one of the most spectacular March Madness events ever. Truly, with writers like Richard Godwin, Jodi MacArthur, Benjamin Sobieck, R.S. Bohn, S.K. Adams, Marissa Giambelluca, Christopher Grant, Laurita Miller …, and believe it or not, little ol’ me too, with my story, “Forever in these Walls.” The challenge was to submit a <1500 word flash with madness as the theme, and “unsettled” as the tone.
Now, you can download all 9 stories in the Nine Days of Madness free from smashwords, or catch the action on his blog, The Leaky Pencil.
I did say books, and so, here is another freebie, my short horror, “The Shadow People,” from my short story collection, “Of the Night.”
“Everyone has a shadow, but most of them don’t come to life. Or kill. It will take more than guts for Kori to get her shadow back, specifically an enemy, a geek, one police officer, two red necks with tractors, and a couple sticks of dynamite.”
So here it is, my excel sheet for total daily word count. I’ve never done anything this elaborate before, mostly guesstimations, but this year, I wanted to tackle my writing with a scholar’s eye.
My goal was to write 2,000 words a day, five days a week, ultimately leading to 40,000 words a month. My writing time is a bigger puzzle, sometimes very late evening, sometimes early morning, sometimes when I think time isn’t even ticking. But with a handy sheet like this, it doesn’t matter. My word count includes stories from scratch, those first drafts, and edits, because writing is also editing, though I start cutting word count in half, or to the tenth, depending on the number of edits it has already gone through.
(Ex: if a 2,000 word story has been through four drafts, and I’m not changing much to it, I’ll include approximately 200 - 300 word count for that story, but if it is a second draft, and I’ve basically deleted everything I’ve written, I total the word count for story again, hence the slow change in my novel word counts – yes, I’ve probably written 13 novels so far. )
So, if you would like one of these handy charts, let me know: (erincole (at) live (dot) com. I’ll delete my totals, but keep the sum/programming totals for you so they’ll automatically create magic when you type. This chart has been a big help in analyzing my writing, spotting patterns, etc. I have good weeks and bad weeks, but they seem to even out. However, as you can see, my March has started out slow, so I’m going to have to step up!
I enjoy the occassional short fiction challenge, such as Lily Childs’ Friday Prediction, and here’s another one to add to my list, thanks to writer friend Angel Zapata.
Lillie McFerrin hosts a Five Sentence Challenge, “…about packing a powerful punch in a tiny fist,” every week based on an inspiring word prompt. This week, it is TATTERED.
Technically Speaking
The bloodied gurney wheeled into the emergency. The surgeon cut away tattered clothing and sliced opened her chest cavity. He pumped her heart, methodically, with gentle hands. Crowding the waiting room, the family asked, “Is she alive?” The surgeon told the nurse at the curtain, “Yes, technically, she is still alive.”
It is only three to five sentences at the end of a publication, but your author biography is your professional thumbprint. It should be unique; no one has taken the same writing path as you. So what all should it include? Publishing credits are valid, memberships, books, maybe your location, but what about your three-legged iguana that you insist is Poe’s muse reincarnate?
I won’t only admit to sometimes detailing strange things about my personal life in my bio (character is everything, right?), but I’m also a fan of the funny ones. They work well to get you noticed, because who doesn’t like funny people? Still, I don’t think they are always appropriate.
There is a place for comical biographies, and then, there are not such places for them. If I’m sending work to a pro-rate literary establishment who stresses professional MS formats, styles, themes, and other (often very specific) submission requirements, I’m not going to close my story with a bio that talks about the weird occurrences in my attic at night—with the exception that my story is about weird things occurring in my attic at night, in which case it might then be relevant to the material I’m submitting. To do otherwise, I think discredits the author’s professional experience and could even shadow the intent behind his/her craft.
But not everyone feels the same. Many of the editors of paying markets themselves have some of the craziest biographies I have ever read. Though entertaining, I have to wonder, who the hell is judging/considering my work? A purple cat or a qualified editor?
The opposite is also true. Some biographies are too dense, packed with publishing credits and/or irrelevant information, and come across b-o-r-i-n-g, or worse, pompous. Balance is probably the best approach. To achieve it, which I don’t always do, I usually rewrite my bio with every piece I submit, in hopes of complimenting each story to its fullest potential. All of which leads me to cover letters …
What is your take? Do you agree, disagree, or just hate biographies all together?
