Writing Adventures » Writing

The Year Turns

Hydy — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 00:01:14 +0000

I made 37 submissions in 2009. 29 of them in the final three months of the year, after returning, inspired and renewed from DragonCon in Atlanta. Of the 37 submission, 29 have been rejected. I wrote a lot of new flash fiction this past year, 7 of which were submitted, and most of the rest of which are being posted here, one each Friday. Only two new short stories entered the mix for me, though. This is something that will change in 2010.

I attempted NaNoWriMo, and came up with some good ideas and some interesting characters. I will be developing some of that in the coming year, as well as a handful of stories I started, but never finished. This includes some of the flash pieces, which are really just story ideas given a few moments on paper instead of worked into real stories.

Life is constantly changing and in my struggle to keep up, I have let slide some of the things that are important to me. New things have become important to me, yes, but some of the things I fill my time with are just pointless distractions. Yes, I’m looking at you, Facebook.

2009 was a good year. 2010 will be a fantastic year.

Working

Hydy — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:33:15 +0000

I’ve started my application for the Ohio Individual Excellence Award. I’ve got everything ready except for the personal statement and printing out four copies of the work I’m sending in. I need to write an anonymous narrative about my work, detailing my technique, motivation, purpose, subject matter, medium and direction in 3,333 characters or less to explain my submitted work to the judges. I haven’t checked if that number includes spaces or not yet, that’s the least of my worries.

I’ve also started work on a new story, about a boy and his father’s sword. No idea where it’s going yet, but a man has already shown up to take the sword away from the boy. I wonder what he’s going to do.

Submission

Hydy — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:02:37 +0000

So, I did it. I wrote a short story in about a week, typed it up today and put it in an envelope, to be taken to the post office shortly and put in the mail to L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Contest. It’s a strange little thing, only about 2300 words, about spirits who don’t want to move on. Not my usual fare, but sparked by a writing I did last summer and then a sentence came to mind: Don’t look into the mirror at night, the old ones are watching. I took the idea from there and ran with it. I feel like maybe it ended up a little religious at the end, but I am a PK, so it’s bound to slip in occasionally, I guess. I mean it didn’t go all God and Christianity or anything, but it is about spirits and the afterlife. Anyway, time will tell. That’s three stories out and about now.

Progress

Hydy — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 04:28:05 +0000

Finally got a start on the new story, three pages written so far, it seems to be parallel to my journey back into fiction at the moment. I think it needs to go with me for the next four days, so I can maybe get it typed up and submitted Monday. I’m back on legal pads, harder to carry around, but I write bigger scenes and longer pieces if my paper is larger.

Saw the little bitty laptop I want today(10″ screen, under 3lbs). I really want to test one out to see if it’s what I want to get when the time comes. They are super portable and can easily hook into wifi.

Onward

Hydy — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 16:01:30 +0000

No more excuses. It’s go time. I will enter a short story contest this month and in July I will start applying for an Ohio Individual Excellance Award. I will be borrowing magazines from a friend to see if that is a market I wish to pursue. I have found eight story seeds that I planted last summer, and will now grow them. My goal is to have ten stories in rotation by the end of August.