Procrastinating

Now Playing: THE BOMB DOT COM V2.0 by Sleeping With Sirens
Just Read: SNUFF by Chuck Palahnuik--Totally awesome in the way that all his stuff is. Whenever I read his work, I want to write like him.
Reading Now: EXODUS by Leon Uris

There are so many things to do besides write.

Right now I'm playing Hearts on my computer, listening to music, and I just put on gym clothes in preparation for a run, which I may or may not take depending on whether the creative juices get flowing here, or if I feel like I need another way to procrastinate.

I'm losing this Hearts game terribly, if you were wondering.

It's also a rainy Sunday, which doesn't bode well for productivity in the first place.

I've watched about an hour's worth of behind-the-scenes clips of Spartacus (one of my favorite shows of all time).

I've got this story idea in mind . . . .

Check this picture out. That's my wire bookcase, collapsed. Maybe I have too many books?

It took me too long to figure out how to upload that pic, so I went ahead and lost that game of Hearts.

Just got a can of cherry coke zero out of the fridge. I figured some caffeine could help.

Maybe I'm just sluggish from that gigantic Chipotle burrito I had for lunch. Happy Cinco de Mayo!

Speaking of gigantic Chipotle burritos, I may have to run off here in a minute before finishing this blog post and procrastinate my writing in the bathroom. You're welcome.

Total word count today: 0. But, I have successfully reviewed the requirements for story submission to Allegory Magazine! Woohoo! Props to me!

(Bathroom break.)

. . .

Hoping to see Ironman 3 later tonight after making some chili.

Think I can fit in a nap later?

Post Pub Update

Now Playing: ALL THAT'S LEFT by Thrice
Just Read: A STORM OF SWORDS by George R. R. Martin--Awesome, as expected. Just as intricate and intriguing as the first two books in the series. Can't wait to see all that on screen!
Reading Now: HEAT WAVE by Richard Castle (?)

It was a really awesome experience, having my story "Skipping Stones" published over at Daily Science Fiction. To everyone who read it and shared their thoughts, thank you so very much. I got a few tweets and followers, some comments here on my blog, and some emails about reading it on Beam Me Up podcast, who did great things with my story "Good Business, With Guns." Couldn't have asked for better, and I'm very grateful.

I posted the link on the left, so if you ever want to (re)read it, it's only a click away.

But now that it's done, it's time to move on to what's new. I barely got in last quarter's Writers of the Future contest submission before the deadline, a story about a colonized planet. To this day, it remains the only story to get a personalized rejection from Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine. Hopefully the changes I've made since then will push it into the realm of acceptable fiction.

I've got about 100 pages of young adult novel left to edit, and I've already cut over 4000 words from it. That's exciting to me--I'll post in more detail later. I've also got two 8,000-word stories to edit, one of which will probably wind up as this quarter's WotF submission. My April W1S1 story is finished, but it's short, so I'm writing a second one, about 2500 words in. I'm calling it "Firecutter," and I'm not really sure what that word means or where the story's going. I guess my characters and I will find out together.

That's all for now. I'll check back soon. Thanks again to all my recent readers; hope we become long time friends.

Ciao.

PS--Who writes the Richard Castle books, honestly? Nathan Fillion? Does ANYONE know?

First Pro Pub

Now Playing: MACHINEHEAD by Bush

My big day is almost here--my story "Skipping Stones" goes out to DSF's 6,000 subscribers tomorrow morning. Needless to say, I am stoked.

This is my first professional sale, so I'm really excited to get it out there and hear what people think. I'm probably going to tweet and post on facebook about it a lot, so be patient with me. 0:)

If you aren't a subscriber, go subscribe! It's free! They send you a story (like mine, for example!) right to your email inbox every day.

If you don't want to subscribe, though, "Skipping Stones" should pop up on the web on the 25th (next Monday). Please, go rate it and give it a comment. I'd love love love to hear what you think about it.

This is an exciting step for me in my career as a writer. It's a validation of my ambition to be more than someone who can put together some competent prose. A pro magazine accepted my story! Wow. The funny thing is, it doesn't feel like an ending at all, not even a little bit. It feels like another step on a long, tall staircase, and it makes me want to sit down and write myself onto the step above that.

Maybe I'll go and do just that.

Thanks for reading.

Footsteps

Now Playing: GIVEN UP by Linkin Park

Just finished watching the Oscars. A lot of inspiring stuff there, I have to admit. I don't usually like that kind of thing--a bit too much pomp and circumstance for my taste, but hey, if I end up there one day having written a screenplay, I'll probably love it.

The first cool thing was seeing so much talent all in one place. Those people really know how to do what they do. The elite. The upper echelon of artistic talent. It makes you want to be like them, you know? It reminds you what the goal is, who you're trying emulate as a rising young artist. It's a bit like why I do the Write1Sub1 challenge: to walk in Ray Bradbury's footsteps.

I think my favorite part though was remembering that all those actors and actresses had someone else write their scripts. My buddy Spencer is an actor, and we laugh sometimes because he says he's useless at parties without a script. Probably why he keeps me around.

One of my dreams is to write a bestselling novel that gets turned into a movie, and to be a part of the movie-making process.Film is awesome. I saw a show once (on the Weather Channel of all places) about the making of Jurassic Park (a fantastic book) in Hawaii, and the hurricane that hit and how the film crew had to adapt. I'd love to be a part of that sodality one day.

I took a play writing class in college, but I've never really written a script for TV. Spencer and I have an idea in mind though.

It's gonna be big.

Recent Tips

Now Playing: YOU BE TAILS, I'LL BE SONIC by A Day to Remember
Just Read: THE WISE MAN'S FEAR by Patrick Rothfuss--Really enjoyed it. A great fantasy epic. Did you know he won the WOTF contest? I ordered it to read his winner--it's straight out of this book. Really well done.
Reading Now: A STORM OF SWORDS by George R.R. Martin

Recently, I read a pair of books about writing. One was "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott, and the second was "The Guide to Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction" by Philip Athans.

They were pretty different books, but they had a few common threads:

1) Publication isn't all it's cracked up to be, and it's far from the end of your writing troubles (ie, there is no end).

2) Study people in real life. They're who you're writing about, under different names and in different places doing different things, but fiction about people who feel real is fiction worth reading.

3) Use your fiction to say something.

4) Take a step back from your writing when it's done and ask yourself if it's believable, honestly (especially F&SF).

5) The surest way to not become a writer is to give up. The surest way to become a successful writer is to never give up.

Some good advice there. I feel like I subscribe to most of it already but reading those books helped to reinforce it and refocus me. I have a longer F&SF piece in mind for my February W1S1 story, so it was nice having these tips to orient me and jump start my creativity a bit.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to the past few weeks. Hopefully this story won't be too stubborn coming out.

The Final Countup

Now Playing: DEANNE THE ARSONIST by Atreyu

Write1Sub1 2013 is here, and I bid a fond farewell to 2012. It was the most productive year of my writing career by a hefty amount. But I believe 2013 will be even better.

But here's the final tally for 2012,  a decent bar for me to surpass:

Total number of stories: 52
Twitter Fiction: 8
Flash Fiction: 14
Short Stories: 30

For a total of . . . wait for it . . . 112,145 words!

Each of those 52 stories was submitted at least once, some half a dozen times. I had three acceptances: "Dying Again" at Liquid Imagination; "Over the Fence" at Fear and Trembling; and "Skipping Stones" at Daily Science Fiction (forthcoming).

This year will involve at least twelve new stories, some work on novel-length pieces I have in mind, and innumerable submissions of stories I wrote in 2012 that have yet to find a home.

Thanks to all the people who helped along the way, especially my fellow W1S1 authors for their support, and the friendly competition involved. Thanks to my friends and family for their encouragement, and for not being annoyed when I had to be antisocial to finish up a week's work. You all make it worth doing for me, and I greatly appreciate it.

Looking forward to the future! Write on, friends, write on.

16-Penny

Now Playing: SKYFALL by Adele

It's been a monumental week for my writing career.

When I was in high school, just starting to take my writing career seriously, I took a book called "On Writing" by Stephen King to heart. In it, he says that he took his rejection letters and pinned them to his wall to be remembered, a kind of inspiration. Who better to mimic than the best?

With this latest rejection from Clarkesworld, my 8-penny became overwhelmed. There was no more space along its shaft for a single sheet of paper. I took it down and borrowed the largest nail my dad could find--a 16-penny nail--and, one by one, spiked the old rejections onto the new nail.

There were one hundred and seventy-three, in all. The oldest, dated January  27, 2006, was from (who else) John Joseph Adams, back when he was still an editor at Fantasy and Science Fiction. One of the next, from agent Dan Lazar, bore a hand-written note in scrawling, blue ink:

"Devin--Many thanks for sending this my way. It seems quite polished, but I'm afraid it's just not striking magic with me. Good luck with it when contacting other agents. Best, Dan Lazar."

That little note, about my first novel "The Wand Holders," meant a lot to my sixteen-year-old self. I was sad it was rejected, but I knew it sounded like a novel a fourteen-year-old kid had written. Still, I had tried, and someone somewhere who knew about such things had read it and responded to me. The system, the process, worked.

I also found some rejections for stories that were later published. Even, I found a rejection from Ray Gun Revival for "In the Lion's Den," which years later I revised and sent back to them, and it was accepted as "The Lion's Den."

There were many from agents rejecting query letters, many from small venue magazines with words of encouragement, and many from pro magazines with form letters. They all affected me in some way, and keeping them on the wall reminds me that what I'm doing, writing, is something important. It's not trivial, or a game or dare or a drunken idea. It's writing, damn it. It's what I do.

This week, I received my first professional acceptance letter. It's for a story called "Skipping Stones," and it will be published in Daily Science Fiction.

Hopefully, if I put in a lot of hard work and get a little luck, it won't be another 173 rejections until  my next pro acceptance.