Out of the Blogosphere, Into the Fire?

[alanajoli]

Hello faithful readers,

I've been out of the blogosphere for longer than intended after a little bit of soul searching about what I'm going to do with my writing business and the distraction of having Sherwood Smith (sartorias)'s newest novel, The Fox, here in the house. I should probably also blame Morrowind, even though I've had it for awhile now; it's a seemingly never-ending game, far more broad of scope than most of the CRPGs I've played, which means it's a complete time-suck. (It's a very *fun* time-suck, mind you, but I'm still spending hours on the X-box, which I haven't really done since I finished Jade Empire for the third time awhile back.)

Soul-searching, you ask? Indeed. Some of you know that I had a bit of writer burn-out back in December, which has made it difficult to get back into a regular writing habit since. (Yes, I did write Regaining Home after the burn-out; my writing schedule for that was anything but regular, and I fully admit to being a little tormented. Thank goodness for Shawn Merwin, turning my writerly suffering into a real novel! I hope that you all will be able to read it sooner rather than later, but I've still not heard from the publishers when that might happen.)

At any rate, now that I'm down to the Steampunk Musha d20 conversion (which we are still doing, despite the announcement of D&D 4th Edition, as we expect it will be easier to convert a 3.5 pdf to 4e than it will be to convert the Iron Gauntlets rules) and Cowboys and Aliens: Worlds at War, which is going swimmingly, I've had a little time to breathe and really consider what projects I want to be doing in the future. I submitted some old short stories to magazines; most of the stories had a really regional draw to them, so I actually came up with the idea of submitting them to lit mags in the areas where they're set. We'll see if this strategy works.

My favorite short story, of all the ones I've written, is called "Nomi's Wish." Unfortunately, it's really long--nearly 10,000 words. Most lit mags won't even touch something that long. I submitted it to Fantasy and Science Fiction, a magazine I very much admire, but it was a no-go. On the up side, they sent the rejection notice right away, which gave me time to get it to a zine with no word-count limit while they're still having an open reading period. We'll see how it goes. Hopefully, the new gang will love it, and the story will actually see the light of day. If not... well, perhaps I'll actually get that website set up and I'll post it there to be read.

"Nomi's Wish" is particularly special to me because it's the only short story I've written in full since I graduated from college. I got back from working at the bookstore one day and wrote the first draft all in an evening. It's changed quite a bit since then; a friend of mine (the fabulous editor Abigail Greshik) used it for an anthology she had to put together to finish her publishing degree, and it grew to about twice its original size. I think it's stronger for the expansion, a more complete piece. I hope there's a market out there that will agree!

One of the other bits of soul searching I did was about this blog, and how to better use it. I used to write articles for an online newsletter called Literature Community News. I got to choose the topics about which I was writing, do research, and get paid, all for writing about stuff I was actually interested in. A friend (Jeff Duntemann/jeff_duntemann) suggested a similar technique for my blog. Pick a topic I'm interested in. Write about it. Find a niche. There are a couple of directions I'm thinking about heading with that (one of which fellow Browncoat and writer Karen Hayes encouraged me in last week, but it may be awhile before my thoughts congeal into actual words), so stay tuned.

Anyway, that's where I've been. No good excuses particularly for being away. I'll try to avoid such lags in the foreseeable future.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Good luck with the stories--and hope you liked Fox!

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

I am loving it. Hopefully I'll get my husband hooked in as well; he's been teaching me how to sail this summer, and I think he'll appreciate all of the nautical scenes. It all seems very authentic to me--I suspect that you're a sailor yourself. True? Or are you just very good at pretending?

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, how I wish! I can barely afford tickets to go aboard tall ships at docks! But I observe very closely.

Nomi's

[exoder27.livejournal.com]

Yay, I love Nomi's Wish (since I'm a privileged person who's read it). That one would have to be picked up by someone out there in the magazine world. Best of luck!

Re: Nomi's

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Your comments on it were really helpful, also--if I didn't mention that before. I actually did a search before I sent it out to make sure I'd changed the "lamb" reference (which I had, which means I integrated your other changes as well). ;)

Wish me luck!

[dmoonfire.livejournal.com]

Sounds like fun, plus the story grinder is always the slowest, but most anticipated. Maybe that is why I have so much trouble, 10k words is my "average" for stories, I have to struggle to write less than that (though I've submitted a couple no more than 1200 word stories).

Good luck!

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

Most of the ones in this submission cycle are right around 7,000--also a tough length for the market. (Most of the places I was looking to submit had a 5,000 word max.) But we'll see how it goes!