Semi-Monthly Update

A crab I saw during my vacation in the Galápagos, one of many.

Hello to my legions of readers, this is my first semi-monthly writing update. In these updates, I'll talk about what I'm reading, what I'm writing, what I'm thinking, and general writing-related life updates.

Most of the past two weeks I was out of the country on vacation, which was good and bad for my writing. I didn't have regular internet access, so I couldn't do much critiquing, which is a pillar of my work on writing craft. But, I did plenty of reading and writing.

The image on this post is from my trip. There are so many crabs there, and they're so brightly colored. There were more interesting things too, but this makes a nice photo I think.

Why I haven't yet posted any of my stories here (yet)

So when I created this blog I did it mostly to have a place to post my stories. And then I started thinking more about publishing (traditional publishing, not self-publishing) and discovered that publishers really don't like to publish stuff that's already been published. And putting it on my blog counts as publishing. So I've decided I'm going to try to publish my stories, and the ones that I can't find a publisher for will end up here on my blog. It takes 6-9 months in most cases to get a rejection, so it's going to be a while before I post any of them here. I do have some stuff that I don't think I want to try to publish that way, so it might show up sooner. (I think it's good, don't get me wrong, just not something that works well for traditional publishing.)

Reading:

I read all of "What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky" by Lesley Nneka Arimah, a short story collection, during my flights. It's so good! And very intimidating to me as a writer. She really understands people in a way I never will, and it shows in her work. Her stories are pretty depressing but I recommend them. On my to-do list is to write a review of it here. I also finished Stardust by Neil Gaiman a few weeks ago, and I want to write a review of that here as well.

I started to read The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin and it seems quite good, but I stopped early and switched to Galápagos by Kurt Vonnegut, because my vacation was in the Galápagos islands and that seemed appropriate. It also seems quite good, but I haven't gotten very far yet.

Writing:

I spent a lot of mornings during the vacation writing while I watched the sun rise, and a lot of time on planes thinking of story ideas. I wrote one new short story (1800 words) while I was there based on an idea I'd had previously, and I came up with ideas for two new long stories that I'd guess would turn out to be novellas, if I follow up on them. For one of them I've started writing down concepts and outline, so maybe. The new short story I think has publication potential, though it needs some refinement.

I'm trying to write a new short story—not necessarily a good one—every two weeks. In part this is because I joined a writing group that's doing writing prompts together every two weeks for 16 weeks, and in part because I just want to push myself to write more, and particularly to focus on variety and breadth. I wrote the first one yesterday, coming in just under 1,000 words. I think it's good but probably not publishable, so it might show up on my blog.

So actually in the past two weeks I wrote not one but two short stories, so I guess I'm doing pretty well on my goal so far.

Craft:

As I said, I haven't been able to critique much these past couple of weeks, but I've been following up on critiques I've received. I'm struggling with using omniscient POV and making it clear that's what I'm doing, so I want to work on that. I got a recommendation for Great Beginnings by Georgianne Ensign, so I ordered a used copy. I hope this will help me not just with establishing the POV early on but with my openings in general.

Business:

I have by now a few short stories that I think are close to being ready to send out to publishers. I've been browsing for candidate publications and there are a few that might work. I'm nervous.

I continue to ponder what to do, if anything, with Epochs Met, my novelette/novella. I haven't made much progress in my pondering.