A Blank Page

When I started going through the first draft of my novel, ‘Lonely Susan’ I got stuck my protagonist’s first appearance. The first time your main character appears is fairly important (just to understate things) and I knew that Susan’s first showing just wasn’t good enough. However, I just couldn’t come up with anything better.

I sat at the computer for, what seemed like, hours with the section of the story before me, I would go to write something, then just stop not happy with what I was about to write. I tried leaving it for a week or so, but the result was just the same. I didn’t matter how hard I tried, I just could not edit what was there in front of me.

It’s just one paragraph, a few sentences, but I could not get anywhere with trying to change what I wrote. Then thought came to me, don’t try and change anything, just wright it all over again. So that is what I decided to do.

Starting with a blank page, I just wrote the little scene again from scratch.

Here is the original:

He gazed down at the most beautiful face he had ever seen. Instead of rotting bones, a young lady lay in the box as though dreaming. She had shoulder length red hair and wore a snuggly fitting jumpsuit. Rod could have stared forever at the vision that lay before him, had it not been for his father.

 Here is the new version:

Rod hesitated as he looked down, expecting a rotted corpse. Instead he gazed upon a smooth face of almost pure white skin belonging to a young woman what seemed to be peacefully asleep. Her closed eyes had long lashes, and thick red browse start against the light skin that surrounded them. Her nose was long and straight with a sprinkling of freckles, her mouth wide with pastel lips. She had thick red hair that was pulled back into a pony tail that was swathed over her right shoulder. Rod felt he could just stare at her face forever.

I think it worked!

Let me know what you think.

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Monday Writing Journal: disapointment

The reboot of my writing has been a disappointment so far. However, I only have myself to blame for it.

So, what did I actually do?

Wrote a couple of hundred words for my major procrastination short story 'Ved'. The whole story is in there (in my head), but it just doesn't want to come out. It's shy for some reason.

Started and wrote a couple of hundred words for a story titled 'Jacq'. This is the origin story the Demon Slayer, 'Jacq' who appeared in my story in 'In Fabula-divino' titled 'Crossroads'. I've had the story in my mind for a while, and have now been inspired to write it for the 'Hear Me Roar' Anthology over at Ticonderoga.

I've also submitted 'Radar Love' again.

Disappointing, this week I must do better.

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Monday Writing journal: Reboot.

Hi,
At the start of this year I determined to finish the first draft of my first novel. To do this I created a set of goals and a progress report system. Since successfully finishing that first draft I've done mostly nothing.

So, it's time for a reboot.

I'm going to take what I did with the novel and apply it to my writing in general. What this means is that I'm planning to do a weekly writing journal blog each Monday, and a daily tweet up date. I hope this works.

The main idea is to make me accountable to me through this process of reports. I'll make myself do something reportable to meet the obligation to making the reports. If others (anyone reading this) want to follow along, it's a bonus.

I was going to finish with some comment about if I fail, but I'm not going to because I'm not going to fail.

In the coming weeks my tweet reports will be outlining what writing I am planning to do. It will be #rickswriting.

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Book Review: Aurora: Pegasus

This is the second book in Amanda Bridgeman’s Aurora Series and picks up the story where book one, Aurora: Darwin, left off. Where Aurora: Darwin was good, Aurora: Pegasus is better, mostly.

Amanda has developed as a writer from book one to book two. From the beginning the story telling feels tighter and cleaner. She builds more depth into her established characters and introduces the new ones seamlessly. She builds great tension, writes good action scenes and has well written plot twists. The old antagonist returns with a new depth and greater agenda. The story’s main conflict is played out and resolved in such a way that leaves the reader both satisfied and wanting more.

Sadly, the book does not concluded well, unlike book one. In book one the aftermath of the main conflict between the crew of the Aurora and their enemies on the Darwin was well handled and the book maintained a good pace and tone right to the end. However, I found the last section of Pegasus a bit of a plod. It felt to me like it was just marking time or just padding out the book so it was a certain length. I kept wondering if something else was going to happen, but it didn’t.

Aurora: Pegasus is still a great book. I spent most of the book thinking this is better than the first, which I loved.

This is a series worth getting into. Book three, Aurora: Meriden, is due out on the 11 of September. I recommend that you buy and read books one and two to be ready for book three. I’m certain this series is only going to get better.

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Positive Rejections

I've just received another short story submission rejection. So it's now two rejections and one acceptance out of the four submissions I've recently made. One out for three is not to bad and if it becomes two out of four (50% success) I'll be very happy.

Although I am getting a fairly large number of rejections, there is a positive spin to them. Most of my rejections this year have come with a please submit again comment of some kind.

Here are some examples of what I mean:

• I appreciate your interest in our Magazine* and hope that you'll keep us in mind in the future.
• We hope you continue to submit to our Magazine* in future and I wish you all the best with your publishing endeavours.
• We encourage you to submit to our Magazine* again.
• Thanks again for submitting to us, and we hope to hear from you in the future.
• In any case I hope you'll consider subbing again because your story was head and shoulders above a lot of other submissions.
• Please feel free to submit other work in the future.

I've been told, and believe, that editors/publishers usually mean it when they say please try again. So, the fact that I'm getting a lot of these must mean that I'm on the right track. All I've got to do now is right the stories so I can submit them.

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*I've taken out the name of the magazine.

One out of Two with Two too go!

I recently made the unprecedented, for me, move of submitting four short stories (two are really flash fiction) at once to different markets. I usually only able to handle doing one at a time.

I've heard back from two already and have one acceptance and one rejection.

The acceptance is my flash story, 'A Matter Og Technique'. I wrote this story back in 2012 and entered it in the short story contest at the Sydney FreeCon. I got seventh place. Anyway, I've been wanting to see it in print somewhere else for a while. It will now be appearing in issue 194 of the Webzine AntipodeanSF in August.

The rejection was of the first short story in ever wrote, and it is it's seventh rejection. The publication that rejected it this time was kind enough to send me the feedback comments from it's readers. Both really liked the start, thought the middle was weak and, therefore, felt the ending didn't work. Which is similar to comments I've received from other rejections.

It's a 'therefore' because I'm fairly sure that the middle is the problem. So, I'm going to rip it's guts out and put in a new one and see what happens.

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Lonely Susan First Draft Finished!

Wow!

I've done it. Wrote the wonderful words 'THE END' on Wednesday 26 of March 2014. I've written a novel. Not a long novel, just over 50000 words, but a novel.

Here are the final numbers:

Novel Length: 50364
Words written in last eighty days: 33718
Average words per day during the eighty days: 415

So, I feel that my commitment to write every day, do daily tweets and weekly blogs, and kept myself publicly accountable has paid off.

I'm very Happy. :)

So, where to now?

My plan is to give it a rest for a few weeks and write some other stuff; some short stories I have in mind. Then I'm going to go through the book chapter by chapter and work on anything I think needs fixing. I'm mainly going to look at the dialogue and descriptions, because I think that is where I'm weakest.

After that I might see if I can get some professional editing, and get feed back from some people, family friends,other writers, etc.

If I'm happy after that, it's submit time.

I'm fairly sure things will not go to plan, but if you aim for nothing that is what you get.

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