.

Archive for May, 2009|Monthly archive page

, ,

200 days writing.

In Uncategorized on 05/30/2009 at 17:05

I've worked on my fiction 200 consecutive days now, definitely blowing away my premillennial record of 175 days or so.

Here's what I managed in that time:

  1. One draft of a short  novel, "Red Jacket," 51,000 words last November during NaNoWriMo. (It's got superheroes.)
  2. One revision, and sale, of a 600-word short-short, "The Odd Poem." I'm told it will appear this summer on  How to Write Stories About Writers.
  3. Two new stories out now seeking homes: "The Language of Monsters," 6800 words (rejected once so far), and "HappYness by DeXign," 4000 words.
  4. One workshopped revision of the now even shorter "Red Jacket, " 42,000 words even with two additional chapters added. (It's still got superheroes.)
  5. All but the final draft of a third story, "The Solid House," now around 8500 words, but that'll come down below novelette length. Should be able to get this out by day 209.
  6. A couple days work on a long-incomplete novella,  and a week's work on a long-incomplete novel.

This list probably sounds ridiculously thin to some, and just a ridiculously bloated to others, so thanks for your indulgence!


Manuscript format guides online.

In Uncategorized on 05/29/2009 at 18:44

Most ms. format articles I've found online have at least one author quirk (like put title in ALL CAPS !?!? so it will "stand out." No, it'll just look weird. I think most editors can suss out that the title in the word group centered halfway down the first page, and directly above the byline.) Or the guy who uses one dash for hyphenated words (correct) but also uses a single dash to indicate dashes between words. Also, he doesn't leave spaces before or after his en dash, which makes scanning his line confusing.

The best I've found is this one by Robert Sawyer, which is also available as a .pdf. He does a few things I'd call quirky, like bold his address information and use a different font than the in the text, which makes for an aesthetically displeasing first page, and insisting on two blank spaces after every period, which is an unneeded hold over from typewriting, since WP apps make a slightly wider space after periods anyway,  but he covers all the details — like how to type a frakking em dash. Robert Sawyer's Manuscript Format Checklist.


Thoreau on reading the classics.

In Uncategorized on 05/17/2009 at 12:22
Men sometimes speak as if the study of the classics would at length
make way for more modern and practical studies; but the adventurous
student will always study classics, in whatever language they may be
written and however ancient they may be. For what are the classics but
the noblest recorded thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which
are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry
in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study
Nature because she is old.

– from Walden, Chapter Three: "Reading."