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Being a list of 10 things that happened this week

1. I finished, polished, and submitted my new short story, “The Shadow’s Flight,” to the anthology Rustblind and Silverbright. Clicking “send” has to be the scariest part of the writing process for me. It’s that moment when I keep wanting to do just ONE more proofread of both story and cover letter with the knowledge that once it’s been sent, it cannot be retrieved. Once it’s gone, I can sit back, comfortable in the knowledge that things are no longer within my control, and what will be will be. I’m quite happy with this story, and wether in this anthology or another market, I’m sure it will find a home.

2. I started work on another short story this week, which has been a little more challenging for me. I started out excited and enthralled with my idea, and was deperately throwing down snippets and phrases into a notebook, but now things have stalled a bit. I have the parameters all sketched out, filling in the colors and the details has turned out to be considerably more difficult. I need to give up finding the “perfect” words and just get any words into sentences and paragraphs in the hopes that my writing gang can read it and review it tonight.

3. The Untitled Werewolf Novel, which now has the tentative title of Beneath the Midday Moon, continues to evolve inside my head. I was originally going to write it in first person with a single perspective. Now, I’m planning to add another character POV, and am undecided on whether to go with first person still or with a limited third person omnicient POV. Decisions, decisions.

4. I posted a new poem on wattpad, called “Ode to an Antique Suitcase,” which you can read it here.

5. Yesterday, I pulled off my  sweater and totally freaked out, suddenly sure that I was naked underneath and had just exposed myself to the entire office — only to realize after a couple of deep calming breaths that it was fine, reall. That I was not naked, but just wearing a nude colored tank top undearneath the sweater. The panic, however, reminded me instantly of those terrible dreams I used to have in high school of being in class without my pants on.

6. Spent Thursday night hanging out with my brother and his friend in San Francisco, drinking beers and eating good food. We stopped by the restaurant he manages, called Split Bread, which is all organic food and has really good toffee cookies.

7. It is raining outside. A lot. It’s like the sky is dumping whole buckets of water on the earth, for which I am very grateful, because how else are my potted plants to get watered.

8. It didn’t help, though, that I left both rain jacket and umbrella in the car, and so had to run down the pathway, leap (unsucessfully) over a puddle and throw myself into the car — none of which stopped me from looking like a wet cat and having to sit there, shaking the water from my limbs.

9. I don’t really have anything else to say.

10. I just like round numbers.

[Cross-posted to my livejournal. Feel free to comment here or there.]
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"There is no great writing, only great rewriting." ~ Justice Brandeis

I recently finished a second draft of a zombie/Bluebeard story, tentatively called “The Girls Come and They Go”. It’s almost there. I need to smooth out some of the scenes, add some details and tension toward the end, and chop out some exposition before finishing up with some good polishing. (I’m tempted to try out the nerd polish excel thing, though I tend to be so focused on the text and hearing it in my head that it’s hard to me to stop and count how many times I used certain telling words.)

I intended to submit this story to an anthology, but the market has closed up. I was too slow getting the story written and edited, which I find terribly annoying. I would much prefer to have my story read by an editor and rejected than to not submit it because I working past the deadline date. It’s happened several times now, and I always kick myself every time (though the upside is that I now have a new story completed). So, now I have to find another market that’s open to looking at zombie stories.

Anyway, this realization — that I would prefer to have the story read and then rejected — has lead me to a decision. I currently have a handful or more stories in various states of revision that need to be polished off and submitted somewhere…. anywhere.

Therefore, I am not allowed to start any new stories (which is a sort of way to avoid the submission process) until I have finished revisions of at least a handful of stories and started sending them out. As great as it would be to launch into the next shiny thing, it’s also important to follow through, take the journey to its conclusion, so to speak.

I also have enough poems to assemble them into a collection for submission, too, and that also needs to happen.

I’m hoping to get all this done by November, though I have a two week trip to Germany (for work and play) happening at the beginning of October, which will really cut into things, but it’s an attainable goal, if I stay focused. Also, while I may not directly participate in Nanowrimo this year, I so have the Untitled Werewolf Novel to get back to and maybe start from scratch on.

Anyway, that’s where I’m at. I’m hoping I’ll have a lot of submission posts to report in the near future (followed by lots of acceptance posts…. *fingers crossed*).

[Cross-posted to my livejournal.]
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Messing around on wattpad and a review of The Waking Moon by TJ McGuinn

So, I found out via twitter that Margaret Atwood has joined and has been promoting this site called wattpad. Essentially, its a way for writers to post stories online and connect with readers. Normally I wouldn’t look twice at this kind of site, in part, because its a self publishing venue in which there is no way to earn money (it’s completely free all around), but I figured since Margaret Atwood and has posted some of her poems, it lends the site some credibility and so I would check it out.

As a Writer

Writers post stories (either short stories or novels in serialized format or snippets or poetry), which readers can vote or comment on, and they can “fan” their favorite authors to find out when something new is posted.  According to the website, it has millions of readers every month. It also has an associated phone app and the option to promote your story on other sites (such as GoogleBooks, Sony eBookstore, and Scribd). All of which, suggests that there is an opportunity to connect with readers. You still have to find ways to promote your work on the site by chatting with readers and commenting on other works, and so forth, which is a lot of work in itself.

Though, I’m aiming to be professionally published, I can certainly see the appeal of instant gratification provided by self publishing your work (in any format). So, though I initially intended to join the site simply to read Margaret Atwood’s poems and to explore, I couldn’t help but post something of my own. The Poetry Project, as I’m calling it, will be a place where wattpad readers can suggest prompts that I will respond to with an original poem. I do have two poems completed (“Dreaming of Water on These Hot Sunny Days” and “The Butterfly Effect“), both of which you can read without being a member of wattpad. And I’m considering posting some of my Fay Fairburn stories on there, since I’ve already posted them on my blog, anyway.

I can already see that it’s a lot of work to get attention and move up in the stats (really based on popularity), which is fine — but it is something I also recognize as a distraction from doing the work to prepare and submit manuscripts for professional paid publishing, which is not so fine. I’ve been holding off on doing the final work to edit and submit some of the short stories I’ve written — there’s  fear involved of the I’m-not-good-enough variety — and I really need to make sure that happens. So, I’ll keep with wattpad for a while as a side project to see how it goes, but only under the provision that it doesn’t keep me from my main goals.

As a Reader

As to be expected, since there is no filter system (no editor selecting what appears and what needs more work), you get a lot of writing on the site that is not great (in fact a portion of it is really bad). You kind of having to skim through first pages and opening lines until you find something that’s worth reading. There are recommended stories and poems, which I tend to go to first, and various ways of searching to come up with unique reads, but there’s a ton of content on there to sort through to find something you like.

Despite that, I did find The Waking Moon, by TJ McGuinn. The book description: “Paulette’s life is in shambles. Her sister is dead, her mother is a drunk, and she’s been forced to transfer into a chaotic public school full of bullies. Things go from bad to worse when, one night while driving them home from dinner, her intoxicated mother hits and kills a teenage boy and is sent to jail. Now Paulette is truly alone. But when the teenage boy mysteriously comes back from the dead looking for Paulette, she finds herself face to face with the purest love on earth.”

McGuinn presents a story with clean, crisp prose. I say this not just in comparison to the work on wattpad, but in comparison work published in general. It’s good clean writing that draws you into the story from sentence one. Paulette is an interesting character, who is understandably downcast, based on the various problems she has to face. Life is rough, but she’s not so despondent as to be depressing or boring. I was definitely on her side.

The character I absolutely fell in love with, though, was the one friend she made in high school, Rhodes. He’s quirky and fun, and sticks up for Paulie. He’s kind to Paulie and though he’s fallen for her, he doesn’t push her too hard. He does make mistakes (at one point, jealousy rears its head), but he’s quick to back off and apologize for him. He even manages to respectfully help her out of her clothes, when she’s injured, which is tough thing to do when it’s someone you’re crushing on. He’s a character that I wish was real, cause I would love to have him be my friend in real life.

The super-haught dead boy (whose name I can’t remember) is rather generic and bland in comparison to Rhodes, who has so much personality. In fact, I didn’t quite get why she falls for him, except that there is an immediate emotional connection based on common tragedy.

The story overall held my interest the entire way through, and I found myself crying by the end. Definitely worth reading, and I hope I get to read more work by McGuinn in the future.

Finding other works on wattpad that I liked as much is slow going. I have found some “good” stuff, and lots of “okay” stuff, but not much that falls into the “great” category. There is definitely some of that in there, though.

[Cross posted to my livejournal.]
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Poetry Projects

So, as a form of procrastination (one of many), I’ve been toying with various ideas for poetry projects* — some I’ve been thinking about for a while now, some are brand new.

The newest idea, and one that could be done both fairly cheaply and easily (uh huh), is creating one or more pocket/mini chapbooks (thank you Poets & Writers). They would be 4.25 x 2.75 inches in size and 6 pages long (not including the cover). So a tiny little book with a series of very short poems (possibly haikus) or one longer poem spread over several pages. It would be something that I could give out at readings and maybe sell on etsy for a buck or two each.

I’ve been thinking for over a year about putting together a kickstarter project, which would be called “As Yet Unwritten,” in which I would create a chapbook of poetry based entirely on prompts from backers. I like the cooperative aspect of the idea, but I’m also aware that there is a huge time chunk involved in terms of researching cost of publishing a chapbook, running the project, creating the project, mailing the finished product out, etc. So, while conceptually fun and exciting to me, it also seems very, very overwhelming.

Then there’s the infamous letter poem series, which is still not complete. In terms of publishing this set, I would hopefully (fingers crossed) work cooperatively with an artist friend of mine, who has created a series of collage art pieces on old envelopes, so that her art and my poetry would appear side by side. Also a fun exciting idea for me. Ideally, I would try to get this one professionally published, but I have no idea how to go about getting an art/poetry book published, or what publishers would be interested in such a thing. So, um, yeah.

And, of course, there’s always the final option, the one I’ve been meaning to do since forever, which is to organize and compile my existing poetry into a booklength collection for the purpose of submitting it to a professional publisher. The only think holding me back here are my own doubts as to whether or not I’m good enough or ready.

Anyway, because I’m still enjoying the planning-level of procrastination, I’ve put a poll up on my livejournal as to which project you think I should work on. Have fun.

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Line Breaks in Poetry

Over on my tumblr (where I’ve been posting all my Napowrimo 2012 poems), my friend mermaidcomplex asked me how I approach line breaks in my poetry. Since, I ended up doing a longer, more detailed response, I thought I’d share it here, too.

Line breaks decisions really depend poem to poem, but essentially, they tend to be based on overall ton, visual elements, word emphasis, flow and rhythm, and (very much less so for me) formal meter or syllable counting considerations. Each reason tends to get wrapped up in the next, and I think the concept of the “pause” at the end of the line is connected to both word emphasis and flow or rhythm.

Tone/Feeling comes first for me, because it’s one of the first things I get a sense of as the words fall where they may. If the mood is calm and peaceful, then I tend to use more even lines, whereas if the poem is angry or in any way chaotic in mood, then I tend to use jagged lines, some longer or shorter, some indented in a seeming haphazard way, so as to suggest the disjointed feelings I’m trying to evoke. Though that’s not always the case, as the indented lines can also have a wistful, floaty feeling (which was what I was going for at the end of #9 napowrimo poem). Shorter lines tend to feel more immediate as they focus on only a few words at a time or they can feel more rushed, whereas longer lines tend to feel more stable, anchored.

As you noted, the Visual element can also play a part. This also ties into tone for me, as a poem that looks jagged on the page can immediately give a feeling of disjointedness even before the reader reads the first line. I’ve also seen poets, as I’m sure you have, take the visual element a level father by

say,
incorporating
the visual layout of
the poem into the metaphorical
images in the text, so that if you’re
writing about rolling down a hill, each line
can grow in length, so that the rolling hillside
is instantly present, even in the poem’s layout.

I don’t usually use the visual aspects of line breaks in that way, but it certainly can work well if the poem calls for it.

Word Emphasis is of equal importance, for me, to the tone or visual elements, and is also closely tied to Flow and Rhythm, which is really where the concept of the “pause” comes from (Allen Ginsberg was big on the idea of line break = pause, as determined by breath, and wrote all or most of his poetry with this in mind). I believe the pause is there. Even if you don’t actually sound out the pause while you are reading a poem, there is at the very least a visual break, as your eye stops at the end of the last line and scans back to the beginning of the next. For example, this poem, “Autum,” on the Poetic Asides page, I definitely pause at the end of each line while reading it, so that there’s a kind of rhythm as I take in the image in each line and mentally pause before moving on. (For me, the pause is stronger when the lines are shorter.)

I approach word emphasis, flow, and rhythm in several ways, including singling out short phrases or single words on a line, if necessary. But even in longer lines, I also look at what the last word is on the line, because the last word can sometime have increased emphasis, as well as to determine whether I want to break up a phrase or keep it whole. Take this not-so-inspiring example: “I don’t want to dance in the moonlight. Stop the buzzing of the bees.”

I don’t want to dance in the moonlight.
Stop the buzzing of the bees.

The above is too standard for my tastes. I don’t usually like to end on a period, because with the combined pause of the line ending and the stopping power of the period, it brings the line to a full halt, which is good sometimes, but most of the time I want more flow. So I would probably break up the lines like this:

I don’t want to dance
in the moonlight. Stop
the buzzing of the bees.

In this way, “I don’t want to dance” is a complete sentence on its own, which puts emphasis on “dance.” For a moment, however, brief it would allow the reader to feel a sense of conclusion, only to find there’s more to it as they read on. In the second line, by putting the period in the middle with the single word after it, my aim is to have the word, “Stop,” serve two functions at once. On the one hand, it relates to the sentence of the line it’s currently on, “I don’t want to dance in the moonlight,” so then “Stop,” it concludes. On the other hand, it also carries forward into the next line, as a part of a separate sentence and thought.

I rarely use Formal Meter and Syllable Counting (and by rarely, I mean, almost never). I cannot for the life of me wrap my head around meter or iambics — those who do, and do it well, are amazing. I only syllable count in very rare circumstances, as with my poem “Broken Cuckoo Clock“, in which every two syllable line is meant to evoke the “tick tock” sound of the clock with the final one syllable line bringing it to an abrupt stop.

So that’s pretty much my whole spiel on line breaks. Overall tone and feel of the poem tends to be the ultimate consideration for me. As I’m writing I usually go by my gut feeling on where a line should break, but during rewrites, I’ll play with line breaks, switching words back and forth between lines to get the combined tone, visual, emphasis, and flow that I’m going for.

[Cross-posted to my livejournal.]