Writing at Last - Phew!
Sep. 13th, 2008 11:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jacey
For the last couple of months Milford Writers' Conference has been looming on the horizon and with a place booked since spring I've known I needed up to 15,000 words in one or two pieces to submit for crit and discussion. In olden days, we used to have to take copies of our stories with us and the week consisted of a very heavy reading workload (mornings) critting workload (afternoons) and socialising workload (evenings), but with the advent of high speed internet we now send out our stories in advance to lighten the morning workload by enabling those of us who can to make a start on the reading.
Unfortunately this has had the effect of advancing the submission deadline to at least the week before the conference and many people submit a couple of months before, making those of us who are laggards feel doubly-tardy.
It's handy when Milford coincides with having a piece you're working on right now, of course. Last September I took the first section of my magic-pirate-adventure-quest novel 'Sea Witch and Rowankind' (then under the working title of 'The Elf-Oak Box') and, lo, I actually finished writing most of it in November, polished off the rest after Christmas, put it through beta readership in the spring, did the polish and... and... and I'm currently waiting for an agent to get back to me. Yeah, right! Same old, same old...
But this year I didn't have an obvious piece to take.
Yes I know, having got Sea Witch to an agentably submissible stage I should be leaping ahead on to a new project... but...
I have a book project which I took to Milford a year or two ago, got some generally positive, but constructive comments that made me change the focus from quest novel to political fantasy and I'm thinking of resubmitting that as one of my projects (It's Hari, FYI![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mevennen , bluehairsue and maeve_the_red , I think you've all seen him before)
I'm not a natural short story writer, but I do like to also take a short to Milford because the feedback is so fantastically helpful. I've had a story beginning on a back-burner for a couple of years. I really liked the beginning, but I couldn't quite get a grip on it. Well, yesterday and today I did it. I had about 1500 words in the pot already and now A Murder of Crows is complete at 7,500 words. (sigh) Yes I was hoping for shorter, too. I thought I might be able to do it in 4,000 words, but it got more complicated than that, and then the characters started to say: Yes, but what's my motivation?
Why am I not surprised that this story ended up at 7,500 words? Almost every damn short story I write ends up at least that long and in order to get them down to 5,000 or even 6,000 I end up cutting and stitching and polishing over the cracks. O, hell, I should just admit that I'm happiest at novel length, but I do keep trying.
Though luckily all the short stories I've sold have been similarly longish ones.
Anyhow I'm really pleased with 'A Murder of Crows' but I'm going to sit on it for a few days and re-read and further polish before sending it. So you'll get it in about a week, guys, OK?
In the meantime, now I know how long Murder of Crows is, I can prepare the first section of Hari (now provisionally entitled 'Spider on the Web') to use up the rest of my 15,000 word quota.
Unfortunately this has had the effect of advancing the submission deadline to at least the week before the conference and many people submit a couple of months before, making those of us who are laggards feel doubly-tardy.
It's handy when Milford coincides with having a piece you're working on right now, of course. Last September I took the first section of my magic-pirate-adventure-quest novel 'Sea Witch and Rowankind' (then under the working title of 'The Elf-Oak Box') and, lo, I actually finished writing most of it in November, polished off the rest after Christmas, put it through beta readership in the spring, did the polish and... and... and I'm currently waiting for an agent to get back to me. Yeah, right! Same old, same old...
But this year I didn't have an obvious piece to take.
Yes I know, having got Sea Witch to an agentably submissible stage I should be leaping ahead on to a new project... but...
I have a book project which I took to Milford a year or two ago, got some generally positive, but constructive comments that made me change the focus from quest novel to political fantasy and I'm thinking of resubmitting that as one of my projects (It's Hari, FYI
mevennen , bluehairsue and maeve_the_red , I think you've all seen him before)I'm not a natural short story writer, but I do like to also take a short to Milford because the feedback is so fantastically helpful. I've had a story beginning on a back-burner for a couple of years. I really liked the beginning, but I couldn't quite get a grip on it. Well, yesterday and today I did it. I had about 1500 words in the pot already and now A Murder of Crows is complete at 7,500 words. (sigh) Yes I was hoping for shorter, too. I thought I might be able to do it in 4,000 words, but it got more complicated than that, and then the characters started to say: Yes, but what's my motivation?
Why am I not surprised that this story ended up at 7,500 words? Almost every damn short story I write ends up at least that long and in order to get them down to 5,000 or even 6,000 I end up cutting and stitching and polishing over the cracks. O, hell, I should just admit that I'm happiest at novel length, but I do keep trying.
Though luckily all the short stories I've sold have been similarly longish ones.
Anyhow I'm really pleased with 'A Murder of Crows' but I'm going to sit on it for a few days and re-read and further polish before sending it. So you'll get it in about a week, guys, OK?
In the meantime, now I know how long Murder of Crows is, I can prepare the first section of Hari (now provisionally entitled 'Spider on the Web') to use up the rest of my 15,000 word quota.
no subject
Date: Sep. 14th, 2008 07:05 am (UTC)Milford sounds wonderful and I keep thinking I'd like to go, but with where my writing ended up it's simply not appropriate.
no subject
Date: Sep. 14th, 2008 02:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Sep. 14th, 2008 02:58 pm (UTC)And it's self-perpetuating -- that's what I know I can sell, so that's what I write, and what I've had enough practice at to be good at writing. I've sold shorts to a couple of spec-fic markets which promptly up and died on me or lost the contract or both (fortunately markets which paid on acceptance rather than on publication). And at this point I'm completely out of touch with what's happening in current specfic, because I'm not reading very much of it.