Author: Sean Monaghan

Writer. Voracious reader.

Writing well and writing badly

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

As I progress through my “year of writing pulp”, I’m certainly learning a lot about myself as a writer. As with any writer, I have ups and downs and I have stories that are more successful (in the storytelling sense) than others. Sometimes it’s easy to feel down when a story isn’t working out. I begin to wonder if I’ll ever have another decent story in me. I guess I’m always measuring against my last best story. And that may be two or three (or more?) stories back.

The reality is that (as with most writers again) I feel like I’m getting better in general. See the graph of story quality here, with the zero to one hundred as the quality measure and the left to right as progress over time. In the early days most (ie, all) of my stories were lousy (say, a fifteen on the quality scale – at least they had reasonable grammar), but over time I’m getting better at the process of storytelling. Sometimes I stumble a little and drop down the quality line, but the general trend seems to be towards the upper end. (You understand, of course, that the ‘quality’ graph here is a purely arbitrary thing, for the sake of illustration. It’s not something I can measure in a scientific way).

This thought perhaps comes out of struggling with a chapter of my new novel that felt dead and lifeless and was a struggle to write; and then going into the next chapter which almost burned up my keyboard it was coming out so fast and easily. A novel is different to a story (that dull-ish chapter has a place in terms of pace and the mindset of the character), though I can see how some of my stories might have been dullish in places (or right through).

Pace is still something I’m learning about – recent rejection letter feedback suggested that one of my longer stories, while very good, did “drag quite a bit in quite a few places”. That’s kind of the opposite to some other feedback on another story (an accepted one – “Pan Am 617 Heavy”, which you can read here at Bewildering Stories) that pointed out (rightly) that the story was “somewhat relentless: the action is non-stop and neither the characters, nor the reader, seem to get a moment to breathe” (I’m paraphrasing those comments here). That kind of feedback certainly informa how I’m looking at my action/pulp stories now: time to breathe without dragging. It seems like good writing advice all around.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to improving on my last best story.

The value of a good cover

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Currently I do the illustrations for all of my book covers. I have a little bit of an art background (in fact have even had some exhibitions), so while I’m no professional I like to think that I have a reasonable idea of how to make a reasonable picture. Sometimes my covers work and sometimes not so much. Case in point here is my cover for my story Stone Goddess. I had the idea – to suit the story – of a pile of rocks that kind of looks like a statue. I attempted a blend of the rocks with the image of the statue (all rendered in Bryce). There are some elements that work, but I’m not convinced that this cover is going to sell many copies of the story (I think the story is one of my best, but so far has sold zero copies on Smashwords).

I was following Jeff Ambrose (another writer who’s inspired me on writing goals) and found his post about working on his covers. Now I though his covers were pretty good to start with, but some of his new ones are just leaving me in the dust. Look at the one here (used with his permission for illustrative purposes) for his story The Stone Goddess. Wow (and yikes, practically the same title). That illustration is so professional that it ought to help him sell an awful lot of copies of the story. (I’m terrified to read his story for fear that not only is the cover better, but so is the story).

That said, he is using dreamstime (an online resource where artists sell the rights for the use of their illustrations), so the covers are going to be pretty professional. Maybe I should take a lesson from Jeff and start investing a little money, rather than time – especially when a cover isn’t working out so well.

Maybe I’ll buy one of Jesse-lee Lang’s illustrations (she did the picture on the cover of Jeff’s story), and go head-to-head with Jeff.

NB: Cover Art Copyright © by Jesse-lee-Lang, Dreamstime.com

Book in hand, typos… in hand

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

The proof copy of the paperback edition of The Tunnel arrived today. It’s very cool, I’ve got to say, to hold the physical result in my hands (as you can see from that goofy grin). The idea of a proof copy, I guess, is that final check before it gets properly published. I knew there would be some tinkering with the cover to do, but what I didn’t expect was to open it up and spot a typo immediately. This is after three proofreads (one by me, and one by someone else [who’s not to blame at all!] and another by me). It’s just a silly thing too – an “at” when it should be “as” – which makes that sentence (“And as Morgan was leaving…”) make no sense at all. Guess I’m going to have to proof the whole thing again. I might have to do that backwards. At least I know that the ebook version is correct (checked it just now – I guess I got the paperback proof printed before that final proofread. Silly).

Tutoring begins, writing slows

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Well, I knew this day would come and I’ve planned for it, I just hadn’t been sure that I’d be quite as far ahead of my writing goals, nor that I would be able to time the beginning of tutoring to fit with exactly what I’m writing. (I tutor in, you guessed it, creative writing).

I’m deep into the next novel (well, 18,000 words), but took a break a couple of weeks ago to write some short/long stories. I should finish the third of those today or tomorrow, then I’ll go back to the novel. That novel will be in three parts, with a long passage of time between each (the first part set in 1996, the second – which I’m about to start – in 2002, and the third will be current), so a break at the end of the first part feels healthy: the characters will have developed and that break should give me a slightly different perspective.

For the next four or five weeks I won’t be able to keep up my 1000+ words a day as I’ve been doing all year (actually much more on average, my lowest daily count was 1010 words, highest over 5500 – the total is just on 130,000 for the 75 days of 2012). It’s going to be hard to slow down, I think, but will likely help with the novel – it might be a little more considered and evenly paced. 500 a day would be nice, but it might be more like 250. Still, that’s about a page. I definitely want to hit 150,000 words by the middle of the year, and do think that with the breaks in tutoring it will be quite possible. It would be good, I think, to get this novel finished by then, and be thinking about the next one.Oh, plus a couple of stories in there too.

On the reading side, I’ve just finished Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s City of Ruins – a sci fi adventure following on from Diving into the Wreck (and numerous stories). It was a fun romp. It seemed to start a little slow, but picked up quickly and became utterly compelling. I’m looking forward to the next one in the series – (Boneyards) – which is actually already out.

Now I’m finally picking up John Irving’s Until I Find You, which somehow I missed reading when it came out. I loved Last Night in Twisted River which I did read when that came out over a year ago – actually one of my favourites of his. I expect I’ll enjoy this one. I know I’ll be reading it slow (see notes on being busy above), but actually, that’s just fine.

The Tunnel – The Hidden Dome Volume 1: new cover and updated text

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My novel The Tunnel, available at Smashwords and other ebook retailers, has a new cover (subtly nicer, I think, richer colours, better layout) and (very importantly) updated text. It’s been proofread (yet again) and more typos have been corrected, plus a few clunky sentences. I seem to have this habit of dropping the last letter from a couple of words (“her” for “here” and “the” for “they”) and missing it in initial proofreads. So now it looks better and reads better.

The little pic here is how the old cover looked, for comparison’s sake.

Careful what you wish for: rejection slips

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I got a rejection slip today. That means I’m down to thirteen live submissions.

This slip was one of the nicer ones, I’ve must say, in that it included some feedback – fair and fairly positive – from the first readers, with comments like these below:

“[T]his is a complex idea. You’ve only barely touched the surface. The writing is solid and workmanlike, but because the central concept is so complex, you’ve been unable to offer much of characterisation, or setting, or colour.”

“This should be a novella-length piece, so you can do justice to the main concept. Accepting it in this form would be wrong for both you, and [our publication].”

Fair enough. Decent food for thought. It is a very stripped back story, one that I had worked on for a long time. The first versions were five or six thousand words long and really didn’t work so well. The final version is 1600. That’s barely more than flash fiction.

Perhaps this is a case for writing a longer version (again). I’ve done that before – my novel Rotations originated from a flash story, as did my forthcoming novel The Room (that flash story – “Don’t Sleep Downstairs” – is still available at Flashes In The Dark.

I had planned on writing a couple of short novels this year, amongst all the other stuff, and I am writing longer these days (that rejected story was written and rewritten quite some time ago).

Now that I think about it my latest novel – The Tunnel – was going to be a short novel (it went to over 60,000 words when I was expecting 25,000 – as I was getting into it I realised that it had to be bigger). I’m feeling more confident with longer forms these days (most of my current submissions are from 5000 to 20,000 words), a far cry from my period of focusing on flash fiction.

I guess that’s a project for later in the year – take that “solid and workmanlike” writing and develop the story with some characterisation, setting and colour. 🙂

In the meantime, the story is going back out to find a publisher who might like it in this form (I still think it works as is – a spare and stark piece). Then I’ll be back up to fourteen live submissions.

Fourteen submissions out and waiting

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Well, waiting and writing, writing, writing. I have fourteen submissions out with publishers right now. I know for some writers that might be a pretty low number, but for me it’s up amongst the highest at any one time. I find I get both excited, and concerned. Excited that some of these stories that have been out for a while might be moving up from the slush pile to more senior editors (yay). Concerned that they maybe never arrived, or have been lost. I need to keep track of those enquiry times – some publications say enquire after a week (I don’t have any subs with those ones at the moment – their turnaround is pretty slick), some say wait ninety days before enquiring.

It’s hard not to be excited, and then always a little disappointing when it comes back after ninety days with a form rejection. Still, that means it can be live again with another market.

So I get the goofball award, but at least it got me writing with focus…

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

In my last post, I bleated on about my best story not even making the long list of a competition (when a slightly weaker story had made the shortlist in another round of the same contest). Well, it turns out I was reading the wrong list. I was reading the (just published) list for the just previous round of the contest, where I’d entered a much weaker story. In fact, they’d already been polite enough to personally email me and let me know that my (not especially very good) story for that round hadn’t made the finals (no surprise there).

This means three things. First: my current best story ever is theoretically still “live” – since it’s in the contest’s current round, not lost from the list they’d published.

Second: I was being a goofball and I need to keep better track of things.

Third: thinking I need to just write better is a great motivator. I completed a new story over the weekend, and have begun yet another one. Talk about motivated. I felt like I was writing with fire. Now I don’t know that either of these stories is better than that other one, but I raged into the writing of them and I think they’re up there with my best. Good enough, in fact, to enter into those next rounds of the contest, when those submissions open up.

Whether to have a crisis of confidence, or just get on and write better…

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Last year I entered a writing contest. I didn’t win, but I placed pretty highly (top twenty). Yay for me. I entered again (this particular contest has four rounds a year), with a story I knew wouldn’t win – just to reassure myself that placing wasn’t easy. Sure enough that story didn’t even make the list of around 100 named as making it to the long list. So placing highly was some kind of achievement. Yay for me, again (not to sound too self-congratulatory…)

Good. So then I wrote my best damn story ever and entered that for the current round, feeling pretty smug and sure of myself that I would, if not win, at least get into that top 20 again. The results have just been posted, and guess what. Not a win. Not top 20. Not even on that freaking long list of around 100. Nada.

WTHeck? That was the best I could do. And it didn’t even place. Maybe I didn’t even send it right (nope, I got an acknowledgment). Maybe the reader was having a bad day. Maybe I really do suck as a writer. Maybe I should just pack it in and buy a PSVita and spend the rest of the year playing Uncharted.

Right. That would be a solution.

Actually, I’ve got a better solution. Write a better story. Yep. Gotta keep improving as a writer. If I want to win this competition then I need to write my even better best damn story ever. In fact, I’ve got the idea down already. And I’ll start writing it tomorrow.

And, on another note. I’ve got to remind myself that contests and submissions are all something of a lottery. You’ve got to buy a ticket to win. Sure, it’s important to write well, but it’s still a whole lot to do with what’s going through a particular editor’s or judge’s head on that particular day.

That story? I’ll be send it to a pro market soon. Actually – tomorrow. You’ve got to buy a ticket to win.

300,000 words progress

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At first I was going to give an update when I hit 75,000 words for the year. That’s a quarter of my goal. But that milestone passed a couple of weeks back. As of today I’m at a shade under 95,000, so will probably be a third of the way to my goal early next week.

It might sound like I’m getting a little ahead of myself here, but I was making allowance for doing tutoring this year. I might not have made quite enough allowance. Tutoring is going to be one big giant tyrannosaur with teeth like stalagtites (and stalagmites). The paper’s structure has changed radically this year. Instead of the regular 4 assignments, with a three week turnaround, the paper now has nine assignment dates. Now those are smaller, certainly, some of them are much smaller, but there is much more regular on-going contact. That’s got to be good for the students and developing their writing, but for me it means that the blocks of time between the deadline dates are smaller and less free. I’m sure that it will be good for me: challenging and stimulating, rather than just cruising into it, but at the same time I’ll have to redraw the way I hit my own writing goals.

Speaking of goals, my first new novel for 2012 is up and available. The Tunnel is available immediately from Triple V Publishing as an ebook through Smashwords – here. It’s a sci-fi adventure story. I’ll blog about it more when it’s made it through to Kindle and B&N and so on, and when the print version is out.