Tutoring begins, writing slows

~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment


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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image

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.

Free fiction

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As I’m deep in the heart of writing novels and novellas, I’ve found a moment to write a piece of flash fiction. “With Demon” is a horror piece about the problem of trying to take a demon to a wedding. Kind of. And it’s available for free now at Microhorror. Thanks to editor Nathan Rosen for publishing this story – check out the rest of the site too: Nathan hosts a wealth of horror flash fiction.

Four recent publications

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As the writing races on like a horse on a track, I’m still managing to find a little time to format and publish some short stories and collections as ebooks.

First up are two short stories – “To A Pile of Ashes” and “Stone Goddess”. Ashes was first drafted years ago while I was working on my thesis. Over the years it had numerous revisions and eventually found a home at Infinite Windows. Goddess first came out a couple of years back, first in Lame Goat Press’s Horror Through the Ages, then in The Best of Lame Goat Press, and was also podcast by Barry J. Northern at Cast Macabre. Ashes is fairly straightforward adventure sci-fi, while goddess is a Mars story but sci-fi with a slight horror edge.

Then there’s also the second of my flashpacks – short collections of flash fiction stories. This new one, following Lizard Brain and other stories (which I neglected to publicise), is Zombie-Eyed Girl and other stories: five stories with at least a hint of zombie to them. One story – “Unbuild the Bridge” – is new for this collection, with the other four having appeared elsewhere over the last few years.

Finally there’s another Michael Shone story – “Katie Stumbled”. This is an odd hybrid of a story, a little sci-fi, a little somethingpunk, and all adventure. It was originally published in the Static Movement anthology Bounty Hunter. I used the pen name since I already had a story (“A Visit to the Theatre”)under my real name in the volume.

These will show up at ebook retailers if you search for Sean Monaghan, or just find them at my Smashwords page – here.

January

~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been fortunate through January, with several days with no other commitments – work, family, etc. – where I’ve been able to focus on writing, so my word count goal has been achieved. Actually, more than achieved. Turns out that I’ve written this year’s first novel. I started on January first (after writing the last few scenes from a novella started in late December), and finished the last two chapters and epilogue this morning before heading to work (this morning being February first). 63,000 words – a couple of thousand a day through January. That’s pretty good, but I’d say I’m unlikely to keep that pace up – still, it’s a good start towards the aim of 300,000 words this year.

Being a pulp fiction writer now (from reading Dean Wesley Smith’s blog), it’s now on to proof-reading before I decide what to do with it – publish right away as an ebook and POD, or submit to a publisher.

Given how impatient I’m feeling at the moment, self-publishing is looking more likely. At the moment I have just two novels available as ebooks and it feels like it would be useful to support those with a few more.

I don’t have a title for the novel yet, but I’m sure that will come in my first round of proofing before I get someone else to proof it. It’s an adventure story set on a jungle on a distant planet with a lead character with artificial eyes. It was fun to write, and I hope it will be fun to read. I’ve created a rough for the cover, but we’ll see what I end up doing with it in a couple of weeks anyway.

Now, on to writing a short story (an entry for a New Zealand literary competition), another sci-fi story (Writer’s of the Future entry) and another novella under a pen name. Then I’m going to write another literary novel for the New Zealand market. It’s good to feel the plan outlined and have a feel for the way ahead.