Well, phooey. I'm at 2300-some words with my little short story I've started. I've got the premise down and I like the beginning, but now I'm a little stymied. I don't really know where to go with it. Anyone else ever have this problem? The best analogy I can think of is that you've got your car all loaded and packed for a nice little road trip ( Read more... )

Dear Ms. Laughlin:

Thank you so much for letting me take a look at this. I’m sorry to say that this is just not right for my list.
My apologies.

Best wishes,

(Name Withheld)

Well, damn. Time to cross another one off my list and get some more queries ready. Bummer.

-Astra

Over breakfast this morning, Tony and I were talking about writing and music. He's a bass-player and tends to see things in musical terms, but as with a lot of things, there's a correlation. His experiences with playing in bands mirrors many of my experiences as a burgeoning writer.

He recounted one experience where he went to see some fellow audio ( Read more... )

I finished a revision of my novel. I can't quite say I'm finished altogether -- how many times do you revise something before you call it done? But at least I went through the entire thing and tweaked/edited/added/deleted as necessary, so that's something. It actually grew, from about 92K to 94K, but I felt I rushed things toward the end in the ( Read more... )

Had a nice little vacation this past weekend. My brother and his fiancee were in town, so the four of us took a road trip out through Wyoming and up to South Dakota to check out Deadwood, Devil's Tower, Mount Rushmore, and other sites of interest. We only had one minor hiccup when the van had a flat, but otherwise the trusty old thing got us safely ( Read more... )

They sure don't make this whole writing thing easy.

And by "they" I mean the nebulous masses of magazines, publishers, agents, and so on. It's a little discouraging, going through all this research and rigmarole in order to narrow down a search to find THE perfect venue, only then to discover that they're closed to submissions. Or that they won't ( Read more... )

After all my fretting yesterday, it ended up being for nothing. I wrote a short story. I was lamenting to Tony my lack of writing lately, so he quite sensibly suggested I switch gears and try a short story. They tend to be more plot-driven, anyway, which would be good practice ( Read more... )

I miss writing. I'd gotten into the habit of doing it every day -- a little in the morning and a little in the evening, after Tony had gone to bed. That became my ritual, and I looked forward to it -- I looked forward to finding out what would happen next. I know some people toil and agonize over writing, and it's a whole laborious process, but I ( Read more... )

As I said on my Facebook page, those are two of the most satisfying words to type. I finished my novel today, clocking it in at 92,764 words. It's a rough draft, of course, but I wrote it all the way through, beginning to end, in the space of less than two months. That's a lot of writing!

I was fortunate (depending on how you look at it?) that I've ( Read more... )

As I told a friend tonight -- the same writing buddy who's been helping to encourage me: As for me, I'm good. Got up to 86,265. I'm in the midst of the grand, climactic fight scene, but I figure I'll stop it here so I'm primed to pick it back up tomorrow. Kind of exciting... the end is in sight!