Posts Tagged ‘publishing’

I did more editing work on “Recall” last night. It’s coming along nicely. I’m applying the old 10% solution. This is something I haven’t really tried before, but I think it’s going to become a mainstay of my writing arsenal. My goal is to have this puppy done and out the door by Sunday. I think that’s doable.

What? No sending it to the critique group? Nope, not this time. I’m changing the way I deal with my workshops now. Honestly, I don’t think they’re helping me, but hurting me. I’ll continue participating and I’ll even submit my work, but I’m not going to use the critique groups to “fix” a manuscript or story. I’m going to use them as guides to improve my craft and that’s about it.

Why the change of heart? Well, I’m blocked. I don’t have writer’s block, I have sender’s block. Nothing is ever good enough to send out the door. So looking around I realize that I haven’t been following the rules. 1) Write, 2) Send what you write to publishers, 3) revise only if the editor asks for it, and 4) repeat above process.

So February is commitment month. I’m committing to writing and sending out 4 stories next week. That’s a story a week. I want to be in a different place as a writer. I don’t like where I am now. I know I can write professional quality work. I’m frustrated that I can’t seem to finish anything. So I’m redefining “finished” for myself. Finished does not mean perfect. Finished does not mean something that has been critiqued to death and then rewritten into something it’s not. Finished is one pass revision and one pass edit and then out the door.

I have to develop some balls about my writing. That’s all there is to it. I’ve seen to many wannabe writers go on and on about how they are going to do this and going to do that, and they might have one or two things published here and there—oh, wait, that looks familiar. I don’t want to be one of those guys.

I don’t want to be the guy who gets a couple of pro sales and writes one novel and never does anything else. I want to be a professional writer. Period. Professionals produce. That’s what they do. They consistently crank out entertaining stories. They consistently have their names on the front covers of the major digests and magazines. They are invited to anthologies and they produce stories for those anthologies quickly. They are invited to write media tie-ins and they do an excellent job with the material. Professionals produce. Professionals sell. And they sell because they produce a lot of quality material. Not one short story every month or every two months.

This is what I call a ‘talking with Red in the prison yard moment’. It’s time to get busy writing and sending or time to get busy doing something else.

Post: Post.  Some of this message comes across a little bitchy, like I don’t appreciate some of the critiques I have received in the past.  This is not true.  I do appreciate the critiques and those giving the critiques.  However, there are times as a writer where you have to look at the process and say, “This just isn’t working for me this way.”  It’s a personal thing and not meant to offend anyone.  When someone critiques my work it is helpful to me as a writer to gauge where I am with my overall fiction, but it probably won’t do much for the actual story.  Hopefully, that clarifies things.