I can’t really tell if May flew by or dragged its feet. On one hand, I can’t believe it’s already June, with summer weather in full swing in MD. On the other, it feels like a lot has happened in the last month, both personally and otherwise.
My short take on current protests around the US:
Black Live Matter.
Now then, onto events primarily taking place at the simple new desk pictured above. Continue reading “June Write Day: #Gains”
The last week has been so weighted, so heavy with sorrow and yet growing with hope too. With current events still in the front of my mind, I’ve tried to resume some artistic activities. So, a day late, but here it is – the next writing exercise from Steering the Craft.
Background: I’ve been working through Ursula K. Le Guin’s excellent Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story. Always glad for feedback or comments! (And if you feel inspired to join in – even better!!)
From Chapter 1: The Sound of Your Writing
“Part 2: In a paragraph or so, describe an action or a person feeling a strong emotion – joy, fear, grief. Try to make the rhythm and movement of the sentences embody or represent the physical reality you’re writing about. ” -Steering the Craft, Page 9.
This one definitely didn’t come from personal experience – no lotto jackpots here!
I don’t always enjoy the story I’m writing. There, I said it. Sometimes, the story doesn’t feel right, or it doesn’t excite me, and it’s just not working the way I had intended it to. And I start to dislike it… maybe even resent it a little for taking up so much of my head space and typing capacity.
However, there is one simple reason that I think lies at the heart of not enjoying the story you’re writing: you haven’t figured out what to like about your story yet. Continue reading “Finding a Way to Enjoy Your Story”
I’ve been working through Ursula K. Le Guin’s excellent Steering the Craft: A 21st-Century Guide to Sailing the Sea of Story. I’m on chapter 3 now and I highly recommend it. I’ll be posting my responses to the short exercises she proposes here. Always glad for feedback or comments! (And if you feel inspired to join in – even better!!)
“Chapter 1: The Sound of Your Writing
Part 1: Being Gorgeous – Write a paragraph to a page of narrative that’s meant to be read aloud. Use onomatopoeia, alliteration, repetition, rhythmic effects, made-up words or names, dialect – any kind of sound effect you like – but NOT rhyme or meter.” – Steering the Craft, Page 8.
Right after high school I volunteered at our municipal zoo – I used to conduct evening tours for groups spending the night. We’d leave the group at the “sleepover safari pavilion” and then had to walk to our cars through the empty zoo…
Nighttime at the Zoo
Nighttime is the absolute best time in a zoo. And I’m not talking about one of those nights the zoo simply stays open late. No! The magic only conjures forth when the zoo is closed. One has the space and time to enjoy the sights and sounds of an assemblage of animals found nowhere else on Earth. The silhouettes of dozens of different animals against the darkening sky or illuminated by the warm red glow of their heat lamps. The monkeys lean against the chain link fences of their enclosures, tufts of tawny tails sticking through at odd angles: they pause in grooming the silky black hair of their babies and take a good long look at the sunset smear of pink and orange. The smell of exotic manure – not plain old horse manure – but manure aroma with the hint of something extra. What exactly depends on the ungulate: extra moisture, extra miles down special serpentine guts, extra regurgitations, who knows? The elephants fart with abandon, the decibels of their farts echoing across the empty visitor plazas. Nothing stops you in your tracks like a sustained reverberating bluuuuuurph from an elephant bum.
The bats hid all day, wrapped in their thin leather bathrobes, caring not a fie for the surges of disinterested visitors or the sinister suspirations of strollers squeaking towards the orangutan exhibits. They are now active, lurching wing claw over feet on the ceiling of their cage, tipping their heads back to assess the selection of fruit on offer. Ever see a southern wombat do anything but sleep, Buddha belly rising and falling, stubby toes pointed firmly at the sky? Come to the zoo at night and the wombat will be upright, nose in its food bowl.
The wildlife isn’t all contained either. The peacocks scream eiiiiiiiiiiii triumphantly from their roosts high in the eucalyptus trees. Skunks waddle down the deserted paths with purpose, like assistant zookeepers. “Business to attend to, whot whot!” they seem to say. It is not recommended that you attempt to interrupt them; a blast from a skunk butt will make you not want to be with yourself. No one else will want to be with you either, the sulfurous compound lighting lesson-teaching fire to every mucus membrane it meets. Best to let the wild skunks get to their meetings unhindered; even the great cats, the lions and jaguars and tigers, leave them be, knowing the skunks are the perfect bureaucrats of the nighttime zoo.
April flew by, but I’m pretty happy with where I ended up. I ended up deciding to shift my goals mid-month, and I think it’s important to be flexible where possible.
For instance, my now more chaotic work area pictured above. My desk is sitting in the middle of my office as I try to rearrange the furniture and prepare for a much smaller desk in my ever-shrinking office/storage closet. Continue reading “May Write Day: Onto the Second Draft!”
Although I haven’t officially updated you all on my writing progress for April (that’s next week), I can tell you that I have moved on to the second draft of “The Herb Witch”.
Since I wrote the first draft by hand in a journal, I’m now transcribing it to the old electronic typewriter (PC) and making edits along the way. Here’s why this type of rewrite is more efficient than revising a single draft.
Continue reading “When Rewriting is more Efficient than Revising”
March has been weird for everyone, I’m sure. Maryland, my home-state in the US, has been under a state of emergency with escalating degrees of a shutdown for at least three weeks.
My wife and I are incredibly fortunate to both still be working. I am working from home, and she is considered an essential employee for a healthcare institution. (She works in a lab, so she’s not on the front lines of the pandemic response, like most doctors or nurses are.) My son is out of daycare for the time being, and I haven’t left my house in a week.
I’d be happy to talk about life under quarantine if you’re interested, but not in this post.
This post is about writing! And other goals. Continue reading “April Write Day: Writing in Quarantine”
I’ve been known to self-edit when I write… a lot. For the first draft of WoEM, I think I wrote and rewrote the first couple of chapters three or four times before I made any real progress on the story.
I’ve been knee-deep in the discovery draft of my short stories for a couple months, and it’s taken a while to convince my brain that it’s only the discovery draft.
So I just wanted to talk about some things to keep in mind as you write a discovery draft. Continue reading “Leaning into the Discovery Draft”
I had totally planned to write about marketing strategies this week, but I am mentally drained. Next week.
For now, I’m just going to unload a bit. A few things coalesced over the last several days that had me in serious doubt about my writing endeavors. As in, I honestly questioned whether I should be in the self-publishing arena, whether I even wanted my stories published at all. That was a first.
Here’s what happened, in the order that I remember it:
That last one still irks me. They claimed to have found places where content in my novel were published online and asked me to provide explanations as to why.
…I have not published a single word of my novel anywhere in any online forum. They asked me to send them links of where they found my book’s content published, as if they were protecting my copyright by not telling me if anyone else was infringing on my copyright.
I sent them four links, two of which were on this site, one on YouTube, and one on Wattpad, and told them that I used my cover image in marketing materials, which is… kind of… what you do when you publish a book.
I then emphatically asked that they identify any other places they had allegedly found my book published online, because I was terrified that someone had stolen my story.
They replied thanking me for my cooperation, confirmed that my book would be made live on their platform again, and gave me no other information!
What the hell?
Am I supposed to assume that the four places I use my cover image online were what flagged their team to potential copyright infringement of my own book?
Maybe. I haven’t even bothered asking for clarification, because I’m 90% certain I won’t get any.
This episode took place over the course of about 18 hours, but that day-and-a-half had me questioning every decision I had made about writing and publishing stories over the previous six years.
The good news is that I’m mostly over it, I think. The first draft for my short story was bothering me, because I know it’s terrible at this point, and I wasn’t sure how to make not terrible.
But I also know that the first draft is always terrible, and that I just need to get the thing written so I can go back, scribble some notes, and rewrite it. I wrote up a small outline to help me figure out how to get from the middle of the story to the end, so that should make the writing process a little smoother.
Except tonight (Tuesday) because I can barely look straight ahead without my eyes drifting.
The moral of the story is this: You will always find a reason to doubt yourself as a writer. Sometimes, the universe gives you several reasons all at once! Take a moment to breathe, and then find a way around it.
I can still publish this short story this year. I can still attend a convention or two. And I can do some quick Google searches to make sure no one has stolen my book, even if it’s just for momentary peace of mind.
Steve D
February has been a month of preparation, or at least preparing for future preparations…
I’ve started looking into conventions I want to attend this year, and realized a little too late that I should have been doing this three months ago. Due to another trip I’m taking around the same time, I will not be attending Awesome Con in DC this year, which is a bummer.
However, I’ve found a few book festivals in Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia that I’m looking into attending later this autumn. Some of the application dates are looming, so that will be a focus for me this month. I’d definitely like to attend two of those. I’m considering doing all three. Hopefully I’ll have more details this time next month. Continue reading “March Write Day: Looking Ahead”
Evening Satellite Publishing 