Caroline M. Yoachim

Yay productivity!

Submission #27 – Flash fiction to Postcards from Hell.

I revised not one but *two* stories today. One was the flash story, which I submitted. The other was a substantially longer piece, that I needed to trim by several hundred words. The somewhat-shortened longer story is now awaiting crits with one of my crit groups. Cutting 700 words from a 5,700 word story was hard. I had to do it in three passes, with each pass resulting in fewer anti-words. I’m tentatively pleased with the result…we’ll see what my critters have to say about it.

Was good to have had …

submission, rejection, headache

Sub #26 – a drabble, which is a story of exactly 100 words, something I’d never tried before.

So, for a brief period of time I was up to *six* items in circulation. Then,

Rejection #20.

*sigh* Need to think about how I want to shuffle things. In addition to what’s out there, I have a flash fiction piece that I’m going to touch up a bit and send out hopefully this weekend. Then I’d be up to seven. Drabble and Flash stories are a good way to get ones submission numbers up in a hurry!

Completely unrelated to all …

Hugo House Workshop – Terry Bisson

Got to spend the day on Sunday learning about short fiction from Terry Bisson as part of the Hugo House series of one day workshops (http://www.nwmediaarts.com/2007Event-Workshops.html). About a month ago I went to one of the other workshops in this series, where I learned about ‘middles’ from Connie Willis. Therefore, I was pleased when Terry announced that we would be learning about ‘beginnings’ and ‘endings.’ So in theory, I should be able to write a complete story now :) We also spent a lot of time on how to convey information using dialogue, which I found very helpful.

Some tidbits:

…

Submission # 25 and random thoughts on revisions

Sub 25 – Did some light revisions to the story that came back from F&SF (mainly tweaking the opening), came up with a (hopefully) better title, and shipped it out to Writers of the Future. This is my sixth entry to WotF.

Holding steady at 5 stories out to market at the moment. I’ve got one more almost ready to go (a flash story), and a bunch of things that need revisin’. Some writers thrive on revisions. I am not one of those writers. Little revisions I can handle, no worries. Tweak this, adjust that. But when I have to …

And on the 8th day the Slushgod smote my story…

Rejection #19 – Alas. 8 day rejection from JJA at F&SF. I’m getting a lot of “no grab” rejections…need to work on writing catchier openings.

I am pleased to report that 19 rejections makes a stack that is difficult to push a pushpin through. (I impale all my rejections on a pushpin on my corkboard.) Maybe when I hit 25 rejections I’ll upgrade to a nail.

Productivity Resumes

So I had an idea that was rattling around in my head for a while, and I kept trying to mash it with other things, which wasn’t working very well. So instead of doing that I tried to boil the idea down to its very essence and write it as flash, which seemed to work. Flash is not really one of my strengths, so it will be interesting to see what other people think of it. Anyway, it was nice to get some actual writing done, as lately I’ve been doing photography and outlining, both of which are at least …

Submission #24 and stock photography

Well, after Connie’s workshop, I’d meant to revise a story AND get a new one written by Potlatch (tomorrow). I’m one for two on that. Got the story revised so I can mail it off today (Sub #24, my 8th sub to F&SF). No new writing whatsoever, though I did do some outlining on two separate story ideas. So post-Potlatch, I really need to settle in and get at least one of them written up.

Why so little writing? I’m working on breaking into stock photography. At the moment I’m selling pictures through dreamstime and fotolia. These are …

Workshop Tidbits

Went to a writing workshop with Connie Willis, part of the Hugo House series of one day workshops (http://www.nwmediaarts.com/2007Event-Workshops.html). Connie was wonderful, with lots of insights on plot. She gave TONS of examples from books and movies, which I always find helpful. And, in addition to all the tidbits I picked up from Connie, it was nice to spend the day with a bunch of other writers, talking about writing.

Assorted tidbits from Connie Willis:

Plot reversals change the direction of the story. The questions that the reader is interested in change. A reversal can come about by finding out …

Miscellaneous Stuff

Over the last week or so:
Submission #23 – to Strange Horizons
Rejection #18 – an 8-day “nice writing” but “no grab” from F&SF

After several days of not writing, I outlined a story today. It’s not ready to be written yet, it’s close, but it needs to be mashed with *something.* I’m hoping that it will become clear to me what that something is by Monday, so that I can devote next week to writing the story. On the other hand, it may be that I’ll have a whole bunch of shiny new ideas by then, since …

Rejection #17, return of the ducks

My mechanical ducks are back from Strange Horizons, but with a personal rejection, which was nice. (Well, as nice as a rejection ever is.) Feeling relatively encouraged, I went ahead and turned those ducks right around and sent them to Clarkesworld (submission #22).

No fresh writing today, or even revising. Instead I’ve been working on assorted crits. Tomorrow, though, I’ll get back to my own stuff. Really. After all, I have to have *something* done by the end of the week, be it a new story or a revision. (Or a novel chapter, I suppose, but since I’m not working …