Caroline M. Yoachim

Submission #20

Packaged up my backwards-in-time story so that it can go out in the mail tomorrow. I’ve decided to send it off to Asimov’s next, and it’ll be my first sub to that market (mainly because I’m impatient, and the turnaround time there is not quite as quick as, say, F&SF or SH). I tweaked a couple things in the opening scene before stuffing the story into an envelope — mostly just smoothing out the language a little bit.

Despite not getting any actual writing done this weekend, I’m feeling pretty productive. In addition to getting my Asimov’s sub prepped, I …

Skiing in the Sunshine

After starting the year with a burst of writing, I took the last five days off and went up to Whistler. It was beautiful and sunny, and the views (http://www.flickr.com/photos/78523822@N00/sets/72157594514935628/) were spectactular. No fresh snow, but I was perfectly happy spending most of my time on wide open groomed runs. Midweek skiing is definitely the way to go, if you can swing it–no lift lines and fewer people on the runs, very nice stuff.

Also had some very tasty food this trip, including crepes, tapas and Belgian chocolate fondue. Yum! Good thing I got a lot of exercise skiing to …

Rejection #16

Back from Canada (more on that later). In the stack of mail from when I was gone:

After 44 days, Stanley Schmidt at Analog found my backwards-in-time story ‘not quite suitable.’ Next market up for this one is probably Asimov’s, though I’m tempted to hold it for a bit and send it to Strange Horizons, since they have a quicker turnaround time. (Can’t send it to SH immediately, since I’ve already got a story there.) At 5,300 words, it is a smidge above SH’s preferred length (5k), but the guidelines say that they’ll consider stories up to 9k.

Also a …

And All That Jazz…

Had a lovely time going out to dinner at Tula’s Jazz club with some of my Clarion classmates. We got to meet up with Paul Park, who is in town to teach a one-day workshop through Hugo House. Sadly I can’t make it to the workshop today, seeing as I’m leaving for Whistler sometime in the next hour or two. Still it was nice to see everyone and catch up a bit.

Post-JaNo I haven’t generated a whole lot of new words, which is okay. I did manage to get the (very) short story I wrote mid-JaNo revised, so all …

All’s well that ends.

Done!! Yay!! I now leave the ranks of ‘people-who-want-to-write-a-novel-someday,’ and join the ranks of ‘people-who-have-a-novel-sitting-around-in-a-drawer.’

Day 24 of JaNo – 4004 words today, 54097 total

Pushed through 2 days worth of writing today, as I wasn’t so keen on stopping once the very end of it was in sight. I can’t say that I’m thrilled with the ending, but I got to a point where I felt comfortable writing “THE END,” so that’s it for my JaNoing experience. Overall, it was really good. I learned some things about what works, and a lot about what doesn’t work, both of which …

Wordcount complete!

Day 23 of JaNo – 2370 words today, 50093 total

Well, the novel isn’t finished yet, but I’ve crossed the 50k mark. And I’ve got a climax scene started in today’s words, so I think this is all going to work out. I’m guessing I’ll be finished on Thursday. Purely a practice novel, of course, but at least it will be a complete practice novel. Then I can jot myself some notes about what I’d do differently for next time, and my JaNo educational experience will be complete :)

Day 22 of JaNo – 2248 words today, 47723 words total

In all likelihood, I’ll hit 50k tomorrow, though I don’t think the story will have reached any sort of resolution by then. I am shooting to wrap up by Friday though, which means sometime in the next 8k or so I’ll hopefully be writing the words: THE END. I think this means I’ll be abandoning at least 2 of the minor threads, which I’m okay with. If I can get the major storyline into relatively coherent shape, I’ll consider it to be a successful ending.

Productive Day

Day 21 of JaNo – 3807 words today (2203 novel words), 45475 total

I had a short story in my head that demanded to come out, so I scrawled out a very rough draft this morning at 1.6k words. Since they’re not part of my novel, they don’t go into the grand wordcount…but I went ahead and tossed them into today’s word total, mainly because I’m pleased with myself for getting so many words down today. Yay!

Since this is the end of week 3, I’ll go ahead and do a weekly wordcount too: 14830 words for the novel this …

T-minus 7 days

Day 20 of JaNo – 2322 words today, 43272 total

After having a terrible time generating words earlier this week (can’t quite remember when, but I was definitely frustrated with the whole project at one point), the words have been flowing the last few days. The various threads seem to know what they need to do, at least for now, and I’m hoping everything will get tied together in some sort of climax. I have exactly one week left to pull it off, with January 27th being my last possible writing day before I leave for Whistler. At this point, …

Missed a couple posts. . .

. . .because my left wrist has been a little bit titchy the last couple days (nothing major, but given my history of wrist problems, I’ve been trying to lay off the computer for non-writing activities). So I’m still writing, but more ice, more breaks, and less LJ posting.

To sum up the JaNo days I didn’t post:
Day 17 – zero words (skiing), 34958 total
Day 18 – 3098 words, 38056 total
Day 19 – 2894 words, 40950 total

Less than 10k to go…yay! And now I’m off to ice my wrist.