Uncategorized – Page 26 – Caroline M. Yoachim

This That and the Next Thing

Last weekend I went to Peter Beagle’s one-day writing workshop at Hugo House. We did some writing exercises geared toward creating a distinctive voice: writing a monologue in a non-human voice, writing a dialog between two characters where it was clear who was speaking even without any tags. The exercises (at least for me) were as much about thinking from a different POV as they were about dialog per se. I wanted to generate dialog that was unique to the character on more than just the surface level of vocabulary and speech patterns.

tinaconnolly came to the Peter …

Notes, notes, and more notes

Outlines, character development, and other miscellaneous notes for the novel are finally coming together. Things are looking good to start writing at the beginning of May. I’ve also made another attempt at breaking off a chunk of the story to do as a short story (or it may end up being more of a novelette). Anyway, the bit I’m thinking about breaking off comes right near the start of the novel, so even if it doesn’t work on it’s own, I can convert it into chapters or something after the fact. Hopefully I’ll be able to write the story/novelette version …

Website 1.0

I’ve decided that the time has come for me to have a website. So I made one:

http://www.carolineyoachim.com

Comments are welcome and appreciated. Particularly comments about things that look funny or don’t work properly.

Submission # 33, more construction

Sub #33 – I spent all day today working on revisions, which resulted in a sub to SH (my 4th sub there).

They’ve stopped working on the roof of my apartment, and have moved on to the walls (I think they’re installing new siding. Or throwing elephants at the walls.) I will be very happy when the all day banging noises stop.

Back to business as usual…

Rejection #26 – A personalized and fairly positive 52-day rejection from Strange Horizons.

I’m now down to a mere 4 submissions out and circulating, so this weekend I’ll sit down and see where things need to shuffle off to next…

Sale #2

My week 5 Clarion story, “Time to Say Goodnight” was accepted at Fantasy Magazine! The announcement of the acceptance is at: http://oldcharliebrown.livejournal.com/116497.html

Yay!!!

Illusions of Productivity

Writing flash stories makes me feel very productive. When I’m writing longer stories, I can almost never finish a story in a day. Today though, I wrote a flash story. Only 700 words, which isn’t a lot, but I still *feel* productive because it’s a finished story.

WnIP, Rejection 24

WnIP = Work NOT in Progress

I had the best of intentions for trimming off a small corner of my novel-ish idea and writing it up as a short story, but the ideas kept squirming away from me. Over the past couple days I easily made the quota of 1500 words, but not in story text — I wrote several pages of additional notes. I’ll give myself a couple more weeks to lay out the ideas/characters/etc in notes and get some outlining done, and I’ll start in on novel writing probably around the beginning of May.

Rejection #24 – 6-day …

WIP

1,445 words today. Not quite up to the 1.5k quota, but I’m at a stopping point so I’m going to go ahead and call it ‘close enough for government work.’ My brain has turned to mush anyway. The story isn’t coming out quite the way I envisioned it, which might end up being a problem or it might be okay. Still too soon to say.

Six scenes in four days

That’s the goal. I have a story outline with six scenes, and I want it to be a complete draft by the end of the day on Sunday, which gives me 4 days (not including today). I’ll be shooting for a total wordcount of 5,000 words (which is the max length for the market I have in mind for this story). I suspect I’ll end up a bit over that, but I can trim later if need be.

Word quotas have worked well for me in the past, so I’ll try it again. Minimum output of 1.5k per day, starting …

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