Uncategorized – Page 31 – Caroline M. Yoachim

Rejection #15, first of the new year!

JJA found himself ungrabbed by the mechanical ducks. They’re slated to go to Strange Horizons next, but I’m toying with the idea of sending them to Cricket, since they might work well as a children’s story. That would mean trimming the story down substantially, but I think I could make it work. Problem is, I don’t want to deal with the story while I’m doing JaNo, and I don’t like the idea of having it sit around for the next 3 weeks when it could be out somewhere.

Fresh Characters

Day 8 JaNo – 2291 words today, 17864 total

Shifted my focus closer to the villain of the novel today, which means a whole new set of characters and a setting in a different part of the world. I tried to focus on working in tendrils to the outside world, and while I don’t think I’m doing a good job of it, today’s words seem a bit better. Practice, practice, practice. Perhaps by the end it will read like an actual novel.

Update: In a rare (but short) burst of afternoon productivity, 184 more words, which brings the grand total …

Tendrils

Day 7 JaNo – 2061 today, 15573 total

One full week of making quota!

I think that four of my six clarion instructors told me that my stories were too neat and tidy, and that what they lacked was little tendrils of things working their way in from the world outside the story. When they told me that I nodded my head. Great idea, having the outside world creeping in at the edges of the story. And, at some level, I understood what they were saying, but I couldn’t really wrap my mind around what was needed enough to do …

Why my novel isn’t as good as A Deepness in the Sky

Day 6 JaNo – 2458 today, 13512 total

Lots and lots of words, but it doesn’t read like a novel. Fortunately, this is practice, so I’m not too concerned that the end result isn’t quite right. I’m starting to get a feel for what sorts of mistakes I’m making. A lot of it boils down to insufficient worldbuilding and character development. I spend as much time as I would have liked ironing out the details of the world and the nitty-gritty of the characters, and so the novel thus far doesn’t feel real. It has a vague disconnected quality to …

Just barely…

Day 5 JaNo – 2037 words today, 11054 total

Even closer to hitting quota dead-on today than I was yesterday. I’m becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the plot that I’ve outlined for myself, but maybe that’s a good thing, as it might be a sign that my characters are asserting themselves. However, while they seem to be unhappy with the things *I’ve* outlined for them to do, they aren’t exactly coming up with alternatives. Lazy characters. In any case, I’ve made it most of the way through chapter 5 at this point, and I have a couple of story-lines going. Now …

Like pulling teeth. . .

Day 4 of JaNo – 2059 words today, 9017 total

Slow going today, and I think what I ended up with was mostly pretty nasty stuff. I did manage to come up with some new creatures though, towards the end of the day, and I think that saved it. Oddly enough, I’m having a much easier time writing the chapters that come from the POV of what I thought was the secondary character. I think, though that he might be the more interesting of the two main POV characters I’ve got so far, so I may have to think about …

Good progress today

Day 3 of JaNo – 2,681 words today, 6958 total

Wrote all of chapter 3 this morning, and got a fair bit into chapter 4. I’ll definitely need to sit down this afternoon though, and outline what comes next, as chapter 4 is the last chapter for which I have a detailed outline. In addition to getting pretty good wordcount today, I’m feeling a bit happier with how the words came out. The first couple chapters had a decidedly choppy feel, almost more like detailed outlines than chapters, but today’s stuff reads a little smoother. Fingers crossed that I’m starting …

Writing in the Rain

Not literally, of course, as I’m inside and the rain is outside. But the weather has turned nasty once again, and with all the wind and rain I’m a bit worried that the power will go out.

* * *

Day 2 of JaNoWriMo – 2090 words today, 4277 total

My chapters are ending up rather shorter than I expected, which may be an artifact of my quota system. (I’m shooting for 2000 words per day, and the chapters are ending up 2k long.) More likely, I just tend to write things on the short side (I often end up …

And so it begins…

Happy New Year!

All the cool kids are posting summaries of 2006 on their blogs, so here’s mine: 16 short story submissions, resulting in 12 rejections and 1 acceptance (3 stories are currently out at markets). Not the most impressive numbers, but 2006 was a ramping-up year for me, writing-wise, with most of the submissions going out in the second half of the year. Attending Clarion helped me be more confident in sending stories out, as did friendly competition with my Clarion classmates (and not-so-friendly threats from a certain stuffed Zebra).

Hopefully I’ll have bigger numbers this year (I subbed …

JaNoWriMo

Since November was a bit too crazy for novel writing, I’ve joined up with some of my Clarion classmates for JaNoWriMo – JAnuary NOvel WRIting MOnth. In the interest of saving myself some prep work (January being right around the corner and all), I’ve opted to set my novel in the same world as ‘Tending the Mori Birds,’ which is the short story I sold to _Fantasy Magazine_. I consider this to be entirely a practice novel, so I’m going to do my best to burn through it as quickly as possible, and treat it solely as a learning experience. …

Category: Uncategorized