May Progress Report

May is over.  And it is HOT outside.  Even for a cold-blooded reptillian like me.

From a writing point of view, it was a pretty good month.

I continued to send a new agent query every week and just because of the way the Thursdays fell, I got five sent.  Of those five, I received three form letter rejections, and no synopsis or full requests.  I didn't work on anything new with novels this month, since the focus was more on short stories.

For short stories, I finished a first draft of a story, which doesn't quite meet the goal I set.  The goal was to submit a new story.  What I ended up with was over twice as long as I envisioned, so I'll need to spend a couple more days tightening it up before I can send it off.

I resubmitted five short stories, and received six responses, with two acceptances (yay!) and four form letter rejections.  Four short stories remain pending.

Overall, it wasn't a bad month.  The focus in June will once again be novels.  I'll be back tomorrow with specific goals for that.

Five Links Friday 5/31/14

Here we are for another Five Links Friday.  Have a good one!

1. Check out this interview Brian Stern did with fantasy writer, R. A. Salvatore. In it, he gives us this awesome quote: “If you can quit, you should do so. If you can’t quit, you are a writer.”

2. If you're looking to write some flash fiction, and you really should, here are 5 Tips for World Building in Speculative Flash Fiction, from Camille Griep at Flash Fiction Chronicles.

3. Connie Brentford has a really good article from last December looking at social media for writers, stressing the point that Social Media Is Not Always About You.

4. What Is The Percentage Of Books Published On Which Publishers Actually Lose Money? Let Forbes Magazine answer that question for you. It will shock and possibly frighten you.

5. But don't let that previous link scare you off completely.  Keep sending in those query letters.  Here is a link that can help you out: Query And Cover Letters 101: The Fundamentals

And that's it.  Man, this month went by way too fast.  I'll be back tomorrow with a progress report and then set up my writing goals for June.

Thanks for stopping by.

Writing a short story the NaNoWriMo way didn't work

I had this idea that if I wrote 250 words a day, I'd finish a 3000 word story in less than two weeks (around day 12).  Two-hundred-fifty words are nothing by the way, and it was a really easy goal to keep.  Every day, I wrote until I hit 250, then finished the sentence and logged my progress. 

Only somewhere along the way something terrible happened. Day 12 came and went.  Day 20 came and went.  Day 27 came and went.  Somehow I forgot to end the story.  What should have been a 3000 word space opera is now approaching 7500 words and I'm wondering if an end if even in sight.

I really wanted to finish this story in the first few weeks of the month, and then clean it up and submit it by the end of the month.  The basic ideas I had going in are all still in place, but the story and the characters keep going off in other directions and by the time I pull them back in, another 500 words have gone by.

I can only blame NaNoWriMo.  While the daily word count is much higher for that contest (1667 words per day), I ended up writing this short story the exact same way I would write a novel in a month.  That is, I only paid attention to word count. I pretty much lost track of the overall story arc. 

Plotting out a story scene-by-scene before I start writing it has never worked for me, but I do need to have some sort of idea of where it's going or it just gets filed away in the "unfinished" pile.

Anyhow, with this story I've got two options.  I can keep going until the end even if it becomes a novella, or I cut it in half, tighten it up and make it a better short story.  I'm leaning toward the latter.  Looking this over, I really find a lot of fluff that could go.

I think that if I could get it down to the 3500-ish range it's chances of getting picked up are much better.  The anthology I'm hoping to send it to does accept up to 10,000 words, but I can't honestly see this piece keeping an editor's attention for that many words.

So even though I hit the goal of 250 words per day, I didn't do it correctly.  I like to say that everything you do in writing is a learning experience, so I'll learn from this one as well. 

But in the meantime, let the cutting begin!

Wrestling...for Jesus?

I've been known to throw in the occasional pro-wrestling reference here, so it should come to no one's surprise that I'm a fan of that type of entertainment.  I found this documentary on Netflix called Wrestling for Jesus: The Tale of T-Money and figured it's probably something I should watch.

I've been aware of some of these "Christian" wrestling organizations for quite some time and I believe at one point or another, a few big names like Ted Dibiase, Sting, and Vince Russo have dabbled in them.

This documentary, however, wasn't about any big names.  It followed a tiny non-profit independent group called (what else?) Wrestling For Jesus.  Basically, an indie wrestler lost his father to suicide and dealt with his pain by creating a small wrestling promotion in South Carolina with the purpose of evangelizing their brand of Christianity to their fans.

I don't want to make too many wisecracks about this, because WFJ did have a (mostly) positive influence on the lives of everyone involved.  But, good God, as both a Christian and wrestling fan (not necessarily in that order, lol) I couldn't help but cringe to see the way this documentary enforced common stereotypes of both groups here. 

But let's put that aside and talk about the positive.  You have 20 or so guys who love something (or in this case two somethings) enough to put everything on the line and go out and do it.  None of these wrestlers could make it in the big leagues--they just didn't have the look or talent--but they still got professionally trained and managed to put together something for a few years that gave them the opportunity to touch the lives of their audience by doing something they loved.

And, really, isn't that the whole point of living?

Finding yourself at Barnes & Noble

My parents came over today and watched the kids so my wife and I could go out for a couple of hours. 

Back before we had kids, our typical form of entertainment was to go to Borders (RIP) and drink coffee and read magazines.  Exciting, I know, but I still get nostalgic about those weekday nights when we could spontaneously go out for a few hours without any worries.

So today we hit Barnes & Noble.  I know it might not be popular to say this, but I'll say it anyhow: I love big bookstore chains.  We ordered our drinks (I order normal coffee, because that's how I roll) and then pick out a stack of magazines and plant down at a table.

My magazines for those interested were Fortean Times, Atlantis Rising, The Skeptic, and Skeptical Inquirer.  Skeptical Inquirer was of special interest because one of my old college physics professors had a letter to the editor printed in that issue.  (Note: As a comp-sci major, I didn't actually take any physics classes in college.  I spent a summer working in the physics library, though, so I did know him.  Also my brother and best friend both took physics.  So it counts.)

So after that tangent, where was I?  I don't know...but I like bookstores.

After we finished paging through the magazines, we split up and walked around a bit.  This is the part that both inspires and depresses me as a writer.  I hit the science fiction section and look at the novels.  First, looking at all of these books gives me hope.  It's like physical evidence that you can make it writing.  After all, someone did write these books, so someone did get paid for them.  But the depressing part is that the overwhelming majority of sci-fi/fantasy books are parts of a series.  And a lot of those series are based on TV shows or movies.  Stand-alone novels by new writers aren't all that common in the chain stores.

It just means that there's work to do.  And it also reminds me that getting into the "real" bookstores isn't the real objective, even though I still think it would be really cool to see my own books there someday when the day comes.  Although some of my anthologies are on bn.com, so I suppose if I really wanted to, I could go into a store and have them order me a copy.  Lame or awesome?  You decide...

Anyhow, the real objective is to be the most successful writer I can be.  To hopefully reach that day where I can write full time.  And if I get there, great.  If not, at least I won't reach the end of my life regretting that I never tried.

Five Links Friday 5/23/14

You know what?  I had a pretty good week.  But it's still great to have a long weekend.  Here are five links to check out.

1. Life is way too complicated, correct?  Well here's an article from Angel Chernoff giving you 12 Easy Ways to Make Life Simple Again.

2. Sticking with the theme of keeping things simple, Amlokiblogs has an article up asking (and answering) the question How Do You get into Your Fiction-writing Zone?

3. Here's an older article from Randy Susan Meyers at Beyond the Margins giving advice on Earning a Reader's Time.

4. Steamfeed has some great advice for anyone looking to market their product: How to Create an Email Newsletter that Generates Leads without Being Spammy.

5. Finally, while staying on the topic of marketing, in Clearing Marketing Roadblocks the Evangelist Marketing Institute takes a look at three major roadblocks that get in the way of putting good marketing into the world.

So there we go.  Enjoy the long weekend and check back tomorrow.

Interview with Strange Musings Press

Here's an interview I did with Strange Musings Press to help promote the Alternate Hilarities anthology.

http://www.strangemusingspress.com/2014/05/author-interview-jason-bougger.html

     

Free registration for the Author Platform Summit through May 19

Here's a really cool opportunity for writers.  The Author Platform Summit is free to view online through May 19.

During this special free online summit experience you will learn from best-selling authors, publishing industry experts and leading authorities who will share strategies to help authors and anyone with something to say or sell build a platform of success. On May 15-19 you will have free, on-demand access to watch video teachings from each of our speakers. You can watch online whenever you want. Each teaching will share a few specific tips from our experts with a focus on actions that you can take immediately.

http://authorplatformsummit.com/

Voluted Tales Issue 13 (April/May 2014) Available

The current issue of Voluted Tales reprints the first story I every published, "Fresh Dirt."  The first couple of pages are available online from the link below:

http://volutedtales.com/issue/voluted-tales-13-apr-may-2014

Five Links Friday 5/16/14

Happy Friday all!

1. You’re An Adult. Write Like One. Here's an awesome post from January at Rachel Thompson's blog.

2. Allen Taylor has a great article on his site looking at Who Can (And Can’t) Be An Indie Publisher

3. Here's a guest post on Molly Greene's blog by Patricia Sands talking about Top 5 Takeaways From PubSmart 2014

4. This is really cool if you have a manuscript you're hoping to self-publish: How to Convert a Plain Manuscript to an eBook File – Yourself!

5. So you've got a book? Now you need to sell it. Check out Book Promotion Made Easy by Laurence O'Bryan for a list of all the tools you need.

Sorry if we're a little sort this time. It's a busy day. Gotta run!

Backbreaking Labor and Baby Monitors (and other scary stuff, too)

Today was an interesting day. 

Our baby hasn't slept through the night in a long time.  I think this is mostly because she's still in our room.  She's a pretty light sleeper and if I stay up late writing, I wake her up when I go to bed.

I'm also a weird sleeper.  I need the right position, the right amount of clothing, and the right amount of blankets (in the right place) before I can fall asleep.  Once I get there, I'm out immediately, but sometimes that can take a half hour.  After I get up to go to the bathroom, which happens far to often, I have to do it all over again. 

In other words, my constant tossing, turning, and walking around wakes up the baby and then we're all screwed.

It sucks, but come on, how could you not love a face like this:

So anyhow, we finally decided to move out of our (her) room today.  This meant first moving everything in the computer room/library down to the basement.  That was hard enough, but then came moving everything from our bedroom down to what was previously the computer room, including a king-size bed that didn't want to squeeze through hallways or around corners very well. 

After everything got done, I fell to the floor and whined and cried about my back while my wife gave the kids baths.  We set up the baby monitor and put them to bed.

And that brings us to the baby monitor. 

Let me share with you a little secret: I'm scared to death of baby monitors.  If you've seen Insidious, you'd understand.  That reminds me, I'm still putting off the sequel to that one.  Now that I have to do all my writing in the basement in the middle of the night, I might not ever watch that one.  It is, after all, common knowledge that most, if not all, basements are haunted.

So what I was going to do tonight was work on a new horror short story.  I found this really cool list, 20 Terrifying Two-Sentence Horror Stories That Will Keep You Up At Night and was going to use it for writing prompts/inspiration.  But then I read them and got freaked out.

So now I'm going to go to bed and hope I don't have nightmares about Number 8 on that list...

Five Links Friday 5/9/14

Hey, it's Friday!  Here's some stuff to read...

1. From one of my favorite writing sites, here is Chuck Wendig giving us Five Common Problems I See In Your Stories.

2. Do you have an editor-repelling email address? Linda Formichelli asks a question few of us have ever really thought about. With examples!

3. Here's a great guest post Corey Ann Haydu wrote for Adventures in Reading looking at her Writing Process and Doing What Works.

4. This is cool.  Writer.ly is doing a free webinar on How to Pull Off A Successful Book Launch.

5. And if you're working on a novel, Scivener is some pretty sweet software to try.  Let Andrea Hannah give you some Tips for Using Scrivener to Revise Your Novel.

And while your lounging around this weekend enjoying the weather, why not make the most of it and send me some flash fiction.  More details on that project as it progresses...

Don't Feed Your Baby Cheese and Broccoli Slop

My little girl is still under a year old.  I had her strapped down in the highchair today, scooping in the Gerber.  Or at least attempting to.

Usually it's not so bad, but today my hit ratio was only around 10%.  It seemed like she'd do everything she could to block the punch.  We got the baby food all over her hands, her bib, her hair, my hands, my hair(?), and even a little bit on the two-year-old.

In other words, she just wasn't feeling the blended cheese and broccoli flavored gruel in a jar.  We ended up switching to applesauce and she gladly finished the bowl.

So what does that have to do with writing?

In a word--nothing.  Or everything.  I'm not sure.  The situation pretty much mirrors my writing experiences in the last couple of months.  Sometimes I have an idea in my head (such as successfully getting the spoon past the baby's hands and into her mouth) but I just can't implement the plan and end up with dark yellow mush all over my face.

I've had so many stories this year that started out well, but just ended up becoming a terrible mess the longer I tried to get them working.  The harder I tried, the messier the stories got.  So I filed them away and worked on something else.

I've been feeling a little down that I haven't finished a lot of short stories this year.  I think the problem is that I do end up spending too much time on stories that just aren't working out, when I should be spending time finishing the ones that are.  In other words, I need to figure out when a story is applesauce and when a story is cheese and broccoli slop.

Yet another post about finding time to write

I was downstairs in the computer room paying some bills online this weekend and when I came back to the living room, my two-year-old said, "Daddy, are you writing a story?"

I chuckled a little and told him that I wasn't writing right then, so he responded with the cutest "Can you play with me?" that he could conjure up.

While it's pretty cool that he already understands sometimes Daddy has to lock himself in the computer room and write, it's also a harsh reminder that writers do have to make some sacrifices if they want to taste a little bit of success early on.

Becoming a writer isn't one of those thing you can just give up everything and go do.  It's something you have to do in your spare time because when you're just getting started, you will make literally no money writing.  And I'm talking $0.00 US dollars.  You can't quit your day job to write, so you have to give up other stuff to make the time.

I would first suggest giving up TV, but even those of us who barely watch anything still have limited free-time.  I try to minimize the amount of family time I have to give up to write, so most of my writing gets done after hours.  At times it really sucks falling behind on quality sleep, but you just have to keep that end goal in sight.

Also, it helps to look at it this way: Stay up late and write, or write after work and never see the kids.

Like I said, it's great that my two-year-old knows that sometimes I need to retreat to the computer room and write, but it's also great that most of the time when he says "Can you play with me?" I can say, "Of course I can."

Five Links Friday 5/2/14

Time once again for Five Links Friday.  This week they're all writing relating because that's what we really need to stay focused on this month.

1. Nothing can help jump-start your writing like a writing contest on a quality website.  Especially when it's asking for flash fiction with a built-in theme.  The flash fiction challenge at terribleminds.com this week is “We’re all human, even when we’re not.” Now doesn't that sound like fun?

2. Have trouble with productivity and writing?  Of course you do.  Everyone does.  Here's a post on publishingcrawl.com from Aime Kaufman with some stellar advice on the topic.

3. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I'm at the querying stage with one of my novels.  Here's good advice for writers looking for agents (from literary agent Carly Watters) - Why simultaneously submitting to very small presses and literary agents is not working.

4.  Here's a nice article by Annie Cardi at Ploughshares Literary Magazine about The Power of Children's Literature.

5. Finally, since I just returned from Canada, I thought it would make a fine touch to link to some free fiction from the great white north.  What better place to find some than from AE - The Canadian Science Fiction Review.

Have a great weekend and don't waste a minute of it.

Writing Goals for May

Well, I didn't hit most of my writing goals for April.  I did write; in fact I wrote quite a bit.  My only problem was that I didn't finish anything.  I think part of the reason was that I took the approach of working only on what I felt I should be working on instead of what I wanted to work on.

That's good when you're at your job and hitting the higher priority projects first, but when writing fiction?  Not so much.  I wanted to finish a story, so I (mostly) randomly picked one.  The one I picked is one that I'm having trouble with and therefore lost a lot of time struggling with it and rewriting a lot of scenes. 

This month, I'm going to try things a little differently.  If I run into trouble with anything, I'll move on to something else--something more fun to write.  Instead of forcing through a story that my heart's not into at the moment, I'll work on something that gets me excited to read it.  Even if that means the third novel that is running through my head, which would be a ton of fun to write :)

Something else I'm toying around with is my other site.  In previous carnations, it's been a Pink Floyd fan site, a libertarian commentary site, and a personal blog used for sharing whatever nonsense I felt like talking about, usually pro-wrestling or cryptozoology. 

Anyhow, I've got an idea of something I'd like to do with the site, but I'm still figuring out when I'll be ready to pull the trigger.  Right now it's down for redesign.

One thing that won't change this month is that I'll still send out an agent query every Thursday.  One query per week may not be as much as they recommend, but I'll up that to two per week once I have my second novel ready.

So that's it.  Have a good productive month and we'll see where we are in June.