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Tag: writing

Meetupdate

As you may recall, I started attending a meetup group for writers since I am new to Austin. Since the first meetup, the group has grown quite a bit and I am – apparently – an assistant coordinator. I’ve gotten some feedback for Sister Christian and Diatomaceous Earth that’s been very helpful, and the writing prompts of ours have been fun for me. I finally remembered to bring my laptop so I could record my prompt results. I decided to go ahead and share the story I wrote from the prompt. Keep in mind this was written in 10 minutes, and hasn’t been edited at all.

The prompt was: You are in the green room of a talk show with a kangaroo. What happens?

“Why is this fucking kangaroo man in my green room, trying to steal my thunder?” I thought. This show was supposed to be all about me and my fucked up problems, not about some weird human who uncannily resembles a kangaroo. I looked over at the kangaroo man, waiting for him to make eye contact. He didn’t. He kept staring at the pouch in his lap pretending I didn’t exist, that I wasn’t 4 fucking feet away from him. Clearly, I would have to be the bigger person here and make conversation first.

“What’s your name, freak?” I ask. He continues to stare at his pouch, but reaches down into it and pulls out a Ziploc bag half-full of what I suspect is cocaine. I wonder if his kangaroo snout makes it easier or harder to snort coke. I’ve never been a fan of the stuff. I just can’t stand having things in my nose. And I hate the smell of smoke. I’m okay with needles; maybe I could do intravenous drugs.

“Sully,” the kangaroo said. “And yes, I am still human. I killed my entire family falling asleep at the wheel and just wanted to hop away from life after it happened. Spent my entire retirement savings on plastic surgery to turn myself into a kangaroo. Killing your family will make you do fucked up things.”

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New story up: Diatomaceous Earth

Ever since I moved to Texas, there has been one neighbor I haven’t cared for much… the gigantic cockroaches that live in the trees behind our apartment. It’s rained once since I moved here, for about 45 seconds, and the whole city is in the middle of level 2 water restrictions, so the cockroaches have been coming inside to look for water since they’re not getting it outside.

We’ve tried a lot of methods, both of us being pacifists who would rather throw the bugs back outside than squash them, but we’ve only just now found a system that seems to work at keeping them outside, where they belong. Still, it got me thinking about the cockroaches, and how it must be hard for them to face the danger of scavenging in peoples’ homes (although cockroaches in the lab have been known to go 3 months without food), so I wrote a story about it. Then again, maybe they just really don’t give a shit, like the honey badger.

Check it out, and tell me what you think.

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Weird Austin Writers Meetup!

I recently relocated to Austin, TX, and working from home and not going out much isn’t doing much for my social life. I’ve also resolved to start getting some traction on The Redheaded Stepchild, so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and join a writer’s workshop meetup group. We had our first meeting last week (I remember because it was not Shark Week, and because it was the only day last week I bothered to put on a bra), and I’ve assessed the following tech writer-y pros and cons list:

Pros:

  • It’s free. I like free. It’s much better than not free.
  • It’s a good way to get some eyes on my stuff – some eyes of people who have a clue what they’re doing.
  • It’s a good way to meet some like-minded people.
  • It’s a good way to see some new parts of the city (we were right on the water at our last meetup).
  • There’s a writing prompt exercise at every meetup.

Cons

  • The meetup organizer is less than organized.
  • They don’t exchange manuscripts before the meeting, so everyone just brings their stuff and we read it right there.
  • Only 3 people came to the first meetup.

I’ll give it a few meetups before I decide if it’s a bust, but in the meantime, if you’re interested in the material I write from the prompts, I’ll put em up.

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New poem – Sister Christian

I wrote the idea for this poem on an envelope I stole from the greeting card aisle in a Price Chopper. When inspiration strikes, you’ve gotta be prepared. Yes, I ripped off the title from one of my favorite 80s ballads, so hopefully I won’t get sued.

What do you think?

Read it here!

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New short story up: Date Zero

I’ve had this story written for awhile, but life has been really busy, between my real job and my freelance job, by which this story was inspired. Back in January, I took a job as a virtual dating assistant on a freelance basis. I write people’s online dating profiles and create messages to potential matches on their behalf. It’s a lot more work than I thought it would be originally, but it’s also teaching me a lot about a world I never knew and giving me insight into the lives of some of the clients and their matches. Honestly, anyone’s Match.com profile would be an amazing place to go for inspiration as a writer.

So my newest short story, Date Zero, is very loosely based on a client I wrote for a lot. I sometimes wonder, if our clients get really far with someone, at what point to they tell them that they hired a service to do their work for them? Anyway, there’s a lot of that in this story. Hope you enjoy it.

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SXSW panel in review: Tell & Sell Your Story

The next exciting panel I attended at SXSW was called “Tell & Sell Your Story,” with panelists that included author Stephanie Klein (@stephanieklein), professor Michael Chaney (@mjchaney), agent David Hale Smith (@davidhalesmith) and writer Ned Vizzini, moderated by agent Alex Lerner.

The panel was billed as one that would discuss how to write a book proposal, how to find an agent, apps you can use, and writing software. Much of this came toward the end of panel, but the first part was highly valuable too. One of my favorites moments was when Klein (who is fabulous and whose work I am going to have to discover) stated that for an author, balance is bullshit. As someone with a full-time and a freelance job, it felt good to hear someone else say it, although I already knew it. It only mirrored my sentiments that you can always do something if you make the time for it.  They talked extensively about how to structure a writing day – everyone has their own method – but some of the suggestions were to create structured, absolute writing days, where you do nothing but spend the whole day writing and don’t break the roll. I haven’t been able to do this since college, but I should probably find a way to do this again and see if it works for me.

Then they discussed writing itself, and again, Klein said something that resonated heavily with me. She said the moment we start to censor ourselves is the moment our writing becomes inauthentic. If you’re worried that someone’s going to be put off by something you wrote, then THAT’s where the gold is. Because The Redheaded Stepchild is a story that’s so close to my heart and doesn’t always speak positively about some of the closest people in my life, I’ve often wondered if I should tone down some of the prose and fictionalize it a little bit more. As such, it was reassuring to hear that I should do nothing of the sort. After all, they’d probably be offended no matter what. And hey, a lot of it IS fiction.

They then asked, how do you get people to read what you’ve read? They stressed the importance of having your own domain for your material, which was one of the first things I did when I decided I wanted to seriously pimp The Redheaded Stepchild, but that having a website means using a unique structure depending on the medium. I always use my own voice, but I’m going to structure my blog posts much differently than my actual writing, as well I should.

After that, they got to the meat of writing a book proposal, and the consensus was that it should have all of the following:

  • The pitch, which has to be written in your own voice, not the cover letter voice you’d use in a resume. The agent should get an idea of your voice after reading the pitch.
  • A chapter summary that everyone hates writing, but summarizes what happens in the story.
  • A market analysis of what makes your book unique compared to similar titles.
  • One or two sample chapters that showcase your best writing and let it speak for itself.

Or something like that. I’ve drank a lot since then. Finally, they outlined one of the best plans for finding an agent – find similar titles to yours and look in the acknowledgments. The author almost always thanks his agent, and that agent can’t turn around and say he doesn’t represent your kind of work.

So what did I learn from this panel? First of all, I need to continue the practice of not censoring myself with my writing. I’ll probably hurt someone’s feelings along the way, but I’d much rather live an authentic life than a safe one. Next, I’ve got to revise my pitch. It sounds like a cover letter for a resume! I’ve got to inject my own voice in there and show them why I’m a writer. I’d heard the agent trick a couple months ago when I went to the Pitchapalooza event, and it bears repeating that I definitely need to do my homework finding books out there that are like mine. I’m sure I’m not the only branch on that tree.

More panel reviews to come, and thanks to the panelists! For audio of the entire panel: http://schedule.sxsw.com/events/event_IAP8326

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Weekly writing challenge 1/1/2011

As part of my writer goals for 2011, I am making myself write something every week. One of the things that helped keep me motivated last year was to give myself a weekly writing challenge. If I got inspired by something, I made it my challenge to put it to paper. If someone threw out a challenge, I picked it up. Some were easier than others, some ended up getting killed in the creative process, and some turned out to be phenomenal.

I was handed this challenge by one of my Twitter followers who is hosting a contest. I typically don’t go for writing contests because they usually have some ridiculous price tag and a ridiculously unattainable or puny prize. I also typically don’t bite for horror, because it’s not really my genre, but then again, I don’t really have a genre so I figured I could pull it off. It may or may not be as predictable plot-wise as every horror film from the 1980s, and may or may not be far too much like Rosemary’s Baby, but I hope what it lacks in originality it makes up for with literary merit and proseworthiness. But you be the judge of that.

New short story – The Rainbow Prison.

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New Short Story: The Camera

Last week I was struggling with whether to finish either of the 2 short stories I’ve been working on for what seems like ages and whose writer’s block has given me fits of semi-insanity, or tabula-rasa it and start over, when a friend told me a crazy story.

It was all about how he found this camera while we were in Lawrence, which I remember, and how he found the person it belonged to, just by the pictures that were on it and his powers of deductive reasoning. Well, the truth might be stranger than fiction, but I’ll let you be the judge of just how implausible this really sounds. Check out The Camera and let me know what you think.

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The submission withdrawal process, round 3

I got my first short story accepted for publication, which is super fantastic, but always comes with the horrible chore of withdrawing the manuscript from everywhere else you sent it that hasn’t rejected it yet. The first time I found out a poem of mine was getting published, I was completely overwhelmed by how much work it was to complete this chore, and how rude some of the publications were. Last time around, I got some interesting responses, including the following:

  • “Umm… we don’t have your stuff.” Hmmm… that probably means I put it in an envelope and was too cheap to mail it off. My bad.
  • “How dare you! We don’t accept simultaneous submissions!”  Oops… I must not have read the fine print. But you really should if you want work from real writers.
  • “Mail daemon: undeliverable.” Update your mail server if you want submissions.

This time around, I was much more prepared. I made sure I read the fine print over again for everyone I sent to, to make sure I hadn’t been violating their rules in the first place. I also prepared an email template, so I wouldn’t have to think about what to write every time. So I was both mentally and resourcefully prepared. These are my findings from this round of submission withdrawal:

  1. It was far, far easier than last time. I had sent my poems to about 3 times as many people as I had this manuscript, which significantly lessened the chore.
  2. I had sent this manuscript to a total of 18 publications. Of those 18, 1 accepted it, 6 rejected it, and 11 still had it under consideration.
  3. The range of dates for submission were from March to September.
  4. Of the 11 who still had it under consideration, the longest period was 7 months.
  5. One of the publications who I had still recorded as pending had rejected me without notification.
  6. I was able to withdraw 4 submissions myself using an online manager.
  7. I had to email 6 of the publications I had submitted to.
  8. There was only one snail mail submission that I had forgotten to mail, and I knew it without having an embarrassing response email.

Lesson learned: keep good track of your submissions, and be prepared when you get lucky and one of them picks it up.

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My first short story publication!

Happy Columbus Day, everyone! I got an email late last night that Line Zero, a new quarterly arts journal, is going to pick up Two Steps Forward! I almost didn’t believe it, but I took a look at the site this morning and on the post with the finalist announcements was my name.

http://linezero.org/literary-finalists/

The issue comes out in November and I can’t wait to see it. This is a brand new journal, just opened for submissions at the beginning of September. I heard about them on Twitter, I think. It just goes to show that it pays off to keep track of emerging players in the market and get in on the ground floor!

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