My Writing – Page 6 – Aphotic Ink

Counting ink.

It is late, and everyone is discussing 2014. With my habit of getting bogged down in quantifiable minutiae, I am therefore posting about my reading and writing this year.

In 2014, I aimed for 80 books and finished 95, covering a total of 24421 pages.

I was also trying to aim for gender parity in my reading, and I failed. Overall the split was 38:14:43 (the numbers representing female authors:authors of non-binary or unspecified gender, or multi-authored works with a gender mix, or anthologies:male authors, respectively).

one was non-fiction. This low number isn’t surprising; I tend to dip in and out of non-fiction works, rather than read them end to end, and I don’t count RPG books as non-fiction. 1:0:0
eighteen were short standalones (stories or novellas); most were ebooks, although I did get four in print, including copies of Bob Leman’s “Instructions” and Naomi Mitchison’s Travel Light. 9:1:8
sixteen were anthologies! Unsurprising, as anthologies are generally my favourite kind of book to pick up. 2:13:1; the first two were Two of the Deadliest and The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women, and the last one was The Cthulhu Mythos Megapack.
(I ran across two other Mythos anthologies this year which only featured male authors, earning Mythos anthologies the distinction of being the only genre of anthology I’ve learned I need to check when I’m tracking gender in my reading, as I clearly can’t assume they’ll actually have a gender mix. A++ Nyarlathotep, carry on. You jackass.)
fourteen were collections of stories by a single author (including one of the graphic novels, since the Jonah Hex collection felt more episodic than any of the others). 6:0:8
three were RPG sourcebooks. 0:0:3
five were game-related fiction: two Wasteland standalones, two Deadlands Noir standalones, and one Pinebox, Texas (now… re-mastered, I guess? as East Texas University) anthology. 0:1:4
eight were graphic novels. 0:0:8
Yes, really. And I thought Mythos anthologies were bad. If you count the writer and the artist as co-authors, that changes to 0:1:7, and my overall stats become 38:15:42
twenty-five were ebooks; I read more of these towards the end of the year, and suspect I will read more in 2015. Cheers for a tablet and a new ereader. 11:2:12
thirty-seven were novels. 20:0:17

Four of the books I read I five-starred on Goodreads, which is a rating a reserve for books that I think people should read even if they usually pass over that genre (The Last Unicorn, The Inheritance and Other Stories, Save Yourself, and Strong Female Protagonist). 2:0:2, or 2:1:1 if you count writer and artist as co-authors.

Four of them I two-starred, which means I did not hate them but pretty much stopped enjoying them and ground on to see if they would get better. If they had, I would have rated them higher.

And the oldest book I read this year was Naomi Mitchison’s Travel Light, first published in 1952.

I also submitted stories 34 times, and got 31 rejections (although one of those rejections came in for a story I submitted in 2013, so you can say I only got 30 2014 rejections. This does not mean I got four acceptances, but it does mean I am expecting at least four rejections next year. 😉 ) I am slightly embarrassed by how little I wrote; my yearly wordcount hit five digits, but not six.

Happy New Year! See you on the other side.

Deadlines and recalculations

A story I recently submitted got a lot further than I’d expected it to before coming back with a personal rejection. I’d submitted it very close to the deadline, and I told myself that when[1] it got rejected, I’d revise it one more time before sending it out again.

Now, though, I’m kind of unsure. It’s apparently a sounder story than I thought it was, and I’m wondering if more revisions are just procrastinating. (I’m not saying it’s perfect! I’m saying it might be as close to really good as I can get it, if you see the distinction.)

Therefore, on the horns of the dilemma of “do further revise an already good story” or “don’t revise a story which I felt needed more”, I am picking the obvious option. The only sensible option. The option which stands out as clearly as if spotlit from above with “Thus Spake Zarathustra” playing in the background.

To wit, “find an umbrella and go out for some form of fluffy beverage which incorporates both coffee and whipped cream.”

The rest can get sorted in a bit (possibly while keeping this in mind); right now it’s likely the warmest part of the day, and I always feel a bit odd if I don’t get outside at least once.
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[1] This is how I plan for such things.

Counting centiBrads.

I actually got my tenth rejection on Monday, but it’s been a very long week. (Well, tenth since I’ve started tracking.) Still, this means I’ve actually completed my second centiBrad. This is a measure I like to track, since Bradbury apparently got hundreds of rejections before he got his first acceptance.

(Please note that I said apparently: while he’s spoken of writing a thousand dreadful stories and getting them rejected, I’m not sure if that’s literal. After a discussion in which someone told me that they’d rather believe “thousands of fans” who attributed a Le Guin quote to Tolkein than attribute it correctly[1], I am particularly hoping to avoid presenting vague anecdote as solid fact.)

Anyway! Therefore, five rejections is a hundredth of what Bradbury had (probably at least) gotten; five rejections is a centiBrad.

It’s not fun, or anything. But rejections happen (acceptance theoretically might happen, but rejections definitely happen), so since they’re there, it’s a metric to track them with. That’s something.
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[1] Most people, I’ve found, will be cheerily polite when you mention that a quote’s been misattributed. And then one person will fire back with “Well have you considered that the author you mentioned might have used plagiarism? I’ve never heard of them.” Oy.

By main persistance, to unscheduled absence

There are two quotes that I keep thinking of when it comes to writing. One is from Maya Angelou, speaking directly. The other is from Stephen King, speaking as a character. Angelou’s I have handy, it’s

What I try to do is write. I may write for two weeks “the cat sat on the mat, that is that, not a rat,”… And it might be just the most boring and awful stuff. But I try. When I’m writing, I write. And then it’s as if the muse is convinced that I’m serious and says, “Okay. Okay. I’ll come.”

The Stephen King one I cannot find right now, but the gist of it is along the lines of “starting to write feels like French-kissing a corpse”. And while I can’t speak to the truth of that statement, I believe it. Because those first few moments when you’re coming in cold and the story is more a list than a sequence of events… Yes. I will completely believe it is like French-kissing a corpse, and goddammit it’s so hard to get anything moving.

Still, we persevere, yes?

Alright. I’m running on three hours sleep, and I actually just found this–I thought I’d posted it a week ago–so I am going back to bed. When I wake up everything will be a lot more coherent, because that is what Enough Sleep does for you.

Remember.

Good is good, but done is better.

The word for year is library.

Early this year, I read a post on Captain Awkward[1], and one of the things she mentioned–cited from the Blogess, actually–was the idea of 2013 as a library. A safe quiet space where you can get ready for something.

Maybe you spend the year recuperating from last year. Maybe you burn the Thanksgiving turkey and forget an important birthday. It’s okay. It happened in The Library. It was just practice for next year. Maybe it’s insanity, or maybe it’s just me, but somehow I think we all need a year in The Library. A year where it’s safe to make mistakes.

Probably the biggest thing for me was trying to actually commit to writing[2]. (Cat Rambo gives excellent classes, by the way, and I am not sure she self-promotes quite enough, and there’s a deal on her classes if you sign up before 2014. Just saying. I like the six-week course best.) I’ve gotten seven rejections so far and I think they’re getting easier to take, which is nice?

Other things this year: I tried to do Mary Robinette Kowal’s Month of Letters challenge, but that got interrupted by a pet health emergency. (Pet in question is fine, but leave us just say February got itself repurposed very hard.)

What else? Started staggering along to Zombies Run again after I’d stopped for longer than I’m happy with. Started reconnecting with someone I’d kind of lost touch with. Went to Farthing Party and CanCon (for the record, doing two cons in two weekends is not a great idea; that said, so glad I managed to get to a Farthing Party).

The house was cleared of about ten feet of bookshelf space and perhaps twenty-five bags-and-boxes of things that weren’t being used, or wouldn’t be used, or would be better used elsewhere, or just really needed to go. And I finished installing a cabinet. Admittedly in the bathroom we use least, but still, it’s installed.

I knit 0.76 of a mile of yarn into a sweater for my mother, and it worked. I mean, it fit and she liked it. I was terrified that I’d need to reknit half of it and the yarn store would be out of the dye lot, and…

Anyway, it worked.

And I cut my hair. Myself. (I haven’t dyed it again yet, but… maybe next year. The light of my life dug up an old picture, and I miss the purple.)

What did you do this year? What’ll you do the next?
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[1] Lovely lady, very thoughtful, excellent advice, minimal Evil Bees.
[2] I had to work through a brief bout of “omigod I am admitting in public that I want to write things and care about whether I’m good at it!” to even type that. Oy, my issues.

I’m not sure if this is optimism or cynically informed pessimism. But it’s working!

So I am trying to tidy something up and get it ready to send off. And I am actually not getting this done, because the idea of revising is unnerving me greatly, to put it mildly. And as I often do in such circumstances, I turn to the light of my life, for his words of wisdom.

“What are you worried about?” he said.

“What if I make it worse and can’t tell?”

“Well,” he said in a cheer-up kind of voice, “it will probably get rejected by statistically the same number of people.”

(I confess there was something of a stunned pause on my part, here.)

“…boy,” I said in a slightly strangled voice, “are you lucky you took the knives and forks away.”

Still, you know. He’s… right, I guess? I mean, if I make it better, it will probably get rejected by fewer people. If I make it worse, it likely won’t actually get rejected by more.

I am fairly sure that I am missing something, but since I am more looking to get unstuck than I am looking for statistical analysis[1], at least I am achieving my primary goal. Cheers!
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[1] Which is fascinating, but often leaves me with that faintly bubbly feeling that I get when I have managed to (briefly) internalize the Monty Haul problem and the truth of the solution.

Not quite a love story, nor a fairy tale, nor an adventure.

Warning: this is extremely silly. But it got into my head, and I would like to get it out, so here goes: Continue reading “Not quite a love story, nor a fairy tale, nor an adventure.”

Shock and silence.

Well, I submitted a story.

I… well, let’s be generous and say I haven’t done this much. I actually think I’ve submitted one story in the last two years, and not for years-that-get-into-double-digits before that and… well, let’s say I hold no malice whatsoever for the rejection and move along.

On a semi-related tangent: I keep using the phrase “mule puke” to refer to bad writing, as long as it’s my bad writing. “Oh god, I thought it was mule puke.” “It’s okay if this is mule puke, just keep typing. I can edit later.” “Why do I bother if it’s all mule puke?” This amuses me, a little, since I know exactly where I picked up the phrase–it’s from Dean Koontz’s Lightning.

This is a little funny, because… Seriously, I read that book about twenty years ago, it has twisty plots and dramatic death scenes and time-travelling Nazis, for crying out loud, and what do I remember? The author finding that her husband has gone out after reading her first novel and being convinced that it’s mule puke and he’s gone out to get enough liquid courage to tell her.

(He actually went out to buy her a (Lalique?) crystal bowl with leaping frogs for handles, which he was certain they could afford because her book was awesome and would sell millions. “Would you for god’s sake stop being the shattered young artiste and open your present?” He was right.)