So, I'm starting this topic for a number of reasons. Mainly because the start of my writing "career" coincides very closely with my joining with community, and a lot of the formative stages occurred in this environment. This place is sort of my literary hometown. Maybe I can think of this thread as a place where I ruminate about things literary, update my good friends on how things are going, and just generally talk about writing.

I'll post later on today about the first round of stories I've sold, now that some of them are out, and what it's like going through the review gauntlet.

Does that mean you're giving up on your blog?

No. I just consider this a more private space. I feel like I'm ruminating to family here, as opposed to...whatever it is that my blog is. Abandoned, I suppose. Anyway. I'll be maintaining the blog in the same way I maintain all aspects of my electronic presence. Sporadically.

Well, this thread has already made me feel guilty for not getting more writing done. So that's something.

So, let's see. Writing. My writing life these days consists mostly of discipline. I get up in the mornings, make my coffee, to go work, hate my job. Get through. I come home, I work out, I eat dinner with my wife. We talk. Sometime around 8-8:30, I pack up my laptop and head out. As stereotypical as it sounds, I do most of my writing in a certain coffeeshop. Drinking coffee, even when it's over 100 outside. I write for an hour, maybe an hour and a half, then I go home. Watch some television to wind down. Then I go to bed. In that hour or so, I can usually produce 1000 words. There about.

At that rate, I should be able to produce a book in 90 days. Right. And of course things don't always work that way. I miss nights, usually when I'm trying to actually spend some time with my wife. Sometimes when I'm simply too wrecked from work to do anything of value. Sometimes what I write is shit and it has to be deleted. Or I don't know where I'm going with the narrative, and most of my hour is spent noodling around with plot points and thinking about character. Productive, but not words on the page.


Okay. And there's a lot of nervousness now. This is something I've been working towards for, oh, I don't know. My whole life. Though I didn't get serious about it until three years ago. But now it's out there, I'm making sales, I've got an agent interested in the novel. It's a critical point. The next six months to a year are a turning point. This stops being something I do locally, something my immediate peer group reads and comments on. It becomes public. Widely distributed and openly inspected. I care what my friends think, sure, but if every one of my friends buys my book, I will have sold very few books. I'm not good at making friends.

That's where we get to the critical response. I had two stories come out in May. I have one coming out in September. Probably one or two more by the end of the year or early next year. Depending. And the stories that are coming out are almost all set in the same world as the novel. So how readers and editors and, well, the general consumer population responds to those stories will determine the fate of the novel. You see? All this work, and the initial reports are just coming in.

Anyway. The general reviews have been good. One spectacular, one "forgettable" but mostly up-average. But a very nerve-wracking couple months, while mostly-strangers read and reviewed my work. Now we wait for the september release, and the subsequent review cycle.

And at some point I finish the book. At some point I get back to that agent, start circling the editors and publishers that will gatekeep the next stage of my career. At some point we take the next step, and it's either up or down, or it's more of the same. But still. You take the step.

quote:

Originally posted by Shadoth:
Productive, but not words on the page.

That's a part of the job. You can't really use
word count as a metric, because there's a lot
more to it than that. When I'm writing a report,
I spend an awful lot of time reading and looking
at rocks. It's progress, although it certainly
doesn't feel like it.

timtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtimtim!

you da man!
can't fault you for not keeping up with the blog, although i did add you to my fav's. really dig the wry, dry cynicism. makes my day.

quote:

Originally posted by Shadoth:
In that hour or so, I can usually produce 1000 words. There about.

That's AMAZING! I can barely produce a page an hour uder ideal circumstances, let alone in a coffee shop!

Keep at it man!

You're kind of... excitable, aren't you, equus?

I think a coffee shop would be a pretty good writing environment, as long as you didn't have friends turning up and interrupting. I don't think I could do more than a few hundred words an hour though. Maybe.

Which reminds me...

I imagine that time for thought, contemplation, mulling over ideas is at least as valuable (if not more so) than time spent getting words down on the page.

If you spend an hour developing a perfect idea and writing a sentence that expresses that idea in wondrous crystalline beauty, surely that hour's no less valuable than one spent filling a page with exposition?

I don't think daily word counts matter a damn.

Hmm, where did I recently read about some famous author who'd take his typewriter to cafes and write there, with the sound of humanity around him....

Asimov? It was here somewhere that someone mentioned it, or are you being sarcastic?

quote:

as long as you didn't have friends turning up and interrupting

HA! I don't have FRIENDS!

quote:

Originally posted by Shadoth:
I pack up my laptop and head out. As stereotypical as it sounds, I do most of my writing in a certain coffeeshop. Drinking coffee, even when it's over 100 outside.

I told them I wasn't the only one- I love going to my local coffee place to draw or write- Tho I think you get more done than I do-

quote:

Colin-as long as you didn't have friends turning up and interrupting.

friend are usually considerate enought to realize I'm busy or at least ask if I mind them joining me-

I'm not generally a short story fan. As a teenager I read pretty much the whole of my dad's Analog collection, but I haven't read much in the way of sci-fi shorts since then.

This year I picked up 2 editions of "Best of SF vol XX", plus all the issues of Interzone, plus I subscribed to Electric Velocipede.

So, I don't know much about sci-fi shorts. But, as the saying goes, I know what I like, and I like both of the published stories I've read from Tim. Both are stronger than the stories that generally make it into Interzone, and are on a par with many of those in "Best of SF".

Although the 2 stories (Interzone and Electric Velocipede) were not obviously connected, there was enough in them for me to suppose that they both occurred in the same milieu, and enough for me to want to find out more about it.

i guess i am a short story reader.
i've been buying the best of every year for about 10 years now. they've been pretty influential on my reading. i often use shorts as a guide to new writers.

on the other hand i've not really bought the magazines. though at the moment i've been buying interzone and F&SF for most of this year. i've been enjoying F&SF more than interzone. though i enjoyed tim's story more than most in interzone. the current issue seems to be a pretty strong one, which i was pleased about.

personally, when i write i often have all the thoughts and ideas buzzing about before i sit down to actually type something. though usually even once i do start to type there is a lot of work to be done before it becomes the piece. though no doubt tim is much more accomplished at the sitting down bit - i too often have to wait for that buzz in my head that tells me its time to write.

quote:

Originally posted by Splitcoil:
You're kind of... excitable, aren't you, equus?

Yes, yes I am... I blame it on coffee. And puberty. ...Oh Hell! why not? I blame society!

(heh. eh...)

No. Just trying to be encouraging y'know?

Like if someone tells YOU you have a nice voice...

Which you do.

quote:

i too often have to wait for that buzz in my head that tells me its time to write.

Damn straight. Sigh.

Of course, a professional (or aspiring professional) writer needs to be able to come up with ideas as part of the job. That is, coming up with an idea is maybe something you have to sit down and work at, just like the typing. I wouldn't know, since I suck at doing it.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:

quote:

i too often have to wait for that buzz in my head that tells me its time to write.

Damn straight. Sigh.

but then, sometimes that buzz comes from getting out there, from watching, observing, noting the funny little details of all those humans out there.