Another one in the mail!
Aug. 2nd, 2009 11:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuOr it will be tomorrow morning, anyhow. I spent some time yesterday and today polishing up the story. At one point it was some 500 words over the maximum allowed wordage for the market. But I edited it down to fit, tightening up the prose in the process. Now it's printed* along with the cover letter, and in the envelopes along with a SASE, awaiting mailing.
Tomorrow morning I'll drive the wife to work, then stop at the Post Office to buy postage and send it on its way. I count this as a win on this week's goal. Sooner (like Friday, or even Saturday) would have been better, but the work week starts Monday morning, so I'm gonna call it good.
This week's goal: To start on a longer story. Not a novel, but a 10-20K story for an erotic romance market. I have the general shape of the story in mind, but I need to flesh out the characters and scenes. I'm going to try the "snowflake method" for this. It starts with a one-sentence blurb for the story (which can also serve as an "elevator pitch"); then you flesh that out to a full paragraph describing the conflict and turning points of the story. That gets expanded into a paragraph for each sentence, and so forth. Eventually you end up with detailed character backgrounds and a list of all the scenes in the story. Then you write it.
I haven't tried that technique before, but I think I'll give it a whirl. So to reiterate, the goal: to start writing (but with no expectation of finishing this week) a 10-20K story, with the intent to finish it by the end of NEXT week, i.e., by August 15th.
*I've been having a hair-pulling good time with the printer. It works fine with my wife's (Windows) PC, and with the boy's as well. But for some reason, despite it being a model that should work and play well with Linux, the same printer that worked fine last time I used it now steadfastly refuses to cooperate. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the damn thing several times. I'm currently corresponding with some helpful people on the OpenSuse linux forums and I hope to get it resolved soon.
In the mean time, I have to email anything I want to print to myself, then log into my email account on the wife's PC, download the files and print from there. It's annoying, but at least I can get the stuff printed.
Words Written Yesterday: 2,347
Words Written Today: 3,427
Words Written YTD (since May 1): 107,981
Stories in Circulation: 8
Rejections: 7
Stories Accepted: ONE!
Tomorrow morning I'll drive the wife to work, then stop at the Post Office to buy postage and send it on its way. I count this as a win on this week's goal. Sooner (like Friday, or even Saturday) would have been better, but the work week starts Monday morning, so I'm gonna call it good.
This week's goal: To start on a longer story. Not a novel, but a 10-20K story for an erotic romance market. I have the general shape of the story in mind, but I need to flesh out the characters and scenes. I'm going to try the "snowflake method" for this. It starts with a one-sentence blurb for the story (which can also serve as an "elevator pitch"); then you flesh that out to a full paragraph describing the conflict and turning points of the story. That gets expanded into a paragraph for each sentence, and so forth. Eventually you end up with detailed character backgrounds and a list of all the scenes in the story. Then you write it.
I haven't tried that technique before, but I think I'll give it a whirl. So to reiterate, the goal: to start writing (but with no expectation of finishing this week) a 10-20K story, with the intent to finish it by the end of NEXT week, i.e., by August 15th.
*I've been having a hair-pulling good time with the printer. It works fine with my wife's (Windows) PC, and with the boy's as well. But for some reason, despite it being a model that should work and play well with Linux, the same printer that worked fine last time I used it now steadfastly refuses to cooperate. I've uninstalled and reinstalled the damn thing several times. I'm currently corresponding with some helpful people on the OpenSuse linux forums and I hope to get it resolved soon.
In the mean time, I have to email anything I want to print to myself, then log into my email account on the wife's PC, download the files and print from there. It's annoying, but at least I can get the stuff printed.
Words Written Yesterday: 2,347
Words Written Today: 3,427
Words Written YTD (since May 1): 107,981
Stories in Circulation: 8
Rejections: 7
Stories Accepted: ONE!
