Some days the bear gets you
Aug. 7th, 2009 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuJust got a rejection from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine in the mail. Not a surprise, really, but disappointing nonetheless. I'll have to see where else I can send this story later today.
I got a story off Monday morning, so I'm still at eight stories in circulation despite this one coming back. So that's good. But Rejectomancy is feeling kinda difficult today. I think I'm a little depressed today. Nothing serious, but it makes focusing on the work harder than usual.
I've been working on the plot for a longer (10-20K probably) story all week and...as usual, at times I feel pretty good about it. Today is not one of those times. I've reached the stage, as I toldsnippy yesterday, where the plot feels like it's disintegrating. That's always happened when I worked on a plot for any length of time, which is probably why I've tended to be a seat-of-my-pants writer.
I start working out a plot, and it seems pretty good. But as I try to flesh out the details, invariably I start finding things that don't seem to work, so I try to fix them. And that reveals more flaws. Lather, rinse, repeat until the plot seems to collapse like wet newsprint. Now, having read Dean Wesley Smith's comments about the "one third wall" for novels--the point at which you always hate it and think it needs to be scrapped and started over--I wonder if this is the same thing.
Probably. So I'm still working on the story, and will continue to do so. But right now it feels like a waste of time and effort. It doesn't help that while spending my writing time this week on trying to work up the plot and characters for this story I haven't really written much. Not much fiction, though I've written quite a lot of words as I noodled around with the plot and characters.
Ah well. Back to the grindstone.
Words Written Today: None
Words Written YTD (since May 1): 107,981
Stories in Circulation: 8
Rejections: 8
Stories Accepted: ONE!
I got a story off Monday morning, so I'm still at eight stories in circulation despite this one coming back. So that's good. But Rejectomancy is feeling kinda difficult today. I think I'm a little depressed today. Nothing serious, but it makes focusing on the work harder than usual.
I've been working on the plot for a longer (10-20K probably) story all week and...as usual, at times I feel pretty good about it. Today is not one of those times. I've reached the stage, as I told
snippy yesterday, where the plot feels like it's disintegrating. That's always happened when I worked on a plot for any length of time, which is probably why I've tended to be a seat-of-my-pants writer.I start working out a plot, and it seems pretty good. But as I try to flesh out the details, invariably I start finding things that don't seem to work, so I try to fix them. And that reveals more flaws. Lather, rinse, repeat until the plot seems to collapse like wet newsprint. Now, having read Dean Wesley Smith's comments about the "one third wall" for novels--the point at which you always hate it and think it needs to be scrapped and started over--I wonder if this is the same thing.
Probably. So I'm still working on the story, and will continue to do so. But right now it feels like a waste of time and effort. It doesn't help that while spending my writing time this week on trying to work up the plot and characters for this story I haven't really written much. Not much fiction, though I've written quite a lot of words as I noodled around with the plot and characters.
Ah well. Back to the grindstone.
Words Written Today: None
Words Written YTD (since May 1): 107,981
Stories in Circulation: 8
Rejections: 8
Stories Accepted: ONE!
