Okay, New Plan...
Sep. 13th, 2010 10:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinanjuScrew the cyberpunk story.
I wrote 3,000 words on it today and was bored to tears. Whatever seed of an idea I had clearly wasn't enough to keep me interested, and if I'm not interested, nobody else will be either. Maybe I'll go back to it one day, but then again, probably not. This is one of the drawbacks of being a "seat of my pants" writer; trying to write to a call for submissions just doesn't work worth a damn. Twice now I've seen calls for Halloween and Christmas-themed stories from online publishers--and twice now I've never written anything for them because my process just doesn't work that way. There's no telling where the original concept will take me--if it takes me anywhere. Sometimes it does, though the final result is nothing like the original idea. Sometimes--as in this case--I take a run at the idea and discover that there's no there there.
On the other hand, I've had a half-formed novel in mind for a long while. I've cobbled together 40,000 words of bits and pieces around the idea. A lot of it isn't usable (a lot of the bits and pieces are contradictory; I wrote scenes independently, as I worked out the background and backstory, so things changed from one section to another). But that's okay. I can redraft from scratch, and that's what I intend to do.
It's one of those ideas I keep thinking nobody else would be interested in. So I have to keep reminding myself that I'm interested in it, and I should write what angers, or excites, or fascinates me and to hell with everything else. When it's done, then I can see if anyone else cares. So there!
Stories in Circulation: 12
Rejections: 57
Stories Accepted: SEVEN
Stories to Resubmit: 1
Novel Queries
Strange Attractors (urban fantasy): 4 queries out, 9 rejections
Repossessor (science fiction): 5 queries out, no responses
I wrote 3,000 words on it today and was bored to tears. Whatever seed of an idea I had clearly wasn't enough to keep me interested, and if I'm not interested, nobody else will be either. Maybe I'll go back to it one day, but then again, probably not. This is one of the drawbacks of being a "seat of my pants" writer; trying to write to a call for submissions just doesn't work worth a damn. Twice now I've seen calls for Halloween and Christmas-themed stories from online publishers--and twice now I've never written anything for them because my process just doesn't work that way. There's no telling where the original concept will take me--if it takes me anywhere. Sometimes it does, though the final result is nothing like the original idea. Sometimes--as in this case--I take a run at the idea and discover that there's no there there.
On the other hand, I've had a half-formed novel in mind for a long while. I've cobbled together 40,000 words of bits and pieces around the idea. A lot of it isn't usable (a lot of the bits and pieces are contradictory; I wrote scenes independently, as I worked out the background and backstory, so things changed from one section to another). But that's okay. I can redraft from scratch, and that's what I intend to do.
It's one of those ideas I keep thinking nobody else would be interested in. So I have to keep reminding myself that I'm interested in it, and I should write what angers, or excites, or fascinates me and to hell with everything else. When it's done, then I can see if anyone else cares. So there!
Stories in Circulation: 12
Rejections: 57
Stories Accepted: SEVEN
Stories to Resubmit: 1
Novel Queries
Strange Attractors (urban fantasy): 4 queries out, 9 rejections
Repossessor (science fiction): 5 queries out, no responses