But apparently I did.
I’ve had a couple ideas for stories that I’ll probably start working on next month. One is basically Golgo 13 meets Sailor Moon, and another centers around a kidnapper/psychologist who helps his targets realize that they’re better off without the person who comes to rescue them (As of course, in fiction, “leave this to the cops” is not an option).
We’ll see where these ideas go, both creatively and literally.
-EE
So I’m about a month away from Gobble-Con 2.0, where I’ll be giving the So You Want to be a Speedrunner panel again. This time, I have a bunch of new videos to show, and I asked for a second hour to do a live run of Mega Man X, even though the game play won’t take a full hour. With setup and the like, an hour sounds reasonable. My current best time through the game getting everything is 41 minutes and 46 seconds (Which is actually only about 20 seconds slower than my time not getting everything, even though the two should be about 4 minutes apart if I were a top-tier player at either of them).
I’ve been keeping up on the writing thing as well, although I’ve failed to get anything published as yet. That’s fine, because I’m still pretty new at the whole thing. As long as the ideas keep flowing, I’ll break through eventually.
-EE
Yeah, that works.
I’m currently sitting in the living room of my friend Emily, watching another one of my friends playing Final Fantasy VII. Considering what it took to get here (It took about three times as long as it should have), I’m quite glad to be here.
My writing career has begun the same way that of a lot of writers does, with a string of rejections. Right now I’m trying to decide whether to revise a story, do some further revisions on another story, or start writing yet something new. I also have three stories currently submitted–one to the Machine of Death anthology, one to The Spirit of Poe, and a third out to Comets and Criminals. With any luck, one of them will accept my submissions, and I’ll try and get more stories out there as well.
-EE
Although not for the best reason. I got my first rejection of a story yesterday, from 10 Flash Quarterly. I’m pretty sure this makes me a real writer, since it will be the first of many rejections to come. Heck, Ray Bradbury says that he got a rejection a week for 50-plus years. I’m not Ray Bradbury, in either sheer output or skill, so I fully expect more “Sorry, we’re passing on this” letters in the future.
As for the story I had written for 10 Flash, I quickly sent it out to Abyss & Apex. I don’t have high hopes for acceptance here, since Duotrope (Which is an awesome website for finding short story markets, as well as tracking what you’ve sent where) reports an acceptance rate of just over 1%, versus about 15% for 10 Flash. But I figure that’s still better than the 0% chance I have if I don’t submit it, and the more stories I have out in the wild, the better the chance that one of them eventually gets accepted somewhere.
Onward!
-EE
Awhile back, one of my friends noted that he was editing his book, and implied that he hated the process. It makes sense, in a way; in On Writing, Stephen King mentions that cutting out words from your story is akin in some way to killing your children. He goes on to mention that, whether you like it or not, it’s something you have to do to make your story the best it can be.
It probably says something about me that I actually like the process of revision and editing. It sounds strange, but I look forward to taking words out of a story, knowing that what’s left will be tighter and faster-paced as a result of it. To be fair, it probably also helps that I don’t have the attention span/dedication to write a full novel, choosing instead to write and submit short stories to various markets (I’m currently attempting to participate in the monthly version of Write 1 Sub 1). I like the stories I write, but I don’t spend enough time to be able to get emotionally attached to any of them, or the words within them, to the point that I struggle with cutting stuff most of the time.
How about you? If you’re a writer, or a musician, or some other creative profession, so you enjoy deletion as much as creation?
-EE
Writing this while I watch UltraJMan play La-Mulana Wii.
Writing-wise, I’ve finished a revision of my Machine of Death story that, I think, is stronger than my original concept. As I mentioned before, I changed the concept a bit to focus less on the original main character and more on the reactions to her calling. I’ll have to run this by a few people to see if they agree with what I’m saying, but I personally like the new version better despite it running about 600 words longer.
We’re less than two weeks away from Connecticon, and suffice to say that my subconscious knows it. I feel like Trevor Horn (Yeah, that Trevor Horn) when he was in Yes. That’s all I’ll say on the subject for now.
How about all of you out there? Anything fun/exciting/stressful going on?
-EE
I’ve been working on my submission for the second Machine of Death book (If you’ve never heard of the first one, you can read about the concept here), figuring I may as well aim high as I prepare for the inevitable stream of rejections for my short stories. This one’s had an interesting road so far, and it’s something a lot of writers can identify with, I think.
Right now, it’s actually two separate stories. Without giving too much away, the first story was about a woman named Jackie who receives their death prediction and, rather than running from their fate, decides to seek it out, becoming the best in the world in her chosen field in the process. Thinking about this, and reading suggestions posted by the Machine of Death editors, I decided to tackle the same basic concept from another angle, focusing on people’s reactions to how Jackie responds to the question “so how did you arrive at your calling?” with “Oh, the Death Machine told me how I was going to die, and I decided to embrace it rather than run from it”. This seemed more interesting to me in the wake of the fact that Jackie’s tiny nation is the only one in my world with a Death Machine, causing people to regard her as somewhat crazy if brilliant in her field.
While I was writing this second version of the story, something interesting happened. Jackie stopped being the main character about halfway through, giving way to her publicist, Alan. This particular version is still in the first draft stage, meaning I’ll have to revise it heavily to more accurately reflect that, but it’s fascinating to me to witness firsthand all these things that more high-profile writers say happens to their stories, where they start one place and end up something completely different.
How about you? Anyone else have something like this happen to them with anything creative–writing, music, whatever?
-EE