Making decisions

How do you make decisions? Do you weigh up the pros and cons? Or flip a coin? Or agonise back and forth until you've forgotten what the question was?

What if there's no correct answer?

I have a very clear idea where I want to be, career-wise, but the path I travel to get there is a very windy (as in twisty, not breezy) road. It's full of decisions I don't want to make.

Today, I sent off a short story to a competition, then wondered if I should send it to another one as well. But I don't know, so I haven't yet. Is the story good enough to warrant two entry fees at the same time?

A couple of days ago I was considering some severe editorial changes to a novella. If I make the changes, there's a good chance a publisher would take it. If I stick to my vision of the story, that market would disappear but another might open up. I don't know, so I haven't done anything yet.

I have a novel that I'm querying, but I'm running out of agent options. Should I go small? Should I self-pub? Is it even any good? Should I shred it into a million pieces and throw it like confetti onto some unsuspecting bride at my local church?

See... far too many decisions and questions, and I don't know how to answer any of them.

Does anyone actually have answers, or are you all floundering around and getting lucky too?

Write, submit, walk the dog, repeat

My favourite bridge, from the opposite direction

I'm sure I only closed my eyes for a moment, and now it's July! I went away for the weekend last week, and it seems to have thrown me completely out of sync. It was a very warm weekend, and I didn't sleep well, and I was on the go the whole time.

While I was away, I decided to write some short stories. So I hunted out a new notebook and wrote. But they're all really daft and will need a lot of work to get them up to standard.

I've been submitting my first almost-novel (it's only a little bit short) to agents. Nothing's happening there yet, but it's early days. Although I woke up in a hot sweat last night when I realised I hadn't added contact details to the latest attachment I submitted, so all they have is my email - no address or phone number or anything - assuming my email and the attachments don't get separated. I did it wrong! So very wrong!

And finally, I'm rewriting one of my oldest stories, changing it from 3rd person/past tense to 1st person/present tense. I've had to cut 1000 words off the first draft because some of it was from another POV. But I hope this will make the story tighter. I've missed the deadline of the market I was aiming for though, sadly.

I'm now going to visit all the blogs I've been neglecting (ie. all of them)

Always check before you submit!

Luckily, I did check... but what I almost did was submit a novel without making the final changes. I still had all the 'track changes' mark-ups intact. Oops.

In February, I sent my novel out to three wonderful ladies, who said my novel was great and made several very good suggestions for improvement. I incorporated the changes, using 'track changes' so I could un-change them later if I thought of an even better idea. Then I put the doc to one side and got on with lots of other stuff.

And completely forgot about it until this week when I decided I should submit it. At first I thought it was a few easy 'accept change' issues, but then I got to a part where a character arc needed to be clarified - going right back to his introduction, I think. So now I'm heavily into revision mode.

(You'll note I'm finally using the word novel... It's 50,600 words - which is very, very long for me. I just hope I don't revise too much and bring the word count down too far.)

I did manage to submit another piece though, which came back a day later saying 'D'oh, check our guidelines, we don't do this!' - which would have been fair enough, if I hadn't tweeted them to check the very thing they complained I hadn't checked. I was a little bit annoyed, so I immediately sent it out again - at about 11pm last night. I'm not entirely sure I do my best work at 11pm, so I'll just have to see what happens.

Have you ever made/almost made silly submission errors?

July already? Insecure much?

Yes, folks it's July... and it's the first Wednesday... which must mean it's time for another Insecure Writers Support Group meeting, hosted by the wonderful Alex J Cavanaugh. Click this link to find out more, to sign up and to check out the other group members.

Today's post is not an insecurity, it's a deficiency. I have a game plan for my writing career, and I'm not achieving it. Instead I'm achieving other things, like creating my new website and self-publishing my collection of stories. Neither of these things were in my original business plan.

In fact, when I started writing, self-publishing meant taking out a loan and spending an arm and a leg on several thousand copies of your book that you then had to store in your living room and dining room and kids bedroom until you sold them. Print on demand and ebooks have changed the face of self-publishing, so you can excuse my lack of foresight.

Similarly, the internet was born after I started writing. Author websites were something proper authors had - not me - so I never even considered it was something I should do until this year.

My writing plan involved being published in specific literary magazines, and winning high-profile competitions.

And there lies my deficiency... I have not been submitting stories. In fact, while I've been focussing on trying to write my novel, I haven't even written a short story for a while. Which is odd, seeing as though I call myself a short story writer!

Has your writing taken a turn you weren't expecting?

Help!

It's been a while since I've had a blank post to fill. Over the past month, I've had posts telling you to visit other blogs, I've been tagged to share information about myself and excerpts from my WIP... I almost  feel like I've forgotten how to write a post!

But lo! - there is something I'd like to take your advice on. Please read on...

I've just about completed my WIP, a collection of stories which I'm suddenly scared to submit. Yesterday, I realised that my publisher doesn't actually publish collections. 

I'm currently torn between abandoning the project and writing something else, or writing a killer query that will explain why I think these stories work together. (If my publisher is reading, I am so, so sorry - I'm usually very good at reading and obeying submission guidelines!)

I really believe in this WIP. I've been working on it for a long time, and I still get goosebumps when I reach the final pages of the final story.

My options are:

1. Sending off the query. In doing this, I'll be fulfilling the obligations of my current contract which asks for first refusal on similar works. If rejected, I can then consider another publisher or - gulp! - going it alone.
2. In my killer query as it stands, I've explained that these stories could be standalone novelettes, thereby showing that I do understand the guidelines, but blatantly pointing out that I've chosen to ignore them, and risking my publisher's ire.
3. Not sending this WIP to my publisher, or to anyone else. If I send it to someone else, I'll be ignoring the obligations of my contract and annoying my publisher who's been fantastic. However, by not submitting this WIP, I'll have to start something from scratch, and currently I have nothing in reserve.

I see so many pros and cons with all the options that my head is spinning. So I really want to know...

What would you do?

Waiting... waiting... waiting...

The same subject that had me so secure last month, is the one making me insecure this month.

Yes, I signed a contract to have my novella published. Yes, I emailed it off. Yes, Thanksgiving and Christmas have got in the way, and yes I understand that to publish an ebook takes a lot less time and effort.

But, I have heard nothing from the publisher, at all! 


I've been writing and submitting work for a very long time. Although I've had limited success, I pride myself on being professional. I know that I shouldn't send off manuscripts accompanied by my kids crayon drawings as a suggested book cover. I know I shouldn't include an A4 page of quotes from friends and family saying how much they loved my story. And  I know that I shouldn't send hourly emails to check the contract arrived (I didn't - I sent one after a couple of weeks and got a reply).

But now what?

Should I send another email asking when I should expect the first proofs? Should I wait a little bit longer because, after all, Thanksgiving and Christmas are big holidays close together in the US? Should I wail and eat lots of chocolate, convinced that I've made a fool of myself by telling everyone I was going to be published when I'm not, not ever, not ever ever?

What would you do?

Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop members

My niche?

In this post, a couple of months ago, I bemoaned the fact that I didn't seem to fit the current market. I wasn't mainstream enough for the mainstream; I wasn't experimental enough for the experimental market; I definitely didn't fit a genre.

Not long afterwards, I submitted a piece of work - I took a risk and suggested it might work as Romance/Contemporary. Now, I had no problem with Contemporary, because it's set today; but Romance was more of a gamble because it's not a happy-ever-after piece that I assumed Romance readers required.

Then - then! - it occured to me that if I marketed at least some of my work as Romance, I'd immediately be challenging, daring and surprising - the words that confused me so much in my last post - within that genre.

Have I - eventually - found my niche?

Oh, and if you're wondering, the gamble paid off and I've had some positive feedback on my submission; although I'm not sure whether they agree with the Romance/Contemporary tag yet. I'm hoping I'll have some news about it in the next couple of months!

Insecure, Moi?

The premise of the Insecure Writers Support Blog is here, so I'm not going to explain it again. There's also a link on the same post to all the bloggers taking part, so please have a look and check out a few of them!

So, why am I insecure this month?

Because I didn't win a competition. In fact, I didn't win two.

My writing 'career' has been a little bit hit and miss, as you can see for yourself if you check out my Writing CV. There's lots of activity - like last year, for example, when I placed in three competitions - followed by a vast desert of non-publication. Every time I reach this desert, I feel like my writing life is over, done, finished. (As a writer, I feel it's my duty to be melodramatic!)

This year, as with every other year where this has happened, I've been locked away working on longer pieces of work, forgetting to submit - or not submitting at all, while telling myself I really ought to - to magazines. So I know there is a legitimate reason - ie. it's my own fault! But that doesn't help - I don't want rational thought. I want to wallow! But, on the other hand, while I'm wallowing - I mean, working hard on the bones of a novel - new names are emerging, new talents are changing the goalposts and moving the short story market on a few notches.

Competitions are my lifeline, my one way of proving I still exist - it's much easier to send out entries to comps than to research markets and email covering letters. So, when I don't win, don't come second or third, don't even make a mention on the long-list, I wonder if I'm still really here...

Insecure Writers Support Group Post

On a day when I was feeling particularly insecure, I discovered this, The Insecure Writer's Support Group, which I found mentioned on Sarah Pearson's blog. Perfect timing, Sarah, because today I am feeling particularly insecure. The idea of the group is to post - on the first Wednesday of the month - about my insecurities as a writer, and to help other people battle theirs.

Today's insecurity is the one I usually have, and have probably mentioned before. I don't think I fit today's writing. I'm not a genre writer, which leaves those odd groupings such as literary, experimental. I consider myself to be mainstream when confronted with other genres, but mainstream publications don't. I fall between the cracks. I even fall between the cracks of magazines that claim to publish people who fall between the gaps!

I've been searching new markets, and found editors who wanted dangerous writing, who wanted daring and surprising, who wanted to be challenged. I don't do that: I write stories about ordinary people doing - on the whole - ordinary things. And then - then! - when I read the stories that are all of these things, sometimes - sometimes - I don't understand them.... ssshh... don't repeat that too loudly, will you?

Therefore, today's insecurity is that I'm a fake and a fraud.

My other insecurity is that I've totally misunderstood what I should be doing for this support group. One thing I think I understood correctly, is that I should include the list of other people who have signed up. So, here it is - at least I'll have lots of new blogs to look at while I'm wallowing in self-pity:

Submissions are the logical next step

After reading Jen Campbell's blog  it's occured to me that with all this novel writing malarky - and prior to that, some novellas which took up a lot of time - I've stopped submitting short stories to magazines. I still enter competitions, which - if you win - takes care of actually earning some money, but there was a time when I knew which were the best magazines to submit to, submitted prolifically, and I got a fair number published.

Now, I have no idea.

I think I stopped submitting regularly when every third new website seemed to be a literary journal of sorts. I've never been all that comfortable with online publishing, and it just seemed as though quantity was more important than quality - the choice was overwhelming. I've probably mentioned this aversion before, and I know the reasons seem very lame. The biggest reason is that I'm a set-in-my-ways 30-something, and I like holding magazines and books in my hand. It gives me much greater pleasure to see my name printed on a page than on a screen... because (another lame reason) I can write my own name on a screen!!

Seeing my work laid out on paper, properly type-set, with an illustration or two, just seems proper. But, after reading Jen's post about all the stories she's having published imminently, I feel like I'm being left behind. So, my mission, set in stone here today (albeit a bloggy stone) is to submit work to magazines again.

Now, all I have to do is work out which ones.

Competition season

It's that time of year again when all the literary competitions come out in force and all my unpublished stories go out, hither and thither (no one uses that expession anymore - I wonder why??). Of course, there are competitions throughout the year. but for some reason, as soon as the sun comes out, everyone wants to hold one.

I'm not sure I enter into the spirit of the thing properly. I know, judging from the comments that organisers make in their rules of entry, that I am expected to write a new story - some competitions force me into this by having a theme. I, on the other hand, cannot write to order, so I rifle through all my old stories and send off the most suitable. If there's no suitable entry, I don't enter.

Which means, at this time of the year, when my muse is playing in the garden - happily skipping up and down and spouting all kinds of new ideas - I am to be found in a dark study making lists of what should go where, and when it should be there. Which is exactly what I am doing now - or, should be doing now when I stop writing this.

On a slightly different note: I would like to announce that a new novel has just been conceived!! Well, I say novel. It ought to be a novel, but at the moment reaches about 5000 words. I haven't written a novel for a while, so this will be an interesting experiment, if nothing else.

Hmph!

I'm going to totally ignore that I planned to share the link to my winning short story, on account of the fact that technology hates me. I cannot work out how to get the link into my post, let alone make it a pretty imbeded link that merely says here in a colourful font. (Well, that explains why this post is entitled Hmph!)

Instead, I turned to sending out new competition entries. Last week I sent an entry via email; this week I needed to send one via snail mail, and I admit I prefer doing it this way. Although the web is quicker, cheaper and allows you to submit a story the day before the closing deadline (so perfect for my unorganised self), I do like to hold the envelope in my hand, kiss it quickly (and very suureptiously) and hear that plop into the postbox.

I love entering competitions. Years ago, I'd trawl Writers News for magazines and send unsoliticted stories. This worked, somewhat. But there were always the return of post rejections which had obviously not even been opened. By entering competitions, you guarantee that someone will read your story. And, after all, that's the reason I write. I can't ever imagine not writing, but writing knowing it would never get read would rob me of some of the pleasure. Like an artist who never showed her painting, or a musician who only ever played in a sound-proof room.

So, this is a big thank you to whoever is going to read the short story that I've just kissed!!