I spent all weekend loading software on my computer, getting it ready for use.  I'm having a lot of fun, really.  I've never had one with enough RAM and a big enough hard drive to actually hold all of my software (games included) at once.  Anyway, I'm not getting much in the way of work done yet, but that will come.  I just have to get everything exactly the way I want it first.  Oh, and clear off my desk.  It became kind of a "catch all" location while my laptop was out of commission.  Now that I have my lovely new desktop, though, I need to get the desk back in working condition as well.

Wheeeeee! 

I got my new computer delivered today. I wasn't expecting it until after the first, so that came as quite the surprise. But a happy sort of surprise. This means I can do more work at home now. Including updating the market side of my submission software. I did stay after work last night and do a bit, but I didn't get very far because I kept getting distracted and I kind of wanted to go home. Problem solved! And this is one mother of a machine, too. I'm very happy with it. We can all just say a little song of thanks to the fairy godfather who provided it for me (in return for some promised web design help later on down the road, of course).

Yay for tools that work! Yay for shiny new boxes! Yay, yay, yay!

Man oh man, it occurred to me today how much work I really have to do on pure housekeeping, so to speak. My submission tracking program (some of you may recall that it's an MS Access application I wrote for myself - available for free to anyone who may desire a copy to try) is sadly out of date on the market side. I haven't updated any of the information in a dog's age. To try to use it for submissions right now would be little short of foolhardy. So what do I get to do? I get to sit and try to get the damned thing updated. Wheeeee. *sigh*

Since my laptop at home is so unreliable (wouldn't boot at all last night) and my new desktop won't be arriving until early next month, I'm thinking of just camping out at the office some evening and trying to see how much I can get done. Hell, maybe I'll just do it tonight. I don't know. Why not, right? The boss won't care, and I'm going to have to drive home in the dark anyway, so what's an hour or two later?

Anyway, I'd really like to get all this done before the new year. Because once I have a reliable computing situation at home again, I'm going to really get to work on clean-up and revision of the old stories and get them back into submission. For that, I need reliable data. Besides, maybe going over all the guidelines and such again (and discovering which magazines have shut down or started up in the iterim) will be a good way to get my head back in the game. Couldn't hurt. And it feels productive, which is always helpful. Right?

Or maybe I'm just trying to psyche myself up for spending a few hours doing what is basically nothing more or less than data entry. *grin*

Cleaning house before the new year starts, you see. I want to get everything straightened up in my records and make sure that I'm ready to rock and roll with submissions the very first time I finish a story's clean-up. So, just for the sake of completeness, here are the rejections from last year that never got recorded.

"Toyland Revisited," on April 20, 2006:

I regret to inform you we will not be accepting your submission forpublication. As you may have noticed, this is a form rejection. While we would like to give personal responses to each submission, it is not practical for us to do so at this time.

Please keep in mind that this may not be a statement about the quality of your submission. All this e-mail truly says (and we apologize for not being able to offer more) is that we can't use your piece at the moment. Best of luck placing your submission elsewhere, and thanks for giving us the opportunity to review your work.

Jeremiah Sturgill
Editor, Son and Foe

"Through My Eyes," on May 02, 2006:

Dear Kim,

Thank you for your submission of “Through My Eyes” to Aberrant Dreams. I’m sorry to say that we will not be able to use this story at this time. Good luck with it elsewhere and feel free to send another story to us in the future.

Sincerely,

Pattrick Higgins, editor of fantasy

"Perchance to Dream," on July 07, 2006:

Dear Kim:

You are correct that we considered "Perchance to Dream" and passed on it some time ago. We do send out e-mail notifications, but yours must have gone astray. Sorry for the mix-up.

David E. Hughes
Editor, Electric Spec

"Shadowman," on July 27, 2006:

Thank you for offering your story to Orson Scott Card's Intergalactic Medicine Show. We're sorry to tell you that we will not be using it; you are free to submit it elsewhere.

Sincerely,
The Editors

"The Hunt," on September 25, 2006:

Thank you for submitting “The Hunt" to Dark Wisdom. The story was enjoyable, the characters strong, but it doesn't quite fit the style of the magazine, so we must pass on it. It seems likely the story will find a home with another market.

Thank you for taking the time to submit, and please consider doing so again in the future.

Best,

Chuck

Here I go, up on the stage. Or something like that. Yes, that's right, it's time for my semi-annual come-back tour. *sigh* Honestly, I'm tired of going back and forth. Either writing is important enough to me to take the time and make the effort, or it's not. And it is. I really believe that it is. And, somehow, over the last couple years I've managed to learn a few things. I can feel it when I read, when I discuss books or movies with friends, and even more when I'm looking at my own work. I can see deficiencies that I couldn't see before, and I can see new ways to strengthen plot and character.

This is especially evident in the notes for my novel. If you read the last post here (done in May, yeesh), you'll see that I'd put myself in a bit of a spot. Well, working exceedingly sporadically, managed to hammer together at least the first segment of a plot. I've got my opening and the portion of the conflict that's going to take us into the meat of the book. I've got my main character, and the beginnings of a few more (though they need work, obviously). I've got some rudimentary world building, and I'm getting ready to really dive into fleshing that out. And I've got some glimmers of where the plot will go from here (I'm hoping the research and the worldbuilding will help to flesh the rest of that out as well). And with all this work and the thinking that I've been doing, I'm really seeing some strong differences. The plot is stronger. The conflicts are more dramatic. The character is deeper. And most importantly, I'm really feeling this one in a way I never have before.

So, to celebrate this new excitement and my new committment (and I swear I'm sticking to it this time), I've decided to put up the writing resolutions I've decided on for this year. I'm not going into a lot of specifics with it or anything, just some general guidelines of what I hope to accomplish, time, fates (and in some cases, budget) willing.

1. Finish the planning for my Roman fantasy novel and begin writing, hopefully finishing the first draft.


2. Edit, polish and/or rewrite my existing short stories and get them back into the submission cycle.


3. Re-design, edit, and polish both the atheist website and the vampire website and get them back on the web.


4. Be faithful about keeping up this LJ and other measures of my writing progress to help with accountability.

Okay, so I find myself in sort of an odd situation (well, odd for me).  I had a plot and three or four characters.  Then I combined two of the characters, and the resulting character was pretty damned interesting.  In fact, this character has a damned-near built-in character arc.  However, now that I have all this other stuff to explore, the plot I had is no longer interesting to me.  Wouldn't allow me to explore the character and her arc enough.

So now I'm trying to find a new plot.  I've written down six vague possibilities so far, and I'm working on that.  But I'm curious.  When you find yourself in the position to choose from amongst various plot possibilities (assuming that's ever happened), how do you pick?  What kind of criteria do you use?  Is it a conscious, logical process or more of an emotional/gut thing?

Speak up, people.   This is turning into one of my new favorite "fascinating writer stuff" topics.

Okay, in a desperate attempt to get my life back on track, I've started working again.  I know I'd said that I'd started some notes before, but that idea never really went anywhere.  I know now that's because there wasn't enough to it.  I had another idea that grabbed my attention more, and the first one has somehow ended up entangled with it.  Together, I think they give me some pretty strong possibilities.

I'm going to try to write a novel.  I've tried before, some of you know, without actually finishing one.  But this time I feel like I've got a much better grip on the principles of plot and character and conflict and all that good stuff.  I've been devouring all kinds of writing books, embracing the stuff that means something to me and discarding the rest.  Out of it all I'm trying to fashion a method of novel writing that will really work for me, instead of slavishly devoting myself to somebody else's system.

Anyway, Sunday evening I got six pages of really solid work done.  Fleshed out some important characters in a really satisfying way, set up some of the societal situation in the world (it's fantasy), and got a pretty firm grip on the plot that's going to drive the first bit of the novel.  There's still a ton of work left to be done, but I'm feeling pretty good about what I've got so far.

For the first time, I feel comfortable with the work I've been doing on the book, and I feel like this might actually be the one I finish.  Whether or not it's going to be any good is another question, but at this point just finishing would feel like a real triumph.