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The next update of Aswiebe's Market List will be after 08/15/2010.
Permanent link to this newsletter in the archives: http://www.aswiebe.com/
Editor's Note
It's...done. Vicesteed, the steampunk mystery novel that I've been working on for way longer than I care to think about, is for-real, until-a-publisher-tells-me-otherwise, final-polishing-complete finished.
What do I do now?
For months and months, all my writing time has gone to editing this beast, and the short stories I've written have been squeezed in around the edges. It's a very strange feeling to try and get back in the butt-in-chair, producing at least a set number of words mindset. It's not writer's block, because I know what I need to do next. I have another novel barely started (from my idiot phase when I thought I could edit Vicesteed in a couple of hours on Saturdays). I have an outline. I know what needs to be written next.
It's like the sign taped up over my writing desk says, "There is no stress, there is only do."
( Read more... )
The next update of Aswiebe's Market List will be on 7/15/2010.
Permanent link to this newsletter in the archives: http://www.aswiebe.com/
Editor's Note
You'd think I'd have learned by now that I will always have more than enough writing tasks to do. But no--I keep thinking that I have time to squeeze in just one more. Then something else comes up and that one last thing just becomes impossible. Deadlines help some, but their effectiveness relies on correctly estimating a) how long things will take, and b) how much time you have. This month the thing that slipped through the cracks was a story I hoped to get written for a contest that closes at the end of the month. I do have an excuse--something else more urgent came up--but it's still disappointing. On the other hand, I did get a lot done, including giving a presentation on social media for writers and working up an agent list and a query letter for my novel, Vicesteed.
My blog post on social media for writers: http://cloudscudding.livejournal.com/98
And my post wherein I drew up my own rough guidelines for writing a query: http://cloudscudding.livejournal.com/98
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The next update of Aswiebe's Market List will be after 6/15/2010.
Permanent link to this newsletter in the archives: http://www.aswiebe.com/
Editor's Note
Convention season is coming up! And do go to those SF/F or writing conventions in your area--you'll learn a lot, come back at your work with a different perspective, and maybe even make some friends. But maybe your budget doesn't extend to the entrance fees and hotel room. Or maybe you just need a warmup to ease into things. Or maybe you just think the idea of an online SF/F writing convention is awesome.
Allow me to introduce you to Coyote Con (http://coyotecon.com/), an online SF/F writing convention hosted by Drollerie Press. It's taking place on weekends throughout the month of May, so there are two more sessions left (http://coyotecon.com/the-schedule/
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The next update of Aswiebe's Market List will be on 5/15/2010.
Permanent link to this newsletter in the archives: http://www.aswiebe.com/
Editor's Note
Sorry, this newsletter is going out a little late! The last couple of weeks have been pretty busy, what with one thing and another. Sickness, work, other projects, taxes....
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The next update of Aswiebe's Market List will be on 04/15/2010.
Permanent link to this newsletter in the archives: http://www.aswiebe.com/
Editor's Note
Sometimes the process of getting a story from an idea to a submission feels overwhelming. Weeks to write it. Days to get it critiqued and edited. Hours finding a good market for it, formatting it according to their submission guidelines, and sending it in.
Why not shrink that process down a little? Give yourself a break. Rev up your imagination, find a great idea that can fit in a nutshell, and write a tiny story. Twitfic, or Twitter fiction, is made of complete stories that fit within Twitter's 140-characters-or-less limitation. It's a good exercise in finding just the right words and editing a story down--way down. It'll loosen up your imagination. And it pays a professional rate per word, although that's only because there are so few words.
In the Featured Market section below, I've listed all the active, paying, spec-fic-friendly Twitfic publications that I'm aware of.
As a writing exercise for myself, I've started always keeping a twitfic submission in play. As soon as I hear back about it, I send in an another one. The writing and editing doesn't take much time, and it's fun.
I've had decent success at it, too. Here are two twitfic stories of mine that Thaumatrope has published in the last month, both science fiction with a dash of humor. They're tiny tweets of stories, and free to read. If you like them, share the link.
http://twitter.com/
http://twitter.com/thaumatrope/status/1
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The next update of Aswiebe's Market List will be on 03/15/2010.
Permanent link to this newsletter in the archives: http://www.aswiebe.com/
Editor's Note
Writing process logjams. We all have them (at least I hope I'm not the only one!). I'm not talking about procrastination or writer's block; I'm talking about things blocking the process of doing all the things that go into having a writing career. Writing. Story research. Getting critiques--and usually doing critiques in order to get your story critiqued. Editing. Doing market research (hopefully this market list helps). Submitting. Keeping track of everything: submissions, income, expenses, publication dates. Craft improvement. Publicity. If you're working on a novel, add agent research, synopsis, chapter summaries, query letter, and submitting to agents.
In a perfect world, this would be a wonderful smooth flow and everything would get done in a timely fashion. Naturally, at the same time you'd be producing thousands and thousands of new words daily.
It's not like that for me. I have three logjams.
1. Writing (side project) even while editing a novel (main project) is something I'm working on.
2. For a long time, I had a huge problem with not submitting stories. I just always had something else to do. I got around that by setting Sundays aside as submission days. Though I still have a submissions backlog, I have a fair number of stories out being considered, and several have even been accepted!
3. I tend to collect critiques and then take forever to get around to marking up and making editing changes to stories. I only realized how very bad this got a couple of days ago, when I finally made some small editing changes to "The Unkindness of Ravens," which I consider to be one of the best stories I've written. Do you know how long it had been sitting in a drawer waiting for those changes to be made? Over a year. That's time that one of my best stories was lying fallow, and that's unacceptable. It took only 20 minutes to make those changes.
Figure out where your logjams are. Be aware of them. Track all your manuscripts and where they're at in the process (I use a spreadsheet and some simple color-coded statuses). And if anything important gets hooked up on a logjam, try to dislodge it in a reasonable amount of time!
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The next update of Aswiebe's Market List will be on 02/15/2010.
Permanent link to this newsletter in the archives: http://www.aswiebe.com/
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The next update of Aswiebe's Market List will be on 01/15/2010. (2010!)
Permanent link to this newsletter in the archives: http://www.aswiebe.com/writing/archive.h
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The next update of Aswiebe's Market List will be on 12/15/2009.
Editor's Note
You may recall back in August, right after I had knee surgery, I talked about choosing an anthology and writing a story to submit to it. I was in a fair amount of pain and heavily drugged, and I could only write tiny amounts at a time. My point was that even when you can only do a little bit, it's worth doing instead of giving up. Well, they accepted it! "Missing You in Pieces" will be published in the upcoming Dead Bells anthology.
This month I've been thinking a lot about motivation and production goals when writing. I read an article about setting achievable goals that resonated. Writing is one of those things that there's always more of, and it's easy to feel like the only way to get a break from it is to procrastinate. The article makes the excellent point that instead of a to-do list, perhaps what we need is a done-after list: a set of easily achievable goals after which we are guilt-free done for the day. Step one is figuring out what achievable goals actually are--how long certain tasks take. I've been trying it out. Counter-intuitively, by trying to do less, I'm getting more done. As in all things, YMMV.
( Links and lots more )
The next update of Aswiebe's Market List will be on 11/15/2009.
Editor's Note
This month I have three personal announcements!
First, my annual contest for speculative holiday works, Spec the Halls, is coming up soon! Beginning November 1st, you post your holiday-themed science fiction, fantasy, or horror creation on your blog or website, I link to all entries, and I give a prize to the one I like best. Reprints are just fine.
Second, this November, I'm planning on doing--not NaNoWriMo, but Nano WriMo. I'll be writing a steampunky sci-fi story in daily Twitter installments at http://twitter.com/cloudscudding. Or I might set it up in its own Twitter feed. Thoughts?
Third, "The Radiator Burped," my comedy/horror modern fantasy about a gay man looking for just the right person to split the rent with is now out in the free PDF fall issue of Strange, Weird and Wonderful Magazine.
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