I recently answered some questions about my writing and latest story on the Astounding Analog Companion blog.
Astounding Analog Companion blog post
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Tag Archives: writing
My New Writing Motto
My new writing motto is: Everything is better with aliens.
Rejection Poker
This week I ran across a blog post where the author suggested one could set up a skill ranking system for handling rejection, where you get experience points for handling rejection well, and lose them for … well, not. I don’t categorize my rejections as finely as the author of the post does, but my math shows me at roughly level 8 or “wood” level resistance.
I have long thought of trying to come up with a “rejection poker” system where you use the rejections (and acceptances) you got in the month to make a hand. The suits would be:
- Acceptance
- Rewrite Request
- Personal Rejection
- Form Rejection
The numbers would be the day of the month. I have been surprised by the number of times I have gotten multiple rejection letters on the same day. It’s as if editors, like writers, meet in cafes to do all their reading and rejecting together while enjoying some nice tea and company.
If you get more than five responses, you get to pick the ones you use for your hand.
The standard rules of poker would apply (although statistics may show a re-ranking of hands would better reflect their probabilities). Maybe the 31rst would be wild.
So far this month, my hand would be:
- 5 FR
- 8 FR
- 10 FR
On my way to a flush!
In either system, the only way to level up is to submit more!
How do you handle rejection?
Writing Accomplishment
The feeling when your writing accomplishment for the day is deleting yesterday’s writing accomplishment. I need to cut 1180 words from this story to reach short story length. So far I’ve cut 630.
Story Sale
I am over the moon: I sold a story to Analog! My first SFWA-qualifying story! I am so excited! Perseverance pays off. Keep writing, my writing friends!
September 2015 Stats
I’ve been working on editing short stories.
HOURS SPENT WRITING: 17.8
HOURS SPENT WRITING WORDS: 17.8
WORDS WRITTEN: 2553
WORDS/HOUR: 143.4
August 2015 Stats
A friend hosted two write-ins, which were hugely useful in terms of getting words written.
HOURS SPENT WRITING: 6.3
HOURS SPENT WRITING WORDS: 6.3
WORDS WRITTEN: 1494
WORDS/HOUR: 237.1
July 2015 Stats
Spent some time on research last month, but I think I’ve got some things better nailed down and understood … building a world from scratch is a lot of work.
HOURS SPENT WRITING: 10.9
HOURS SPENT WRITING WORDS: 3.2
WORDS WRITTEN: 741
WORDS/HOUR: 231.6
March – June 2015 Stats
One reason I keep and publish stats is to hold myself accountable … another is to develop a feel for how long it really takes for me to write things.
But I run into quandaries about what I should count. Counting words are easy – they’re there or they’re not. Even with editing, I can count new words. But what about other things? What about research to understand the physics of what’s happening in the story? What about writing an orbital dynamics program so I can see what something will actually look like? What about writing a program to start with a certain colony population and propagate it forward N generations? What about reading books to learn about the culture or science background I need for the story? It’s all work, and it’s all work I need to do to write this story … but it’s not writing, so it’s something I haven’t counted in the past.
Starting this month (July), I’m going to start also counting research hours.
But due to all the research activity above, the count for the last four months looks light. I need to get back to actually writing.
March “Apparently I did write down some research hours”
WORDS WRITTEN: 0
HOURS SPENT WRITING: 5.5
WORDS/HOUR: 0
April “But not consistently”
WORDS WRITTEN: 0
HOURS SPENT WRITING: 0
WORDS/HOUR: 0
May “And when my writer’s group met I got motivated to write some words”
WORDS WRITTEN: 1443
HOURS SPENT WRITING: 4.9
WORDS/HOUR: 294.5
June “But not, sigh, consistently”
WORDS WRITTEN: 0
HOURS SPENT WRITING: 0
WORDS/HOUR: 0
July will be better!
Hard SF Homework Set
So a long, long time ago when I was studying engineering in college, we were assigned “homework sets” where we practiced solving the particular sort of problem we were learning about, often with sets of problems where each built on what you worked out in the last. I just finished a self-assigned homework set to understand the physics of what happens at the start of my current novel. It felt good to exercise my brain, but I am pleased that it is done. Now maybe my brain will let me get back to writing.
Space&Aliens 