The image of rain has been rolling around in my head for quite a while. I was trying to figure out if it was supposed to be metaphoric or symbolic, but it just wasn’t coming to me. I guess I was trying too hard, because last night I cued up Youtube and listened to the sound of rain (my writing soundtrack lately) and started writing. Still not quite what I was going for, but it has been haunting me for a long time, so maybe now it’ll leave me alone!
Check it — The Nature Show, The Rain Dance:
I finally finally made myself submit something to a print publication. I had a piece accepted at short-story.net about a year ago. I’ve been gearing up my nerve to submit to Glimmer Train and have been putting it off because I was intimidated. About once a month I pull a piece out and fiddle with it and then put it back. Well, I finally decided I was really happy with it and before I could change my mind, sent it in!
I’ve entered for the Very Short Fiction award and the Standard Short Story. It will take at least 90 days to know if I’ve been accepted or rejected.
So uhm. I guess life goes on until then?
In the meantime I wrote something earlier, a non fiction Essay piece called Subject Matter Expert and have submitted it to Indie Ink. We shall see where it goes!
So. I might possibly be a total dummy, but I pledged for 2011. The big one. The INSANE level. I know, I know. Oh my GAH. 350,000 words in 2011. I have to write 1000 words a day, every day for the next year to just skate by. Uh. What?
But it’s ME. I write a lot of words. Usually.
This means I have to get back to blogging but since I’m dumping my personal blog, I will be doing more reading/reviews and writing blogging. Which is just fine with me.
Trying to get into my daily writing groove now, instead of waiting until the New Year and trying to jump into it. I can’t remember what word count I started with but I know I got in at least 1000 words tonight, so #WIN.
One of the blogs I read has WIP (Work in Progress) Wednesday, where they talk about what projects they have on-going and how they’re coming. As everyone knows I am in what is supposed to be the final chapters of a serial fanfiction story. It will, eventually, end. Just… not where I originally thought. Oh well. Word count!
Count for today ends at 4840. Chapter is going very. slowly. GUH. I’m trying, folks! I promise!
Wow. I can’t even believe I did but I wrote something new. And it was short. And complete. Who am I??? And what have I done with the woman who writes 400,000 word stories and can’t finish them? Oh, wait. She’s still here.
Over at the fanfiction archive I thought it would be fun to do a challenge called AwesomeAugust, where writers sign up for a day and on that day, post a new, complete story that they want. It would get writers… well… writing and it would produce at least 31 new stories for the archive. We like new stories, and considering how dry the fandom is these days, new stories can breathe new life.
I hadn’t planned on doing one, because I didn’t have an idea. And then… with about 3 slots open, an idea came to me. And then I thought it was dumb and gave up my slot. And then I got some great advice and swallowed my pride at my ‘damn good idea’ cut it back to the beginning and re-wrote it and guh.
Can I say I love my own work? Is that egotistical? Oh well. I think it’s cute. It’s called, “Rescue Me” and borrows a little bit from Pretty Woman, which I know aired last night and that was a complete coincidence. I was trying to find a movie that two people could be watching at 4am and did a Google search and Pretty Woman popped up and I thought, Yes! there’s some great quotable lines in that! I already knew how I could mold some dialog around the lines and draw some parallels. I thought it turned out great.
A snippet? Don’t mind if I do (beware of language, this piece is Rate R):
“See, I liked the Julia Roberts character,” Gabby admitted, crunching on popcorn. “But I liked her friend more.”
“Kit De Luca? Yeah she’s a little spitfire. Every prostitute needs a great best friend.”
“Well, and I’ve had a girl crush on Laura San Giacomo, ever since The Stand.”
“Good flick,” he said, tossing a handful of popcorn into his mouth. “Scary, though.”
“The good outweighs the scary. I love the part where they’re talking about the fairy tale, the Prince Charming, you know? And Vivian asks her who that ever worked out for, and Kit says, Cindafuckin’rella.” She laughed, adding, “I always wanted to be called that.”
“Not Gab-Gabriele?”
Gabby burst into delirious giggles, nearly choking on a kernel of popcorn. “Shut up! I didn’t know if I wanted you to know me as Gabby the fun girl, or Gabrielle, the serious writer. I wanted to make a good impression.”
“Honey, you wasted a good impression on a man who was falling down drunk.”
“Shhhh,”she hissed, tapping him on the chest. “I like this part…”
We‘re going to be spending an obscene about of money…
Exactly how obscene an amount of money were you talking about? Just… profane or really offensive?
“You like that part? Where the guy drags her to a shop and dresses her up so she fits into his LA wet dream and doesn‘t look like a…you know…” His voice trailed off, seemingly on purpose.
“Like a whore?” Gabby volunteered. “Okay, not the deeper meaning part, no. But I like the sarcasm and how it’s so Beverly Hills. To a tee.”
“Got that right.”
“You know… this is kind of ironic.”
“What is?”
“Us. Watching this movie. Okay, you said you didn’t want to be alone, tonight. In the movie, Edward picks up Vivian because he doesn’t want to be alone. And she thinks it’s just gonna be this quickie… thing. And I thought I was just dropping you off, on my way home. And he convinces her to stay.” She twisted around so she could see him, face to face. “And you won’t let me leave your house.”
He was almost smiling. Almost. He blinked, slowly, then asked, “If I agree to that irony, am I saying you‘re a prostitute?”
“No. You’re just agreeing to the irony.”
“Then… I should point out that it’s not really irony. More coincidental. You’re a writer. You should know that.”
She laughed, and then blushed. “Touché. I would have caught it, if I wasn’t tired. But what a coincidence, huh?”
Gabby wasn’t sure what she was doing. Or if he would even respond, but fuck it… she was leaving town anyway–may as well go out with a bang. All it took was a few seconds of concentrated staring, her eyes moving from his eyes to his lips and back to his eyes. He picked up on the hint and moved in, brushing his lips across hers and then opened his mouth.
Soft. Slow. Heady. Damn. He was a good kisser.
Et voila. *shrug* I like it.
This week I am trying hard to move Same Time Next Week forward. All I Wanna Do is at a pinnacle point right now and I need to be strategic about how I take it. I have sort of an avalanche of events that are going to hit my main character… the reader needs to feel her absolute despair. It has to be done right. And I feel like I might lose my grip on Same Time if I don’t give it some attention. I still have some fixing that needs to be done with that story.
Seems like I have a lot to do. Maybe I might finish both of these odysseys this year! I def want to finish Same Time before November. My 09 NaNoWriMo cannot still be hanging around when ’10 NaNo starts.
I’ve uploaded my current piece that I am trying to enter into a short story archive. Thoughts would be much appreciated!
I forgot to mention this is a rewrite of a piece I did last year called Calm Waves and Smooth Moon, so if it sounds familiar, it is. :)
I have submitted this story to two archives. Because if I didn’t do it tonight I would obsessively edit more until it was worse and I really think, after getting some thoughts from a friend, that it’s at its best. *breathes sigh of relief*
One of the archives, I didn’t realize they hadn’t posted a story since fall of ’09. That doesn’t bode well. The other is just one of those internet archives… don’t think I’ll have any trouble being accepted but we shall see. Other sites require first right of publishing or… whatever it is they call it, so I can’t submit until I have something I haven’t submitted elsewhere.
I also am reading some advice on being published and submitting your work… I guess I need to prep a couple of different stories, in case an editor wants to read more. Guess I’d better get moving! I’m kind of thinking of digging into my archive and adding to the one about the girl that doesn’t like light. I want to get away from romance for a minute.
Feels good to have something done, though. Really good.
I have great samples that can be polished/ rewritten and submitted, just for practice.
Gee.. I gotta make everything so hard.
I am thinking of revamping Calm Waves and Smooth Moon. Giving it a new title and a little more story and submitting it to a short story archive. Have to check to see if it has to have not appeared elsewhere first, since I put everything in my personal archive.
After that, I’ll get some prompts and get to writing something new as well as plan out the next chapter of All I Wanna Do… I also want to have something submitted to The Glimmer Train by the end of March. I could aim for the end of February but that’s not a lot of time to produce a quality piece.
Going to do it. HAVE to.
Pen in Hand,
I remember back when I was trying to finish this story… last year…. and I said I didn’t even want to hit Chapter 30 because I thought that was ridiculous. Here I am at Chapter 40 and still going strong. In my mind, we have quite a bit more story left to tell. Who knows how many chapters, but we know how I hate to rush through these things. I’m truly enjoying spinning this yarn. It’ll finish when it finishes.
What slows me down, sometimes, is resarch. Research is King and I like to do a lot of it. This chapter found our main characters driving through Tennessee, from Kingsport through Gatlinburg/ Pigeon Forge. Among other storylines, they take a trip to the Pigeon Forge Elvis Museum. And, wow. Just watching the video alone at elvismuseums.com gave me ideas for how to incorporate some fun into the story. Funny thing is that one of my reviews mentioned that they’d been to that very museum. I love when art imitates life… or whatever that saying is.
From there they drove on to New Orleans, destination French Quarter. I’ve never been to N.O. but I’m dying to go someday. If I do, I must stay at the Maison Dupuy Luxury Hotel, just based on the pictures. I love hotels! The most fun in writing this story has been picking out the destinations and trying to weave a description into the story line.
Hoping to get started on a new chapter this week… I don’t want to take a lot of down time and get out of rhythm. Have been doing a lot of blogging and reading of blogs, gathering inspirations here and there. I need some literary inspiration, though, so I’m hoping to get back to my lunch time reading habit this week.
Speaking of inspiration, I am going to be following along on WriteMeg’s Two Girls Read Shakespeare. I’m ashamed to say, as a writer, that I’ve never read much Shakespeare. Amazingly, it wasn’t required in my English classes, even the College Prep ones, and past Romeo and Juliet, I never read any. I studied Communication at University– had I stuck with English as a major I likely would have read my share. So, now I’ve got to make up for it and I’m looking forward to being analytical and discussing literature. Almost makes me want to go back to school.
Almost.
Pen in Hand,
I recently updated my Writers Write page to indicate the current projects I am working on. One of them is something I started last year but I simply wasn’t ready to jump into an original longform piece. SO I kept writing and kept it around and since 2009 was such a good writing year, I decided to make this piece my project for the year. By the end of 2010, I want to have a completed original longform piece. Novel, I guess.
So today I dug out the few thousand words I wrote before I shelved it and have already begun rewriting and reshaping it. I believe I have a good start for my rough draft. I need to put it somewhere so I can stop messing with it and move on to new territory– Chapter 2. Dun dun duuuuuuuunnnnnnn.
I’m doing something I never do on this blog and posting a WIP (Work in Progress). Just ’cause. *shrug*
Title: Tentative Caged Bird Singing
Genre: Fiction, possibly YA
Synopsis: Rachelle is one of eight children, but has never been one to blend in. She’s always been a rebel, doing things her own way, including pushing forward with her dream to sing despite her parents wishes.
Summary: Rachelle Nixon is a superstar: rich, famous, talented, world renowned– in her mind. She has a dream, and that is to sing. She has an obstacle– two of them– and those are her parents. Rachelle feels stuck, trapped by her family and held down by her responsibility to them, caged by her parent’s expectations of her. What she wants most is take the chance of a lifetime and sing her heart out– instead she’s working at a record store and playing mommy to five younger siblings while her parents work to keep the family afloat. When Rachelle’s chance comes, she jumps at it, though the odds are stacked against her. She’s “discovered” by a slick, smooth talking manager with a lot of big names under his belt and high powered connections who claims he can her into pop stardom. Overnight, Rachelle is living the life she’s always wanted to live, believing at first that it’s her dream come true. Slowly– and way too late– Rachelle learns that that the music business isn’t much about music, and no one comes out the way they went in.
Phase: Writing:
Status: Incomplete
Linky: Ch1- CBS