Gosh, is it that time of week already? You can tell things have gotten busy for me; I’ve gone from thinking wait, what? It’s Friday again already? Didn’t I just do a Writing Update, like, three days ago? To wait, what? It’s Friday again already? Didn’t I just do a Writing Update, like, yesterday?
But, alas, time continues its relentless march. And so here we are. Another Friday. Another update.
And…well, in some ways, this past week wasn’t much different from the one that came before. Progress on actual writing has been slow, but at least somewhat steady: between Chronicles of Usi book 1, the new Blueblood story I’m working on, and the Kosan rewrite, I’ve got a lot of different things to chip away at. And, of course, that’s not even considering the edits I’ve got coming up (for The Ravage and Nightmares Inc.), or the dang 2nd Realm, which I still need to finish.
All of that is pretty much going the way it was a week ago: slowly. I’ve had a few good writing days here and there, but overall I haven’t been able to write at nearly the frenetic pace I’d written at while working on The Ravage. But, then again, I’ve literally never been able to maintain such a torrid pace for so long: I did, after all, write a 73,000-word novel in under a month. That’s a pretty ridiculous pace to keep up long-term, especially with all the other things I have going on in my life right now. Maybe if I had no thesis project to worry about, I’d be able to get my words per day up to 4,000 or even 5,000, but with my schoolwork and various other obligations to take care of, that leaves only a certain amount of time and energy for writing.
Still, though, despite the fact that not as much writing has gotten done, my mind hasn’t slowed. All my different ideas for all the different worlds I’ve created have still been churning around in the hurricane that is my brain, and this has led to one major new development: the second blueblood story is going to be a novel. Surprise, surprise. Yes, once again I started writing something thinking it’d be a short story, only for it to turn into a novel as I wrote it. 2023 has really seemed to be the year for story ideas just ballooning on me. And so, with this new story – for now just titled Blueblood – set to be a novel, I’m thinking I might set it aside for a bit in order to focus on Usi Book 1, then maybe return to it once that’s done.
The other major development: I got a whole bunch of new rejections! First, I finally heard back about Endure: and, as is often the case in my writing life, my cynical side turned out to be right. Over four months of waiting, and I got a simple rejection, with no feedback. Sigh. Well, I guess the fact it took them so long to get back to me maybe means it got through the first round of slush readers. Maybe.
If that wasn’t enough, though, A Test of Doubt also got a rejection, and Find and Exterminate got rejected twice. Yep, two rejections for the same story in the span of, like, a week. When you’ve been doing this for as long as I have, you do mostly get numb to the rejections…but at the same time, when it’s been so long since you published anything, or since anyone in the industry even gave you a sliver of positive validation for your work, you do start to doubt yourself.
Part of me thinks this might be a problem of style, or subject matter: I’ve begun to notice that the world of science fiction and fantasy has swerved very much literary in recent years, especially in the world of short fiction. This, of course, pretty much runs the opposite of my style: where literary fiction prizes flowery, elegant prose, my prose is more like a jackhammer: blunt, workmanlike, jarring. (Or, at least, that’s how I like to think my prose is). In addition, literary fiction prizes the inner lives of characters, and their growth and development, above all else. And while this is a vital aspect in just about any story, it’s not be be-all-end-all for me. Part of what I love about stories, be they on the page, on the screen, or wherever, are the thrilling chases, the climactic duels, the shocking twists. And yes, a lot of that is achieved through character, but from what I’ve seen, there doesn’t seem to really be as much of a place for short stories with those elements anymore. A lot of sci-fi and fantasy now – and again, this is especially true in the world of sci-fi and fantasy short stories – are pretty much just Hemingway in space, or Hemingway with magic. It seems to me that writers like Hemingway – who is to literary fiction what Tolkien is to modern fantasy – have begun to exert more and more of an influence on science fiction and fantasy, making them less the literature of ideas and the literature of the fantastical, and more like, well, your standard “slice of life” story.
But hey, maybe I’m just bitter. After all, the possibility also exists that I’m just a terrible writer. Well, OK, maybe that’s overstating it. Maybe it’s better to say: it’s possible my writing is still plagued by fatal flaws that require the attention of a dedicated editor. That’s why, when The Ravage has gone through several edits and a round of beta readers, I plan to send that one off to a professional editor, like I did with Kosan. My hope is that, by next year (or maybe even later this year), I’ll have enough money saved up to hire a pro to do a full run-through of The Ravage. Getting feedback from an editor can sometimes be a painful experience – I’ve heard of pros with 20 books under their belts who still scream into a pillow after getting an editorial letter – but, much like the last one was, it’ll be a great chance for me to grow and hone my talents, and also bring The Ravage closer to being in a publishable state.
I skimmed a few sections of The Ravage recently, and while, yes, I am extremely biased when it comes to my own work, I thought some of the big moments in that book were pretty powerful, if a bit clunky. It does still need lots of editing: I’ve said that before. But even so, I really believe in this book. I really believe that, under the currently-rough exterior, there’s at least a pretty good story. Maybe not an all-time classic, but a pretty good one. And yes, I know, all authors believe in their work. Every single one of the millions and millions of books published to Amazon every year were written by an author who believed in it. But if you don’t have that belief…well, what in the hell are you even doing?
Oh well. Guess I’ll just have to stay the course. And hey, even though I’ve felt unproductive lately, and this latest flurry of rejections has left me dejected, these first three months of 2023 have actually been pretty successful, all things considered. I finished a new novel, albeit a short one. I finished the new Nightmares Inc. ending. I wrote several short stories. I got a decent start on two more novels. And I did it all while also having to deal with schoolwork and with the various obligations of life in general. I’ve had entire years that weren’t this productive. And if I can do this three more times, I’ll have had by far the most productive year of my life…right on the heels of 2022, which itself was a record-setting year for me.
So there you have it. The first quarter of 2023 has, all in all, been pretty good, writing-wise. Could it have been better? Sure. But what couldn’t? Getting rejections is disappointing, sure, but I’ve been doing the legwork. I’ve been making clear, measurable progress. The wheels turn slowly in the world of writing, but I feel like I’m getting there.
Slowly, but surely.
Anyway, that’ll be all for now. Until next time, have fun, stay safe and keep reading.
