Progress Report

Rookie mistake! So, some magazines require anonymous submissions. All of them, though, require Shunn standard, with or without your name on it. I write all my stories to Shunn  standard (if you are an aspiring writer, Shunn is your bible. In fact, if you are any writer, Shunn is your bible) so my name appears on the first page in the address block, on the header of every page except the first, and under the title. Before I submitted anonymously to this magazine, I deleted my address block and reminded myself to make sure to remove my last name from the header. I forgot to remove my name from the header another time because I thought my name only appeared on the first page and forgot about my last name on all the subsequent ones. This time, though, I forgot to remove my name from under the title. Immediate rejection. Gah! I sweet talked them and got to resubmit. The craziest thing though, was that I went looking for my name and didn't notice that I had left it directly under my titl...

I knocked out almost 2,000 words today to complete my latest story, "Next Breath." Of course, it's far from actually complete since I now need to take a look at the story as a whole, and make sure there are no plot holes or grammar whoopsies. I also think I should try to gussy up the language a little. Throw some lipstick on that pig. I feel like it turned out good, though. We'll see in the following weeks. I won't be able to give it much time to cure, though, since I intend to sneak it into this quarter's Writers of the Future contest. That gives me two weekends to make it as pretty as possible. One thought I had was printing it out and retyping the whole thing. I haven't revamped a story like that yet, but I hear it helps. I'm becoming a good editor thanks to my experiences with Scribophile, so maybe I can look at my story more like a reader and get it really popping. I intend to get going on my next story as soon as possible. Whether it's the s...

I posted a new book review on Goodreads . I'm sure having problems finding a decent book to read this year. Although my latest read is pretty fun. I didn't write too much today. I've been kind of stuck with the two stories I created recently. I just don't know how they end yet. If I knew how to end them then I could figure out how to get there. As it stands, I'm just hammering off a few words here and there and I'm not too thrilled with how they are unfolding. Maybe I will do what I did with "Broken Gold" and excise a bunch of words and go in a different direction. In a perfect world, I'd like to submit one of them to Writers of the Future contest before the month is up. I got two rejection letters in one day on September 1st, to my dismay. One puts "Paradise Burned" at 20 rejections. A new record. It's looking more and more likely that it will end up on Wattpad . I've eased up on submissions this month mostly because there are a...

In an unusual turn of events, I wrote words for two different stories today. My tally is 1,400 words, but only 500 for my "Finder" story and 900 for my "Next Breath" story. These forward footsteps have been hanging in my brain for a little bit now and I decided I would take some time to push both stories forward. I was naturally a little concerned that the different styles might bleed into each other, but I think we're all good! I had been slacking a little on website (and Blogger) updates for the summer months as holidays took me to different places away from the keys. I'm back up and running now. Even though I only knocked out 1,400 words of prose, I also wrote a new ClinTalks for my site  and Medium . I'd like to write one at least one ClinTalks per year, so I decided for my birthday (today) I would gift my website a short blurb about sports. In the world of my submissions, I sent off "Broken Gold" a week or so ago and expect to start hearin...

During a power outage, I decided it was the perfect time to start figuring out my two newest short stories. Which is really cool, by the way, because I don't think I've ever had two simultaneous stories in the forge before. The trick will be to keep them distinct from one another. And I'm not sure if I will bounce back and forth between the two, or if one will overwhelm my brain more than the other. In either case, I hashed out a few new ideas and did some character development. No more words on them yet. But it's coming. The real story here is how well "Broken Gold" turned out. "Broken Gold" is a trial run for (potentially) my next novel about a treasure hunter whisked into a world-ending conspiracy. Its prequel, "Broken Gold," has significantly lower stakes and takes place on Cuba. After cracking the story and pounding out almost 3,000 words the other weekend, I let the story stew a little. I also asked myself "What's the point o...

The other day, I decided to force my writing juices to the surface. I hammered out a page of a story I'm calling "Next Breath" and the first page of another story called "Finder" (working title). Both stories have hidden plots--just the idea is there. Even the characters aren't fully formed yet. But it seemed to have worked. I sat down to work out some of the details on those one-pagers and got smacked with an epiphany about "Broken Gold." I had to excise 700 words to resume in a different direction and it took an additional character introduction, but I figured it out! I crushed a further 2,800 words to cap it off. It will need some work, but the ending is in place. It even turned out better than I thought it would. Now, are the juices still flowing? Can I drop back into one of those one-pagers and knock out some more words? I did the one-pager treatment on "Thieves of Chikara" and got a really good story out of the technique. Maybe this...