This is What I'm Doing: The January 2014 Edition

I kind of went heads-down over the last few months of 2013, more than I intended or expected to. Between family and work, the holidays, the extreme weather adventures (I know I'm not alone there -- for a while it seemed like the entire continent was snowed in and frozen solid), I was pretty engaged in other things. 

Oh, and there was winning NaNoWriMo, but I kind of feel like I bragged about that one enough, on Twitter and Facebook, when it actually happened. It's worth mentioning, but more because obviously it was taking up a lot of my time and my writing energy in November. 

(It left me with a post-NaNo hangover, too. It was hard to buckle down and write in December. I spent a lot of the month feeling wrung out and like I needed to recharge my creative batteries.)

The important thing is that I used NaNoWriMo to kick off what appears to be my next novel, a science-fiction story with the working title Nobody's Watching. 

So, what am I doing now? 

Nobody's Watching was on hold while I shook off the post-NaNoWriMo doldrums, but I'm about ready to resume work on it. It helps that it's the work-in-progress that I've been taking to my writers group, because I do get motivated by deadlines. 

I've been continuing to take my short fiction to market, so far without success. I currently have three stories out on submission (with a fourth that just got a rejection, so I really need to get it out there again as well). More news on that as it happens. In terms of time and project management, short stories tend to be one of two things for me: the short, sharp idea that gets stuck in my head and won't go away until I write it; and/or creative palate cleansers between long stretches of working on a novel. 

The result of this is that I have a backlog of short fiction pieces in addition to the ones that are currently out to market -- about six or eight, I think, in various states of readiness between "just needs a polish" to "oh my FSM what was I thinking this calls for a page-one rewrite". 

My plan is to work on revising and finishing these stories over the first half of this year, in between working on the big ticket projects -- Nobody's Watching, until it's done. I have a pretty good sense of what the novel after that will be, too, but I'm going to keep my powder dry on that one until Nobody's Watching is actually a finished draft.

In other news, I spent a lot of the fall polishing All That Glitters, and my other big initiative for the New Year is going to be using it to query literary agents and seek representation. I'm not sure how much of this process I really should go into -- certainly I'm not going to name any names, that's just unprofessional. So let's just say that the manuscript is ready, and I've been honing my query letter and, more painfully, my synopsis. And now I'm as ready as I'm going to be. It's time to see if my first novel is ready to fly. 

Nervous? Ha. I'm feeling a combination of heady excitement and stomach-curdling anxiety that reminds me of nothing so much as when I was in theatre. It's exhilarating and terrifying to be confronted with the prospect of taking a step that could lead to either success or showing my ass in public (which has actually literally happened to me a couple of times, but that doesn't seem to make this any easier).

For now, let's just say there'll be more news on that when I have something I can share. 

I'm also continuing to focus on home and family, work and on my own health, the latter of which I sort of lost the thread of over 2013, and need to get back on top of. And there are other creative projects on the horizon, including some interesting potential ones relating to my comics work. Again, more on that when it's less nebulous. 

2013 was a remarkable year, full of peaks and valleys. I did some of my best writing last year, even if it has yet to see the light of day. I also had a personal health crisis that literally could have killed me. The peaks were high. The valleys were real nadirs. All in all, I'm glad it's a new year. 

It's January, 2014 and on reflection, it seems like I've got rather a lot I want to do. It's time to do it. It's time to move forward. I hope we can all move forward, together. And I look forward to telling you about the steps I take in my journey -- and hearing about yours. 

Onward!

This Is What I'm Doing: The October 2012 Edition

Lots of little updates this time out...

The Short Fiction
I have continued to take my short stories out to the market. One advantage of starting with the most prestigious and professional genre publications is that I know the bar is high, and my expectations are therefore low. So far, I've been getting rejections, which I am trying to frame as valuable experience in dealing with the realities of the short fiction markets. Currently, two stories are still out and I'm waiting on responses. If I get a sale, you'll hear about it. Believe me, everyone will hear about that.

The Novel
I have forward momentum on the novel again, at long long last. After letting the notes I got from my esteemed Alpha readers lie fallow for a while, I'm now going through the manuscript and making edits and revisions - if you follow me on Twitter, that's what the #RewriteMonth hashtag is all about.  I'm also making notes for broader, bigger revisions that need a little more thought than "That line's out, that line stays in" - things like fine-tuning character arcs and bringing themes into focus. It's going quickly, and most of the big-picture stuff is going to be a matter of adding touches at a few, key pinch-points across the whole story. Oh, plus one scene that needs to be entirely rewritten, but that should be relatively straightforward.

My goal is to have the new draft done, and out to my Beta readers, before the end of the month. Yes, this month, October. I know it sounds optimistic, but like I said, I have forward momentum at last, and I don't intend to squander it this time. 

The Next Novel
My timeline for the Novel (which I'm calling the Novel because I'm a between names for the darn thing) seems to be sufficiently realistic that I'm thinking about the next big writing project. It's one that's been waiting on the back burner for even longer, a collaboration with my dear friend, once and future partner in wordsmithery, the all-around awesome writer Nicole Winters. It's called Underground. This is going to be fun.

November is of course National Novel Writing Month, so I'm strongly considering taking another stab at NaNoWriMo this year with Underground. Now, I haven't had much success with NaNoWriMo in the past, but I seem to have gotten better at making time in my schedule to write and I've done my own, effective, not-part-of-NaNo Big Pushes on various projects since then. I think it's worth another try, especially since with Underground I'll have a detailed outline and won't be starting cold.  Again, this is something that I'm sure you'll hear all about while it's happening. 

The Comic
I've also been doing some scripting! In September, I started in on really writing Book 2 of Cold Iron Badge, and I took the loose outline from where I left off and turned it into something rather more detailed - with page breakdowns, for instance, so there won't be any pagination surprises this time out - and then started scripting.

I got about a third of the script written before #RewriteMonth started eating all my writing time and energy. Right now, the script is paused, and waiting for me to get back to it. That's looking like it might be a December project. I'd like to finish the script by the end of 2012. 

The Other Comic
It's in the early stages, but Greg Beettam and I have been discussing plans for Xeno's Arrow - and we've got interesting ideas in the works. The question now isn't what we'll do, but when we'll do it

The Fitness
I haven't made a big deal about it, because I wanted to make sure that I was in a groove first, but I've been eating better and getting to the gym more regularly. How is it going? Slow and steady, but well.

Life, the Universe and Everything
There's lots more to talk about, but they're a little more substantive and deserve being discussed at length. I mentioned that I've been making more time to write, but not the whats and the hows. There have been some great developments at home. My children been amazing at transitioning into the new school year and all the changes it brought with it. The progess I've been making on the fronts I mentioned has put me into a positive frame of mind that I've carried through to all the rest of my life, and it feels good.

That's where I am, and how I am, in October 2012. How are you?