Episode Two of The Universe of Tristan Johnson!

The voice actress who read my story was really good, I think, especially for an nonpaying gig. I was pleasantly surprised by it.

Here’s the episode, including the Q&A interview following the story:

http://www.tristanpej.com/?p=96

I think I sound nervous and rather, um, manly, but Eric has been arguing with me for the last half hour and claims that I do not sound at all like I have a penis.

"Hello" Appearing on The Universe of Tristan Johnson!

My short story “Hello” will be appearing in audio format on an upcoming episode of the brand new podcast The Universe of Tristan Johnson.

Tristan Johnson is a fellow novice writer who has participated in NaNo with me both of the years I’ve been involved and is also a Youtube vlogger and Blogspotter as well. His website for the show is The Universe of Tristan Johnson and he is, according to comments he’s made to me, always looking for new material. Anyone interested in politics, religion, current events or fiction writing should do themselves a favor and check him out.

We still need to meet up on Skype to do the post-reading interview section (I’m not reading my own story as he’s found real female voice talent to do that for him. Good choice.) and then hopefully the new episode will be up within the next couple of weeks.

I’ve never recorded an interview or had my work published as an “audio story” before, so needless to say I am quite excited.

The Usual Difficulties

A new project, a new set of problems, it seems.

While Eric is reading my (very) rough draft, I’ve been mulling over a new long-fiction concept. At first I was supposed to be writing a winter-themed short story for a friend’s upcoming podcast, but once I realized that this was something much too long for an audio format I resigned myself to having come up with yet another novel idea.

I’m still not all that great with novels.

While some people can apparently come up with a legion of characters, a main plot and a half dozen subplots with ease, I struggle to keep one story line coherent. I’m always afraid that I’m going to end up sounding ridiculous or implausible with my plots and dialogue. I’m beginning to come to the point where I don’t care about the end result and plow forward with a feverish determination, but I still have enough self-doubt that it’s holding me back.

I want to get started on this immediately. One of my biggest fears is the loss of interest in a project, and time and time again I’ve been on fire for an idea only to stop caring after a few short weeks. Now I immediately begin to panic when I don’t set upon a project at the first thought of it, worried that I’ll somehow lose the passion somewhere along the way. I’m fairly certain this line of thinking was responsible for my eighteen-day draft of Teahouse, especially the last two days of it. All I could do was type, screaming silently in my head, “Get it out! Finish it! Don’t stop until you see The End!” I was so worried that I’d quit caring, even that close to the end, that I had to push the story out despite the fact that I could have spent a bit more time working on the details.

Thanks to my “motivation issues,” I now have two hundred pages of plot with no trace of subplot, character details or emotion. Nice.

Here I am now, with another semi-formed story, feeling the urge to push my way through this yet terrified of screwing it up or leaving it half-finished. I suppose I could go back to something I really have left sitting unfinished, but all I can think about right now is this story.

On a related note, Eric is reading my draft of Teahouse now. I told him, jokingly, that he should change his away message to “Reading my girlfriend’s first novel. Don’t bother me.” I didn’t think he’d actually do it, but he did. Something that small and insignificant made me feel giddy.

Here’s hoping the book stands up to some criticism. I’m very nervous waiting for his reaction to it.

Rejection Done Right

Nothing hurts the ego more than being blown off or insulted, and a lot of writers are comprised of more sensitive stuff than others, so sending work out into the great wide world can be potentially painful for some. I know, I’ve been there. As a very young writer, in my late teens and early twenties, I found it very difficult to separate my professional self from my private self and see literary rejection for what it really is, someone letting you know that your work isn’t a good fit for their publication or just any of their upcoming issues.

Sometimes it really stung.

Getting back into the swing of things, I’ve noticed that rejection doesn’t faze me much, if at all, this time around. I’ve received a number of them in the last two years, from one-line “no thank you” type replies to well thought out critiques.

Don’t get me wrong, a “yes” regardless of how it’s phrased will always be more preferable than a polite “no,” but rejection is a part of the life and will never go away. Better to get used to it than it wear you down, no?

That said, I’ve received several decent rejection slips recently. It’s always a disappointment to find out you don’t fit in, but they were written well enough that I’d like to share them here.

The Abacot Journal recently responded to a submission of my short story, Cryptic Coloration.

Dear Jessica,

 

Thank you for your submission to The Abacot Journal’s fifth issue. While I loved the uplifting and unexpected ending to your story, unfortunately, it was not chosen from the wide range of fabulous stories we received. Good luck in your writing, have a wonderful new year, and please consider submitting to us again. 



Alexandra J. Ash


Editor, The Abacot Journal


The Harrow, a publication I’ve been featured in before, weighed in on my submission of My Neighbor’s Apartment not only with a gentle “no” but also some words of both critique and encouragement.


Dear Jessica,

Thanks for submitting 'My Neighbor's Apartment' to The Harrow. We're going
to pass.

While it's a well-written piece, and provides ample atmosphere, I
ultimately found that this is all the story does.

While it's certainly a point of interest that the protagonist's neighbor
has a vacant apartment beside their apartment, the mystery of such a thing
is not quite enough to engage the reader. There needs to be some sort of
conflict - internal or external - that is provided to draw the protagonist
to the place on the basis of her own decisions. The curiosity of our
narrator simply isn't enough... but perhaps there is a strong reason why
she is so curious. (And if that curiosity is born out of a rather banal
existence of reading spam email - the dullness of the character's
predicament needs to be highlighted strongly in the piece - a violent or
otherwise awful death as a result of her investigations, for example,
displaying that both fates are equally dreadful.)

Regardless, I think if you can provide such a thing here, the rest of the
story may write itself, and the piece will be stronger for it, overall.

Do try us again.



Regards,

Michael R. Colangelo


I now have quite a bit to think over. Accusing me of only providing atmosphere isn’t anything new – I do it to myself all the time. In fact, this is one of my major weaknesses. I’d rather focus on character, setting and atmosphere instead of plot, and that provides for a very lopsided story. Apparently only Murakami Haruki has license to get away with those kinds of shenanigans.

One of the things I enjoy most with rejections are the encouragements for resubmission. Not only are they show at least some interest in you as a writer but they are also proving to the more sensitive types that “No, you don’t really suck as a human being. Your story just didn’t work, and it’s not universal, it’s just this one time. Keep showing us your stuff.” It’s hard to convince either yourself or other writers this very important fact. Usually it has to come from the publisher.

Unfortunately, I won’t be having any time left over to rewrite My Neighbor’s Apartment for quite some time. I’m still trying to proof In the Teahouse before Christmas so I can have a copy of the rough draft printed at Staples for Eric. I had a few run off (at twenty bucks apiece!) to pass around for reading/editing purposes but it appears my initial proofing glossed over several glaring mistakes.

After that, I agreed to write a winter-themed short story for a friend’s upcoming podcast. So far the plan includes him reading the story and then the two of us recording some kind of dialogue discussing the piece and writing in general. I’m excited but the business of the season has prevented me from my usual brainstorming sessions. I’ve only got bits and pieces of ideas so far. And two very large holidays are looming in the horizon.

Busy, busy.

New Blog!

Actually, it’s a bit of a companion blog to this one. I’ve been meaning to write more about things I’ve read recently, and this seemed as good a place as any. I’ve kept a running tally of books read over at LibraryThing all year, but I find I encourage myself to write more and dig deeper when I’m blogging and not when I’ve just finished reading a book.

Please, feel free to leave comments or reading suggestions of your own. Over the next few days I hope to expand my list of books read and leave reviews or comments for most of them.

The blog can be found at http://alookatabook.blogspot.com/.

The Purple Bar and Beyond

Oh, it’s finally over! I verified my rough draft’s length and got the certificate and purple bar to show for it. I suppose I should be proud of what I’ve gotten done so far, but all I can think about is digging into the draft and revising it. I promised myself I’d give it time to cool down so I could go over it with a more analytical eye, though, so in the meantime (meaning the next month or so – I’d like to start on this early in the new year) I have other projects to focus on.

The Woman Without, last year’s NaNo project and my first attempt at a full-length novel, is still only halfway complete. I had a hard time staying focused with it, most likely because I was winging it plot-wise the whole time. This year I used ten “key scene” note cards for Teahouse and that ended up working out well. I’d like to go back and summarize my first story so far into single ideas for each chapter and give the story the note card treatment as well. Hopefully I’ll be able to salvage the novel that way.

A friend of mine is starting his own writing-related podcast this month, and for his debut episode he asked if he could read one of my short stories and then record a discussion between us to play afterwards. I’ve never been too fond of hearing my own voice (it’s a bit unusual, and certainly lower than most) but seeing as I’m a huge fan of podcasting in general I’d have to be somewhat crazy to pass up that kind of opportunity. Rather than giving him something unpublished that I’ve had on my hard drive for a while (most of my newer stuff has been sent out within the last few months) I think I’m going to write something especially for the show. The idea I have now is a hybrid of science fiction and horror, a style I’ve never successfully tackled before. We’ll see how it works out, I suppose. If I fail I have the entire month to come up with something new.

I have other things to keep me busy, as well. I recently rejoined the Critters online critique group after lapsing a few years ago. This time around I’m having a lot of fun reading other people’s stories, rather than finding them burdensome. I’m still having difficulties crafting critiques that feel satisfactory to me, but the more I write them the easier they are becoming. To be honest, one of the stories I read today makes me regretful I don’t own a publication that could buy it. It’s that good. I’m not sure when or if I’m going to submit my own material. I haven’t gotten past the “force your writing upon your loved ones” stage yet, though I’m seriously considering it. If I’m going to entertain thoughts of querying agents then I’m going to have to become a bit more realistic about opening myself up to criticism.

I’ve been thinking about starting another blog, as well, not for writing but for reviewing. This year I’ve so far read fifty-five books, and I’d like to read at least five more, if not ten. Many of these are books I read when I was younger (Poppy Z. Brite, L.J. Smith, Christopher Pike, etc) that I come back to out of a sense of fond remembrance or out of curiosity. Sometimes I want to see if the stories I enjoyed hold up to the test of time and changing tastes. Some do, some don’t. I think it might be fun to keep a permanent record of all of the books I read and how I feel about them when I’m finished with them. I know it would take some time to get caught up to where I am now (should I decide to review everything I’ve read so far, which I’m not sure I’ll do) but I think it could be fun.

Fifty-Two Thousand Words, Two Hundred Pages

Well, the rough draft of In The Teahouse is finished. I came home from work yesterday with a fire lit under me and wrote about seven thousand words, finishing up with an hour left before bedtime. I spent this afternoon getting the formatting down, exporting the pieces into one .doc file using an awesome piece of writing software , Scrivener, that I've been using for a year or two now. I've never compiled so many pieces into one document before, though.

My first novel-length rough draft. This is a milestone, right?

Now comes the hard part, something that I’m simultaneously looking forward to and dreading - editing. Now, editing other people’s work comes easy for me. People ask me all the time to go over things they’ve written: papers, correspondence, memos, etc. No big deal. But now the tables are turning and I feel like I’m giving a lump of my own flesh out to people to hack apart and put under a microscope.

This almost feels more invasive than my yearly exam. Almost.

I need this, though. I know I need it, and I want it, but I hope the people I choose to read this end up helping. Nothing could be worse than giving out two hundred pages of direct imagination-to-paper daydreaming and getting nothing but one-word or one-sentence replies in return.

The way I see it, I’ve received rejection slips before, even the cruel form letters that editors use when they’re flooded but always end up seeming more like a personal insult than a convenience. If I can get through those, I suppose I can get through this. It’s what I need to make the second draft plumper and smoother, and unless I plan on putting this in a manuscript box and hiding it in my closet (which I don’t) it’s going to be touched on by other people’s eyes at one point or another.

Might as well be now.

In the mean time, I’m going to pick up some books on revision and plotting and go from there.

I am so glad to be able to read other people’s fiction again, too. As soon as I started this project I was hit with cravings for at least ten different books. Putting them off was agony.