Written in Electric Stone

Dear Me,

What would you like me to call you, Me? Hmm, let's go for second person. We'll try to keep this as simple as possible.

You did okay with the promises you made to yourself last year, but then you didn't write them down. That makes it easier to cheat. You spent fall working your way through several writing books, using realistic stories to practice the skills you learned. You wrote a little poetry, something you had never attempted before. During the summer you completed a first draft of a novel, Complexity. Your review total went up to 300 by June and 400 by August, and now you're well on the way to your goal of 500 by the start of June. The only goal that didn't work out was revising Complexity during the school year, but you and I knew that was going to be a little dicey, didn't we, Me? The standard advice is to write something every day, but whoever made that up must not have been a homeschool mom with a part-time job on the side.

Moving right along:

Through February:

Continue working on speculative fiction stories and poems, and consider submitting some of them to sci-fi/fantasy anthologies. You have five drafts in your Inventions folder, but all of them need revision. And they'll get it! Between WYRM, Chatterbox, and a couple quality forums on this site, you've got a pretty terrific reviewing posse. Three stories and one poem submitted to the anthology people. Update 4/09: The guy got back to me on one of the stories at least. It got rejected. He said the writing was a little rough, and if I had reviewed it I would have said about the same. I don't expect to hear any more about it. Entered an old one, The Fairy's Kiss, for another anthology.Update 8/09 Also rejected. The person who wrote said it was amateurish, not professional. I'm a little fuzzy on how to fix that one. And a guy on the site is putting out an anthology that will have Actually, another old story, in it. That's pretty cool. I put in all the effort I could on the new ones, and I know it wasn't inadequate; I can live with whatever results.

March through May:

Work on stories and poems that center on the worlds of your new novella, Mythology, and Complexity. Come up with a list of ten short story ideas for each project, then complete at least two from each list. For Mythology: I've ended up with two three four five more chapters instead, plus several ideas. I'm just going ahead and writing the thing. For Complexity: Well, I just didn't do it, that's all. But I have an outline I can live with. I need to work more on the characters, then write. (Sometime in May, come up with an outline and blurb for both the novella and the novel, and consider possible changes to titles and character names. From this organizational and creative work, you can plan how to balance the rest of the writing. {e:check3) Done, done, all done, as of May 29. I'm ready to rumble, creatively speaking.

Your review total should be up to 500 by June, Way early on this one. It wasn't very ambitious. always with the emphasis on quality reviews.

June through August:

Work on both Mythology and Complexity. It will probably come down to working simultaneously on a first draft of the former and a second draft of the latter. Last summer you discovered how difficult it can be to keep a main theme in mind when working on a longer piece; the nuts and bolts of plot, dialogue, and such can overwhelm the more intuitive parts of writing. Let's identify, right now, a couple themes to keep in the mix. This went way too slowly. However, I'm doing Complexity for NaNo and it's working out. Drafting a book with such a complicated plot simply works better with the added focus committing to something like NaNo provides. I'll probably do something similar with Mythology a few months down the road.

For Mythology, keep in mind readers' point of view on the subject of eating animals. It's a touchy subject. When the dragons are deciding what makes a species sentient -- identifying creatures which, according to their moral code, they cannot eat -- remember that real people have feelings about eating cows, or deer, or doves. These are strong feelings that go beyond the rational, and that deserve respect. Dragons may need to work their laws out logically, but readers won't necessarily identify with their ways. So take care.

In Complexity, there needs to be a certain mood that pervades plot details and such. Remember the mystery you felt as a girl? When you thought the chirping of crickets was the sound the stars made, or when it seemed impossible that a rainstorm ruffling the walnut leaves at night didn't have something to tell you? If you can remember that, you can put those feelings into the writing too.

Finish working your way through Style: The Basics of Clarity and Grace, by Joseph M. Williams done andThe Discovery of Poetry, by Frances Mayes. I'm trying out some of the forms as I go. I've done a sonnet and a sestina. Not my usual style, but fun to try. Will finish the book today.Once school's over you have a mess of sci-fi and fantasy books on the to-read list, and more to discover. (Hint: Head over to http://www.goodreads.com/ and plunder the reading lists of your fellow Wyrmies.) Work the review total up to 550. I think I'm up to 550 already (mid-April). But I want to revise this. I think I can finish these two books by the end of June. Today I bought a couple books to spend the rest of 2009 working through, starting after school's over: One Year to a Writing Life, by Susan Tibergien, and The Poetry Home Repair Manual, by Ted Kooser. You have no idea how much I'd like to start an both these books right this minute, but I'll wait till I have time to do them justice.

September through December:

This will depend how it goes in summer. If you come up with a draft you're happy with, great. If you come up with something usable, use it. There's always more work to be done. And if the summer doesn't go so well, at least you know where to find the “Open new document” button on the trusty laptop. Since I'm still drafting Complexity, not much to worry about here. It's slow but steady progress. Also, I'm taking an online writing class through the UW that I probably won't finish till the end of the year.

So there it is, written in virtual stone. Now it's up to you, Me! Make me proud of you.

Best wishes,

You (No, that doesn't work.)
Me (That either.)
Cathy (There!)

ps: Special bonus goal: Have a "My Rating System" item up by the time this contest is judged. The prize for meeting this goal will be a peach pie! Got it, in very -- uh -- basic form. Okay, it sucks wind. Still earns a pie. 8/09 I have one I really like now. See "Those Little Stars" .

More colorful ps: It's mid-November now, and there's a couple notes I want to make about my progress that don't fit into the paragraphs above.

October: Got about 2/3 of the way through a University writing class. Getting professional feedback is not only helpful, I feel it's necessary at this point if I want to make any real progress. I'm keeping Laurel's critiques in their own file and I'm going to go through them in detail before I go on to the last part of the class (it's self-paced), but boiling down: She says I write pretty well overall, but unevenly. I do pretty well with making up plotlines and characters, but don't always get the right words on the page to make them come across. Sometimes she can't understand where I'm going with parts of it. Other than that, I need to take more care with style and not be satisfied with anything less than a thorough job of editing. Also, assignments need a last read-through before I hit Send. (Since I usually submit the things when I'm on my way out the door to work, I have an excuse. But I don't need an excuse, I need to get things right!)

November: I became a NaNo winner on the 21st, with 50K worth of Complexity drafted. This does not include the chapters I worked on during the summer, and there's about 10K to go before it's done. This was a very good experience. I will probably draft longer work in about this same way in the future -- that is, by taking it fast and working on it every day with no breaks till it's done. Knowing that this can be accomplished in a month or less gives me the confidence to know this is doable.

I submitted some things this year in various places, and it was all rejected. This wasn't unexpected, and since I did it more for the experience of submitting that anything else I'm only a wee bit disappointed. I'm ready to move on from this base of experience. I got comments back from three editors. The gist of these comments is the same, and fits with what Laurel tells me: I can write entertainingly and come up with imaginative, original work, but the "craft" part of it is uneven. In the details of the things the editors choose to comment on, I think I see the place in my writing process where this happens. Here's how this goes (for a short story):

1. Make up a story and get the whole thing on the computer in a day or two
2. Read it through, clarify and correct, and post it as a static item on WDC
3. Get some reviews. Usually I have to ask for them.
4. Use the reviews, and any second thought that have occurred to me in the meantime, as a springboard for revisions.
5. Put the story through a Chatterbox reviewing session. These comments will be stronger and more detailed than an average review. Plus since I know all the people (accomplished writers, all of them), I can interpret their reactions better than I could otherwise.
6. Do a final draft, really combing through the think before submitting it.

It's between steps 5 and 6 that I'm coming up short, mostly I think because by that time I've looked at the story so much that my head gets all muddly. I don't focus on that combing as well as I should. Several edits may have parts that don't mesh well, but I don't see that until someone points it out. I need to find a way to motivate myself on that very last step, the careful read-through, without just giving up in exhaustion and sending out work that isn't really finished. This may involve chocolate and a walk through Cherokee Marsh to clear my head, and a trip to Borders when it's over with. Seriously, I don't think I reward myself enough for all this hard work.

December: I plan to join a "submitting" group and consider whether I'm ready to re-join WYRM. I'll get the first few chapters of Complexity ready for reviews. I'll finish the University class. Other than that, I'm ready for some time off:

- One week away from WDC for sure
- A private NaNo celebration down at Hilldale. (Good food, an arty movie theater, a new Title Nine store, a running shoe store, and a bunch of other shops. I'm gonna have a blast.)
- A lot of time with family, and fixing up the house, and getting some clothes and winter boots that aren't falling apart.