Month: August 2024

State of the Blog — Aug 2024

Amazingly, it has been almost four years since I started this blog. It has become such a part of my life that I have a hard time remembering the days when I didn’t send my thoughts out to the internet on a semi-weekly basis.

I strive to document my process, if only for the curiosity of other writers—from my Razor Mountain project documenting the first draft of a novel, to my NaNoWriMo series, to my current series where I’m spending the year writing and submitting short fiction.

My “State of the Blog” posts document the blog itself. I used to do these every six months, but I switched to a yearly schedule in 2023.

Previous Posts

Metrics

  • Years blogging: 4
  • Total posts: 473
  • Total followers: 149
  • Monthly views: 299 (average over last 3 months)

The Year of Short Stories…and Less Blogging

The fairly obvious narrative when comparing the stats to 2023 is that the blog has slowed down considerably. In my first three years, I averaged 126 posts per year, which is about 2.5 posts per week. This year, I produced only 95 posts, or 1.8 posts per week, and the daily posts during last year’s NaNoWriMo even skew that a bit higher compared to the rest of the year. Sheer posting volume isn’t the be-all, end-all for a blog, but it does have an impact. All other things being equal, more posts make the stats go up.

I did plan to reduce my post frequency in 2024, although I ended up posting even less than I planned. Part of that was the intrusion of non-writing priorities. I moved to a new house, and my family and day job have kept me plenty busy.

Part of it was that I didn’t have a project like Razor Mountain, which lent itself to frequent posts. My “Year of Short Stories” series was, in some ways, the replacement for my Razor Mountain series, but that’s one post per week and occasionally less.

Another explanation for these statistics is the sort of content I’ve been posting. Razor Mountain (and the NaNoWriMo series, to some extent) had the advantage of an ongoing story to bring readers back on a regular basis, as well as the “development” portions that were more focused on the writing process. I’m very purposely excluding my actual fiction from my “Year of Short Stories” series, because you can’t sell first rights to a story if it’s already been publicly published—even on a blog. I’m writing approximately the same amount, but less of it is blog fodder.

I also don’t expect that “Year of Short Stories” is always the most exciting content for my readership. I hope it provides some value, if only for writers to compare to their own experiences and expectations, but I do it partly for myself. It gives me a record of what I’ve been working on, and motivates me to keep making progress every week.

New Content

Seeing the WordPress graphs go up is not the most important thing in the world, but I would like to feel that I’m providing something interesting for more readers. To that end, I have been thinking about how to spruce up the blog and post more. However, I am still committing the bulk of my writing time to work that isn’t going up on the blog. I think it’s the only way to progress my writing career. So, I want to post more things that readers like. I just don’t want it to take too much time or effort. Easy, right?

My first new experiment is the Story Idea Vault series, which started this past week. I’m excited about this, because I think most writers like prompts and ideas, and these are easy posts to write. I have huge documents full of story ideas, so I could write weekly posts for years without running out. This also gives me a good excuse to do a little brainstorming every week or two, in order to come up with new ideas.

And while I haven’t been posting as much in 2024, I’ve developed a backlog of half-finished posts. I may put a little more time into finishing some of those to give the blog more life. Still, what I would really like to find is another ongoing series that focuses more on the craft side of writing, as these are the type of posts that have mostly been MIA in the past year.

Razor Mountain

I was recently contacted by one of my old beta readers for Razor Mountain, wondering about the status of the story. I was a little sad to tell them that it’s effectively on hiatus.

As much as I enjoyed the experiment of writing a novel in public, the first draft is really only half of the work. To make it the best book it can be, I would need to dedicate months of effort to revision and critique. That would be a nice second act to the Razor Mountain series, and I do think it’s important to shed light on that part of the process. There is depressingly little writing about the struggles of editing and revision (and not just the grammar and copy-editing parts).

Unfortunately, writing Razor Mountain in public means that it would be very difficult to get a traditional agent or publisher interested in it. Unless the blog suddenly blew up and got millions of views, traditional publishing doesn’t want something that people have already seen. And despite my best efforts, I just can’t get myself excited about self-publishing.

I understand, at an intellectual level, that self-pub is a significant chunk of the landscape these days, and that it’s the way that many authors make their careers. Even so, I grew up in the era where traditional publishing was the only game in town, and I still have a certain…romanticism?…bias?…toward trad pub. Could I feel satisfied with a physical copy of my book, if I hadn’t first convinced a jaded, chain-smoking agent and an overworked, sassy editor that the book was worth spending time and money on? I don’t know. Say what you want about my biases, but we all have to follow the path that feels right. For me, that doesn’t include self-publishing, at least for now.

I haven’t given up on properly finishing Razor Mountain, but I won’t be picking it up again in 2024. I’m enjoying writing short fiction and getting involved in all the aspects of writing from idea to submission. It’s fun and satisfying to produce a heap of stories in the time that one novel would take. That doesn’t mean Razor Mountain is dead. It’s sleeping. I just need to figure out how to get excited about it again.

Thanks for Reading!

If you’re one of my regular (or even occasional) readers, know that you’re appreciated. As writers, we’re all throwing words out into the world and hoping that someone will read them. You doing that for me may not feel like much, but it’s nice to be heard.

If you have any thoughts about Words Deferred, or more generally, what you’re looking for or enjoying in blogs, feel free to drop a comment and let me know.

The Story Idea Vault — Wizard Lawyers

It’s a common misconception that a great idea makes a great story. The truth is that most great stories come down to execution. A great idea with poor execution rarely works, but a great writer can breathe new life into even the most tired tropes.

Like any writer, I have my own treasure trove of ideas that might end up in a story…someday. But why horde them? Instead, I’m opening the vault and setting them free.

Use these ideas as a weekly writing prompt, or come up with your own twist and reply in the comments.

Idea of the Week – Wizard Lawyers

There’s a world where magic is real: a powerful force in politics, war, and religion. But people can’t wield magic on their own; they can only get it from supernatural forces—for the right price.

The wizards who negotiate these contracts are power brokers, lawyers, expert deal-makers, and sometimes thrill-seeking gamblers. They know how to hedge their bets, and might enter into half a dozen interconnected contracts to get what they want while negating the consequences.

What’s the contract that breaks the system? Who brokered it? And what will happen when the most powerful beings in heaven to hell find out?

Year of Short Stories — Week #32

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 4
  • Submissions This Week – 3
  • Submissions Currently Out – 9
  • Acceptances This Year – 1
  • Rejections This Year – 17 (7 personalized)

Goal

Last week I set myself a word count goal: 1,000 words per day. Sadly, I only managed about 50% of that. Most of those words were on my newest story, temp titled The Scout. So far, it’s one of those stories where I am really enjoying certain aspects, and other aspects are very obviously falling short. Stories like that just need time and effort to find the pieces that will click into place and make the whole thing work.

Even though I didn’t meet my goal, it was a useful motivator, so I’m setting the same goal this week (1k words/day).

Submissions and Responses

It continues to be quiet. I received no responses on my current submissions; maybe the editors are all enjoying the last few weeks of summer.

I have purposely stuck to publications that accept simultaneous submissions for my drabbles so that I could submit widely. I sent each of these three stories out again this week. Of course, Murphy’s Law of Short Story Submissions ensures that after weeks with no responses, I’ll eventually get them all back at once.

Goals for Next Week

Once again, I’m shooting for 1,000 words on my works in progress per day, and planning to send out one or two more simultaneous submissions.

Year of Short Stories — Week #31

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 4
  • Submissions This Week – 0
  • Submissions Currently Out – 6
  • Acceptances This Year – 1
  • Rejections This Year – 17 (7 personalized)

Another Story

Last week, feeling blocked on my stories in progress, I started working on a new story. This week, inspiration struck for yet another idea. Since I was excited about that, I let the momentum carry me and started on a fourth story.

I do believe that it’s important to work on finishing things, and that writers can fall into a bad habit of chasing ideas without ever putting in the work to revise and polish. Unfortunately, revision is never as thrilling as that first discovery of a new story, and sometimes working on exciting new ideas can be a good emotional reset. Working on the thing that excites you at the moment can be a good way to boost word count as well.

Simultaneous Subs

This was the second week in a row with no responses to my current submissions. Since I purposely picked publications that accept simultaneous submissions for my drabbles, I should probably send those to at least one or two more places.

Goals for Next Week

This upcoming week, I’m going to try to motivate myself with a word count goal. I plan to write 1,000 words on one of these stories in progress every day. That should get me close to finishing at least one of them—although my first drafts tend to run long.

Year of Short Stories — Week #30

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 3
  • Submissions This Week – 3
  • Submissions Currently Out – 7
  • Acceptances This Year – 1
  • Rejections This Year – 17 (7 personalized)

Release

I’m happy to report that my tongue-in-cheek horror drabble, “Renter’s Dilemma,” is in the anthology Dead Girls Walking (The Red Volume) which released this week. It is available in EPUB and paperback.

Submissions

Since I finally finished my big ‘ol list of publications that seem like they’d be interested in drabbles, I figured I had better send out the ones I’ve had sitting around.

I sent out Tom, Dick, and Larry; A Going Away Party; and No More Kings.

Goals for Next Week

Short update this week. I just didn’t get much done besides submissions.

It’s starting to feel like I haven’t finished a new story in a while, so this week I’m going to focus on really churning through my stories in progress.

Year of Short Stories — Week #29

2024 is my year of short stories. In this weekly series, I talk about the stories I’m working on, from idea and draft to submission.

  • Stories in Progress – 3
  • Submissions This Week – 0
  • Submissions Currently Out – 3
  • Acceptances This Year – 1
  • Rejections This Year – 17 (7 personalized)

No Submissions, No Responses

My stories are currently submitted to publishers with longer turnaround times, so I had no responses this week. It was a nice break to get caught up on other writing tasks. I still haven’t submitted those drabbles that have been sitting around. More on that below.

The Writing Pipeline

Recently, I’ve been thinking about my writing pipeline. When I find myself doing the same type of work (like editing drafts) for too long, I lose focus and slow down. It is good to actually finish projects instead of endlessly jumping between half-finished things, but when I’m getting stuck on a project, it’s better to make some progress on another piece than grind ineffectively.

This week, I tried to diversify my writing more than I have been. I spent some dedicated brainstorming time generating new story ideas, which I haven’t done in quite a while. I also started outlining the new story I mentioned last week, The Vine. Finally, I wrote more of Portrait of the Artist in Wartime, a story where I suspect I will end up with a large word count and have to pare down.

What I didn’t do this week is any editing of Red Eyes, which is the story I was stuck on.

Next week, I’m going to try the same tactic and split my time among a few projects, and I might go back to Red Eyes to see if I can be more productive.

The List

The last thing I did this week is finish compiling my big list of potential publications for submitting drabbles.

One interesting discovery (which is obvious in retrospect) is that many publications will pay a fixed amount per story, and while $5-20 per story doesn’t seem like much, it ranges from a respectable semi-pro to top-tier professional pay rate when the story is exactly 100 words.

My next step will be to rearrange these publications into a rough ranking. I’d like to try more simultaneous submissions, but that will be limited by the amount of time I want to spend submitting.

Goals for Next Week

  • Work on brainstorming, The Vine, Portrait, and Red Eyes – whatever feels most productive
  • Submit some drabbles

The Read Report — July 2024

Since I took a month away from blogging in June (and I was so busy that I only read one book), this will include my June reading as well.

Where possible, I’ve included Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon. If any of these books pique your interest, please use those links. I’ll get a small commission, and you’ll support real book stores instead of a fifth vacation house for a billionaire.

Going Postal

By Terry Pratchett

This is my favorite Discworld book, and Pratchett is at the top of his game. There are a couple of additional books that came after this, but sadly he was likely fighting dementia at that point, and I think later books like Unseen Academicals suffered for it.

Moist von Lipwig is a confidence man who starts the book by getting hanged. He’s given a reprieve by Vetinari, ruler of the city, and given the job of postmaster. The Ankh-Morpork post office is a dilapidated disaster, but he’s aided by Mr. Pump, a golem bodyguard/probation officer, the elderly “junior” postman Groat (who attributes his health to horrifying homemade herbal remedies), and the young postman apprentice Stanley, a boy who isn’t quite all there and has an abiding obsession with collecting pins.

Moist spends the first half of the story looking for ways out of his forced government service. However, he’s a showman at heart, and he soon discovers that his brand of hype and hyperbole is well-suited to getting people excited about sending mail. Unfortunately, the post has largely been replaced by Clacks—a network of semaphore towers that act as a fantasy telegraph system.

The Clacks were built by high-minded engineers, but the original owners have all been ousted or murdered by clever corporate raiders, who are doing their best to extract as much value as possible while running the whole company into the ground. By delivering the mail once again, Moist finds himself in their crosshairs, and it doesn’t help that he’s falling in love with Adora Bell Dearheart, the disaffected, chain-smoking daughter of the Clacks’ dead founder.

Pratchett is a fantastic comedy writer, but he doesn’t get praised enough for his intricate plots or his characters that make you care, even if they’re all rather silly. This book is filled to the brim with all of that. If you’re only going to read one Discworld book, it should be Going Postal.

Poison for Breakfast

By Lemony Snicket

This was a re-read with my children. It is still one of my favorite books, and you can read my review from a couple years ago.

Ender’s Game

By Orson Scott Card

Another re-read with my kids. This was a formative sci-fi book for me when I was young, and it holds up fairly well.

This is one of those books with some content that some adults probably wouldn’t want their kids reading, like children murdering other children. And yet, my children really enjoyed it, and didn’t seem especially traumatized. I guess we’ll see how they turn out.

I appreciate that Ender’s Game is populated by many characters who do terrible things, but the narrative is not judgmental. As a reader, you’re free to form your own opinions about whether each character’s actions are justified or reasonable, without feeling like the book is trying to steer you to a particular conclusion.

It’s a book about growing up, and war, and the terrible things people do to one another, often for reasons that seem justifiable or even absolutely necessary at the time. It is also about the way that history often judges those actions in its own context, ignoring those justifications.

Go: A Complete Introduction to the Game

By Cho Chikun

As I was getting back into Go, I re-read this excellent beginner’s guide in the SmartGo app. Cho Chikun is one of the most famous professional players in modern times, and the Japanese player with the most titles.

This book deftly introduces all the important aspects of Go rules and basic strategy, while alternating chapters about the history and cultural significance of Go. It’s a perfect introduction to the game (or re-introduction, in my case).

Double Digit Kyu Games

By Neil Moffatt

Another book from my SmartGo library.

In amateur Go, players start at a rank of 30 kyu. As they improve, their rank decreases down to 1 kyu, then to 1 dan, and up to 7 dan. As you might expect, players with double digit kyu ranks are beginners and casual players.

While most books about Go are written by pro players for obvious reasons, Moffatt wrote this as a moderately high (1 kyu-ish) amateur. He’s close enough to still remember and understand why the players of these games make the mistakes they do.

Moffatt also goes into more detail than usual in explaining the merits and disadvantages of each move, often exploring various alternatives. They result is a set of thorough game deconstructions that are very useful aids for an amateur player to recognize their own shortcomings.

Lore Olympus, Vol. 1

By Rachel Smythe

I bought this on a whim while on vacation, mostly on the authority of a positive blurb by Kieran Gillian (of Die and other comics), and a brief skimming of the art. Unfortunately, this book was not for me.

I don’t read a lot of romance, but I’m not strictly opposed to the genre. This, however, was just too much irritating teenage angst and not enough mythology for my tastes. When the romance hinges on everybody being afraid to voice how they feel, and the conflict stems from people hating each other for basically no reason, I get bored.

As far as the art goes, the character work is nice, but these characters live in a world composed of colored smears. This lack of any background detail is something that seems to be more and more common in indie comics, and while I understand it, I do miss the crispness that you see more in high budget superhero comics.

Hellblazer: The Red Right Hand

By Denise Mina and Mike Carey

Illustrated by Leonardo Manco, Cristiano Cucina, John Paul Leon

I do love me some John Constantine, but this collection wasn’t my favorite. There are two story arcs here: one where Constantine enters into a trap, and one where he gets out of it.

The typical Constantine story usually has a mystery twist, and this is no exception. Unfortunately, the twist didn’t shock me, it just made me shrug. Maybe if I were reading the series in sequence I would be better prepped as a reader.

It’s also not uncommon for Constantine to have some plan that only gets revealed when everything seems hopeless. Here, he doesn’t have much of a plan at all.

A collection of Constantine’s friends show up midway through, and it feels like deus ex machina, but even they don’t actually do very much. They muddle through, and the eventual resolution to the situation hardly feels like any of the characters had agency.

The last issue in this volume is a stand-alone one-off story, and it’s a classic, solid Hellblazer story. It made me a little sad that the rest of the book didn’t hold up as well.