Category: Write 1/Sub 1

Write 1/Sub 1 check in: week 10, the one with snowstorms and stomach flu

Week 10! We’re into double digits, folks! Despite snowstorms and long commutes, and my daughter coming down with a nasty stomach flu, I conquered another Write 1/Sub 1.

This coming week I also want to work in some revisions, if for no other reason than I’m running out of stories for the submission half of the challenge. I have a handful of drafts and I hope to polish at least one of them up for the coming week.

Writing:

  • Untitled flash fiction, ~ 1,150 words: I’ll cut it down to about 1,000 words before I submit this. Some of those words are throat-clearing.
  • Untitled something-or-other, ~ 1,500 more words, in progress

Rejections:

  • The Patron Saint of Lost Things, this boomeranged back so fast, if I hadn’t ducked, I would’ve ended up with a concussion.  
  • Land of the Free (Haircuts), a narrative verse I sent out last year. 

Submissions:

  • The Patron Saint of Lost Things 

Acceptances:

  • None

Write 1/Sub 1 check in: week 9, the one with the even weirder prom date

Week 9! I worked on a longer story this week. (Novelette? Novella? Only time and word count will tell.) I was a little worried because I knew I couldn’t finish it during the week, but still needed my write 1. But Friday afternoon, while I was driving home in rush hour traffic, an idea hit me (kind of felt like that, too).

I made it home with the idea still in my head, jotted down what I needed to, and then wrote it up yesterday. This is how The Short, Sweet Life of My Invisible Prom Date was born. It includes the line:

Now, it probably doesn’t surprise you that there isn’t a patron saint of prom.

Writing:

  • The Short, Sweet Life of My Invisible Prom Date, ~ 1,600 words
  • Untitled something-or-other, ~ 3,000 words, in progress
  • Breaking the Unwritten Rules in Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction assignment: 250 words class assignment

Rejections:

None this week. However, my submission tracker tells me I should be getting some soon. 

Submissions:

  • The Life Expectancy of Fireflies AKA the neck tattoo story. I’m not sure about this one, or its pretentious title, so I tossed it into a flash fiction contest. We’ll see what happens. 

Acceptances:

  • None

Published:

Write 1/Sub 1 check in: week 8, the one with the weird prom date

Week 8! Oddly enough, after I complained about last week’s ebb of creativity, I was struck with a story. Or rather, struck with a title and first line.

The title:

The Most Miserable Prom on Planet Earth

The first line:

My prom date is a space alien.

Despite its beginnings, it has no trace of science fiction or fantasy. Really. I scribbled down the title and that first line on Sunday, then wrote the story on Monday. I won’t say it came from nowhere, but it was unexpected. So considering how busy the week was, I got my writing and subbing in and I was quite pleased.

Writing:

  • The Most Miserable Prom on Planet Earth, ~ 2,000 words
  • Breaking the Unwritten Rules in Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction assignment: 350 words on a dialogue scene

Rejections:

  • The Madness in King’s End But! This is a rejection-plus. I didn’t win the contest I entered it in, but the story was one of two honorable mentions. This pleases me immensely, since the contest was for mystery fiction, and this story is more mysterious than mystery.

Submissions:

  • The Madness in King’s End (and yes, I sent it right back out again)
  • It Only Takes a Minute (this one too from last week)

Acceptances:

  • None

Published:

  • Payment My “it doesn’t get much shorter than this” short story went live at Literary Juice. 

Write 1/Sub 1 check in: week 7, the one with all the rejections

Week 7! I’m hanging in there, although I must admit, I slowed down a lot this week, got all panicky, and then topped off my week with three rejections. However, I do feel stories and words gathering in the back of my mind. With a little luck, the ebb will soon be over.

Writing:

  • Lost and Found
    • Poem of this title
    • 100-word flash fiction of this title

Yes, it’s true. I wrote two very short, but different, pieces and gave them the same title. I. Was. Inspired. (Not.) Neither one may go out, but when I made this Write 1/Sub 1 pact with myself, I defined “write 1” as something I could potentially send out, not a scene or rambling words, or whatever. But, speaking of rambling words:

  • Breaking the Unwritten Rules in Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction: 1,200 words on a character sketch assignment

Rejections:

  • Just a Matter of Time
  • It Only Takes a Minute
  • One Good Turn

Submitting:

  • Just a Matter of Time, back out it goes. Bye-bye!

Acceptances:

  • None

I’ve been waiting for this week to happen, by which I mean, the week where the flood of rejections came in and my creativity was at its lowest. From looking at my submission tracker, I knew I was (over)due for this sort of rejection storm. This is what happens, of course, when you submit something every single week–they come back, sometimes all at once.

Write 1/Sub 1 check in: week 6, the one with Girl Scout cookies

Week 6! Despite the 200 hundred boxes of Girl Scout cookies in my living room–that need a home that isn’t my living room–I had a very good writing week. Here’s what I did:

Writing:

  • It Only Takes a Minute, 247 words, for the Flash Fiction Chronicles String of 10 contest
  • The Weight of Secrets, short story of some length. I wrote it longhand and it’s still in my notebook, so I don’t know the exact word count.

Submitting:

  • It Only Takes a Minute, since I wrote it for the contest, why not actually submit it too?
  • The Madness in King’s End, to a local mystery contest. However, my story is probably more fantasy than mystery, so I’m not holding my breath on this one.

Rejections:

  • None!

Acceptances:

  • Payment, that even shorter (25 words) version of Cash or Check received an acceptance from Literary Juice for their Pulp Fiction section, where the story must be exactly 25 words with a one word title. (Now you know why I changed the title.) Oddly enough, it’s a story with a Girl Scout cookie theme.

Published:

I also started an online class this week at The Loft Literary Center,  Breaking the Unwritten Rules in Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction. I’m all about the rule breaking. The next couple of weeks are going to be very busy, so this Write 1/Sub 1 thing may be more of a challenge. It’s like a cliffhanger–stay tuned to see if I can make it all work. 

Is Your Writing Stuck Because Your Brain has Plateaued?

I love this post from Rosanne’s blog. It captures one of the reasons I’m participating in Write 1/Sub 1 this year. Give it a read–as you can see, it applies to more than just writing.

rosannebane's avatarBane of Your Resistance

By Sean D’Souza

I’m delighted to introduce you to today’s guest blogger, Sean D’Souza, Chief Brain Auditor for Psychotactics. Sean is a fellow brain geek — fascinated by the human brain and able to translate what he discovers into engaging articles (as you’re about to see). He is the author of The Brain Audit—Why Customers Buy And Why They Don’t. Visit the Pyschotactics website for more articles by Sean including a free report on “Why Do Most Headlines Fail?”

As you read’s Sean article, consider how much of your writing resistance is caused by your brain plateauing…

Imagine you had thirty-three seconds to pick up a glass of water, take it across the room, and throw the water down the sink.

Could you do it?

Sure.

And you wouldn’t need more than ten seconds to do the task, especially if the sink isn’t very far away. Now give…

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The Burden of So Many Roses: Milestone story

Falling Roses

So today, The Burden of So Many Roses is live over on Kazka Press, where the theme this month is an undelivered valentine. My guess is (I haven’t read all the stories yet) that if you’re not a fan of gooey Valentine’s Day stories, you’ll be happy with the fare offered up this month.

At least, mine isn’t gooey.

It is, however, a milestone story for me. Here’s the breakdown:

1/3/2013: finished the draft

1/13/2013: sent to Kazka Press

1/30/2013: accepted

2/5/2013: published!

Not only is that one of the fastest turnaround times for me, submission to acceptance, it is the fastest I’ve ever drafted/revised/polished a story and sent it out. That being said, Kazka Press has a list of prompts on their submission page, and I had that undelivered valentine fermenting in the back of my mind for the entire month of December. That probably helped.

One of my goals this year is to figure out how to maintain a steady pace of writing while dealing with the ebbs in my creativity. And ebb it does. To the point where I’m all reclined on the fainting couch, hand on forehead, and despairing, I’ll never write again!

But since I always do, I’ve stopped believing myself when I get this way. This is why Write 1/Sub 1 is such a challenge. If I don’t write one, I’ll run out of things to submit. But it’s teaching me that:

  • I can write more than I think I can.
  • I have more story ideas than I think I do.
  • No one story concept is like another. Some tumble out like gifts, some I pick at, bit by bit.
  • There’s no wrong way to draft a short story.

Sometimes, to write, you simply need to get out of your own way.

Write 1/Sub 1 check in: week 5, the one with no heat and a sale

Week 5! Our furnace died on Friday. It’s also been one of the coldest weeks all winter. Clearly our appliances have a (dark) sense of humor. Yesterday was Girl Scout cookie “go” day, so since the house was cold, Kyra and I bundled up and sold cookies door-to-door. By the time we arrived back home (several boxes lighter), we had heat.

Writing:

  • Poem about the color orange. It is full of whimsy. And adjectives.

Submitting:

  • One Good Turn, (very) tongue-in-cheek science fiction story.
  • Payment, an even shorter (25 words) version of Cash or Check

Rejections:

  • None!

Acceptances:

  • The Burden of So Many Roses to Kazka Press for their undelivered valentine prompt. The story should be “live” in a few days. 

I also spent a good deal of time revising/editing two stories, One Good Turn and another that I’m set to submit in this upcoming week. 

Write 1/Sub 1 check in: week 4 rejections, fast and furious

Week 4! I did take it easier this week, writing a flash story. I also worked on some revisions as well for some upcoming deadlines. Plus, I read a novel-length manuscript for a friend and provided some feedback. Have my fingers crossed for her.

Writing:

  • The Madness in King’s End, flash fiction, ~967 words

Submitting:

  • Cash or Check, to another postcard fiction type site.

Rejections:

  • Cash or Check, in what may be the world’s fastest rejection (or at least my fastest) ~ 8 hours
  • Long Distance Charges May Apply, 12 days

These were both nice rejections and if I have something appropriate in the future, I’ll definitely submit to both markets again. Besides, I don’t mind fast turnarounds. It beats staring at your submission tracker and thinking, wow, that’s been out for 397 days. Is it too soon to query?

Write 1/Sub 1 check in: week 3

Week 3! This week I finished a long short story. Word count says it’s a novelette, but I think it wants to be a novella when it grows up.

This coming week I would really like to work on some shorter stories.

Writing:

  • Aliens & Invisibility ~ 11,800 words. Aliens & Invisibility is not its title, just a reminder (to me) about its content. Although I feel compelled to say that the aliens in the story aren’t invisible. You can see them. Or could, if they weren’t a fictional construct. You know what I mean. 

Submitting:

  • Long Distance Charges May Apply, another super short story (80 words) that I sent to a postcard fiction site.
  • The Burden of So Many Roses, normally I don’t send stories out so soon after writing them, but this was in response to a prompt call for submissions with a deadline, so out it went.

Rejections, etc.:

  • Cash or Check (that 44-word story) was a finalist but did not make the winners’ list. Which, if you recall, I was totally fine with since part of the prize was reading on stage.